Drones in Pakistan!

In the most heavily targeted parts of Pakistan’s tribal regions, in the northwest -- U.S. drone strikes are but a single form of state-sponsored killing, alongside conventional airstrikes and ground operations by Pakistan’s military, insurgent bombings, tribal hostilities, and everyday criminality. But drones occupy a special category of their own. The strikes began in 2004; they have since killed a total of 2,500 to 3,500 people. Estimates suggest that several hundred of those killed were innocent civilians. Last May, U.S. President Barack Obama said that those deaths would haunt him and his advisers for “as long as we live.”

In Pakistan, the strikes have been a source of bitter political contention from the very beginning. Broadly speaking, one side focuses on the violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty while the other -- a sizeable group -- maintains that drone strikes are the least bad option for maintaining some semblance of security in a restive region. For their part, the country’s politicians hold up victims of drone strikes to serve their own ends -- to illustrate the tyranny of the United States or the unfortunate sacrifices that must be made in the name of security.

I recently read some articles and news, and have spoken to people who  concerns revolve around their day-to-day struggle to make ends meet. Talk to them, and you will find that the monolithic view in the West that all Pakistanis are enraged by drone strikes is inaccurate. In fact, further north -- closer to the areas that bear the brunt of the strikes -- it is not uncommon to encounter strong support for them.

Karachi is a giant swirl of nearly 21 million people, all competing to get by in their various, overlapping versions of the city. Karachi is a kind of gold rush town: everyone constantly sifts through the debris hoping to spot a golden nugget and strike it rich. It is a paradise for the fortunate few with the resources and bank balance to live in a security bubble; for most of the rest, life is a desperate grind.

Karachi is also a microcosm of Pakistan. Every ethnic and linguistic group lives here, and so all of the country’s political parties have a stake in the city. National issues are mirrored at the local level. Even armed non-state actors -- be they the Taliban, sectarian extremists, or the armed wings of political parties -- maintain an open presence. Although there is no reliable polling to gauge attitudes about drones, the city is simmering with resentment about strikes in the northwest. You see it in graffiti, you hear it from politicians, and you feel it among ordinary people in regular conversation.

Karachi has one of the highest murder rates in the world. Electricity is a problem, water is a problem, street crime is a given. Almost everyone has a story of being held up at gunpoint, and home invasions are like a rite of passage. Did the problems of the hinterland even seep in past the local chaos?

Drone strikes were a humiliation. Washington has been calling the shots in Pakistan since its independence. Didn’t I know that drones were just another means of subjugating Pakistan? The United States would never tolerate such a violation of its sovereignty. Criticism of Pakistan’s government and military flowed freely; they were complicit at every stage. It was the only way to explain why these strikes went on with no end in sight.

In recent years, some evidence of collusion with the United States has become all too clear. Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf admitted in an interview last April that he consented to CIA drone strikes “two or three times” during his time in office. And WikiLeaks disclosed in 2010 that former Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani did not care about the damage of drone strikes, as long as they got “the right people.” There is a strong feeling that if Pakistan’s military and intelligence services aren’t directly involved in the minutiae of targeting, they are at least looking the other way. The only other option is to believe that Pakistan’s all-knowing intelligence agencies are incapable of standing up to the CIA. And few are prepared to believe that.

Drones dot the sky over village like clouds, enough that the United States’ ubiquitous presence above makes people in the tribal areas feel like they’re living in an American colony. The drones strike at will, and it seems that nobody can stop them -- certainly not the Pakistani government, let alone the United Nations. No one haves any judgment about them and no one makes any effort to stop them,  For Pakistani, it is as though we are living at the mercy and generosity of the Americans. There is no force that can stop them or topple them.

The anonymity of drone victims makes it easy to say that their deaths were a sad but necessary sacrifice. The majority of U.S. drone strikes have hit North and South Waziristan, which serves as a buffer of sorts along the border with Afghanistan. The Pakistani government keeps tight reins on movement in and out of the tribal areas, and information travels slowly. As a result, the region’s reality is obscured from most Pakistanis. Their inability, and sometimes unwillingness, to consider the experience of those who actually live in those areas has further strained Pakistan’s public discourse.

There is a feeling that things are tough all over, and that as the security situation has turned dire the tradeoffs have naturally become starker.


Pakistanis know that the United States will not end its drone program in Pakistan anytime soon. And so the polarized debates will continue. But for those who live the closest to the strike zones, drones are not some abstract talking point. Just getting through the day has become a high-stakes game. It feels that each day could be their last. And for anybody living around that area, the possibility of dying in a strike, remains all too real.

Wake up Pakistan!

Love to all...

DiL