Afghan Journal

Drone strikes are police work, not an act of war?

Launching an air strike in another nation would normally be considered an act of aggression. But advocates of America’s rapidly expanding unmanned drone programme don’t see it that way.

They are arguing, as Tom Ricks writes on his blog The Best Defense over at Foreign Policy, that the campaign to kill militants with missile strikes from these unmanned aircraft, is more like police action in a tough neighbourhood than a military conflict.

These raids conducted by sinister-looking Predator or Reaper aircraft in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen – and since last month in Somalia - should not be seen as a challenge to states and their authority. Instead they are meant to supplement the power of governments that are either unable to or unwilling to fight the militants operating from their territories.

They are precise, limited, strikes aimed at taking down specific individuals, and in that sense are more like the police going after criminals, rather than a full-on military assault. Ricks writes: 

“Police work involves small arms used precisely. Drones aren’t pistols, but firing one Hellfire at a Land Rover is more like a police action than it is like a large-scale military offensive with artillery barrages, armored columns, and infantry assaults.”

It is a bit of a stretch, though, to compare a police action in a rough part of town with the kind of devastation that the laser-guided Hellfire missile can rain down when fired from unmanned aircraft as scores of Pakistani civilians in the troubled northwest region  discovered in the initial days of the programme launched by the Bush administration.

US-Pakistan ties : bleeding America in Afghanistan

U.S.- Pakistan ties are entering an even  more dangerous phase, going  by the language that the two sides are employing ever since a public airing of  differences over covert U.S. activities in Pakistan 

It’s a game of smoke and mirrors and some of it could be bluff and bluster, but there is little doubt that Pakistan and America are  stuck in an unhappy relationship, attacking each other as much as  the militants  they joined forces against ten years ago.

Foreign Policy has a piece which quotes an unnamed official as saying that Pakistani leaders want the United States to “bleed a little like the Soviets “  in Afghanistan just as it prepares to withdraw from the country. America will abandon the region once again, the leaders are convinced,   ending the flow of aid to Pakistan and leaving it in the lurch.

More immediately, the NATO supply line for the troops in Afghanistan that runs through Pakistan is a tempting target, and some in Pakistan are already plotting to use that to get back at the United States for violating Pakistan’s sovereignty with impunity. The Foreign Policy piece says ex-Pakistani servicemen are planning to disrupt the supply line by organising civilians and political groups to block highways that are used by the trucks carrying everything from fuel to water for the troops, if Washington ignores Pakistan’s demands on curtailing its covert war inside Pakistan. These include reducing drone strikes to only high-value targets, greater transparency about CIA activities, and a reduction in the number of U.S. military trainers. If Pakistan adopted such a plan to choke off the re-supply routes, Pakistan can turn Afghanistan into a graveyard for U.S. troops,  former chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence Lt.General Hamid Gul boasted in a TV appearance.

The supply line has been targeted in the past, including last year when the Torkham crossing was blocked in retaliation for a cross-border U.S. helicopter strike in which three members of Pakistan’s Frontier Corps were killed. But Pakistan was forced to reopen them under U.S. pressure and it’s hard to see Islamabad resist Washington beyond a point.

In any case the language from America’s supporters is also getting equally menacing. Here’s an editorial from The Wall Street Journal that says Washington must present Pakistan with a stark choice, in the manner it did immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks when it reportedly threatened to bomb the country into the Stone Age if it didn’t cooperate in the war against al Qaeda and the Taliban in next door Afghanistan.   Regardless of how Pakistan acts, the United States has a vital national interest in going after al Qaeda and the Taliban who hide in sanctuaries inside Pakistan and that fight must go on, the newspaper said in the editorial titled The Pakistan Ultimatum.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

The “sound and fury” of U.S.-Pakistan ties

With the release of CIA contractor Raymond Davis, the United States and Pakistan have put behind them one of the more public rows of their up-and-down relationship.  It was probably not the worst row -- remember the furore over a raid by U.S. ground troops in Angor Adda in Waziristan in 2008, itself preceded  by a deluge of leaks to the U.S. media about the alleged duplicity of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency in its dealings on Afghanistan.

But it was certainly one which by its very nature was guaranteed to get the most attention - an American who shot dead two Pakistanis in what he said was an act of self-defence, denied diplomatic immunity and ultimately released only after the payment of blood money. Adding to the drama were two intelligence agencies battling behind the scenes.

It was also the first serious row since the Obama administration began to build what it promised would be a new strategic relationship with Pakistan.

