The Drone Strike Narrative in Pakistan, by Farooq
Yousaf
June 10, 2014
The discourse
surrounding drone strikes in the FATA region has always been complex.
At least, that is what the New America Foundation’s Peter Bergen said recently, a revelation that was backed by a statement
from an unnamed official in
Islamabad.
With a sharp decline in the
number of drone strikes from 2010 onwards, and no strikes at all so far in
2014, it seems as if the Obama administration, ahead of a complete withdrawal
from Afghanistan in 2016, has finally decided to wrap up the CIA drone campaign
in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA.
Bergen, while commenting on
Obama’s security policies, wrote that the lack of infrastructure due to the
U.S. pullout, as well as a shift in drone focus towards Yemen and Somalia, has
effectively ended the drone campaign in Pakistan’s lawless frontier.
Professor Brian Glyn
Williams, author of Predators: The CIA’s Drone War on Al Qaeda, also believes
that Obama and the CIA may have called it a day on drone strikes in FATA.
Responding to a question about the future of drone strikes in Pakistan, he
said: “The CIA has indeed ended its aggressive drone program in Pakistan.
Despite all the claims in the Pakistani media that the drones were killing
‘hundreds of Pakistani civilians a week’ the truth is that the drones had
systematically annihilated Al Qaeda and killed thousands of allied Taliban, not
innocent civilian bystanders. There are fewer and fewer HVTs (High Value
Targets) left to be killed.”
According to Bergen’s New
America Foundation, which has tracked every strike over the past decade, drones
have killed a minimum of 258
civilians and 1,600 militants in
Pakistan, with no civilian casualties reported in 2013. There have been close
to 370 strikes since 2004, killing more than 50 high-profile leaders of
the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and its affiliates.
During this time, drones
been portrayed to the Pakistani people as one of the greatest evils to have
ever engulfed the country. This is a narrative driven largely by the Pakistani
media and the country’s politicians.
Pakistan’s electronic media
has boomed over the past decade, especially during the Musharraf regime, and
the country now has close to 90 independent television channels, compared to
just three before Musharraf. This boom, coupled with impressive print media
circulations, changed not only the political dynamics, but also the way people
consumed and synthesized information.
The media in Pakistan now
has the power to shape the public discourse on major issues, notably the CIA
drone strikes in FATA. And the position of the Pakistani media on drone strikes
has been very heavily critical. This discourse is predominantly based on the
fact that drones were a U.S. tool, violating Pakistan’s sovereignty, and
apparently killing “thousands” of innocent civilians. (Official
estimates in Pakistan of civilian casualties have varied: In October 2013,
sources in Islamabad claimed the number of civilian deaths to be around 400, but the government late backtracked from this
number, reporting a mere 67 deaths
since 2008.)
While media outlets
occasionally quoted figures from Pakistani and U.S. officials designating
victims as “suspected” militants, their commentaries and op-eds insisted that
those died were mostly civilians.
Politicians, meanwhile,
have also been outspoken on drones, for instance when high-profile Taliban
leaders are killed.
The death of
Wali-ur-Rehman, a Taliban spokesperson, in a May 2013 drone strike is one
example. Imran Khan, the popular politician and
leader of the Tehreek-e-Insaf Party, tagged Rehman as a “pro-peace” Taliban, willing to negotiate peace with
Islamabad. According to Khan, Rehman should not have been killed. Yet Rehman
was associated with, and represented, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, an outfit
responsible for a number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan.
Khan, the Pakistani
politician who has been most vocal against drones, bases his stance on the
assumption that the strikes have fuelled militancy. His open opposition to
drone strikes, with emphasis solely on civilian deaths and not on those of
militants, has resonated among his many supporters.
A more recent example was
the killing of TTP head Hakimullah Mehsud in a November 2013 drone strike. At
the time, Mehsud was not only Pakistan’s public enemy number one but also one
of the most brutal leaders to have led a militant faction in the country. Yet
Mehsud’s death was officially condemned by the
Nawaz government as an attempt to sabotage the peace process in Pakistan.
Farhat Taj, a Pashtun
academic and expert, has debunked the common drone discourse writing that “people of Waziristan are
suffering a brutal kind of occupation under the Taliban and al Qaeda.
Therefore, they welcome the drone attacks.” Taj’s opinion is supported by many
in FATA, who believe that drones, even with their loopholes, are high precision
weapons mostly targeting militants.
A student from Mohmand
Agency, FATA, while talking to me on the issue, was of the view that “many in
his tribal agency, as well as Waziristan, believe that drones are highly
precise compared to military operations, and thus result in minimal civilian
loss.”
Christine Fair, Karl
Kaltenthaler and William J Miller, writing for The Atlantic on Pakistan’s drone discourse,argued: “In fact, many Pakistanis support the drone strikes.
This suggests that there is room for the United States to engage in a public
diplomacy campaign to win over more Pakistanis to the idea that drone strikes
are not the bringers of carnage that is so often portrayed in the Urdu-language
media in Pakistan.”
This alternate view on
drone strikes goes largely unremarked in the Pakistani media, as does the fact
that the campaign has eliminated a number of high-profile militants and
terrorists, with Pakistan’s
consent.
Farooq Yousaf is working as
a research analyst and editor at the Centre for Research and Security Studies,
Islamabad, while currently based in Germany. He tweets as @faruqyusaf and can
be reached at farooq@crss.pk
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