Pakistan: Now or Never?

from 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.

Pakistan vs U.S. Dumbing down the drones debate

If there was one thing the United States might have learned in a decade of war is that military might alone cannot compensate for lack of knowledge about people and conditions on the ground.  That was true in Afghanistan and Iraq, and may also turn out to be the case in Libya.

Yet the heated  debate about using Predator drones to target militants in the tribal areas of Pakistan – triggered by the spy row between the CIA and the ISI – appears to be falling into a familiar pattern – keep bombing versus stop bombing. Not whether, when and how drones might be effective, based on specific conditions and knowledge of the ground, and when they are counter-productive. 

Combined with that is a tendency to discuss the use of drones in isolation without taking account of the historical context (Pakistan and the United States have been rowing about this for several years – it is not new)  or indeed the broader political context (a botched drone attack by the CIA is guaranteed to enrage all the more if it comes at a time when American diplomats are trying to convince Pakistan they want to improve relations.)  

Consider, for example, the case of a tribesman with a performing monkey who gathered an audience of turban-clad, rifle-bearing men around him in a village in 2005. The U.S. controllers of the drone mistook the event for a weapons-training session or military briefing and dropped a missile, killing many in the audience.  That story was recounted by General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, now head of the Pakistan Army, and quoted by Brian Cloughley in his book “War, Coups and Terror”. “This, said the General, was an example of lack of cultural understanding,” wrote Cloughley.

Then there was the botched drone attack on Damadola in Bajaur agency in 2006 – by some accounts it was intended to target al Qaeda deputy Ayman al Zawahiri.  According to the Pakistani version, many women and children were among the victims of the strike, enraging the local population, driving them into the arms of local Taliban militants and fuelling a ferocious insurgency which took the Pakistan military several years to contain.

In language that could have been written today (and it has) the Guardian reported at the time that Pakistan had lodged a strong protest with the Americans over the attack and “the strained relation between Pakistan and the U.S. has been pushed to breaking point.” It blamed the botched attack on faulty intelligence on the ground.

Compare that, though, to the killing of Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), in a drone strike in 2009.  His death was welcomed by Pakistani authorities, and indeed by many ordinary Pakistanis who blamed him for bomb attacks in Pakistan. Good intelligence. Specific target. And probably the high point of cooperation between the United States and Pakistan over the use of drones.

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.

Will S. Arabia broker a deal to repair Pakistan-US ties?

With the U.S.-Pakistan dispute over CIA contractor Raymond Davis stuck in Pakistani courts, newspapers are reporting that the two countries’ common ally, Saudi Arabia, may step in to defuse the deepening crisis between them.

The high court in Lahore, where Davis shot dead two people in what he said was an act of self-defence in January, on Monday declined to rule on whether he  has diplomatic immunity. The court referred the question of immunity to a criminal court which is dealing with murder charges against him.

Given Pakistan’s cumbersome legal system which takes years to resolve disputes, something which both the United States and Pakistan would like to avoid, Pakistani newspapers say  Saudi Arabia is playing a behind-the-scenes role to find an out of court settlement.

“All eyes on Saudi role in resolving Davis row,” read a headline in daily The News on March 9. 

According to the report, the Saudi government would try to resolve the issue in line with Qisas — an Islamic injunction which allows the settlement of murder cases through payment of blood-money to the relatives.

The News said Marc Grossman, the new U.S. envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan who replaced Richard Holbrooke, discussed the issue of payment of Qisas with Saudi authorities on the sidelines of an international conference in Jeddah earlier this month.

Titled “Saudi ambassador comes up with ‘Raymond offer’, daily The Nation reported that Saudi envoy to Pakistan, Abdul Aziz bin Ibrahim al Ghadeer, discussed the issue separately with Pakistan’s interior minister Rehman Malik last week.

U.S.-Pakistan relations better than they look

Given the high-decibel volume of the row over Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor who shot dead two Pakistanis in Lahore in January, it would be tempting to assume that overall relations between Pakistan and the United States are the worst they have been in years.

At a strategic level, however, there’s actually rather greater convergence of views than there has been for a very long time.

In a speech last month, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took a step closer towards meeting Pakistan’s own call for a political settlement in Afghanistan through negotiations with Taliban insurgents which would force al Qaeda to leave the region. It was time, she said, “to get serious about a responsible reconciliation process, led by Afghans and supported by intense regional diplomacy and strong U.S.-backing.”

