Brian Williams - Predators

Dawar said he was convinced that the drone aircraft were mainly targeting the militants and that most of the civilians killed in the attacks were either from the extended families of the militants or victims of collateral damage. “I have never seen a missed hit,” Dawar said, adding that the strikes were creating panic and fear among the militants. Once used to moving freely, senior Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders are now being forced to spend their nights in sleeping bags under a tree in the fields or in a mountain cave and hold emergency meetings in a moving vehicle instead of a building, Dawar said. 89

A recent report by the Jamestown Foundation based on interviews in the FATA, titled “Drone Attacks: Pakistan’s Policy and the Tribesmen’s Perspective,” supported these conclusions. After interviewing students from the region, the report concluded,

They agree that the government of Pakistan has no writ whatsoever over the tribal agencies. They hold the militant occupation responsible for:

■ Damaging their culture and traditions.

■ Eliminating their entire traditional and indigenous leadership.

■ Weakening the tribal society.

■ Occupying their houses by force.

■ Destroying their traditional and democratic institution of jirga (an assembly of elders that makes decisions based on consensus) and tribal code of Pashtunwali (“The Way of the Pashtuns”), instead replacing it with the militants’ own strict brand of Shari’ah.

■ Bringing destruction to homes and businesses by inciting Pakistani military operations .90

Regarding the drones, the Jamestown Foundation pollsters discovered that the interviewees thought the following:

■ The drone attacks are killing the leadership of those al-Qaeda and other militant groups who have made ordinary tribesmen and women hostages. Ordinary people are powerless against the militants and drones are seen as helpful by eliminating the militants and frustrating the designs of ISI.

■ The drone attacks have resulted in substantial damage to the militants, especially the elimination of the Arab and Punjabi leadership of al-Qaeda.

■ The drone attacks cause a minimum loss of innocent civilians and their property. The respondents appreciated the precision of such attacks. 91

In addition the article stated,

The respondents expressed a strong desire for drones as a means to attack the leadership of the local Pashtun Taliban. Half of those who supported drone attacks said that people’s daily lives are affected most by the local Taliban and not the Arabs or other al-Qaeda militants who generally mind their own business, or have perhaps assigned the duty of harassment to the local Taliban. One of the respondents suggested that if only ten people amongst the leadership of the local Taliban were killed, the hierarchy of the organization would collapse like a house of cards. 92

Christine Fair, an American scholar who visited the tribal zone, gave an account that backs up the Jamestown Foundation findings:

These FATA residents are strong proponents of the drones. They report that the drones are so precise that the local non-militants do not fear them when they hear the drones above as they are confident that they will hit their target. Locals attribute this precision in part to the placement of “targeting chips” which direct the ordnance to the exact location of the militants in their redoubts. The accurate placement of these chips requires local cooperation to provide the whereabouts of these militants. This has driven an important wedge between the locals and militants with the former shunning the latter. 93

As these findings demonstrate, the notion that many in the West and the settled parts of Pakistan have of the FATA region being inhabited by pro-Taliban tribesmen who are driven to join the terrorist group en masse as a result of “indiscriminate” drone strikes is false. In fact evidence suggests that some of the Pashtuns of FATA who are most exposed to both the drones and the Taliban are the Pakistanis that are most tolerant of the former and intolerant of the latter. A journalist writing about the issue for Reuters reported, “What I have noticed is that at least some among the Pashtun intelligentsia say the drone strikes are precise, and that opposition to them increases the further away you get from the tribal areas.” 94Salman Masood, writing for the New York Times , said, “A lot of the people have pointed [out] that there have been lesser protests in the tribal areas over drones as compared to Pakistan proper. The issue has become a bit of a political football.” 95Farhat Taj similarly noticed the tendency for Pakistanis who live across the Indus River in Punjab and Sindh Provinces to be more intolerant of the drone strikes than the Taliban-dominated tribesmen from the FATA region. In an article in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn , she wrote,

There is a deep abyss between the perceptions of the people of Waziristan, the most drone-hit area and the wider Pakistani society on the other side of the River Indus. For the latter, the US drone attacks on Waziristan are a violation of Pakistani’s sovereignty. Politicians, religious leaders, media analysts and anchorpersons express sensational clamour over the supposed ‘civilian casualties’ in the drone attacks. I have been discussing the issue of drone attacks with hundreds of people of Waziristan. They see the US drone attacks as their liberators from the clutches of the terrorists into which, they say, their state has wilfully thrown them….

The people of Waziristan have been complaining why the drones are only restricted to targeting the Arabs. They want the drones to attack the TTP leadership, the Uzbek/Tajik/Turkmen, Punjabi and Pakhtun Taliban. I have heard even religious people of Waziristan cursing the jihad and welcoming even Indian or Israeli support to help them get rid of the TTP and foreign militants. The TTP and foreign militants have made them hostages and occupied their houses by force. The Taliban have publicly killed even the religious scholars in Waziristan.

What we read and hear in the print and electronic media of Pakistan about drone attacks as a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty or resulting in killing innocent civilians is not true so far as the people of Waziristan are concerned. According to them, al Qaeda and the TTP are dead scared of drone attacks and their leadership spends sleepless nights. This is a cause of pleasure for the tormented people of Waziristan. 96

In an article for the Daily Times , Taj came out strongly in support of the drones:

They [the people of Waziristan] want al Qaeda along with the Taliban burnt to ashes on the soil of Waziristan through relentless drone attacks. The drone attacks, they believe, are the one and only “cure” for these anti-civilisation creatures and the US must robustly administer them the “cure” until their existence is annihilated from the world. The people of Waziristan, including tribal leaders, women and religious people, asked me to convey in categorical terms to the US the following in my column.

This was the view of the people of Waziristan. I would now draw the attention of the US to the Peshawar Declaration, a joint statement of political parties, civil society organisations, businessmen, doctors, lawyers, teachers, students, labourers and intellectuals, following a conference on December 12–13, 2009, in Peshawar. The declaration notes that if the people of the war-affected areas are satisfied with any counter-militancy strategy; it is drone attacks that they support the most. Some people in Waziristan compare drones with the Quran’s Ababeels—the holy sparrows sent by God to avenge Abraham, the intended conqueror of the Khana Kaaba….

The overpowered people of Waziristan are angry. They believe no one in their entire history has inflicted so much insult on them as al Qaeda. In our native land, they say, al Qaeda has killed so many of us. 97