Analysis: Our enemy, their enemy

Published September 30, 2014
.— AP file photo
.— AP file photo
.—AFP file photo
.—AFP file photo

At least in tactical terms, the US and Pakistan appear to be on the same page — both are hunting their enemies in our north-western border region and that’s where there is convergence. There is divergence though when it comes to making a distinction between ‘our enemy’ and ‘their enemy’.

Pakistan’s F-16s pound targets in the remote corners of North Waziristan to take out local and foreign militants just when American drones sharing the same airspace target local and foreign militants around the same area.

But there is a difference. Pakistanis are bombing those they see a potential threat to their national security while the Americans are hunting for men of interest to them. The Pakistanis are targeting those waging war against Pakistan, the Americans are tracking those “interested in attacks across the border”.

Know more: US drone kills four suspected militants in Wana

This is how Pakistani officials describe drone victims — ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’. In the same way, the target of the Sept 28 drone strike in Karikot, six kilometres to the south of Wana in South Waziristan, was characterised as ‘theirs’.


Both Pakistani planes and US drones are carrying out strikes in north-western border region


Sunday’s drone strike killed two men of Middle Eastern origin including what local residents believe was Sheikh Abu Turab, who had taken over as Al Qaeda’s money bag’s man. The two men were killed because, officials say, they were of interest to the Americans and were involved in cross-border operations.

Much the same pattern can be seen as being repeated in North Waziristan. There have been a total of ten drone strikes since January in what was then rightly considered a hotbed of militancy in Pakistan, excluding Sunday’s drone attack in Wana.

There was a five-month hiatus in drone strikes till mid-May when Islamabad sought to negotiate peace with the same set of people it is seeking to eliminate now. The halt in drone strikes had come after a furious response from Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan to the death of TTP chief Hakeemullah Mehsud in November 2013.

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s exuberant leader who led a campaign against drone strikes by disrupting — and attacking — supplies to Nato in Afghanistan claimed the credit for the halt in equal measure, though drones continued to hover the skies in North Waziristan.

But no sooner had the peace talks collapsed than the drone strikes began in earnest with the first one on May 14. And since then there has been a steady drone campaign every month operating in the same region extending from North Waziristan into South Waziristan.

The total number, by all media accounts, of those killed in the drone strikes since May stands at 68.

While the Pakistanis and their American allies in the war on terror — a term that no longer seems to be in use — look for and eliminate their own targets in the volatile Waziristan area, their interests do converge every now and then.

Consider the case of Hakeemullah Mehsud whose death in a drone strike in November 2013 caused the interior minister to accuse Washington of sabotaging Islamabad’s peace overtures with the militant honcho.

Mehsud, under whose watch terrorism-related violence in Pakistan peaked, found his name added to the list of most wanted men in November 2009 when Islamabad posted a bounty of Rs500 million on his head.

Washington followed suit in September 2010 by adding Mehsud’s name to the Specially Designated Global Terrorists and by offering its bounty of $5 million. The US move came only when Mehsud appeared in a video along with Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi: the suicide bomber who blew himself up inside Camp Chapman in Khost, killing several CIA officers in January 2010.

Pakistanis and the Americans wanted him dead, though the timing of his ultimate elimination became a bone of contention owing to the circumstances surrounding the peace overtures.

There, however, appeared to have been no disagreement when the Americans took out Hakeemullah’s predecessor and TTP founder Baitullah Mehsud in August 2009 or Nek Muhammad Wazir in June 2004. Indeed, some say, the two militant leaders were taken out on Pakistan’s request.

Whether or not Islamabad has acquiesced in the ongoing drone campaign in Waziristan is not known. Beyond terming these strikes as violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty, reaction from the foreign office always appears to be subdued and tepid.

Such considerations as internal displacement of nearly a million people from North Waziristan, collateral damage and strikes being counter-productive seem no longer to bother the foreign office much. The US drone strikes are continuing to hit targets of interest just when the military is in the midst of the Operation Zarb-i-Azb in Waziristan.

Officials say the strikes are likely to continue and perhaps expand, depending on how the situation in Waziristan pans out post Zarb-i-Azb and when the US ends its combat operation in Afghanistan in December 2014. Until then, the drones would continue to take out the few remaining key targets of interest to the Americans.

Not many foreign militants, particularly the Al Qaeda type, are left in the tribal region, according to security officials, their focus having shifted from Afghanistan to Syria. But while the military operation in Waziristan continues, so will the drone strikes that have come to be seen as complementing the effort — of cleansing the area of local and foreign militants — though neither Islamabad nor Washington admits to it.

Published in Dawn, September 30th, 2014

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