As I wrote earlier this month, overall relations between the United States and Pakistan were rather better than they looked (or at least than they appeared at the height of the Davis row).  Compared to two years ago, Pakistan is more likely to talk now about the need for stability in Afghanistan than strategic depth (the extent of this shift is open to debate). The United States has also moved closer towards meeting Pakistan's calls for a political settlement in Afghanistan by holding direct talks with representatives of the Taliban, according to several official sources with knowledge of those contacts.

On the subject of Taliban talks, the New York Times noted that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, during a speech to the Asia Society last month, "appeared to recast longstanding preconditions for talks: that the insurgents lay down their arms, accept the Afghan Constitution and separate from Al Qaeda. Instead, she described them as 'necessary outcomes'. "

According to the NYT, "officially, the State Department played down the change in language, but a senior Western diplomat in Washington, who was familiar with the strategy behind Mrs. Clinton’s speech, said: 'It was not intentional to explicitly make preconditions into outcomes. But the text now leaves room for interpretation, which opens doors.'”

The other half of that story is to look at who first suggested that the United States focus on outcomes rather than preconditions for talks  -- Pakistan Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani, who wrote a detailed letter to President Barack Obama last year outlining how he saw the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

U.S. drones fall silent in Pakistan; only a brief respite?

For more than three weeks now, there has been no U.S. drone strike in Pakistan’s northwest, triggering speculation that the pause may be related to the tensions between the two countries over the arrest of an American embassy employee for murder. Washington is seeking the release of Raymond Davis, a former Special Forces soldier who killed two Pakistanis on Jan 27 during what he said was an attempted robbery in a Lahore street, arguing he is covered under diplomatic immunity.

Pakistanis,  deeply resentful of the heavy U.S.  involvement in the country, are refusing to hand over Davis, saying he should face trial in Pakistan as he didn’t have immunity.

The matter is in court and given the surcharged atmosphere across Pakistan, the United States may well be holding off on its covert air campaign in order not to inflame  passions further. The last missile strike took place on Jan.23 in North Waziristan, where the raids have been concentrated in the hunt for the Haqqani network.  Ordinarily, the Predators and the more advanced Reapers controlled from the U.S. are in the Pakistani northwest at least two or three times a week, as part of a ramped-up campaign since President Barack Obama took office in January 2009. “Drones in slumber after Davis incident,”  a headline read in The News.

But The Long War Journal which closely tracks the drone programme  said there have been periods of operational inactivity in the past and this latest pause is only the third-longest. The longest was in November 2009 when it lasted 33 days, followed by another in June of the same year when it ran for 28 days.

Weather is a primary reason for disruption of drone missions. Also, it may be a question of operational intelligence with missions dependent on the information flow. Even now in this surcharged atmosphere, if the CIA were to get information about a high-value target in the Pakistani northwest, it’s hard to see them passing up the chance to strike.

As CIA director Leon Panetta said in 2009, the drones were the “only game in town” to stop the al Qaeda , and it doesn’t seem likely the United States is about to give up its weapon of choice.

‘Obama’s Wars’ and clandestine operations

Bob Woodward’s new book “Obama’s Wars” is making waves for laying bare the policy divisions and the personality clashes within the administration over the U.S. President’s Afghan policy. The author, according to the excerpts published by the New York Times and the Washington Post ahead of the book’s release next week, exposes the colliding egos of senior political and military figures in even more stark detail than Rolling Stone‘s profile of General Stanley McChrystal that cost the U.S. commander his job.

But what may turn out to be even more explosive in the theatre where America’s longest war is being waged is the revelation that the CIA is running a 3,000-strong Afghan army to carry out clandestine operations in not just Afghanistan, but more importantly over the border in Pakistan. The idea that an Afghan army is fighting al Qaeda and Taliban militants inside Pakistan is not something that Islamabad can tolerate easily. Or at least the public disclosure of it.

Firing missiles from unmanned U.S. drone aircraft patrolling over Pakistan’s northwest region at a rate that has far outstripped the Bush administration’s record is bad enough ; to now have a brigade-size paramilitary unit operating inside the country marks a significant expansion of the covert war that the Obama administration has waged there.

The Washington Post says Woodward characterizes this previously undisclosed Counter Terrorism Pursuit Teams as “elite, well-trained units that conduct highly sensitive covert operations into Pakistan as part of a stepped-up campaign against al-Qaeda and Afghan Taliban havens there.” The New York Times advancer of the book says the “covert army” captures and kills Taliban fighters and seeks support in tribal areas.

