CIAO DATE: 06/2013
May 2013
Nine years after the first U.S. drone strike in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in 2004, the U.S. refuses to officially acknowledge the CIA-run program, while Pakistan denies consenting to it. This secrecy undermines efforts to assess the program’s legality or its full impa ct on FATA’s population. It also diverts attention from a candid examination of the roots of militancy in the poorly governed tribal belt bordering southern and east ern Afghanistan and how best to address them. Drone strikes may disrupt FATA-based militant groups’ capacity to plan and execute cross-border attacks on NATO troop s and to plot attacks against the U.S. homeland, but they cannot solve the fundamen tal problem. The ability of those groups to regroup, rearm and recruit will remain inta ct so long as they enjoy safe havens on Pakistani territory and efforts to incorporate FATA into the constitutional main- stream are stifled. Since 2004, there have been at least 350 drone strikes in FATA, mostly in North Waziristan, South Waziristan and Kurram agencies. These have killed significant numbers of al-Qaeda leaders and senior mi litant commanders of both the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban, but also scores of innocent civilians, in part because of so-called “signature” strikes that target groups of men based on behaviour patterns associated with terrorist activity rather than known identities.
Resource link: Drones: Myths and Reality in Pakistan [PDF]