US drones and Pakistan

S P SETH

Is US policy on the use of drones changing? President Obama’s recent speech at the US National Defence University would seem to suggest rather more a rethink than a change. He would like it to be based on firmer legal ground but he didn’t unveil any course of action to achieve it. His speech was a mishmash of wanting to follow a moral and legal code but unable to do so, as has been the case with Obama on most things. For a President who claims moral high ground, the revelations by the New York Times some time ago about drone targeting didn’t quite match up to this. Indeed, they were quite the opposite.

The Times reported that the Obama Administration held “Terror Tuesdays” meetings in which the President and his national security advisers discussed, which suspected terrorists should be assassinated by drones. And in about a third of these cases, Obama alone took responsibility for naming the targets. This was quite a shocking revelation about the President of the world’s most powerful country making decisions about whether or not someone will live sitting thousands of miles away from the targeted individual(s) and groups.

While the drone strikes started under the Bush presidency, their numbers exploded from about 50 (under Bush) to over 300 hundred under Obama. While these did kill some targeted terrorists, the resultant “collateral” damage in terms of civilian casualties, including women and children, was much greater, though there is no reliable tally. Amazing how we all have got used to the detestable description of civilian deaths as collateral damage! According to the New Yorker, after 2008, the CIA won approval for a category of drone attacks known as “signature strikes” in which, even without a specific target, an attack is justified by a pattern of behaviour, like young men test-firing their weapons or, perhaps, even celebratory firing at a community gathering.

Obama’s speech, though, seemed to suggest some softening of the drones’ policy. Before one is carried away, it is necessary to point out that droning as a policy instrument to hunt out suspected terrorists would continue. The recent drone killing of the Pakistani Taliban’s second-ranking leader, Waliur Rahman, is a case in point, so soon after Obama’s speech. At this point it is important to stress that Pakistan’s political/military establishment has been, over a period, complicit in the US policy of droning terror suspects in the borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan, even as it conveniently blamed the US for these strikes.

It is only after the Raymond Davis affair when the US secret agent killed two Pakistanis early in 2011 that US-Pakistan relations became testy.  And they got worse after the US commandos killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad. However, despite all the acrimony, the US satellite intelligence has most likely been useful to the Pakistani army in the Swat valley where the Pakistani Taliban almost succeeded in creating a secure foothold to expand their territorial control. But they were halted and even pushed out, though the situation remains unstable. In this situation, some of the high level drone killings, including that of Waliur Rahman, might not be unwelcome; though in today’s politically charged environment nobody in Pakistan’s establishment will admit to it.

The recent elections in Pakistan further raised the temperature on US drone killings. Two major political parties, led respectively by Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan, cited this as a major complication in US-Pakistan relations. And they both committed themselves to dealing with this issue, and the Taliban question, first, by seeking to stop the use of drones over Pakistan and, second, by starting a political dialogue with the Pakistani Taliban. On both these counts, Waliur Rahman’s death is likely to create fresh complications. Besides, a number of deaths and injuries from blowing up of a university bus in Quetta and attacks on a nearby hospital will make the government’s task of a dialogue with the militants quite difficult. As for drone strikes, even though President Obama made some encouraging gesture in his congratulatory message to Nawaz Sharif (now Prime Minister) on his election victory, the latter would need to tread cautiously in his opening moves that would be watched carefully by many people in Pakistan. Sharif wouldn’t like to be seen as caving in to the US pressure.

The problem in US-Pakistan relations is not just between the governments in the two countries, which in itself is quite formidable. At a more fundamental level, a vast majority of people in Pakistan disapproves of the United States and its policies. And the drone strikes have come to symbolize the low level of their relationship. Therefore, any turnaround would require an important shift in the US policy on drone killings. The US, on the other hand, would like Pakistan to be able to exercise control over terrorists in the tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghan border. Which is easier said than done. It has the look sometimes of an untamed wild frontier with no government control on both sides. That makes it a haven for terrorists, extremists and al Qaeda elements. In this situation, the US authorities have taken on themselves the role of judge, jury and executioner in another country infringing its national sovereignty.

Pakistan, of course, has been complicit at times and, at other times, unwilling or unable to take a determined stand.  The US has argued that the drone strikes are precise in hitting the targets and the resultant collateral damage is minimal compared to comparable action on the ground by troops. The US certainly has been able to eliminate some high value targets but at what cost?  The cost of turning almost an entire country into hating the United States is pretty high, by any reckoning. At the same time, this has the potential of turning many Pakistanis into sympathizers and/or even recruits of the Taliban cause. This is certainly something the US should ponder about, and initiate some concrete action to halt drone strikes. This will be helped considerably if the new government in Pakistan were to succeed in asserting control over the Pakistan-Afghan tribal belt to deny terrorists the safe haven they have come to exploit to Pakistan’s own great detriment.

However, any effective and lasting solution might have to await the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan by end-2014. In the meantime, some political fence-mending with Pakistan’s new government  is all that one can hope for.