The CIA directs and funds the force.

U.S. officials didn’t just confirm the existence of the counter terrorism force, they bragged about it. “You’re talking about one of the finest Afghan fighting forces, which has made major contributions to security and stability,” CNN quoted an unnamed U.S official as saying in a report following the publication of the book excerpts.

Afghan attacks dip after crackdown on Quetta Shura?

It could be early days yet, and the sampling may be small, but there are signs of a drop in Taliban attacks following the Pakistani crackdown on the Quetta Shura, an intelligence website says. If the assessment put out by NightWatch intelligence turns out to be true over the next few weeks, it will  reinforce U.S. military officials’ long-standing position you cannot win the war in Afghanistan unless you take out the Taliban leadership in Pakistan

NightWatch says it began compiling and analysing open source reporting in Afghanistan in early February to determine whether the arrest of Taliban  no.2 Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in Karachi and other commanders subsequently had a measurable impact on the fighting. Looking at the figures for January and February and factoring in weather conditions, the answer is that the Pakistani crackdown appears to have contributed to a “clear but delayed drop in clashes,”  it says.

While combat in early January was lacklustre, typical of mid-winter with 5 to 6 significant clashes involving loss of life or property each day, the pace picked-up that month and into early February. In the week following Baradar’s arrest on Feb. 8 the daily number of clashes dipped, picked up a little the following week, but then fell back reaching the low levels recorded in early January.

The February is dip is even more striking, because it happened just when the United States launched the biggest operation in years in southern Helmand province’s Marjah. Usually each time there is a big NATO operation, Taliban fighters try and step up action elsewhere to distract the security forces.

We may well be grasping at straws here.  It’s not even clear how much of the Taliban military strategy was being directed by Baradar; some people have suggested he was actually in contact with the Afghan government as part of its reconciliation drive. If that were true, he may not have been the top military strategist for the Taliban for  sometime, and in that sense, his capture shouldn’t be making a huge difference to their operations.  Perhaps the dip in Taliban attacks is just a temporary phenomenon.

Either way, the pressure on Pakistan remains. If indeed its crackdown on elements of the Afghan Taliban, for whatever reason, has made a difference to the war, it will only bolster the U.S. case for more action.

“I think there is going to be a lot of  talk  about what more Pakistan can do about the militants,” Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst and now with The Brookings Institution, told Reuters last month.

America seeking revenge in Pakistan for CIA raid ?

The United States has carried out the most intensive series of  unmanned  ”Predator” drone attacks inside Pakistan’s tribal areas since the covert war began, following December’s deadly raid on a CIA base just over the border in Afghanistan. Pakistani newspapers citing interior ministry data, say there were 12 missile strikes in January fired by the unmanned Predator and Reaper planes, the highest for any single month. The highest number of attacks in a month stood at six previously, which was in December 2009. There were just  two strikes in January 2009, reflecting the surge in the drone campaign to fight al Qaeda and the Taliban since the Obama administration took over last year.

The strikes began a day after the attack on the CIA base in Khost in eastern Afghanistan in which seven Americans were killed when a Jordanian suicide bomber linked to both al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban detonated his explosives inside the base. Since then the drones have been in South and North Waziristan targeting the head of the Pakistani Taliban  (Tehrik-e-Taliban) Hakimullah Mehsud, who according to some reports may have been killed in a Jan.14 strike.

“The consequent increase in US strikes, first in North Waziristan and then South Waziristan, specifically targeting the fugitive TTP chief Hakimullah Mehsud clearly shows that revenge is the major motive for these attacks. The US intelligence sleuths stationed in Afghanistan are convinced the Khost suicide attack was planned in Waziristan with the help of the TTP. Therefore, it is believed Afghanistan-based American drones will continue to hunt the most wanted al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, especially Hakimullah, with a view to avenge the loss of the seven CIA agents and to raise morale of its forces in Afghanistan,” Pakistan’s The News, which has compiled details of each strike, writes.

The Khost attack  cost the CIA dearly, taking the lives of the most experienced analysts of Al Qaeda whose intelligence helped guide the drone attacks inside Pakistan  since the campaign began in earnest in the summer of 2008. “For the C.I.A., there is certainly an element of wanting to show that they can hit back,” said Bill Roggio, editor of The Long War Journal which tracks the drone campaign in Pakistan, told the New York Times.   The agency, which took its second biggest lost in history in Khost, has responded with a furious burst of strikes.

