Dealing Death

It’s 6:46 AM somewhere inside Texas, near the Mexican border. A senior Mexican drug cartel member, with three rather well-armed goons standing behind him, is handing a suitcase laden with cash to the driver of a spanking new pick-up truck. The driver hands the key over to the cartel maven and departs for a waiting car. The back of the truck is filled with long, rectangular crates, filled with AR15s assault rifles. It seems that in a few hours, this shipment, with a few disguises along the way, will find its way into Mexico and into the arms of the small army of cartel soldiers who have better weapons that the Federales. Somewhere on the other side of the border, a small video screen reveals what is transpiring from a drone hovering quietly above. Seconds later, an explosion! The truck, the waiting car, driver, the cartel dealer and his goons… gone. Smoldering ruins. A Mexican drone strike has found its mark.

Does this invasion of U.S. airspace seem a bit outrageous to you? But this is just fiction. Yet it is precisely how the United States, from bases across the border in Afghanistan, seems to operate against Taliban and other violent anti-American extremists operating in the ungovernable Pakistani Tribal District. Of course, the Pakistani government protests. Of course, the Pakistani masses consider this a violation of their airspace by a foreign power. They are filled with anger and resentment against the American “bully.” The big question is whether the United States is really firing missiles from its hovering drone completely against the will of the Pakistani, or is there something deeper working here?

The difficulty that Pakistan faces is that there are fundamentalist forces, operating pretty much free of threat by the Pakistan military, from the Tribal areas, occasionally mounting a strike against Pakistani government facilities and forces all over Pakistan. It seems that too many Pakistanis harbor strong sympathies for their extremist Taliban brethren, and every time the Pakistani army strikes against these vicious child-shooters (remember Malala?) in the Tribal District, there are too many angry sympathizers who strongly object to Muslims killing other Muslims, no matter the level of extremism. Wouldn’t it be convenient if American drones could take out anti-Islamabad militants under the guise of combating terrorism? Especially if Pakistan could protest and act as if they had nothing to do with it? Is there really such a “secret deal” between Washington and Islamabad?

In June of 2004, a drone-launched missile took out a Pastun militant, Nek Muhammad, in South Wizirstan (Tribal District), a man who has successfully led his band of fundamentalists against Pakistani regulars in the nearby mountains. It was the beginning of our drone strikes in this area. “The target was not a top operative of Al Qaeda, but a Pakistani ally of the Taliban who led a tribal rebellion and was marked by Pakistan as an enemy of the state. In a secret deal, the C.I.A. had agreed to kill him in exchange for access to airspace it had long sought so it could use drones to hunt down its own enemies.” Mark Mazzetti writing for the New York Times, April 7^th. It was an unholy deal with then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

It was about military aid, billions of dollars of it, and a little “help us out where we really can’t appear to be involved.” “As the battles raged in South Waziristan, the [U.S. C.I.A.] station chief in Islamabad paid a visit to Gen. Ehsan ul Haq, the ISI [Pakistan’s intelligence agency] chief, and made an offer: If the C.I.A. killed Mr. Muhammad, would the ISI allow regular armed drone flights over the tribal areas? … In secret negotiations, the terms of the bargain were set. Pakistani intelligence officials insisted that they be allowed to approve each drone strike, giving them tight control over the list of targets. And they insisted that drones fly only in narrow parts of the tribal areas — ensuring that they would not venture where Islamabad did not want the Americans going: Pakistan’s nuclear facilities, and the mountain camps where Kashmiri militants were trained for attacks in India.” NY Times.

So maybe we aren’t operating without approval from Islamabad… or maybe we are continuing a deal that many in the Pakistani government would like to end. Whatever the reality, there is stuff we just don’t know about… but I think we can figure this one out all by ourselves.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the ease of implementing executions from silent unmanned aircraft from a above is both compelling… and terrifying.