The escalation of drone attacks by the United States in Pakistan’s northwestern region, a topic of much recent contention between the two nations, has lead to a stark increase in anti-American sentiment among Pakistanis. While the policy started under the Bush Administration, the Obama Administration has increased the use of the strikes in Pakistan from one per year to nearly one every four days. Although the purpose of the strategy is to decrease terrorist activities by targeting militant groups— including the Taliban and Al-Qaeda— it seems to be doing just the opposite. Collateral damage resulting from the attacks creates nothing but support for militant groups who use civilian deaths as leverage to garner support from the people of northwestern Pakistan, particularly in the tribal areas of Waziristan, a region that the Pakistani government has little control over.
US President Obama meets with Pakistani President Asif Ali
With an estimated 2,451 Pakistanis killed in drone attacks since 2004, anger towards the US is growing not only among militant hard-liners, but among a majority of Pakistani citizens. Those primarily affected by drone strikes in northwestern Pakistan are in the most defenseless position in the country. Largely ignored by Pakistan’s federal government, regional institutions have failed to address the problems of the area’s residents. Already facing staggering rates of poverty and unemployment, young men in Waziristan are much more susceptible to recruitment from Taliban commandos who capitalize on their vulnerability. Add relatives and friends being killed in drone strikes to a lack of economic opportunity and you have a recipe for disaster.
But even more frightening than the fact that groups like the Taliban are gaining legitimacy in Pakistan’s northwest is
Students protest Drone Strikes in Pakistan
that the expression of their discontent comes in the form of suicide bomb blasts. The frequency with which suicide attacks have been occurring in Pakistan since the beginning of the Obama Administration is alarming. Nearly 5,000 people have died and over 12,000 have been injured in suicide blasts in Pakistan, with 83 attacks occurring in 2009 alone.
It doesn’t take an expert to reason that the simultaneous rise in drone strikes and suicide bombings is not coincidental. Members of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban carry out these attacks as a display of anger against the Pakistani government for maintaining relations with the United States, a country who they see as an aggressor against Pakistani civilians. Suicide attacks have occurred in all of Pakistan’s major cities, bringing a conflict many Pakistanis once saw as being restricted to the tumultuous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan into the lives of people living in the most concentrated urban hubs of the country. US involvement in Pakistan is becoming harder for Pakistanis to ignore and it is contributing to the growing frustration with terrorism they feel is caused by American policies. Suicide attacks have become something of an everyday reality for the average Pakistani. And in a country where suicide bombings were virtually unheard of prior to 9/11, this reality has Pakistanis asking how much longer they will have to keep fighting America’s war.
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Drone strikes in Pakistan have significant negative externalities. However, it’s hard to argue for an alternative — militants groups like al Qaeda remain a real threat to the security of US citizens, and Osama bin Laden’s sanctuary in Pakistan definitively demonstrated that the Pakistani security services cannot be relied upon to combat militant groups. If not drone strikes, what policy should we pursue in Pakistan?
I’d argue that the only citizens that Al Qaeda poses a threat to at this point are Pakistani citizens. There have been no major attacks carried out by the Al Qaeda in the United States since 9/11, and not a single one of the 9/11 hijackers were Pakistani. There have, however, been countless attacks against Pakistani civilians carried out by militant groups including Al Qaeda and the Taliban (which has never really posed any threat to the US and it certainly doesn’t now, as it lacks a global agenda). You make a good point that Pakistan’s security services and ISI have been incredibly ineffective at combating terrorism within Pakistan, but again the repercussions of this affect only Pakistanis, not Americans. A military strategy is never going to combat terrorism, not only in Pakistan, but pretty much anywhere. The only realistic policy in my opinion is for the US to cut its losses in Pakistan and take whatever gains may have been made (namely, the killing of OBL I guess). If the US ends airstrikes in Pakistan not only will it stop wasting American tax dollars (each drone costs about a million dollars apiece), but it won’t have to deal with militants using American involvement in Pakistan as leverage to recruit and carry out more attacks on civilians. Pakistan can sort out its security issue on its own without American interference. If the US wants to continue working with and sending military aid to the Pakistani government to fight terrorism, knowing that everyone in Pakistan’s Parliament is notorious worldwide for corruption, fraud, and embezzlement, there needs to be a more systematic method of accountability and transparency because a good majority of the aid money sent to Pakistan never reaches the civilian population.