“Now, I know that reconciling with an adversary that can be as brutal as the Taliban sounds distasteful, even unimaginable. And diplomacy would be easy if we only had to talk to our friends. But that is not how one makes peace,” she said.

Her speech coincided with a report that the United States had begun secret face-to-face talks with representatives of the Taliban for the first time since the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

Clinton also acknowledged Pakistan’s concerns about Indian influence in Afghanistan.  “We look to them – and all of Afghanistan’s neighbours – to respect Afghanistan’s sovereignty, which means agreeing not to play out their rivalries within its borders, and to support reconciliation and efforts to ensure that al-Qaida and the syndicate of terrorism is denied safe haven everywhere. Afghanistan, in turn, must not allow its territory to be used against others.” Her choice of language was unusual in that it equated both India and Pakistan — traditionally Islamabad has been condemned for unhelpful interference in Afghanistan, while New Delhi has insisted it is interested only in helping Afghan development.

Western officials also say they believe Pakistan, which once looked to use Afghanistan for “strategic depth” against India, has scaled back its ambitions into seeing stability there as an end itself. Pakistani officials have been saying for a while they would settle for a “stable” rather than “friendly” Afghanistan.

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).”

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. (more…)

U.S. Predator strikes cripple al Qaeda in Pakistan?

America’s ramped-up Predator drone campaign against al Qaeda in Pakistan’s northwest is starting to pay off, according to U.S. and Pakistani intelligence authorities quoted in a clutch of media reports.

Eleven of the group’s top 20 “high value targets” along the Afghan border have been eliminated in the past six months  Newsweek magazine reports, citing Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

The strikes by the unmanned drones circling high above Pakistan’s rugged tribal areas have been so pin-pointed that in one case a missile fired at a hideout in North Waziristan didn’t just hit the right house, but the room in which Mustafa al-Misri (“Mustafa the Egyptian”) and several other Qaeda operatives were holed up. the magazine reports, quoting a Taliban sub-commander.

A U.S. counter-terrorism official goes so far as to suggest that the CIA-directed strikes have been so successful that it was possible to foresee a “complete al Qaeda defeat” in the mountainous region , according to this report in America’s National Public Radio.

Is that stretching the gains,  a bit too triumphalist a picture?

Al Qaeda’s leadership cadre had been “decimated” with up to a dozen senior and mid-level operatives killed as a  result of the strikes and the remaining leaders reeling from the attacks, U.S. officials say in the NPR report, adding achievements of the past several months should not be under-stated.

America’s escalating “Predator war” in Pakistan

In the dying days of the Bush administration, the United States military has stepped up missile strikes by remotely piloted Predator aircraft against militants in the mountains of Pakistan.

The raids have become deeper – as much as 25 miles into Pakistani territory – and more targeted like the latest one in a compound in South Waziristan where militants had gathered to mourn the victims of a previous strike two days before.

The U.S. has launched 18 Predator attacks since the beginning of August. compared with five strikes during the first seven months of 2008, the New York Times  reported . It said that the White House was relying on air strikes after a ground operation by U.S. Special Forces triggered a furious reaction from the Pakistani government.

The mystery of a downed drone in Pakistan

Last week, the Pakistan Army said it had recovered the wreckage of an unmanned aerial vehicle in the South Waziristan region, but it didn’t identify the aircraft.

The United States military, which has stepped up flights of the Predator, its main unmanned aerial vehicle, on the Afghan-Pakistan border and into Pakistan in recent months, said none of its planes had gone down inside Pakistan. One of its aerial vehicles had crashed but that was in Afghanistan, about  60 miles west of the Pakistani border and U.S. forces had immediately recovered the aircraft.

So whose unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was it that the Pakistan military found and why have they not revealed its identity? Tribesmen earlier said they had brought down the plane with fire, but the Pakistan military said there weren’t any bullet marks and it appeared to have crashed because of  mechanical failure.

If it was a Predator and this is  by no means certain, then you can narrow down the list to a small group of countriies.  Predator-maker General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc.   names the Italian Air Force, the Turkish army and the Royal Air Force (RAF) as customers of the Predator family of unmanned spy planes, besides the United States. All three have forces in Afghanistan but so far none has been known to fly missions into Pakistan.

Danger Room blog, which has been asking the same question about the downed drone,  says a General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc spokesman said they also have classified sales which they wouldn’t discuss.