Afghanistan-Pakistan Special: Mr Obama's Revenge of the Drones

Much tinkling of the keypads has ensued in the drive to comment on the Obama Administration's Afghanistan strategy, in particular the escalation of troop strength. Less noticed in the clatter, particularly in the UK, has been the Pakistan portion of the strategy. Dribs and drabs of that approach have leaked out over the last few months. In February 2009, Senator Diane Feinstein inadvertently (or possibly deliberately in an effort to illustrate the hypocrisy of the Pakistani government) revealed that the unmanned drones carrying out missile strikes in Pakistan were being flown out of a secret base in Pakistan.

Then in the latter half of last year detailed studies of the drones began to appear. Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann first looked at the growth in the number of drone strikes in Pakistan. Then they analyzed the casualties from drone attacks in an effort to determine how many civilians were being killed in the strikes. They concluded that of the 750 to 1050 killed by drones between 2006 and October 2009, one third were civilians. Chiming in the same month was journalist Jane Mayer who in a lengthy and thoughtful piece in The New Yorker examined the expansion of drone attacks by the Obama administration, including their effectiveness, and legality.

The statistics related to the drones are startling. Since Barack Obama took office, there have been 58 drone strikes in Pakistan. This is 32 more strikes than occurred in the entire second term of the Bush Administration and represents nearly 70 percent of all drone attacks that have occurred in Pakistan since 2004. Below are statistics drawn from an effort to map out the location of the strikes using Google Earth.



Drone Strikes by Year [Source, including map]

Drone Attacks in Pakistan by Numbers and Percentages [Source, including map]



Obama Drone Strikes in Pakistan (23 January 2009 to 20 January 2010) [Source: Ben]

For 2010 alone, the number of attacks projected over 365 days would be 201. January 2010 has already seen more than double the previous monthly record of drone attacks and more than occurred in the years 2004 to 2007. This is a massive escalation of drone strikes and points to a particular strategic approach by the current administration to the problem of Pakistan. The administration signaled a further escalation when Obama made his long awaited strategic speech about Afghanistan on 1 December 2009. Nothing about the CIA-operated drones actually appeared in the president’s speech. Instead, administration officials briefed the New York Times that part of the new effort in Afghanistan would involve a substantial increase in CIA covert operations within Pakistan, including drone attacks.

This briefing demonstrated once more that what once occurred under the rubric of counter-terrorism is anything but. One of the striking points made in Jane Mayer's detailed examination of the Obama administration's drone policy is that a growing number of the attacks are not against al-Qaeda targets, the original justification for “targeted killings” by the CIA, but against the Taliban and other Pakistani insurgents. Increasingly, the Pakistani government is apparently having input into the American target selection as the drones become a weapon of counter-insurgency

In a very real sense then drone attacks are less about counter-terrorism operations in Pakistan and more about counter-insurgency operations in support of the mission in Afghanistan. The drones represent the perfect tool for the Obama administration since they can simultaneously fulfill two of his foreign policy promises: to go after al-Qaeda and to make Afghanistan the priority war. Sudden death and destruction from the sky also readily provides the image of a proactive United States savaging its enemies instead of passively waiting for them to strike. The problem with that approach, however, is that it leaves Pakistan out of the equation. The formula doesn’t calculate the wider political damage being done to the image of the United States in Pakistan, something Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently encountered first hand on a visit when Pakistanis complained to her about the attacks, one even calling the tactic terrorism. Driving the escalation of drone attacks appears to be short-term thinking with the drones a convenient and satisfying means to seek vengeance against enemies, witness the escalation of drone attacks against targets in Pakistan since the suicide attack which killed 7 CIA members in Afghanistan on 30 December. An “angry senior American intelligence official” told the New York Times that “[s]ome very bad people will eventually have a very bad day.”

It is worth remembering these words of caution about the path the Obama Administration is enthusiastically following: "We are against targeted killings. We are against the use [by the Israelis] of heavy weaponry in urban areas, even when it comes to people … who have been responsible for the deaths of American citizens. We do think these people need to be brought to justice." So said Bush Administration State Department spokesman Richard Boucher in September 2002.