Brian Williams - Predators

Shamsi came up again in June 2011, when the Pakistanis announced that they were closing the base to punish the United States for withholding promised funds. 9The United States, however, announced that it had already ceased operations at the base and transferred them across the Afghan border to the base at Jalalabad. But this move did not seem permanent, and in December 2011 the Pakistanis again announced they were closing the base after U.S. Apaches and AC-130 gunships accidentally killed twenty-four Pakistani border troops during a firefight in a place called Salala. Regardless, the existence of secret CIA bases and Xe contractors on Pakistani soil created a sense among many Pakistanis that the United States was attempting to occupy their country.

THE ARREST OF RAYMOND DAVIS AND THE DATTA KHEL STRIKE OF MARCH 17, 2011

Rumors of CIA and Xe agents running around Pakistan became even more widespread after a CIA contractor named Raymond Davis was arrested for gunning down two Pakistanis trying to rob him in the eastern city of Lahore on January 27, 2011. Subsequent reports indicated that the two men killed were actually ISI spies tracking Davis. 10When the Pakistanis arrested Davis, an ex–Special Forces soldier, they found a pathrai drone tracking chip on him. He was also found to have traveled to the FATA region twelve times without official permission. 11If this were not enough, his mobile phone was found to have made calls to Waziristan. 12The Pakistani media reported that Davis’s main task was “to keep CIA network intact in the tribal agencies as well as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.” 13One Pakistani official said, “This is not the work of a diplomat. He was doing espionage and surveillance activities.” 14For their part, the Americans claimed that Davis was a “diplomat” and therefore had immunity.

As a result of the embarrassing affair, which led to widespread anti-American protests and exposed the CIA’s covert operations in Pakistan, the Pakistani government demanded that hundreds of U.S. operatives in the country leave. Tensions rose between Islamabad and Washington, and in an effort to placate the Pakistanis during the nearly two-month period that Davis was in custody, the CIA called a monthlong halt to the drone strikes. A Taliban commander said of Davis’s arrest and the resulting lull, “The arrest of this guy is a very positive thing for us. Our forces used to be hit by attacks every other day. Now we can move more freely.” 15

Davis was released on March 16, 2011, following a diyya (blood money) payment of $2.3 million to the slain robbers’ families, and the drone strikes began in force the very next day. The drone attack in Waziristan on March 17 had been strongly opposed by the new U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, who felt that a strike coming so close on the heels of Davis’s release was insensitive and would infuriate the Pakistanis. 16The CIA, however, overrode Munter’s concerns, and the ensuing strike turned out to be a greater mistake than Ambassador Munter could have predicted.

The March 17 strike killed between twenty-six and forty-four people in Datta Khel, a Taliban-controlled village in North Waziristan. 17Although news sources initially claimed that those killed in the strike were “militants,” the New York Times subsequently reported that as many as fifteen of the people killed in the strike were actually tribal elders. 18Others killed in the strike were described as merchants and tribal police. It became apparent that the elders had been engaged in a jirga designed to settle a dispute between two tribes over a chromite mine. Since the territory in question was controlled by the Taliban, a high-ranking commander loyal to Taliban leader Hafiz Gul Bahadur was officiating at the jirga . While the elders and Taliban militants were meeting, as many as four missiles slammed into the jirga , killing the high-ranking Taliban leader, ten of his followers, and numerous civilians. A BBC account of the Datta Khel strike reported, “Officials say two drones were involved. One missile was fired at a car carrying suspected militants. Three more missiles were then fired at the moving vehicle, hitting it and the nearby tribal meeting, or jirga.” 19

Regardless of the intended target, the local population was infuriated by the deaths of so many respected elders at the hands of the CIA. One survivor said, “It wasn’t a militant gathering, but a meeting of tribal elders from Ismail Khan village to sort out some differences over a business deal. One of Bahadur’s commanders, Sharabat Khan, was also present at the meeting as he is also a local elder, but they were discussing business.” The surviving elders demanded blood money from the Americans for their slain family members, and one elder said that the attack “will create resentment among the locals and everyone might turn into suicide bombers.” Another elder who survived said, “We are a people who wait 100 years to exact revenge. We never forgive our enemy.” 20

A Pakistani government source said, “The Pakistan Army condoles with the families whose dear and near ones have been martyred in this senseless attack.” But an American official caustically rejected Pakistan’s account of the civilian deaths and claimed those who were killed in the strike were Taliban militants: “These people weren’t gathering for a bake sale. They were terrorists.” 21Another U.S. source in a similar sarcastic tone said, “There’s every indication that this was a group of terrorists, not a charity car wash in the Pakistani hinterlands.” 22

Pakistan ignored the Americans’ remarks and subsequently showed its displeasure by pulling out of tripartite talks between the U.S., Afghan, and Pakistan governments on the future of Afghanistan. The Pakistani Foreign Ministry issued the following statement: “It is evident that the fundamentals of our relations need to be revisited. Pakistan should not be taken for granted nor treated as a client state.” 23

THE TALIBAN KILL A CIA DRONE TEAM AND TRY TO SET OFF A BOMB IN TIMES SQUARE

The people of the FATA, and Pakistan in general, have many myths and legends about the bangana (thunder), ghangais (buzzers), or machays (wasps), as the drones are commonly known. When the rumor spread that the CIA had placed pathrai homing beacons in Lipton tea bags, for example, many Pashtuns in the region stopped drinking tea.

One of the more enduring myths is that the wave of suicide bombings that have swept Pakistan in recent years is directly related to the drone strikes. According to this myth, if there were no drone strikes, there would be no suicide-bombing slaughter of thousands of innocent Pakistanis. Such fears have been deliberately stoked by Taliban leaders, who have threatened to launch two suicide bombings per drone strike. 24

I have been able to find only a few cases of terrorist attacks that appeared to be directed in response to the drone strikes. The first was the previously mentioned case of a suicide bombing on a Pakistani military base in November 2006, just days after the infamous drone strike killing eighty-one students and militants in the Chenagai suburb of Damadola. 25Suicide bombings were still rather rare in Pakistan at that time, and the timing of the attack, so soon after the Chenagai strike, seemed to be in fulfillment of the madrassa head’s promise of revenge.

Then there was the case of the failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad. On May 1, 2010, Shahzad drove an SUV packed with explosives into the middle of Times Square in New York City and set off a timer on the bomb. Several observant bystanders, however, noticed smoke coming from the truck and called the police, who then defused the bomb. A fleeing Shahzad was subsequently arrested on a plane waiting for takeoff to Dubai.