Believe it or not, we're smack in the midst of the longest lull in US drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal belt since late 2011. Crazy, right? For all the breathless chatter marking a drone debate that's bubbled over into the public consciousness, kicking and screaming and mumbling semi-coherently, at last, a pause. For now--and for all we know--something like an eerie calm has maybe fallen over those remote areas that have beared the brunt of an aerial campaign that began in earnest not long after the Sept. 11 attacks.
But a strange thing just happened. The US, for years blasted by a Pakistani government that has likely greenlit America's lethal drone campaign behind closed doors, is denying any involvement in a pair of strikes that rocked North and South Waziristan last month.
The phantom strikes knocked out nine people, including two senior al-Qaeda operatives. All signs, at least while the dust settled, pointed to the CIA, whose covert killing program has free reign in Pakistan for the next year. Only the New York Times is reporting that officials familiar with the US's two-pronged drone program say the US not only didn't carry out the hits, but has no idea who did.
Strike rubble in Pakistan (via AFP)
There's a hunch, of course: It was Pakistan--partially, at least. To hear two of the three unnamed officials who spoke to the Times tell it, there "had been no American involvement" in the strikes. The third official added that because "no American forces had been involved" the CIA didn't pay much attention to reports of the hits. At the same time, that third official said that intelligence gathered by the Americans suggested that the Pakistani Air Force was behind the initial strike on Feb. 6, most likely as part of operations in the Orakzai tribal agency targeting Pakistani Taliban militants.
As for the second attack? “It could have been the Pakistani military,” the official told the Times. “It could have been the Taliban fighting among themselves. Or it could have been simply bad reporting.”
Whatever it is, this highlights one of the lingering concerns inherent to the new shadow wars, namely that still hardly anyone outside lethal operations and their deliberations has a grasp on what in the actual fuck is going on throughout the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, and beyond. And yet if the American version given the Times is indeed correct, talk about a rich irony.
Again, the US and Pakistan have always been unlikely bedfellows in the scheme of remote counterterrorism. In the early days of the US drone campain throughout the region, the Pakistani Army took false ownership of the lethal strikes. The idea was to blot out any and all signs of the CIA droning within Pakistan's borders, for fear of public outrage. So now, if we're to believe the anonymous disavowal of a handful of US personnel privy to US drone strikes, Pakistan's military could well be using "the same program to disguise its own operations," as the Times nows.
So call it Islamabad discretely having its cake, and eating it too. Or don't. But perhaps most critically, the mystery strike(s) are proof positive of a playing field undergoing rapid, intense leveling. That so-called drone monopoly? Hope the Americans enjoyed it.
Top: US drone parked in Pakistan (via BIJ)
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