For Want Of Better Options

Drones remain the most effective weapon in the US’s counter-terror arsenal. Critics of the remote-controlled missile will do well to reconsider their contention the attacks lead to high civilian casualties and violate Pakistan’s sovereignty

On November 21, a US drone strike in the Hangu district of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province killed six people including a senior leader of the Haqqani network and at least one more militant from the Al Qaeda-affiliated group. The strike came exactly 20 days after a similar drone attack took down another high-profile terror target, Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, in Miranshah, North Waziristan. In the intervening days, the Haqqani network’s main financier Nasiruddin Haqqani was shot dead by unidentified assailants in Islamabad. His brother, Sirajuddin, currently heads the network and was reportedly the target of the November 21 attack in Hangu, since he was seen at the seminary where the drones struck thrice last week. Also, the senior Haqqani leader who was killed in the strike, Maulvi Ahmed Jan, was Sirajuddin Haqqani’s trusted right-hand man.

Apart from the obvious observation that the attacks have put both the Haqqani network, and to a lesser extent the Pakistani Taliban (the two are affiliated but work independently) “on notice”, as a US official said recently, their relative success in eliminating high-profile targets has underlined the fact that America’s remote-controlled predator drones remain one of the most potent weapons in its counter-terrorism arsenal — their reputation as ‘joysticks’ used to play ‘video-game wars’ notwithstanding.

As expected, the Hangu strike has been usurped by the Government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as yet another opportunity to play to the gallery and whip up oodles of anti-American sentiment. Ruling party chief Imran Khan, always the showman, has kicked up a huge fuss about the strikes and blocked Nato supply routes into Afghanistan that run through the Province. Given Pakistan’s previous experience with this pressure tactic — remember, the routes were also shut after a US-Nato attack on the Salala outpost killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November 2011 but re-opened later without Islamabad being able to squeeze so much as an apology from Washington, DC — it is clear that Mr Khan’s passionate outbursts on the matter are, well, just that. He had responded in exactly the same manner when Mehsud was killed, no matter that the Pakistani Taliban has not only been responsible for the death of an estimated 43,000 Pakistanis but also does not recognise the democratically-elected, Government structure of which Mr Khan himself is a part!

But Mr Khan is not alone in his opposition to US drone strikes. There are many within Pakistan and outside who share his views, and criticise drone strikes based on a whole host of issues — legal, moral, political and strategic. It is difficult to do justice to the whole debate here but essentially, the anti-drone club puts forth two major arguments: First, drones strikes cause enormous civilian casualties without promising enough returns; second, they are a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty. Both arguments are problematic.

In the first case, the number of civilian casualties caused by drone strikes is unclear and varies widely between a few hundred to several thousands. This is because of the covert nature of the drone strikes programme which makes it extremely difficult to put together verifiable data on the matter. The US Government does not officially release information on drone strikes while the Pakistani Government sometimes denies it, sometimes acknowledges it.

That leaves us with reports from external agencies such as the UN, think-tanks and advocacy groups, and the media — almost all of them are usually just as vague and unreliable, as foreigners have no direct access to the tribal areas of Pakistan where these attacks take place. Special permission is required from the Government, and even after such access is granted, journalists can only travel with official escorts. In fact, even Pakistani citizens cannot travel to these areas without permission and unless they have proven families ties to the region. This leads to a veritable information black hole, and ultimately a debate that is based on half-baked facts and mostly just fiction.

Occasionally, though, this black hole has been penetrated with reporters being able to conduct first-hand interviews of villagers in these remote areas. But even then they have found it near impossible to ascertain the exact number of civilians, when any, who are killed in a drone strike. There are two reasons for this. One, after such a strike occurs, the militants seal the area, remove the bodies and secretly bury them. Then, they slap the label of ‘martyr’ on all the deceased. Two, the locals live in an environment of constant and violent intimidation. Therefore, their testimonies, on the rare occasion that they are available, are often tainted.

Mr Guillaume Lavallee of the Agence France-Presse reported earlier this month that any local who dares to speak in support of drone strikes is abducted, tortured and murdered by the militants — their last moments caught on tape and distributed in the area. The news report quotes Gul Wali Wazir (not his real name) from South Waziristan tribal area who says: “They (the militants) will cut his throat or shoot him, they will film his false confession, kill him and leave the body on the road with a DVD and a note saying that anybody who supports America and drones will face the same fate. I have seen a dozen such dead bodies.”

