View U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan in a larger map

The New America Foundation has mapped drone strikes in Pakistan over the past 6 years using Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann’s drones database. Their policy paper is here, describing their methodology. Although they estimate the “true civilian fatality rate since 2004” to be “only” 32 percent, they criticize the use of drones as ineffective, and no substitute for a proper strategy in Pakistan. At the same time, “drone attacks in the tribal regions seem to remain the only viable option for the United States to take on the militants based there who threaten the lives of Afghans, Pakistanis, and Westerners alike.”

The drone database is an ongoing project. The latest map update was March 2nd.

Pardon my amateurish photoshopping.

It seems like every week brings a new report claiming the demise of Pakistan’s Taliban leader Hakeemullah Mehsud only to have him pop up in a video days later, celebrating his continued existence in a mocking fashion. The latest and most infamous being his chummy appearance with Jordanian double agent, Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi who killed 7 CIA agents in Afghanistan in late December.

Since January of 2008 there have been three major announcements from Pakistan of Mehsud  heading off to wherever murderous bastards end up after their mortal blight here on earth comes to an end. The latest has him dying from injuries sustained from a US drone attack in late January while enroute to hospital on February 9th. While Pakistani news sources quote alleged Taliban sources affirming his death US intelligence officials remain skeptical. Additionally Taliban leaders have claimed Mehsud is still alive but that he’ll no longer be showing up on video and audio recordings, a measure they claim will aid him in avoiding US/Pakistani detection.

Farhat Taj has a very interesting article in the Daily Times (Pakistan) that vigorously justifies drone attacks. Taj’s credentials are curious—she is a research fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research at the University of Oslo, and a member of Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy—yet it is with that background that she writes from first hand experience praising US drone attacks and saying that Waziristan locals agree with her. For what the article lacks in sophistication and structure it makes up for with its unique perspective.

There is a deep abyss between the perceptions of the people of Waziristan, the most drone-hit area and the wider Pakistani society on the other side of the River Indus. For the latter, the US drone attacks on Waziristan are a violation of Pakistani’s sovereignty. Politicians, religious leaders, media analysts and anchorpersons express sensational clamour over the supposed ‘civilian casualties’ in the drone attacks. I have been discussing the issue of drone attacks with hundreds of people of Waziristan. They see the US drone attacks as their liberators from the clutches of the terrorists into which, they say, their state has wilfully thrown them. The purpose of today’s column is, one, to challenge the Pakistani and US media reports about the civilian casualties in the drone attacks and, two, to express the view of the people of Waziristan, who are equally terrified by the Taliban and the intelligence agencies of Pakistan. I personally met these people in the Pakhtunkhwa province, where they live as internally displaced persons (IDPs), and in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

I would challenge both the US and Pakistani media to provide verifiable evidence of civilian ‘casualties’ because of drone attacks on Waziristan, i.e. names of the people killed, names of their villages, dates and locations of the strikes and, above all, the methodology of the information that they collected. If they can’t meet the challenge, I would request them to stop throwing around fabricated figures of ‘civilian casualties’ that confuse people around the world and provide propaganda material to the pro-Taliban and al Qaeda forces in the politics and media of Pakistan.

I pose that challenge because no one is in a position to give a correct estimate of how many individuals have been killed so far in drone attacks. On the basis of American media estimates, 600 to 700 ‘civilian population’ have been killed. The Pakistani government, pro-Taliban political parties like Jamaat-e-Islami, Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam, Tehrik-e-Insaf, and the media are quoting the same figure. Neither the government of Pakistan nor the media have any access to the area and no system is in place to arrive at precise estimates. The Pakistani government and media take the figure appearing in the American media as an admission by the American government. The US media too do not have access to the area. Moreover, the area is simply not accessible for any kind of independent journalistic or scholarly work on drone attacks. The Taliban simply kill anyone doing so.

The people of Waziristan are suffering a brutal kind of occupation under the Taliban and al Qaeda. It is in this context that they would welcome anyone, Americans, Israelis, Indians or even the devil, to rid them of the Taliban and al Qaeda. Therefore, they welcome the drone attacks. Secondly, the people feel comfortable with the drones because of their precision and targeted strikes. People usually appreciate drone attacks when they compare it with the Pakistan Army’s attacks, which always result in collateral damage. Especially the people of Waziristan have been terrified by the use of long-range artillery and air strikes of the Pakistan Army and Air Force. People complain that not a single TTP or al Qaeda member has been killed so far by the Pakistan Army, whereas a lot of collateral damage has taken place. Thousands of houses have been destroyed and hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed by the Pakistan Army. On the other hand, drone attacks have never targeted the civilian population except, they informed, in one case when the funeral procession of Khwazh Wali, a TTP commander, was hit… I have heard people particularly appreciating the precision of drone strikes. People say that when a drone would hover over the skies, they wouldn’t be disturbed and would carry on their usual business because they would be sure that it does not target the civilians, but the same people would run for shelter when a Pakistani jet would appear in the skies because of its indiscriminate firing.

