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  • aziz 12:34 pm on February 22, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , drone attacks, , ,

    Larison talking about US drone strikes and the Dubai assassination:

    Reliable “pro-Israel” advocates cannot seem to grasp this, but almost all Western objections to this action have nothing to do with any sympathy for Mabhouh or his cause. Just as objections to drone strikes in Pakistan have nothing to do with sympathy for Al Qaeda or opposition to U.S. objectives in the region, Western protests over the manner in which Israel fights it enemies is almost always motivated by an interest in keeping Israel from making counterproductive blunders that empower its enemies and isolate it from those states that would otherwise be willing to support Israel. There is probably no better ally of genuine anti-Israel sentiment than the reflexive apologists for every mistake and crime the Israeli government commits. As the old proverb goes, “The yes-man is your enemy, but your friend will argue with you.”

     

  • johnpi 11:58 pm on February 8, 2010 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: drone attacks, , , Khmer Rouge, , , , , , , Vietnam analogy

    Could US drone strikes push Pakistan into Khmer Rouge type genocide?

    A more provocative — and perhaps more ominous — analogy today might be between the CIA’s escalating drone war in the contemporary Pakistani tribal borderlands and Richard Nixon’s secret bombing campaign against the Cambodian equivalent. To briefly recapitulate that ancient history: In the late 1960s, Cambodia was ruled by a “neutralist” king, Norodom Sihanouk, leading a weak government that had little relevance to its poor and barely educated citizens. In its borderlands, largely beyond its control, the North Vietnamese and Vietcong found “sanctuaries.”

    Sihanouk, helpless to do anything, looked the other way. In the meantime, sheltered by local villagers in distant areas of rural Cambodia was a small insurgent group, little-known communist fundamentalists who called themselves the Khmer Rouge. (Think of them as the 1970s equivalent of the Pakistani Taliban who have settled into the wild borderlands of that country largely beyond the control of the Pakistani government.) They were then weak and incapable of challenging Sihanouk — until, that is, those secret bombing raids by American B-52s began. As these intensified in the summer of 1969, areas of the country began to destabilize (helped on in 1970 by a U.S.-encouraged military coup in the capital Phnom Penh), and the Khmer Rouge began to gain strength.

    The Taliban sure hope so…

     

  • johnpi 12:49 am on January 14, 2010 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: drone attacks, , ,

    US senator Carl Levin criticizes Pakistani politicians’ criticism of drone strikes.

    A US senator, however, scolded Pakistan’s leaders Wednesday, charging them with privately supporting US drone strikes while publicly denouncing them.

    “What troubles me is the public attack on these drone attacks when at the same time they’ve privately obviously not told us that we must stop. They have not done that,” said Senator Carl Levin.

    Pakistan’s leaders “not only understand and acquiesce, but in many cases privately support the drone attacks,” Levin said, adding that “the minimum we should expect is a silence on their part rather than a public attack on us.” Earlier Wednesday, Pakistan’s foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi had said the strikes sour relations with Washington.

     

  • johnpi 9:03 am on January 11, 2010 | 8 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , drone attacks, , , , , , ,

    Farhat Taj, a Pakistani academic now teaching at the University of Oslo, says that Waziristan residents appreciate the drone strikes.

    The people of Waziristan are suffering a brutal kind of occupation under the Taliban and al Qaeda. It is in this context that they would welcome anyone, Americans, Israelis, Indians or even the devil, to rid them of the Taliban and al Qaeda. Therefore, they welcome the drone attacks.
    ….

    What we read and hear in the print and electronic media of Pakistan about drone attacks as a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty or resulting in killing innocent civilians is not true so far as the people of Waziristan are concerned. According to them, al Qaeda and the TTP are dead scared of drone attacks and their leadership spends sleepless nights. This is a cause of pleasure for the tormented people of Waziristan.

     

  • johnpi 9:02 am on December 17, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , drone attacks, , ,

    A veritable squadron of predator drones attacked two compounds in the Ambarshaga area of the North Waziristan tribal region today, killing 15 people, seven of whom were identified as foreign militants.

    Five drones fired 10 missiles. The massing of drones implies the US suspected a high-value target was present.

     

  • johnpi 7:34 pm on December 14, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: drone attacks, , , , , , ,

    ‘The end of the road’ for the US-Pakistan cooperation.

    A senior Pakistani official told Los Angeles Times if the US went ahead with its plan to launch drone strikes in Quetta then it would be ‘the end of the road’ for the US-Pakistan cooperation in the fight against extremist groups.

    ‘We are not a banana republic,’ said the official involved in discussions on security issues with the Obama administration. The official bristled at the suggestion that Pakistan had been reluctant to target militants in Quetta, saying US assertions about the city’s role as a sanctuary had been exaggerated. ‘We keep hearing that there is a shadow government in Quetta, but we have never been given actionable intelligence.

    And Obama refuses to rule out drone attacks in Quetta. This report contradicts the earlier report that Obama was opposed to drone attacks in Quetta.

     

  • johnpi 7:16 pm on December 14, 2009 | 3 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , drone attacks, , , , , , , ,

    Refreshing honesty from the Pakistani military.

