Pakistan's Very First Drone Strike: A Strike Against Effective Governance

By Syed Irfan Ashraf, Reader Supported News

17 September 15

his past week, Pakistan executed its first-ever drone strike against al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, allegedly killing three suspects in the Shawal area of North Waziristan. What will follow next? Will Pakistan take into its own hands the ongoing drone war against al-Qaeda? In turn, will the country ask the US to stop its surgical drone strikes, which are carried out in violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty?

Starting in 2004, the US has conducted over 400 drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal belt along its Afghani border. The circumstances of the resulting deaths are not clear, mainly because the areas under drone attack are inaccessible to journalists. However, independent investigative reports claim that over three thousand people, including over two hundred children, have been killed in these strikes.

Due to massive death and destruction in Pakistan, its military has long been charged with population neglect, silence, and inaction over the violation of its country’s sovereignty in trade for US military aid. Faced with this scathing public critique, Pakistan linked its ability to eliminate the al-Qaeda network with its lack of real-time surveillance capacity. This is why Pakistan's top civilian and military leadership have for years now been demanding that the Obama administration give the country US drone technology.

Why didn't the US give Pakistan drone technology? Security analysts believe that the Obama administration has always been skeptical of Pakistani support for the US War on Terror in Afghanistan. Handing critical technology over to Pakistan was a gamble the US wouldn’t take. Secondly, this type of US high-tech military support to Pakistan was bound to raise alarm bells in India, its rival neighboring state, given their historically strained relationship.

What will Pakistan do now that it has developed its own drone technology? Will its military be able to satisfy the public demand for its sovereignty defense? If this is to happen, Pakistan not only will have to demand the US stop drone strikes on its soil, but will also need to prove the efficacy of its own program to eliminate militants and discourage their infiltration across the border into Afghanistan. Over the past few years, Pakistan seems to have changed its policy on US drones strikes. Not only has civilian leadership frequently condemned the US drone strikes, but a public debate has also been encouraged at different forums to argue that drone strikes kill militants, but they add to militancy.

In the past, military analysts have cited US drone strikes in the Pashtun-dominated border areas as a major factor in al-Qaeda youth recruitment for cross-border attacks on US troops. In my first hand reporting of drone strikes as a journalist in Pakistan’s tribal belt, I found local Taliban leadership using the US drone strikes in a highly strategic way. Within minutes of such attacks, they would cordon off the scene, block civilians’ entry, and remove hardcore foreign militants, leaving only mutilated local bodies. In this way an altered narrative was created around the dead bodies in order to boost revenge against the US troops fighting al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This strategy used against US efforts could easily be employed to subvert Pakistani military presence in the tribal areas if its drone strikes continued but didn't include a mobilization of civilian resources. Empowering local people in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) by allowing them to have their own means of representation such as local government, private media, and other business opportunities would increase localized sovereignty and stakeholder participation. Additionally, it is critical that international funding for developmental works in FATA such as building schools and other infrastructure be made completely transparent. For example, Pakistan received 5.8 billion dollars from the US between 2001 and 2008, but its military has destroyed almost every residence and local business in the areas where military operations are ongoing. In the end, the civilian cost is far more than the damages inflicted on its intended targets of militants.

In other words, no war can be won by the Pakistani military if they employ indiscriminate means against terrorists who use civilian cover. It will on the contrary prolong the ongoing wave of deaths and destruction in Pashtun-dominated areas of the tribal belt, which is so far away from the media limelight that we don’t know if drone strikes by the US or Pakistan are really killing hard-core militants or if the death tolls are largely civilian.

Syed Irfan Ashraf's journalistic career started in 1997 in the militancy-hit northwest of Pakistan, focusing on Swat and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. He has since worked as a journalist for national and international media outlets, including The New York Times. In his co-produced award-winning 2009 documentary for the Times titled “Class Dismissed in Swat Valley,” Ashraf featured a teenage girl, Malala Yousazai. The documentary introduced Malala to the global audience, and proved a visual document of her landmark struggle against militants, a feat that later won her a Nobel peace prize. Mr. Ashraf is regularly writing on terrorism and militancy for the op-ed pages of English Daily Dawn, Pakistan, and won in 2013 a Mirror Award for best commentary on media, organized by Syracuse University, New York. He is an assistant professor at the University of Peshawar in Pakistan and is currently working on his dissertation for a Ph.D. in Mass Communication and Media Arts at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.