Brian Williams - Predators

Taj made a similar comment in an article posted on Viewpoint:

It is in this context that contrary to the wider public opinion in Pakistan, people of FATA welcome drone attacks and want the Americans to continue hitting the FATA based militants with the drones till their complete elimination. I know all this because of my close association with the area. The same is true about Amn Tehreek, those who passed the Peshawar Declaration as well as the Pakhtun journalists working with radio Mashal. I would encourage the researchers and journalists around the world, who care for professional standards of their work, to also get to know the FATA people’s support for the drone strikes through their investigative skills and direct access to people from the drone hit areas. 98

Even those tribesmen who have given the Taliban sanctuary in their hujras out of fear or a feeling of melmastiia seem to be tiring of the Taliban. The Taliban’s brutal spy witch hunts and subsequent executions, suicide-bombing attacks on civilians, burning of local schools, propensity for violence, policy of forbidding polio vaccinations, and tendency to act as a magnet for drone strikes and Pakistani army invasions has turned many tribesmen against the organization. One tribal elder said of the Taliban, “They are swarming our place. We gave them shelter because we thought they were fighting infidels but now they are dictating what to do in our own land. They set up check posts on the main roads and then ask us about our identity. Who are they to ask us such questions?” 99

In response, across the FATA tribesmen have formed lashkars to fight against the Taliban. 100The Taliban have responded with suicide bombings of civilian jirgas that have killed hundreds in the region, but the battle goes on between the majority who do not support the terrorists and the Taliban. 101In this sentiment the Pashtuns reflect a trend in their country. In 2008 only 33 percent of Pakistanis held a negative view of the Taliban; by 2009 it had gone up to 70 percent. As for the drones, one Pashtun source known only as “Khan” (to hide his identity from the Taliban) has written, “Another excitement is the sighting of a drone. People and children do not rush indoors, they look at them and discuss and argue about the distance at which they must be flying. The general impression is that they are close. They feel the happiness of something close, friendly and powerful against evil.” 102

As for the notion that Pakistan proper, on the other side of the Indus (Punjab and Sindh), is seething with fury and mass protests against the drones, although it is true that these regions’ inhabitants are more inclined to dislike the American campaign than those in the FATA, the antidrone protests have been small and limited. Even Imran Khan, a former world-class cricketeer-turned-politician who has attacked the “hypocrite” Zardari government for allowing the drones, has failed to mobilize the masses based on their hatred for the strikes. A recent article in Dawn , titled “US Drone Strikes Fail to Mobilise Pakistan Masses,” said, “Campaigners condemn US drone strikes in Pakistan as extra-judicial assassinations that kill hundreds of civilians, but popular protests against them are conspicuous by their rarity…. Rallies protesting the CIA-run operation against Taliban and al Qaeda allies in Pakistan’s tribal areas on the Afghan border are few and thinly attended.” One Pakistani quoted in the article dismissed the efforts of Imran Khan (known as Taliban Khan by his critics) to rally Pakistanis based on violations of sovereignty: “Imran Khan and others are demonstrating against drones and their victims…. But can any of these people go to North Waziristan and come back alive?” 103

The same paradigm can be found in Yemen. As for the idea that drones drive Yemeni tribesmen to join the terrorists, Christopher Swift, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University who carried out fieldwork in Yemen the summer of 2012, found that “to my astonishment, none of the individuals I interviewed drew a causal relationship between drone strikes and Al Qaeda recruiting. Indeed, of the 40 men in this cohort, only five believed that U.S. drone strikes were helping al Qaeda more than they were hurting it.” Swift also reported that the primary factors driving young men to join the insurgency in Yemen were “overwhelmingly economic,” not drone-based. A tribal militia commander from one of the provinces that had been taken over by militants who were trying to create a Taliban-style shariah law state summed up his feelings on drones as follows: “Ordinary people have become very practical about drones. If the United States focuses on the leaders and civilians aren’t killed, then drone strikes will hurt al Qaeda more than they help them.” 104It would thus seem that in Yemen, as in Pakistan, many who live in the drone-targeted areas have come to have pragmatic views of the drones. It is primarily among Western drone activists and elites in towns in Yemen and Pakistan that the “drones create more terrorists than they kill” paradigm prevails.

Finally, Professor Amitai Etzioni of Georgetown University makes an interesting argument against the “drones make more enemies than they kill” paradigm:

Such arguments do not take into account the fact that anti-American sentiment in these areas ran high before drone strikes took place and remained so during periods in which strikes were significantly scaled back. Moreover, other developments—such as the release of an anti-Muslim movie trailer by an Egyptian Copt from California or the publication of incendiary cartoons by a Danish newspaper—led to much larger demonstrations. Hence stopping drone strikes—if they are otherwise justified, and especially given that they are a very effective and low-cost way to neutralize terrorist violence on the ground—merely for public relations purposes seems imprudent. 105

During her October 2009 visit to Pakistan, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton was frequently criticized in conferences by Pakistanis who strongly resented the killing of their compatriots on Pakistani soil by Americans prosecuting the war on terrorism. On one occasion an angry Pakistani audience member told Clinton that the drone strikes amounted to a form of “execution without trial.” 1The Pakistani Observer said, “Instead of tactical gains or strategic advantage, the daily slaughter of some militants, heavy collateral damage of civilian lives, homes and property will leave long lasting scars, which will never heal.” 2The majority of Pakistanis seem to agree that the distrusted Americans are carrying out a campaign of extrajudicial execution of their countrymen in a unilateral hunt for anti-American terrorists.

DRONE STRIKES ARE A PUBLIC RELATIONS AND STRATEGIC DISASTER IN PAKISTAN

The prevalent Pakistani belief that the majority of those who are being executed by drones are civilians only deepens the distrust of America. A 2010 Pew opinion poll in Pakistan found that “there is little support for U.S. drone strikes against extremist leaders—those who are aware of these attacks generally say they are not necessary, and overwhelmingly they believe the strikes kill too many civilians.” Specifically the Pew report stated, “Nearly all (93%) of those who are familiar with the strikes say they are a bad thing. Most Pakistanis (56%) who have heard about the drone attacks say they are not necessary to defend Pakistan from extremist groups, while about one-in-three (32%) believe they are necessary. Nine-in-ten think these attacks kill too many innocent people.” 3A subsequent 2011 Pew poll found that the number of Pakistanis who viewed the drone strikes negatively had risen to 97 percent. 4A 2012 Pew poll found that “about 75 percent of Pakistanis surveyed regard the United States as an enemy…. A key reason for the ongoing ill will appears to be America’s use of drone strikes as a tactic against Islamist militants based in Pakistan.” 5