Armed US drones first began operating over Afghanistan in October 2001, followed by attacks in Yemen and Pakistan, where most killings have occurred so far. The Obama administration increased the number of attacks from between 45 and 52 under G.W. Bush to 293. It has also changed the strategy for picking the drones’ victims from “personality strikes” – aimed at high-ranking members of terrorist organizations – to a strategy of “signature strikes,” that factor in “pattern of life” analysis and target “groups of men who bear certain defining characteristics associated with terrorist activity but whose identities aren’t known
The US government maintains that these strikes are of a “surgical” nature. One strike dealt with in the report took place on March 17, 2011, targeting a large gathering near a bus depot in the town of Datta Khel, North Waziristan. The US government claimed that all those killed were “insurgents.” It was subsequently established that the missiles had torn into a group of community leaders and local elders holding a jirga.
Interviews with victims graphically illustrate the daily horrors to which Pakistan’s tribals are being subjected by its constant exposure to drones, the report says. It also contradicts the assertions from Washington that drone attacks deter potential “terrorists.” The evidence suggests that “US strikes have facilitated recruitment to violent non-state armed groups and motivated further violent attacks.” In a manner of speaking this is the underlying theme of Imran Khan’s Waziristan march.
Drones are an instrument and they are not the solution to the problem of terrorism and Islamic militancy. Firstly the failure of Pakistan army to check Islamic militancy and secondly its practice of using the militant groups as its proxies and assets left the US with no alternative to launch ‘surgical strikes’.
The US can co-opt Pakistan in the drone enterprise, and thus limit damage at the ground level but it cannot because of the known duplicity of Rawalpindi. Resultant dilemma is as much of the US as of Pakistan.
-yamaaraar