That despite these circumstances, Mr Lavallee’s interviews have led him to conclude that “a sizeable number of people in the country’s tribal areas support them (drone strikes)” must be noted. The report quotes Safdar Hayat Khan Dawar, former head of the Tribal Union of Journalists, from the militant-infested North Waziristan who says that the missiles were the preferred solution to the problem of militancy, as opposed to Pakistani Army’s operations. “The military option, people hate it because the army don’t kill militants but civilians”, says Mr Dawar. His opinions are echoed by Nizam Dawar, director of the Tribal Development Network, who asks: “Those people who became internally displaced persons due to the military operation, those people who are victimised by the Taliban and the militants, all the families whose family members are beheaded because they were accused of spying for America — why would they oppose drone attacks?” A recent Pakistani Government report has also noted that only a small percentage of those killed are civilians.

If the civilian casualty argument stands on thin ice, the one on Pakistani sovereignty holds no water at all. We now have enough evidence to say with certainty that Pakistan’s military and political establishment bartered away the country’s sovereignty years ago when it gave the US explicit permission to carry out these attacks. Former President Pervez Musharraf had said at that time that the drone strikes would be no big deal “as things fall out of the sky in Pakistan all the time”. In fact, his Government even took credit for some of the early drone strikes,  pretending that they had been carried out by the Pakistani Air Force.

Over the years, as relations between Washington and Islamabad have become relatively tenuous, the degree to which Pakistani support now extends to the US drone programme may have dipped. But it has not diminished entirely. The drones do not just sneak into Pakistani airspace, point and shoot, and then flee. They study their targets for hours, sometimes days, before they attack; in the November 21 case, locals said that they knew about the hovering drones for days. This cannot be done without insider support. The Pakistani establishment may feign ignorance and even froth at the mouth over the drone strikes for domestic consumption, but that does not change the facts.

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on November 28, 2013)

Trust Islamabad but Verify Too

New Delhi has many reasons to welcome Nawaz Sharif's third term as Prime Minister. However, this does not mean that India can throw caution to the winds and let down its guard. The Pakistani Army is still strongly entrenched in its anti-India posture, and so is the ISI

On May 11, as the Islamic Republic of Pakistan went to the poll to elect a new Government, democracy in that country received its strongest booster shot yet. For the first time since the country came into existence 67 years ago, one popularly elected regime had completed its full five-year term and was handing over power to another popularly elected entity. The socio-political and strategic import of this historic transition cannot be underestimated — especially, given that the election was held under the shadow of death and terror.

In the run-up to the poll, several candidates, including those from mainstream political parties, were killed by the Pakistani Taliban mostly in drive-by shootings. The ‘bad Taliban’, as the group is often labelled, had made it amply clear that it considered voting un-Islamic and, therefore, targeted leaders and voters alike right up to election day with sickening regularity. That the people of Pakistan still went to the polling stations in large numbers — the Election Commission noted a turn-out of nearly 60 per cent — and in the process thumbed their nose at the Taliban, is heartening indeed, not just for Pakistan but also for India.

In fact, with Mr Nawaz Sharif now returning to power in Islamabad — his PML(N) swept the election and won a comfortable 123 of the 272 seats in the National Assembly — India could have scarcely asked for a more favourable electoral result from Pakistan. The 63-year-old who has already been in the top job twice earlier, has been very vocal in his support for India, and has repeatedly and publicly said that improving bilateral ties between the countries is among his priorities.

Undoubtedly, the most pro-India of all the candidates, Mr Sharif had, as the Prime Minister in 1999, signed the historic Lahore Declaration with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, which was supposed to usher in a new era in India-Pakistan relations. However, that didn’t happen as Mr Sharif himself became the victim of a military coup and was ousted from office. Now, as he returns to power in Islamabad, he has promised to pick up the pieces from where he had left. He has also promised, for instance, to bring to justice those who mounted the 26/11 terror attack on India.

All this has naturally been well-received in India which can surely do with a little less venom and bad blood flowing from across the border. Towards that end, New Delhi has good enough reason to welcome Mr Sharif’s third term as Prime Minister. However, this does not mean that India can throw caution to the winds and let down its guard.