While doing research for my trip to Iraq in 2007, I came across an article written by independent Basque journalist Karlos Zurutuza. He was one of the very few sources I could find who’d been there recently and did so alone, not in uniform. Since then, he’s continued to travel to places that make this blogger, and surely our Coming Anarchy readers, rather jealous. Like us, he is drawn to conflict zones and approaches them with the preparation, research and sense of adventure that we do. Two of his recent articles (and especially photos) are worth reading.

The first involves Balochistan, a region that has been overlooked and wrongly so. He spent some time with separatists and has a fantastic article and pictures to show for it.

PAKISTAN’S OTHER INSURGENTS
A Day in the Desert With Baloch Guerrillas

Just a few of the Baloch soldiers who patrol one of the most inhospitable deserts in the world. From left: Umit, two unidentified fighters, Girok, and Mir. The departure point was in Pakistani Balochistan. Our hosts, a patrol of Baloch guerrillas, requested that we be no more specific than that.

The driver and his passenger had their faces wrapped tightly so that only their eyes showed. Before we began the trip deep into the desert, Said (my contact) and I were blindfolded for “security reasons.” For two hours we rode like this, our eyes covered, in a 4×4 with tinted windows. “Paadha, Baloch,” a popular tune, hissed on the car stereo the entire time: “Wake up, Baloch, we’re at war!”

You can read the rest here and for more photos, check out the 3 Balochistan sets here.

Second, he writes about a little known Christian section of Quetta.

Meet Quetta’s ‘Untouchable’ Christians

They embraced the religion of their invaders to escape the caste system that had condemned them to a miserable existence. But Karlos Zurutuza reports on how, centuries later, Christians in the Taliban stronghold of Quetta are once again becoming ‘untouchables.’

Dubbed ‘Little London’ when still under British rule, Quetta, in Pakistan’s Balochistan Province, was levelled to the ground by an earthquake in 1935. Yet, although the physical evidence of the city’s colonial heritage was lost in the temblor, reminders remain of the British legacy—locals still add milk to their tea, for example, and when they take to the roads they drive (nominally at least) on the left.

Read the rest here.

With all the talk of Pakistan and the Taliban being 60 miles from Islamabad (as if they have tank divisions or conventional forces), I’d like to consider just a few things.

1) The Taleban are an insurgent group, not conventional fighters. If they try to become one, they will be decimated by the Pakistan army just as happened for example during the Tet Offensive.

2) From Pakistan’s perspective, support for the Taliban is a hedge against the future withdrawal of NATO from Afghanistan and a slowing or stop of US support. Remember, the US and Pakistan had bad relations since 1989 when the US lost interest and slapped Pakistan with host of nonproliferation sanctions. Pakistan sees the US as an unreliable ally and fair weather friend. Hence, if Pakistan truly does turn on the Taliban and wins, it will inevitably lead towards a situation where the US/NATO accomplishes its mission and leaves. Then Pakistan will be left alone to fight India with no ally in Afghanistan and fewer proxy forces.

India is still seen as Pakistan’s primary threat while the opposite is of course not true.What are the US/NATO’s options here?

As focus settles on Pakistan as the single biggest danger to international peace and prosperity there has been a move to differentiate Pakistan with India, Friend of the West. Pakistan and its problems are no longer being associated with South Asia. This transition is taking place linguistically with the new Washington buzzword “AfPak”. Elsewhere in the Foreign Affairs media, Robert Kaplan has produced an article that plays a similar function, but goes further afield. Kaplan’s latest article in The Atlantic Pakistan’s Fatal Shore associates Pakistan with Arabia, highlighting west Pakistan’s Omani heritage and drawing comparisons with life in historical Palestine and Lebanon. Arabia in general is a source of much suspicion in the American public conscious. As America prepares to “deal with” the Pakistan problem, keep an eye on how the public discourse depicts Pakistan. A comparative discourse analysis with media from India and Pakistan’s previous standoffs might be an interesting study to undertake. But I digress, back to the new Kaplan article.

Kaplan shows his strengths as a travel writer in this quintessential magazine piece. Longer than his more recent editorial Dispatches, this piece is well-composed and highly polished in the literary sense. His descriptions of the landscapes and urban scenery effectively prodded my currently dormant travel bug.