According to that same Times report, soon after the Khost raid, a senior U.S. intelligence official said there would be a price to pay. “Some very bad people will eventually have  a very bad day,”  he was quoted as saying.

But according to The News an overwhelming number of people killed in the attacks last month were civilians. Others such as Geo TV have said the attacks killed militants. What is interesting is that there are no longer mass protests against these attacks. Is it because people have reconciled to them ? Or is it that Pakistan’s political-security establishment is more favourably inclined to them, now that the United States is targeting the Pakistani Taliban with as much fury ?

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Attack on the CIA in Afghanistan raises jitters in Pakistan

Last week's suicide bomb attack on a base in Afghanistan which killed seven CIA officers and a Jordanian spy is raising fears in Pakistan that it could encourage an intensified drone bombing campaign to target those who planned the assault.

Although it is too early to say for certain who ordered the attack, possibilities include the Pakistani Taliban who claimed responsibility; the Afghan Taliban who had earlier said the bomber was an Afghan army officer; the Haqqani network; al Qaeda; or a combination of different groups working together. 

U.S. media reports, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, have described the bomber as a double agent who was allowed onto the base after he promised to provide information about al Qaeda's top leadership. The Washington Post named him as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian who had been recruited by Jordanian intelligence, and whose intended role may have been to help hunt down al Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al Zawahri.

Instead after what must have been a long campaign of deception to win the trust of the CIA, he blew himself up at the base in Khost province near the Pakistan border.

According to Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai, the attack was believed to be carried out by the Haqqani network, founded by Jalaluddin Haqqani and now run by his son Sirajuddin Haqqani, and based in North Waziristan.  Writing in The News, he forecast intensified drone bombings in North Waziristan,  potentially destabilising Pakistan, which has already launched an offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan.

"The US army, or the CIA to be specific, and the Haqqanis were already involved in a deadly war of revenge against each other and their blood feud has now become deadlier and personal.  In the 80s, the elder Haqqani and CIA cooperated with each other fighting the Soviet occupying forces in Afghanistan. Today, they are rivals," he said.

"The US Special Forces and CIA have killed scores of Haqqani's men, women and children in secret operations and drone strikes in Afghanistan and in North Waziristan, where the family migrated from Khost after the Soviet invasion in December 1979. The CIA will now try harder to eliminate the Haqqanis, who control one of the most powerful Taliban groups in Afghanistan. To succeed, the CIA will make more frequent use of drones in North Waziristan and other Pakistani tribal areas, and hire a larger number of informants, (better screened to prevent incidents like the recent suicide bombing at Khost)."

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Targeted killings in Pakistan and elsewhere : official U.S. policy now ?

One of the things U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ran into last week during her trip to Pakistan was anger over attacks by unmanned "drone" aircraft inside Pakistan and along the border with Afghanistan.

 One questioner during an interaction with members of the public said the missile strikes by Predator aircraft amounted to "executions without trial" for those killed.  Another asked Clinton to define terrorism and whether she considered the drone attacks to be an act of terrorim like the car bomb that ripped through Peshawar that same week killing more than 100 people.

The people of Pakistan aren't the only ones asking that question.  A top UN rights expert has swung the attention back on the drone programme, saying that the United States may be violating international law with the missile strikes.

Philip Aston, the Special Rapporteur on extradjudicial, summary or arbitary executions, said there could be circumstances under which the use of such techniques could be justified in international law, but Washington would have to show it followed appropriate precautions and accountability mechanisms.

The United States will have to be more upfront about its Predator war. "Otherwise you have the really problematic bottom line, which is that the Central Intelligence Agency is running a programme that is killing a significant number of people, and there is absolutely no accountability in terms of the relevant international law."

There is little doubt now that targeted killing is official U.S. policy,  Jane Meyer argues in a detailed piece for the New Yorker.  What is worrying is that the embrace of the Predator programme has occurred with remarkably little public discussion, given that it represents a radically new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force. "And because of the CIA program's secrecy, there is no visible system of accountability in place, despite the fact that the agency has killed many civilians inside a politically fragile nuclear-armed country with which the U.S. is not at war," Meyer writes.The drone programme, for all its successes, has stirred deep ethical concerns. Meyers quotes Michael Walzer, a political philosopher and author of the book "Just and Unjust Wars" that he is unsettled by the notion of an intelligence agency wielding such lethal power in secret. "Under what code does the CIA operate ?" he asks. "I don't know. The military operates under a legal code, and it has judicial mechanisms. "