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War Without Footprints
If Pakistan wants fewer U.S. agents on the ground, it should tolerate American drones.
By William Saletan
War is spreading across the Muslim world. U.S. forces are in Iraq. They’re in Afghanistan. They’re helping NATO in Libya. Even the United Nations—the United Nations!—is fighting in the Ivory Coast.
But one war has been going on quietly all along. It’s quiet because the Americans fighting it aren’t in the place where it’s being fought. That place is the tribal regions of Pakistan, where we’re hunting Taliban and al-Qaida militants. We’ve been waging this war not with ground troops, or even with planes, but withremotely piloted drones.
Now Pakistani officials are demanding that we back off. They’re angry because a CIA contractor shot two men dead in a Pakistani city, creating a political mess. Pakistan wants CIA operatives to get out of the country, shrinking the U.S. “footprint” there. And it wants the drone attacks to stop. But drones don’t increase our footprint in Pakistan. They reduce it.
Pakistan has every right to be angry about the shooting. The CIA security officer who did it, Raymond Davis, says the two men were trying to rob him. But you don’t gun down two people, completely unrelated to your mission, in broad daylight in a country where you’re supposed to be a “diplomat” and
where your government and your agency are wildly unpopular. It didn’t help that Davis’ mission was to help infiltrate a militant group favored by Pakistan. Nor was Pakistan happy that a third civilian was killed in the incident by a CIA car trying to extract Davis. And to top it off, emissaries of the Pakistani government had to negotiate Davis’ release from local justice so he could be spirited back to the hated U.S.
So Pakistan demanded an exodus of CIA personnel. Out went 130 contractors. Another 300 are supposedly packing their bags. The government also wants 25 to 40 percent of our special operations forces to hit the road. And while we’re at it, Pakistani officials want our drone strikes cut back. They want the drones’ roaming area narrowed. They want us to consult them before each strike, increasing the risk that the people we’re targeting will disperse or be tipped off. And for now, they want the drone attacks suspended altogether. In fact, the attacks were suspended. A strike today was the first since four weeks ago, just after Davis was released.*
The Pakistanis see these measures as a crackdown on runaway foreign agents. They accuse the CIA of an “increasing American footprint” in Pakistan and insist that U.S. forces “cut down their footprints” in the country. That’s a legitimate objection to operatives on the ground. But it’s an odd rationale for suspending the drone war, which keeps American boots off Pakistani soil.
Pakistan says the drones kill too many civilians. It points to last month’s drone strike, in which some tribal leaders were reportedly killed alongside the targeted militants. But the drones, thanks to their precise weapons and their ability to verify targets without risking pilots’ lives, are killing civilians at a lower rate than any other form of warfare. Even critics of the drone program acknowledge that its rate of civilian casualties has plummeted. Two months ago, at a forum convened by the New America Foundation, Peter Bergen, the director of NAF’s National Security Studies Program, conceded that the drones’ civilian casualty rate had declined from 25 to 5 percent. That beats the NATO air campaign in Libya, in which pilots have to make quick decisions, sometimes with tragic consequences.
Bergen cited poll data indicating that the drones are unpopular in Pakistan. But that’s nothing compared to the outrage that followed the Davis incident. One American driver firing a pistol created a political uproar worse than any missile from a drone. That’s what happens when we put our feet on the ground.
Drones alone can’t win the war in Pakistan. But by giving us a way to hunt our enemies without ground troops and with fewer civilian casualties, they can help us avoid losing it. If Pakistan wants a smaller American footprint on its territory, it should make its peace with a technology that leaves no footprints at all.
(Readings I recommend: Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann analyzed the first six years of the drone campaign in a 2010 NAF paper and then updated their assessment four months ago in Foreign Policy. Bill Roggio and Alexander Mayer calculate a lower rate of civilian casualties at the Long War Journal. P. W. Singer wrote a terrific overview of drone warfare and the future of unmanned systems in Slate last year. Several analysts consider Pakistan’s latest demands in the New York Times’ “Room for Debate” forum, and Uri Friedman has a good roundup of additional perspectives at the Atlantic Wire. But my vote for smartest take on the fracas goes to Spencer Ackerman at Danger Room.)
