Brian Williams - Predators

John Schmidt masterfully captured the urgency of the Taliban threat to Pakistan in his recent book:

As the Taliban began to draw nearer to Punjab ordinary Pakistanis began to feel threatened. What had been a distant abstraction now loomed on the horizon as something very real. That was not the way most Pakistanis, the majority of them Barelvi followers of [moderate] Sufi Islam wished to be governed. The Pakistani Taliban were a threat to their way of life….

The barbarians were literally at the gates. The Pakistani political establishment, civilians and military, had been humiliated. Their policy of concession had been shown to be bankrupt. It suddenly seemed possible that the Pakistani Taliban would bring all the Pashtun lands west of the Indus under their sway. 69

In the face of such onslaughts, Pakistani prime minister Yousuf Gilani told reporters in Lahore, “Pakistan is not fighting the war of any other country. The war on terror is in our own interests.” 70Noting this trend, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius wrote,

The Pakistanis have their own heavy score to settle with the Taliban, whose bomb attacks have stretched from Peshawar to Lahore. The Pakistani spy service, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, has been a special target, with attacks on some of its senior officers and regional headquarters. That’s one reason Pakistanis have been cooperative; they’re angry and they want revenge.

“It became personal for the ISI,” said the senior administration official. Enraged by attacks on their colleagues, Pakistani officers have worked closely with the CIA to gather intelligence in tribal areas. The Predator assault “has given the Pakistanis some breathing room,” the administration official said. 71

As the internal Taliban menace has become officially recognized by the Pakistani government and military, some in Pakistan have stopped their “violations of sovereignty” boilerplate rhetoric and begun to criticize the Taliban and al Qaeda for threatening their country’s sovereignty. These voices in support of the drone strikes complain that the foreign fighters (Central Asian Uzbeks, Arabs, North Africans, Europeans, etc.) and Taliban militants (including Taliban fighters from Afghanistan) represent the greatest threat to Pakistan’s sovereignty, not their U.S. allies. For example, Syed Alam Meshud, a Peshawar-based political activist who is from Waziristan, said, “To those people sitting in the drawing rooms of Islamabad talking about the sovereignty of Pakistan, we say, ‘What about when Arabs or Uzbeks occupy your village? What about sovereignty then? We compare the drones with Ababeel ’—the swallows tasked by God in the Koran to smite an army with rocks. Any weapon which kills these people who damaged my sovereignty is in fact helping the sovereignty of my region.” 72In the same vein, Bashir Ahmad Gwakh, writing for Radio Free Europe, opined,

The fact that Al-Qaeda leaders (including Osama bin Laden, who was living in the garrison city of Abbottabad just a couple of hours’ drive from Islamabad), foreign fighters, and Haqqani-led Afghan Taliban all live in Pakistan damages Pakistani credibility when it asks that drone attacks be stopped in respect of the country’s sovereignty. If American drone strikes violate Pakistani sovereignty, what about all of the foreign militants who not only launch attacks across the border into Afghanistan but are also a huge security threat to the people of Pakistan? 73

One Pakistani writing for the Daily Times gave the same argument:

Sovereignty is the complete power to govern a country…. Whatever little control Pakistan’s establishment had there [FATA] is now being put an end to by the TTP, al Qaeda and its offshoots. The Taliban are openly roaming around in FATA, alleged criminals are publicly executed in shariah courts, people are amputated and frequent attacks are being carried out against our army. The demolition of schools has become an old story…. The drones are targeting all those people who are bent upon the real violation of our sovereignty and who are busy in a declared war against our army and state machinery. 74

Farhat Taj carried out a survey among Pashtuns from the FATA for the Jamestown Foundation and found that

the majority of the respondents (13 of 15) did not fully see the drone attacks as a violation of the sovereignty of Pakistan. Their argument is very simple: the state of Pakistan has already surrendered FATA to the militants. Therefore Pakistan has no reason to object to the drone attacks. Pakistan will have this right only if it can retake the areas from the militants. Some respondents said that their homeland is used by the militants and the ISI as a launching pad for attacks on ISAF and NATO forces in Afghanistan. 75

The Pakistani paper the News published an account of a similar survey in the FATA:

Pakistan’s sovereignty, they [the interviewees] argued, was insulted and annihilated by Al-Qaeda and the Taliban whose territory FATA is, after Pakistan lost it to them. The US is violating the sovereignty of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, not of Pakistan. Almost half the people said that the US drones attacking Islamabad or Lahore will be violation of the sovereignty of Pakistan, because these areas are not taken over by the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Over two-thirds of the people viewed Al-Qaeda and the Taliban as enemy number one, and wanted the Pakistani army to clear the area of the militants. A little under two-thirds want the Americans to continue the drone attack because the Pakistani army is unable or unwilling to retake the territory from the Taliban. 76

In the article “Why I Support Drone Attacks” on Chowk.com, Raza Habib echoes this sentiment: “Over the years the Pakistani establishment and a series of governments have literally watched helplessly as militants use those safe sanctuaries to promote terrorism in the mainland. If anything, the actual violation of sovereignty is being carried out by the militants rather than the drones which are aimed at eliminating them! Realistically speaking drones are helping the Pakistani state to establish sovereignty.” 77

Finally, an article published in the Daily Times titled “In Favor of Drone Attacks” argued,

Civil society in Pakistan is well aware of the fact that the drones are cleansing us of terrorists but sometimes they fail to resist the temptation to speak out against them. This is caused by the extreme right trumpeting warnings of US encroachments on our sovereignty.

First, Pakistan is the US’s frontline non-NATO ally in the war against terror, which means that Pakistan and the US have to willingly extend their best possible support to each other. Drone attacks are now to be considered as committed support in that process. Second, the drones are targeting all those people who are bent upon the real violation of our sovereignty and who are busy in a declared war against our army and state machinery. They are not the ones who, if scared, will respect our sovereignty.

What is our chief security threat? It is terrorism. What should we prioritize? No doubt its elimination. And what are drones doing, except the same? Rather than theoretical terms we need to think in terms of ground reality. We are faced with a severe threat and cannot channel our meager resources to military operations against the militants.

The present government should not get blackmailed by rightist propaganda; it should boldly and publicly acknowledge the agreement with the US [regarding drone attacks] if there is any. 78

Thus the conventional wisdom in the West that Pakistanis unanimously see the drone strikes as a violation of their country’s sovereignty does not seem to hold true. A number of FATA natives, as well as Pakistanis elsewhere, see the drone strikes as the best antidote against the terrorists who have truly violated their country’s sovereignty by carving parts of it off into off-limits, fundamentalist shariah law terrorist states. The same certainly holds true for the Pakistani military establishment and government, which have taken much criticism for their backing of the drone strikes but continue to tacitly support them despite their unpopularity.