The ‘good’ drone

When was the last time a Pakistani political party helped set the world news agenda for a day? Pakistani politics seldom draws any outside attention barring occasional jokes. So this is a real change. Welcome to constructive, positive politics in a country dominated by failed, violent parties.
The PTI’s anti-drone campaign has propelled the CIA’s illegal drone attacks in Pakistan to the top of world agenda. And it certainly makes the job of the CIA and other pro-drone lobbies in the United States much more difficult as more Americans realise the blunders their military is committing in their name abroad. The expansion of global opposition to the use of drones in Pakistan is a challenge to the Pentagon and increases the chances of future legal accountability for innocent deaths.
On October 7, as many as 12 major American media outlets highlighted the illegality of the CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan. The coverage coincided with the culmination of the PTI march to South Waziristan. This was a first for the United States and prompted a hurried counterattack by the pro-drone lobby.
You can imagine the CIA spin masters hard at work, churning out legal arguments to show the drones in a favourable light. A quick survey of the pro-drone reaction in the US media brings up parallel arguments. My pet favourite is the theory that drones are misunderstood. They are not a solution to terrorism but it is one of the “least bad” options available.
A real eye-opener is the way lobbies in the Pakistani media and politics united to give the anti-drone campaign a cold response, despite a heightened international interest. You cannot unite Pakistanis on major issues in a country where politics are sick, violent and divisive. The PTI, the prime mover behind the campaign, bears part of the blame: it failed to invite other political parties on what essentially is a national cause that draws sympathy across Pakistani public opinion. But there’s more to the way the Pakistani media either boycotted the anti-drone march or tried to cast it in a negative light.
A strong pro-US lobby exists in Pakistani government, politics and media. This lobby is a result of hard work by Washington over a decade, cultivating support through traditional PR and funding under different heads. Political rivalries are another explanation for the unusual animosity shown to the anti-drone campaign. These two factors – the pro-US lobby and political rivalries – combined to create confusion. The federal government, a coalition stitched together and maintained by American officials in the last days of the Bush administration, was successful in using the police and local civil administration to create physical hurdles. By night time, it was natural for the military to advise the marchers how darkness multiplied threats to a rally inside South Waziristan.
The government strategy was a success: waste daylight time by using obstacles on the road and then accuse the military of stopping the march at nightfall.
Dirty Pakistani politics aside, the Pakistani government continues to take a soft line on the CIA drone violations and the murder of innocent Pakistanis. Some official American leaks try to give the impression that the Pakistani military supports CIA drone attacks. But sentiments inside the military were on display last week at the National Defence University, where a representative of American anti-drone activists was invited for panel discussion with military officers. The government continues to hope that the US will transfer drone technology to Pakistan. That is not going to happen. Meanwhile, the drones continue to push our own citizens into the arms of TTP terrorists. The TTP terror group itself continues to survive Pakistani attempts to eliminate it, thanks to safe havens inside Afghanistan under US military watch.
The benefit of CIA drones is also questionable. Barring a handful of real targets, the remaining targets have been of questionable value, inaccurate or not worth the collateral damage and the repeated violations of Pakistani territory. The American claim that our tribal belt is a source of threats to US soldiers in Afghanistan is weak and easily refutable. All existing data and evidence show that American troubles in Afghanistan, including Afghan resistance to foreign occupation, are indigenous and not engineered from outside.
Not shooting down a drone, not refusing permission for the CIA to use our airspace, and reluctance to internationalise CIA border violations, all amount to tacit Pakistani consent. It is time now for the Pakistani government and military to question the arguments used by the US military to justify meddling in our tribal belt. The Pakistani government can retaliate by issuing its own realistic assessments of alleged Al-Qaeda strength on the Afghan border region, the alleged threat posed by our tribal belt to US security, and the alleged role of Afghan territory under US control in sustaining TTP terrorism inside Pakistan.
Email: aq@projectpakistan21.org