The article centers on Gwadar Port, the deep-sea port on the Indian Ocean in western Pakistan, and the Baluchi independance movement there which has resulted in violence in the past. We discussed Gwadar almost exactly three years ago on CA. Kaplan argues that Gwadar will be a major strategic crossroads in the future in terms of culture, energy and trade. A quote:

So now imagine a bustling deepwater port at the extreme southwestern tip of Pakistan, much more a part of the Middle East than of the Indian subcontinent, equipped with a highway, and oil and natural-gas pipelines, extending north all the way through some of the highest mountains in the world, the Karakorams, into China itself, where more roads and pipelines connect the flow of consumer goods and hydrocarbons to China’s burgeoning middle-class markets farther east. Another branch of this road-and-pipeline network would go north from Gwadar through a stabilized Afghanistan, and on into Iran and Central Asia. Gwadar, in this way, becomes the hub of a new Silk Road, both land and maritime; a gateway to landlocked, hydrocarbon-rich Central Asia; an exotic 21st-century place-name.

Exotic indeed, as long as the Baluchis are satisfied. Read the full article at The Atlantic: Pakistan’s Fatal Shore

Robert Kaplan has a new article out in The Atlantic called Talking to the Taliban (via Arab Media Shack).

Kaplan points out that Obama’s new strategy, which consists of convincing Pakistan to sever ties with its long time ally the Taliban, and increase them with its long time foe, India, makes no sense whatsoever and has little chance of success.

No matter how much leverage you hold over a country, it is rare that you can get it to act against its core self-interest. [...] The U.S. demands that Pakistan’s Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), its spy agency, sever relations with the Taliban. Based on Pakistan’s own geography, this makes no sense from a Pakistani point of view. First of all, maintaining lines of communications and back channels with the enemy is what intelligence agencies do. What kind of a spy service would ISI be if it had no contacts with one of the key players that will help determine its neighbor’s future?……

Read the rest. As always, it’s well worth it and spot on.

More and more people in the U.S. are becoming less and less shy regarding the possibilities of how the U.S. will act in Afghanistan:

U.S. mulling expanded covert war in Pakistan: report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama and his national security advisers are considering expanding the covert U.S. war in Pakistan far beyond the tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.

Two high-level reports on Pakistan and Afghanistan that have been forwarded to the White House in recent weeks have called for broadening the target area to reach the Taliban and other insurgent groups to a major sanctuary in and around the city of Quetta, the newspaper said on its website, citing senior administration officials.

Missile strikes by Central Intelligence Agency-operated drones have until now been limited to the tribal areas, and never been extended into Baluchistan, a sprawling province under the authority of Pakistan’s central government, and which is next to parts of Afghanistan where recent fighting has been fiercest, the newspaper website said.

Some American officials say the missile strikes in the tribal areas have forced some leaders of the Taliban and al Qaeda to flee toward Quetta, making them more vulnerable, the Times said. Pakistan has complained that the missile strikes violate its sovereignty.

Many of Obama’s advisers are also urging him to sustain orders issued last summer by former President George W. Bush to continue Predator drone attacks against a wider range of targets in the tribal areas, and to conduct cross-border ground actions, using CIA and Special Operations commandos.

The Times said a spokesman for the National Security Council had declined to provide details, saying only “We’re still working hard to finalize the review on Afghanistan and Pakistan that the president requested.”

No other official would talk on the record on the issue, citing the administration’s deliberations and the politically volatile nature of strikes into Pakistan’s territory, the report said.

While the US missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic have consistently made the news, few realize that other countries are equally interested in ballistic missile defense (BMD). Unsurprisingly, those are Japan, Israel and India (Russia to some extent).

And while Russia has the experience, expertise and technology to build some countermeasures, others do not. Therefore, when I read about Indian BMD, I wonder how Islamabad will react as they have a far smaller capacity to do so with most of their technology being Chinese or North Korean.

Buoyed by the successful testing of its fledgling ballistic missile defence, India is pushing ahead with an ambitious version of the star wars project capable of shooting down incoming ICBMs in the 5,000 km range. The phase-II of the BMD systems, likely to be deployed by 2014, will be an important part of India’s defence as both China and Pakistan possess nuclear capable missiles. Once the BMD is in place it will place India in a fairly exclusive club alongside US, Russia and Israel.