Correction, April 13, 2011: This article was prepared for publication overnight. It noted that no drone strikes had been reported since March 17. In the hours between preparation and publication, a drone strike was reported. The article has been revised accordingly. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
Source:http://www.slate.com/id/2291065/
Filed under: Pakistan, USA, war · Tags: American, civilian, civilian casualties, drone
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Wow! CIA spokespersons are now being published on PTH… $50 Million sure is not a small amount.
I think the adventurists in US are not going to rest until they have completely destroyed this country with their inane thinking and policies.
[...] War Without Footprints [...]
Pathetic. If Pakistani Liberals want to be taken seriously and want to maintain their principles and integrity they should oppose American intervention by being consistent in their calls for justice.
Come on show some consistency!!
Those who dare to be critical must be consistent.
One of the major complaints I find about Pakistani liberals is the slack attitude towards American involvement and leaving the discourse of anti-imperialism to the religious right who manipulate genuine grievances.
The issue is not American “involvement”. For a liberal its almost never other’s involvement that matters, its the home-grown invitation thats the problem. And for which there is no solution at the present.
For the typical Pakistani conservative, its the involvement of the outsider, that is the cause of all problems. And for which there can never be any solution.
In both cases there is no solution.
But stopping the drones immediately is definitely *good* for the political atmosphere. People will rejoice. For the first day. Just like we rejoice at a cricket win, and forget everything thats wrong with us, for one day. The next day, to our “national surprise” its still all the same.
The call for stopping the drones is not accompanied by the alternative solution, whatever it may be. The focus is just on stopping the drones.
How many terrorists can be killed without drones? and where are the resources to kill them if drones are not used? We don’t care.
But Killing is the only solution. Because the alternative to killing them is not possible even for the next 4 or 5 generations in Pakistan. The alternative, in order to bring peace now, is to bombard the region with overwhelmingly mature democratic leaders that no nation has ever seen, use the hypothetical magic of the HAARP project to generate a tsunami of schools flooding the area with the most civilized education, raising a thunder storm of cultural and social activities heavily pouring down in Waziristan, and melodious music being hummed by colorful birds never seen on earth before, perhaps “aba beel” could be summoned through congregational prayers, as Zaid Hamid once proposed.
Since that cannot happen, we come back to reality, and realize, that the only solution is killing as many of the particularly “rebellious” terrorists as we can, and simply reward the non-rebellious “asset” terrorists so they don’t rebel, that we can solve the problem, and this has to continue forever, for the rest of Pakistan’s future.
So how do we go on killing the rebellious terrorists even more effectively than the drones can? No one knows, and so the drones should continue.
Now why the USA must use the drones and not the Pakistan Army? Simple.. The attractiveness of a “rebellious” terrorist is far more than that of the “asset” terrorist. For the Army, the “rebellious” terrorist tends to appear more exciting and strong and frequently tends to seduce them resulting in unplanned activities whose fruit remains un-nurtured and spreads further illegality. Since the “asset” terrorists are more conducive to husbandry and could be reared to work the Nation’s greater goals, that are almost divine in themselves, the USA helps act as a chaperon making sure the wrong match is not made. This benefits all three, the US, the Army, and the Nation.
Domestic weakness gives rise to external intervention – the two are linked hence Salman Arshad’s rather naive presentation neglects the fact that the ”liberal” and ”conservative” narratives are in fact telling the entirely compatible truths.
We are suscpetible to external manipulation but that’s because there is grievous domestic problems and weaknesses. The two are linked. Weak nations, nations that cannot tell their armies to get back to their barracks will struggle and be susceptible to external interference.
Let’s talk about reform but not kid ourselves. The real elephant in the room is the Pakistani Army. We need a Constitution that makes it clear and is rigorously enforced that makes it absolutely clear that the Pakistani Army should stay out of politics.
We in Pakistan love to dehumanize other Pakistanis. May I remind everyone that the people of the tribal areas are our fellow Pakistani citizens. If people here at PTH love to talk about equality then let’s be consistent. Let’s speak about equality for our fellow citizens in the Northern Areas. What about the chronic lack of investment, education and development in those areas for the last few decades? The same goes for Balochistan.
We love to dehumanize each other. The poor Balochis currently being persecuted by our very own Army and State and the destruction ensuing in the tribal areas again with the support and tacit acceptance of the Army and State.
the arguments given in the article are absolutely absurd….we donot care if the success rate is greater…there should be no let me repeat NO civilian casualties…killing ten women n children to get 1 terrorist is pathetic and misses the whole point…..get some humanity ppl