    Demands by the United States for Pakistan to crack down on the strongest Taliban warrior in Afghanistan, Siraj Haqqani, whose fighters pose the biggest threat to American forces, have been rebuffed by the Pakistani military, according to Pakistani military officials and diplomats.

    The Obama administration wants Pakistan to turn on Mr. Haqqani, a longtime asset of Pakistan’s spy agency who uses the tribal area of North Waziristan as his sanctuary. But, the officials said, Pakistan views the entreaties as contrary to its interests in Afghanistan beyond the timetable of President Obama’s surge, which envisions drawing down American forces beginning in mid-2011.
    ….

    The demands have been accompanied by strong suggestions that if the Pakistanis cannot take care of the problem, including dismantling the Taliban leadership based in Quetta, Pakistan, then the Americans will by resorting to broader and more frequent drone strikes in Pakistan.

    But the Pakistanis have greeted the refrain with official public silence and private anger, illustrating the widening gulf between the allies over the Afghan war.

    Because the Pakistani military would like to have their own proxy, easily controllable government in Afghanistan – but for some reason we don’t call Pakistani meddling in Afghanistan foreign interference.

     

  • johnpi 7:22 pm on December 13, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: drone attacks, , , ,

    Obama balks at using drones in populated areas in Quetta where Afghan taliban leaders are located, in spite of US national security and counterterrorism officials who are encouraging it.

     

  • johnpi 8:01 am on December 4, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , drone attacks, , , ,

    Predator drones coming to Baluchistan.

    The White House has authorized expanding the CIA’s Predator Drone program in Pakistan, with US officials now eager to start attacking targets in Baluchistan province.

    Pakistani government objects.

    Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit said there were limits to Pakistani cooperation, and the drone attacks were counterproductive.

    ‘This has never been part of our discussions. There are clear red-lines as far as we’re concerned,’ he said when asked if there were any talks between Washington and Islamabad on expansion of drone attacks to Baluchistan.

    ‘We have clearly conveyed our red-lines to them.’

    In outlining his Afghanistan strategy in a speech on Tuesday, Obama made a vague plea to Pakistan to fight the ‘cancer’ of extremism and said the United States would not tolerate Pakistan allowing its territory to be a safe haven for militants.

    As I said in an earlier post, every reason and rationalization that created a broad left-right consensus supporting the attack and invasion of Afghanistan can now be said about Pakistan.

     

  • thabet 8:26 am on August 13, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , drone attacks, , , ,

    The legal questions over drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal regions.

     

  • johnpi 7:19 am on July 18, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , drone attacks, , ,

    An idea gaining advocates among foreign policy types in the US
    is that America should focus its military efforts on Pakistan rather than Afghanistan:

    “The even better course of action is to shift the weight of U.S. political and military efforts to Pakistan. There, the United States should continue its policy of waging drone attacks against al Qaeda and Taliban leaders. With better intelligence from the Pakistani side — as demonstrated recently — the U.S. Army can improve the accuracy of its strikes. And though drone strikes are controversial, targeting al Qaeda’s leadership is the best military strategy — and the best way to protect Americans, Afghans, and Pakistanis from terrorism. And that fight is in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.

    One problem (among many):

    Nor do the authors deal with a widespread belief, backed by the U.S. administration, that the Afghan Taliban are based not in the tribal areas of Pakistan but in and around Quetta, the capital of its Baluchistan province. Sending U.S. drones into ”mainland Pakistan” would be quite different from dropping missiles on the tribal areas — and even these cause resentment in Pakistan, which sees them as both a breach of its sovereignty and a 21st century sledgehammer in which civilians as well as militant leaders die.

     

  • johnpi 6:06 am on July 1, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: drone attacks, , , ,

    A militant commander in northwest Pakistan tore up a peace deal with the Pakistani government Tuesday, dealing a major blow to the government’s campaign against Islamist insurgents in the extremist-controlled Waziristan region.

    The commander, Gul Bahadur, who heads the Pakistani Taliban in North Waziristan, ended his pact with Islamabad, citing missile strikes in his territory by American drone aircraft for turning him against the Pakistani government

     

  • johnpi 8:23 am on May 1, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , drone attacks, , Indian secret agents, , , , , ,

    Denial-istan.

    In the absence of national leadership or even basic coherence at the top, rumors and ideological punditry masquerade as reason. A television anchor insists that all the attacks are the handiwork of Indian intelligence agents. A talking head on another channel claims that the Taliban are misunderstood – all they want to do is to bring swift justice to the country. Another strategic expert assures viewers that everything happening in Pakistan is the U.S.’s fault. Drone attacks are creating anti-Americanism, and its only natural that those attacked will retaliate wherever they can. If the US were to simply stop the drone attacks on Pakistan, everything would be just fine. The fact that Pakistan was spinning out of control well before anyone had heard the term drone hamla, is left out of the conversation.

    More Denial-istan.

    The conservatives themselves are men reacting to the threatening Western presence and targeting women who are often the victims of wars and the political instability that it brings. With the threat of outsiders, women become burdened with the need to carry and preserve culture.

    If it weren’t for those darn outsiders…

     

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