Another drone attack, another 12 people dead in Pakistan, and continued refusal to address the issue in Pakistan as something other than a rote counterterrorism issue.
Still, the strategy there ignores the populace in a way that seems precision-engineered to increase, rather than undermine, support for radicalism and insurgency. Until the U.S. government decides to focus on the fundamentals and seeing how to be effective beyond just killing those who are against it, we should stop thinking about achieving something constructive in the NWFP and FATA. It just won’t happen.
See Also: A overview of why fundamentals matter
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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Josh, I’m curious. Do you think the whole tactic of using drone attacks should be scrapped altogether, or do you think improvements just need to be made in their deployment?
It’s not an either/or situation. As they stand now, the drone attacks, in my view, make things incomparably worse in the grand scheme of things, regardless of their actual affect on Al Qaeda. At a basic level, they fundamentally undermine the democratically elected civilian government; at a slightly more complex level, they drive forward the idea that the U.S. is the peoples’ enemy (my few and scattered sources in the area make me doubt the recent poll saying that people there like being bombed — they hate the Taliban, but they also hate being indiscriminately killed). From a high-level perspective, we’re doing none of the hard work to reduce the structural reasons for militant Islam’s drive there, which is a vastly complicated mixture of development, education, governance, and security. None of those things, which are necessary for creating a permanent peace in the area, are advanced by the drone war.
That being said, I’m not necessarily opposed to the idea of drone strikes. It is just that, when done in isolation, as if they are all that is needed in a policy, they are deeply counterproductive.
Thanks Josh. I guess these kind of attacks of the last three months have just confused me. I vaguely remember, during the presidential elections, Obama being plainly against the continuation/escalation of a drone war, as well as the civilian government not being a big fan either. I could very well be remembering incorrectly, but if I’m not, I don’t understand where and why apparent shifts in opinion have occured. I didn’t see anything at all regarding the tactic in Washington’s “expansion” of strategy in Pakistan, which makes me wonder if any abation at all in these incidents will occur. The whole thing just leaves me with a nasty feeling, half-expecting the day when a US special forces team gets caught in a botched NWFP operation. But then, what do I know? Match in the gas tank, I suppose.
Ok nevermind the Obama campaign memory. I just read Peter Singer talking drones, and the whole thing read like a “sword of Damacles” concept. It seems like the use of drones is secondarily intended to “encourage” the Pakistani government to “do more.” That’s kind of obnoxious: “Well if you don’t like how WE do it, do a better job!”