Drone Attacks in Pakistan

State sanctioned targeted killing is nothing new.

What makes the US drone attacks in Pakistan unique is the manner in which they are conducted and the conduct of all the actors involves in the incident. This blog attempts to analyze the motives of these actors and what advantage they derive out of these attacks.

The first major actor is the US administration itself. Drone strikes in Pakistan are conducted by the Counter terrorism Center of the CIA. This unit is the latest in a series of units established it conduct the paramilitary operations of the spy agency.

CIA insists that the whole process is legal and that it selects its targets after extensive scrutiny of the evidence. How legal it is can be judges by the excellent article by Tara Mckelvey.  She described the whole process of selection of targets in stark detail.

These attacks highlight the growing frustration of the US administration. Fed up by the two-timing Pakistani and Afghan officials, they decided to take the matters in their hands. But in typical US manner of blundering through a policy that looked good on the drawing board, things have not been going well for the CIA and its official and unofficial allies in the region.

After the 2008 expose of the covert official policy of using drones in Pakistani airspace, US administration moved quickly to control the fallout. After talks, President Musharraf allowed the drone strikes. The talks resulted in a two point agreement. The first was unrestricted access to Pakistani airspace without any retaliation from the air defense units. The second was more important and crucial in the eyes of the US administration.

The Pakistani government gave their assurance that while protests will continue on the official level, unofficially, Pakistan’s intelligence community will provide their full support to the CIA setup involved in the drone strikes.

This brings me to the next actor of the fiasco; the Pakistani government.

The civil administration of Pakistan is not an actor in this case. This might come as a surprise to many western readers. In the name of national security, the security apparatus of the country has taken over the issue.

The army has it easy when it comes to these attacks. It is a major supplier of intelligence to the CIA. According to the US intelligence community, this is the only weak link of the chain. US have learned not to trust Pakistan’s defense community after bitter experiences in the Afghan War of 1980s.

In the event of any opposition or protest from the ‘civil society’, the armed forces just point toward the civil establishment. The elected government is forced to be the fall guy because army provides protection to the corruption and misgovernment of the elected regime.

What about the people who actually face the Hellfire missiles?

Initially, both the US and Pakistani administrations downplayed the number of civilian casualties in these strikes. Once they realized that this farce cannot go on, they shifted gears and altered their stance just a wee bit. Now they admit of civilian casualties but also point out the ‘benefits ‘of these strikes.

Perhaps the best person to ask about these ‘benefits’ are the children who have lost family and limbs in drone strikes.

The ply card reads: A drone attack orphaned me