Likely to continue, with even higher frequency
John Brennan, America’s new CIA chief, in on record being a pro-drone attacks person. And now that the command of the US’ foremost spy and covert operations agency has been put under his command, many fear that the frequency of the strikes of remote-piloted aircrafts would go nowhere but up. The US says drone strikes offer a non-traditional method of fighting a non-traditional war.
But that would be an over-simplistic view of a complex situation. Like any traditional war, the real affectees of drone strikes are the people on the ground, the ones so easily categorised as collateral damage in military parlance. Being a controversial issue, the US has kept the lid tight on its drone programme. For Pakistan, though, the situation is quite different. As has been claimed time and over again by the US, and corroborated by WikiLeaks, certain circles in Pakistani military and political leadership knew about and approved the drones strikes all along while keeping a posture against them to gain public support. This dual purpose tactical move not only allowed the US and Pakistan to carry out strikes, but also created mistrust between the two nations.
With the 2014 deadline of US withdrawal moving closer, the US seems intent on keeping Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders on their heels, and for this purpose drones are a handy option in its arsenal. However, with their high ratio of civilian casualties, they have become a proverbial bone of contention between the two countries. But seeing how John Brennan was the one who developed most of covert operations guidelines in the past four years as chief counter-terrorism officer for Obama, these strikes might see an escalation, quite contrary to what Pakistan wants from Washington amid all the peace talks with the terrorists going on.
In the post-2014 scenario, Pakistan wants a bigger role in Afghanistan. The US while conceding that seems to push Pakistan towards an operation in North Waziristan. Seen in this backdrop the two mystery drone attacks in the tribal belt last month, which both sides are accusing each other to have carried out, takes an ironic turn. When the US first started drone strikes in tribal areas, Pakistan military would claim them as their strikes, but now when the US claims that at least these two strikes were not conducted by them but by Pakistan military, they are pinning it on the US. To make matters worse, no foreign reporters or even local ones are allowed there, leaving no way to verify the claim of either one. But what both of them should do is to stop this I-didn’t-do-it,-you-did-it routine and sit down on a table and thrash out the differences keeping them from making a joint effort for peace.
