On November 23, thousands of people rallied in Pakistan, along with sympathy gatherings around the globe including outside the United States' embassy in London; they were protesting a weapon they had never viewed. What they had seen was the aftermath of that weapon in action. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or Remotely Piloted Aircraft or, as they are more commonly known, drones, have been used by the Central Intelligence Agency over 370 times since 2004 to kill upwards of 2000 people in Pakistan. Some of the dead were terrorists belonging to al-Qaeda including senior members of the organization; more of those targeted belonged to the terrorist Pakistani Taliban. And many others were civilians, including men, women, and children, caught up in the strikes. Regardless of the breakdown of these numbers, it is perception that counts and the strong view among many Pakistanis is that it is a weapon used by the United States to kill innocents. And that means trouble in terms of the fuel for extremism and ultimately for violence.
The short-term appeal of drones to the government of the United States is obvious. These are weapons that are precise in relation to options such as cruise missiles or bombs from a conventional airplane. The drones can follow a target for days, in theory allowing the decision to strike to be made when there is minimal risk of a wider loss of life. Then there is the deniability factor with the U.S. refusing to admit to an attack or, as happened in Yemen, another government taking credit for the attack. Finally, the threat to American lives is minimal in comparison with the use of so-called "boots on the ground" and even in relation to aircraft. Although drones do require ground crew in the region where they are operating, these are some distance from where they strike and, of course, the individuals pushing the buttons to fire the missiles are thousands of miles from where the mayhem is occurring.
Nevertheless, what the U.S. needs to urgently consider is the long-term implications of this strategy in Pakistan. A former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Ryan Crocker, has warned about overusing drones in Pakistan with the risk of their use "becoming a strategy rather than a tactic." He is not the first U.S. diplomat with a connection to Pakistan to sound a warning. Thanks to Wikileaks we know that the then U.S. ambassador in Islamabad, Anne W. Patterson, warned Washington in a 23 September 2009 diplomatic cable that "Increased unilateral operations in these areas risk destabilizing the Pakistani state, alienating both the civilian government and military leadership, and provoking a broader governance crisis in Pakistan without finally achieving the goal." Furthermore, she added, "the notion that precision or long-range counter-terrorism efforts can suffice are equally illusory." The words of two former U.S. ambassadors to Pakistan now intersect with events in Pakistan. First, there is the aforementioned protest over drones in Pakistan, where it was organized by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, the party of leading politician Imran Khan. The potential for the protests to increase remains and the underlying anger from the drone attacks only fuels anti-Americanism and that, ultimately, aids the terrorists. Already Khan and his supporters have publicly named the chief of the CIA station in Pakistan and disrupted some of the supply trucks for NATO forces in Afghanistan while threatening to target more. Why the protests will likely continue connects with the other events that have occurred in November. For only the fourth time ever, and the first time since 2009, a drone strike has occurred outside of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in north-western Pakistan; this latest one was further outside than the three previous attacks. This is an important development in two respects: it suggests that those considered legitimate targets are dispersing outside the FATA; in itself this is not surprising since it is exactly why Osama bin Laden was living in Abbottabad and not in the FATA. It also indicates that the United States is still acting with the private permission and complicity of the Pakistani government even as it, in turn, condemns the attacks. Both of these elements will only cause more anger in Pakistan, thus contributing to a potentially vicious circle. Some of the anger toward the United States and the government of Pakistan over drone attacks will translate into support for terrorism which will lead to more drone strikes. At some point the cycle needs to end or the violence never will.
