FROM the absurd to the farcical, the politics of drones continues to lurch from one unhappy direction to the next. Mocked, slyly, by its political opponents for the FIR of the Hangu drone strike only referring to unknown persons as the perpetrators of death from the skies, the PTI has tried to drag its favourite punching bags, the CIA and the US government, into the mix. High politics or farce, the PTI’s twisting and turning over its rhetoric on drones seems to have trapped the leadership in its own ultimatums and braggadocio. It has almost reached the point where, if it could, the PTI would drag a drone into court, put it on trial before a PTI judge and prosecutor and possibly a jury made up of the Taliban, and then, in full glare of the cameras, flog the drone for its sins against Pakistan’s militants. Or perhaps not — for that may only prompt the CIA and President Obama into launching another Abbottabad-style raid to rescue their drone on trial.

Unhappily, for all the debate over drones and their alleged mass murder of ordinary civilians, the PTI’s political theatrics have had a dangerous effect on the tenuous consensus against militancy in Pakistan. For now the militancy discourse has been reduced to the issue of drones. The PTI is well within its democratic right to protest and petition against drone strikes. The problem is the PML-N federal government and the other mainstream political parties are offering nothing by way of a meaningful counter-narrative. Whether Imran Khan and the PTI are mocked for their stance or supported, the PTI’s is the only narrative that is dominating the conversation on militancy. True, unilateral drone strikes by the US are not acceptable as they violate sovereignty, and the resulting civilian death toll, though relatively low according to government figures, remains a matter of concern. But the way the PTI and other parties are seeking to gain political mileage from the drones issue drowns out any attempt at a broader discourse.