Undermining Pakistan

The cloak of secrecy and mendacity that covers the shadow war the United States is waging in Pakistan undermines democratic values both in the battle against the Taliban and back home. Our strategy relies on backroom deals, on proxy warriors and private mercenaries, on the complicity of a corrupt Pakistani government, on mechanized drone attacks, and on public deceit. And that’s why, when Judith McHale, the Obama Administration’s new under secretary of state for diplomacy and public affairs, arrived in Pakistan, she was told by the prominent Pakistani journalist Ansar Abbasi, “You should know that we all hate Americans. From the bottom of our souls, we hate you.” [1]

The full extent of America’s game in Pakistan is impossible to know; it seems to have utter control over the Pakistani government under Asif Ali ZardariAsif Ali Zardari. Whether he was actually bought or simply believes that his only chance of staying in power is to slavishly obey American desires must remain a subject for speculation. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall when Zardari met with President Obama on May 6 and 7, about twelve hours before the offensive in Swat materialized out of nothingness, or rather materialized out of a terrified army and peace treaty with the Taliban ceding the territory. That offensive created an internal refugee crisis and humanitarian disaster. Pakistanis feel that American interests are at odds with their own: America wants to annihilate the Taliban, but Pakistan needs peace and stability so that moderate and liberal elements can be fostered on a grassroots level. Clearly, Zardari has been convinced of the American point of view. But as the shape of the whole war remains stubbornly opaque to the civilian viewer, I want to turn to the battle being waged by America in Pakistani territory, along the Afghanistan border. Although that battle is seen as part of the war in Afghanistan, its impact on Pakistan is overlooked and very important.

The war in the tribal areas, in the Northwest Provinces and Waziristan is primarily fought with unmanned Predator drones, which routinely fire Hellfire missiles into homes, schools, and caves. The most recent of these attacks occurred on Tuesday, (September 8), killing ten, following one on Monday (September 7), killing six, etc. They’ve been going on for over two years, they are barely reported upon in the American media, and they have become an uncontrollable fact of life in the region. Their effectiveness is highly questionable; because the Pentagon keeps their information under such a veil of secrecy we don’t know what the targets of the drones really are. But the Pakistani newspapers [2] have reported that the 60 Predator strikes that occurred between January 14, 2006 and April 8, 2009, only ten hit their actual targets, killing 14 wanted Al-Qaeda leaders and 687 Pakistani civilians (but it’s pretty hard to tell who is really the Enemy after their bodies have been incinerated. Also, we should make an effort not to conflate Al-Qaeda and the Taliban). Proponents of the strategy are rewarded with a few high profile targets that have been killed by the Predators, most notably Baitullah Meshud who was killed around August 5. But 687 civilians is a shocking number given that the drones operate primarily in sparsely populated areas.

The drone attacks are massively unpopular in Pakistan, and understandably so. We need not dwell on the dystopian quality of the drones to understand why; they are obviously American attacks on Pakistanis on Pakistani soil launched from bases within Pakistan, even while Zardari shakes hands with American diplomats. Are Pakistanis—especially Pashtuns—really supposed to believe that America isn’t at war with them?

That the attacks continue uninterrupted into the holy month of Ramazan adds insult to injury.

The prevailing discourse within Pakistan is that the drones violate Pakistani sovereignty, [3] and it’s a line that the Zardari government periodically trots out in public. [4] The Obama administration leads us to believe that Zardari, like his predecessor, Pervez MusharrafPervez Musharraf, allows the US to operate its drones with impunity, and that the public stance is purely for the sake of public opinion. But Pakistanis aren’t as stupid as we seem to assume they are; they know that their government cannot and will not move to stop the drones. Indeed, until recently, the Pakistanis were using intelligence gathered by drones. It reveals to the world the dishonesty of the Zardari government and makes it appear (rightly) cowed and enslaved to America, further weakening support not only for this incarnation of the American puppet government in Pakistan, but also the ideal of democracy in the country. The Taliban don’t need a propaganda machine, they only need to point to the sky where the drones fly, having taken off from a base within Pakistan.

But the obfuscation isn’t limited to the Pakistani government. Both the American government and the Pakistani government refuse to publicly comment upon or confirm any of the drone attacks, as if there is some reason why the drone attacks should be beyond public debate, as if by keeping the operation classified they escape responsibility for it. Perhaps they do—through subcontracting it to private mercenaries. The New York Times recently reported [5] that the drone operations are carried out by Blackwater, the same thugs we last saw killing and torturing Iraqis. There may be nothing technically illegal about this, but I find it deeply unsettling that our murder machines should be operated so far away from democratic institutions or public debate.

Not only do the drone attacks work against our goals in Pakistan by undermining the Zardari government that we need to maintain power, they also undermine our democratic and humanitarian values—and it is our values that ought to be our justification and purpose in the war against the Taliban.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/world/asia/20holbrooke.html?_r=1&scp=13&sq=drone%20attacks&st=cse

[2] http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=21440

[3] http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/09/20099815473888170.html

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/world/asia/16pstan.html?_r=2

[5] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/us/21intel.html?_r=1&scp=8&sq=drone%20attacks&st=cse