Drones shatter US-Pakistani trust
By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - The Pakistani military's recent demands on the United States to
curb drone strikes and reduce the number of US spies operating in Pakistan,
which have raised tensions between the two countries to a new high, were a
response to US military and intelligence programs that had gone well beyond
what the Pakistanis had agreed to in past years.
The military leadership had reached private agreements in the past on both the
drone strikes and on US intelligence activities in
Pakistan, but both had changed dramatically in ways that threatened the
interests of Pakistan.
The Pakistani military, which holds real power over matters of national
security in Pakistan, is now insisting for the first time that Washington must
observe strict limits on both the use of drone strikes and on the number of US
military and intelligence personnel and contractors in the country.
And they have backed up that demand with a suspension of joint intelligence
operations with the United States - a program that had been strongly sought
after by the Barack Obama administration.
The new Pakistani demands for restrictions on US operations are being taken
seriously by the United States, because it was Pakistan's army chief, General
Ashfaq Kiani, who communicated them to US officials, as reported by the New
York Times on Monday.
The detention of US contract spy Raymond Davis for killing three Pakistani
citizens in January was a turning point in US-Pakistani relations. But it was
only the occasion for the Pakistani military leadership and its Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) to take a much stronger position on larger issues that
concerned them, according to Kamran Bokhari, a specialist on Pakistan for the
consulting firm Stratfor.
"What we're seeing is ISI and the Pakistani state take advantage of the Davis
affair to renegotiate the rules of the game with the United States," Bokhari
told Inter Press Service (IPS) in an interview.
The first move by the Pakistani military and the ISI after Davis was detained
was to suspend joint intelligence operations between ISI and the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), which had been successful in capturing a number of
high-ranking Taliban leaders in early 2010.
That suspension was kept quiet for months by both sides until it was leaked by
a ranking ISI official to Reuters last weekend. It was understood by US
officials as a bid by the Pakistanis to force serious changes in US covert
activities on Pakistani soil.
But Pakistan's tough line on Davis and on the joint intelligence operations
clearly got the attention of the Obama administration. US drone strikes were
suspended in January and February while US officials sought to resolve both
issues.
During the Pervez Musharraf administration, the Pakistani military had reached
a private understanding with the George W Bush administration on the use of
drones against al-Qaeda and its Pakistani allies.
But military and intelligence officials had watched with growing concern as the
drone program shifted from targeting high-level al-Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban
officials to the rank and file members and supporters of either Afghan or
Pakistani Taliban organizations.
Pakistani officials had privately sought to convince the Obama administration
to narrow its targeting. Senior Pakistani officials had complained that the CIA
was increasingly killing "mere foot soldiers", as reported in a February 21
story by The Washington Post's Greg Miller.
Within hours after Davis was released, however, the drone strikes resumed, as
if to make the point that the US had no intention of altering its strategy of
reliance on the drones.
Then on March 17, a drone strike on a gathering in North Waziristan killed more
than 40 people, including some Taliban members but mostly tribal elders and
members of the local government militia force. The tribesmen and elders were
meeting in a jirga to discuss the issue of payment for the sale of a
chromite mine by the Madda Khel tribe, according to local officials. One tribal
elder who lost four relatives in the bombing said 44 people were killed,
including 13 children.
The Pakistani military could hardly be insensitive to the fact that tribal
leaders across the North Waziristan region were calling for revenge against the
United States after the March 17 bloodbath. "We are a people who wait 100 years
to exact revenge. We never forgive our enemy," the elders said in a statement
issued immediately after the bombing.
It also outraged public opinion all across Pakistan, where the drone war has
created growing anger at the United States.
Kiani issued a strong statement condemning that strike as "intolerable" and
said it made it more difficult for the military to fight terrorism. Pakistani
officials had long been saying both publicly and privately that the program had
become "counterproductive", but it was the first time Kiani had weighed in.
In the past, Pakistani military and government complaints about drone strikes
were "hypocritical", said Anatol Lieven, a specialist at Kings College,
Cambridge, and the author of a new book on Pakistan.
But Lieven told IPS the Pakistani military leadership appeared to have been
"seriously annoyed" by that March drone strike and its large number of civilian
casualties, because "it was such a public insult".
"The Pakistanis are in a deeply humiliating position" in regard to the drone
strikes, said Lieven. He said the military leadership no longer trusts the
Americans' judgment on the program, in part because the strikes were killing
people in North Waziristan who were willing to make a deal to end their fight
against the Pakistani military and government.
The Pakistani military's demand beginning after the Davis arrest that the
United States reduce the number of CIA and Special Operations Forces personnel
in Pakistan by 25% to 40%, as reported by the New York Times on Monday, was a
response to a dramatic increase in the number of such personnel entering the
country without explicit agreement from the Pakistani military, according to
Lieven.
"What the Pakistanis are demanding is a rollback of a huge influx that has
occurred in recent months," Lieven told IPS. "They are for a return to the
status quo of last year." They are specifically complaining about more US
personnel who had come into the country without explicit permission, said
Lieven.
The United States had increased the number of "unilateral" intelligence
personnel in Pakistan - those who were not specifically involved in joint
intelligence efforts - by at least a few hundred in late 2010 and early 2011.
Lieven said some US officials had privately agreed that the US spying in
Pakistan "has gotten seriously out of hand".
The Kings College scholar said he has been assured by Pakistani intelligence
officials that they are committed to helping prevent any attack against the
United States from Pakistani territory, because "the consequences would be
disastrous for Pakistan if there were ever an attack."
But that does not apply to the Afghan Taliban presence in Pakistan. "The
Pakistanis have been giving very little help on Afghanistan," he said. And that
is one reason the US had increased the number of intelligence agents in
Pakistan.
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing
in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book,
Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was
published in 2006.
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