Even the possibility of effective BMD presents a major threat to Pakistan’s strategic weapons. Given that their warheads will be delivered by a combination of missiles and F16s, and that the Indian Air Force would likely intercept at least some of those planes, what are Pakistan’s options for countering India’s BMD program? They have neither the money or indigenous capabilities to develop their own, nor are they likely to find a country willing to sell them the technology. Even a partially successful Indian BMD program could have a major destabilizing effect on relations with Pakistan at a time when Pakistan is fighting for its very existence from internal threats.

While recently doing research on Pakistan (my least favorite country in the world), I’ve developed four short scenarios to help myself and others think about alternative futures for that country and the implications for US policy as well as the region. They are NOT meant as predictions, but rather narratives to help the reader set aside his or her personal bias and assumptions and consider different paths, their implications and to better process current developments in Pakistan to discern the direction it is going.

Your Job: Choose which scenario you find to be the most likely and why. What are the implications for US policy?

1) The Territory Formerly Known as Pakistan
As US and NATO forces increase in Afghanistan, the Taleban insurgency in Pakistan spreads and the central government is unable to resist, ceding more and more control to the Taleban.. Government control extends only to the Punjab. The FATA and NWFP remain lawless and a safe haven for international jihadists as well as Afghan and Pakistani Taleban. The economy continues to decline as FDI all but vanishes and foreign nationals leave. Waves of people try to emigrate.
As the Pakistani government moves from one crisis to the next, US support wanes while Pakistan’s government changes several times a year through shifting coalitions and coups. In addition to secret US bases, NATO establishes a series of permanent and official bases in Pakistan 15 miles across the border from Afghanistan. Serious consideration is given to seizing Pakistan’s nuclear facilities, and several covert joint US-Pakistani operations in ungoverned territories seize and relocate part of their arsenal. Kashmir remains unsolved but Pakistan’s weakness essentially seals Indian dominance and control of the region.

2) Nuclear Nightmare
Taleban insurgents infiltrate further into Pakistan proper and the NWFP and FATA remain sanctuaries for the Taleban and al-Qaeda. Suicide bombings and violence increases as an increasingly impotent civilian government fails to improve the situation. The economy falters with even Chinese FDI dramatically shrinking. As unemployment and unrest grow, the military launches a coup. Although the situation initially stabilized, overly aggressive government action against jihadist groups at the behest of NATO/US lead to an increasing split within the military – the nation’s strongest and only truly functioning institution.
As more NATO/US forces are deployed in Afghanistan, Taleban and al-Qaeda activity within Pakistan grows again pitting secular elements against religious ones. When religious factions of the military, partnered with local militia seize 60% of Pakistan’s nuclear facilities (including its nuclear arsenal), Pakistan stands on the bring of outright civil war while India and the US consider preemptive nuclear strikes against Pakistan’s nuclear facilities.

3) Peace at Home, Peace in the World
Taleban insurgents fight further into Pakistan and the NWFP and FATA remain sanctuaries for the Taleban and al-Qaeda. Violence increases and the civilian government fails stem the tide. The economy falters with even Chinese FDI dramatically shrinking. As unrest grow, the military launches a coup followed by aggressive and large scale military action. Although levels of violence go up, the military successfully defeats extremist elements while making peace with others. It establishes a satisfactory autonomy agreement with the NWFP and FATA which help to expel (but not eliminate) foreign jihadis. The Pakistan/Afghanistan border is formally recognized internationally and violence in Afghanistan is also winding down to manageable levels. The Pakistani military government reaches out to India in a series of confidence building measures and a contact group is setup over Kashmir. Pakistan’s new government makes the strategic decision to treat jihadis/insurgents as its primary national security threat instead of India.

4) Islamic Republic of Pakistan
The creeping Talebanization of Pakistan continues unabated until all but the Punjab is controlled directly or indirectly by Islamic extremists. Nearly powerless the civilian government is forced to form a coalition government with the Pakistani Taleban as the military itself remains divided between secular and religious elements. Over time, Islamists seize control instituting a drastic version of Sharia law, expelling Western diplomats and ending all military agreements and cooperation with the United States. NATO supply routes into Afghanistan are in peril as all of Pakistna becomes a base from which to fight Western troops next door. A nuclear armed Islamic Republic is declared and immediately recognized by Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt.
Although Pakistan now serves as a base for exporting Islamic revolution, it maintains basic relations with its neighbors, including India. Bangladesh eventually succums to an Islamist takeover as well. However, both China and India, wary of Pakistani interference in their own Muslim populations, begin covert action against it while China plans for a potential seizure of Pakistanis nuclear facilities and India for a large scale war. The West struggles on in Afghanistan, as the situation worsens and European allies begin to pull out. Slowly, a China-India-US axis forms against a Pakistani-Bangladeshi-Iranian one.