Mr Sharif is surely the best that India could have hoped for, but he is neither a saint nor a super-human. There are skeletons in his cupboard too. For instance, let us not forget that, if Mr Sharif helped script the Lahore Declaration, it was also during his rule that the Kargil conflict happened. Of course, Mr Sharif has consistently held that the military misadventure was planned behind his back by his treacherous Army chief Pervez Musharraf. But General Musharraf has claimed otherwise, going so far as to say that five days before Mr Sharif met Mr Vajpayee in Lahore, he had been briefed by the Army about the mission.

Either way, the Kargil conflict makes Mr Sharif look really bad. If he knew about the attack, then he is exposed as a duplicitous character. And if didn’t know about the attack, then he comes across as a weak and ineffective Prime Minister who didn’t known what his own Army was up to. And even by Pakistan’s standards of civil-military relations, that is a bit too much to accept at face value. Still, if this was indeed the case, one must ask if things will be any different this time around. 

As of now, there are no indications as to how Mr Sharif will define his Government’s relationship with the country’s military. It is true that given his own bitter experience with the Army, he may try harder than others to curb the latter’s influence but with what degree of success, remains an open question. Also, in this context it is important to dismiss the notion that has been doing the rounds of late that the military is backing out of Pakistan’s political space or will be reluctant to interfere like before in the functioning of the new civilian Government because of popular resistance. First, the military has never cared about daily administration issues as long as its own interests have remained secured. This is true not just in Pakistan but even in other countries where the military has played a domineering role in public life — such as in Egypt, for example.

Second, the Pakistani military has done nothing to suggest that it will concede any strategic space to the newly elected Government. On the contrary, Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani’s much-hyped media briefing prior to the election proved that the military was very much a political force to contend with. Even though the meeting with journalists was organised to put out the Army’s official story supporting democracy and popular representation et al, it quickly devolved into a session critiquing Pakistan’s political class as one that is inept, inefficient and ultimately incapable of protecting the nation’s interests. Somewhat correct as that analysis may be, Gen Kayani has already used it to set the narrative of a weak Government that might eventually have to be replaced by a stronger Army. Also, Gen Kayani’s term expires later this year and it is the transition of power that’ll happen then, that India should watch closely. 

Coming back to Mr Sharif, his continued dalliances with Islamists should be a cause for concern for India. The Prime Minister-elect is known to be close to the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba and considers the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi to be an electoral ally. The latter has been held responsible for a slew of attacks on minorities and Mr Sharif has scarcely, if ever, raised his voice in condemnation. And that is not all, when the Taliban came to power in Kabul, Mr Sharif’s Government in Islamabad was one of the few that recognised it.

Now, add to this the fact that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan did not attack the PML(N) during this election because it said it had no problems with the party, and a murky picture of the dangerous opportunist politics emerges. Especially now that the PML(N) is in power, make no mistake that the Taliban, who like to view themselves as the king-makers, will seek to extract more than just their pound of flesh from Mr Sharif and his Government.

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on May 16, 2013)

A second look at no-first use

Thirteen years after Atal Bihari Vajpayee committed India to a no-first use nuclear strike policy, his Minister for External Affairs Jaswant Singh believes the time has come to revisit and revise this strategy. Referring to India’s increasingly multi-dimensional security concerns, especially Pakistan’s growing nuclear arsenal and deteriorating political situation, he has cautioned the Government against sitting in yesterday’s policy. He has a point.

The year was 1998. America was the undoubted global superpower and the tall Twin Towers graced the New York City skyline. China was growing but was far from being a global player. Pakistan had a popularly elected Prime Minister in Mr Nawaz Sharif. The Buddhas of Bamiyan from the sixth century stood tall and proud in central Afghanistan. India was still a developing nation, although the effects of economic liberalisation introduced under the earlier Union Minister for Finance Manmohan Singh were gradually becoming conspicuous. No one was yet talking of an Asian century. Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee was Prime Minister and it had been less than three months since India had test-exploded five nuclear weapons in a nondescript town in Rajasthan. 

