Pakistan and US appear once
again to be cooperating on drone strikes,
A series of CIA drone
strikes launched last week against Taliban insurgents in Pakistan’s northwest
tribal areas provide the clearest demonstration yet that the U.S. intelligence
agency and Pakistani security forces are once again cooperating on defeating
the insurgents.
The pattern of the attacks fits the description of American
acquiescence to a behind-the-scenes request for help from the Pakistani
military, but nobody in Islamabad or Washington is saying so. The U.S.
government rarely comments on drone strikes as a matter of policy, and
Pakistan’s only acknowledgment of the strikes has been to dust off an aging
diplomatic draft feigning protest at unauthorized incursions into its airspace.
The Pakistani news media
made no mention of the strikes until Monday, a day after the last of the recent
attacks, when Dawn, the country’s top English daily newspaper, drew attention
to what it said was minimally Pakistan’s “tacit acceptance” of the U.S.
airstrikes.
“Relative silence can be
interpreted as, at the very least, tacit acceptance and, possibly, active
cooperation between the countries. From the general location of the strikes …
it would appear active cooperation is taking place — for surely neither the
U.S. nor Pakistan could want an errant U.S.-fired missile hitting a Pakistani
military target,” Dawn said in an editorial.
That comment alluded to
the November 2011 clash between U.S. and Pakistani forces positioned on either
side of the border with Afghanistan in which 24 Pakistani troops died. Pakistan
responded by suspending cooperation with U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan,
including the closure of two supply routes running through its territory.
Relations have slowly
improved since, because U.S. officials have adopted a more politically
sensitive approach in dealings with their Pakistani counterparts, who are
deeply averse to public criticism.
The sticking point was
the U.S. demand, since 2009, that Pakistan launch a military offensive in North
Waziristan. After successful operations in other tribal areas, it had become
the last safe haven in Pakistan for al-Qaida fugitives plotting attacks on
Western soil, and a home away from home for the Haqqani network, an Afghan
militant faction notorious for audacious attacks on government and NATO
installations in Afghanistan.
Occasional drone strikes
resumed in June, shortly before Pakistani forces launched the current
offensive, but a pattern suggesting active cooperation did not emerge until
last week.
Each of the nine drone
strikes launched between Oct. 5 and Saturday targeted militants fighting the
Pakistani military, rather than anybody the U.S. would consider a high-value
terrorist target. And the drones operated in airspace in frequent use by
Pakistani warplanes and helicopter gunships.
None of the four drone
strikes launched against militants in the Dattakhel area of North Waziristan,
for example, targeted the dominant local faction, which is led by Hafiz Gul
Bahadur, a key Haqqani network ally and, presumably, someone the United States
would want to eliminate.
The Pakistani military
has said its operation in North Waziristan would not discriminate between
cooperative and combative militant factions, including Bahadur’s, and it has since
claimed to have secured Dattakhel, except for insurgent bases located in
inaccessible terrain that have been softened with both American and Pakistani
air power.
A blanket ban imposed by
the military on any news coverage beyond official statements and leaked
intelligence assessments of drone strike casualties has made independent
verification of events very difficult.
However, Pakistani
researchers still able to access their information sources in locked-down North
Waziristan said ground fighting in Dattakhel has been minimal, and no reports
have emerged of any clashes between the Pakistani military and Bahadur’s
faction. They spoke to McClatchy on condition of anonymity, citing the ban.
A retired ranking Afghan
Taliban commander based in Islamabad, who has maintained contacts with various
militant factions, said the relative peace in Dattakhel had made it a magnet
for fleeing militant insurgents, following the Pakistani military’s capture of
their former strongholds in the Miramshah and Mir Ali areas of North
Waziristan. That migration prompted Pakistan’s request for U.S. drone strikes,
said the former militant, who identified himself by the militant nom de guerre
“Okasha,” saying disclosure of his identity could prompt his arrest by
Pakistani authorities or violent militant reprisals.
He said the precise
nature of the airstrikes, including those launched from CIA drones, had allowed
the Pakistani military to sidestep a confrontation with the Bahadur faction,
which so far has stayed out of the fight.
That assessment is
consistent with the behavior of Haqqani network allies during previous
Pakistani military actions in the tribal areas straddling the border with
Afghanistan. The network has brokered several peace agreements between its
Pakistani allies and the military, both in North Waziristan and South
Waziristan. Those agreements were advantageous to the Pakistani government
because they divided militant forces that had successfully fought off military
offensives as a united force until 2006.
The political division
of the militants into two camps was a major factor in the military’s 2009
capture of South Waziristan, until then the biggest den of militancy in
Pakistan. But it also created an unlikely post-conflict spectacle there of
Haqqani network-allied militants providing security to Pakistani military
contractors building the U.S.-financed Gomal Zam hydroelectric dam. The leader
of the faction guarding the construction site, Maulvi Nazir, was killed in a
January 2013 drone strike, shortly before the dam’s completion.
Hussain is a McClatchy special
correspondent.
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