During a debate on foreign policy in Parliament, Mr Vajpayee made a historic announcement that defined India's position as an emerging nuclear power -- he said that the country was committing itself to a distinct unilateral and global no-first-use nuclear strike policy. In other words, Mr Vajpayee promised that neither would India use its nuclear weapons against another state that does not possess nuclear weapons nor would it be the first to strike another nuclear power. Based on the principle of minimum deterrence, the policy went a long way in discrediting foreign criticism that the country was moving away from the principles of disarmament and setting the stage for another arms race. A no-first-use policy helped portray India as a responsible and non-aggressive nation, as was the need of the hour. 

Now, fast forward to 2011. A bearded old man who lives in remote mountain caves wields more power and influences more people than any world leader, business tycoon or matinee idol. America has lost its edge and the Twin Towers no longer exist. In a new global order that is now supposedly multi-polar, China has redefined the idea of an ‘Asian Tiger' while Pakistan is a malfunctioning state that is struggling with its democratic credentials. In other words, this is a new world which has presented before us a new set of realities, challenges and situations. Consequently, the policies and principles of 1998 may or may not be relevant any longer in 2011 and either way, deserve to be revisited. 

Little wonder then exactly 13 years after Prime Minister Vajpayee made his landmark announcement, his Minister for External Affairs Jaswant Singh, while participating in a similar Lok Sabha debate on foreign policy, pointed out that India's no-first-use policy is "greatly in need of revision" and cautioned the present Government against "sitting in yesterday's policy". Referring to India's increasingly multi-dimensional security concerns, the senior BJP leader has urged the Congress-led UPA regime to undertake a thorough review of India's strategic policy. 

Much to Mr Singh's credit, he has also specifically pointed fingers at Pakistan's fast growing nuclear arsenal -- a matter of grave concern that is often brushed under the carpet or simply ignored by the current regime. As Mr Singh mentioned, Pakistan possesses at least 100 to 110 nuclear warheads, which is double that of India's nuclear stockpile. But more than the sheer number of nuclear warheads, what is vastly more worrisome is the fact that these either remain in particularly unsafe hands or are at risk of falling into them. No matter how much we wish to sugar-coat the matter, we cannot, and indeed should not, undermine the fact that Pakistan is a dysfunctional state, run by a powerless Government that is a puppet in the hands of its huge military establishment and has absolutely no control over the extensive terror networks that have engulfed the country. It is, thus, imperative that the Government of India approach the possibly outdated no-first-use policy with an open mind and realistic expectations. 

Sadly, the present administration has shown little inclination towards either. Days after Mr Singh made his recommendations, the Union Minister for Foreign Affairs SM Krishna categorically stated that there would be no reconsideration of the policy. It seems like Mr Krishna has decided to continue with a strategy that is obviously way past its expiry date only so that he can be seen as the bearer of India's commitment to "universal, non-discriminatory nuclear disarmament". In itself, the aforementioned principle is praiseworthy but nonetheless unsuitable for present day circumstances. 

Let us not forget that a few days ago, former President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf described India as an "existential threat" to its neighbour and the sole reason why his country possesses nuclear weapons. He also said that 90 per cent of Indian soldiers have an anti-Pakistan orientation. Irrespective of the degree of truth in his statement, it surely does point us to the mindset of every soldier on the other side of the border. Last time we checked, they were not big fans of India either. But what makes it worse is that the Pakistani military has access to power that is way beyond its means. In fact, it would not be wrong to assume that power in Pakistan is not in the hands of politicians in Islamabad but lies with the Generals in Rawalpindi. Thankfully for Pakistan, such is not the case in India where we at least have a functioning democracy, warts and all. 

It must also be mentioned that India's foreign policy towards Pakistan as it stands today is also one that needs to be revised. As Mr Singh pointed out during the debate, it is unclear if our bilateral ties are governed by the "spirit of the Shimla Agreement, the spirit of Sharm el-Sheikh or more recently the Thimphu spirit". This confusion has been sadly manifest in recent events during which India has tended to go soft on its neighbour in contrast to its earlier no-compromise stance. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's  invitation to President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minsiter Yousuf Raza Gilani to enjoy an afternoon of cricket at Mohali -- cricket diplomacy, they call it -- despite the fact that the two leaders have done nothing to assist with India's investigation into the 26/11 attack on Mumbai is a telling example of all that is wrong with our foreign policy.

(This article was published in the oped section of The Pioneer on March 29, 2011.)