For the first time since a deadly U.S.-Pakistani firefight drove relations between the two uneasy allies into the toilet, a missile fired by a drone slammed into a North Waziristan target. Surprise! Washington-Islamabad acrimony isn’t enough to stop the drone war.
Four people were killed near Mirin Shah in the first drone strike since Nov. 16. In the interim, 24 Pakistani soldiers died in a U.S. helicopter strike during a raid by U.S. commandos on a village near the Pakistan border; a military inquiry determined the Pakistanis had fired persistently on the commandos. The drone war has effectively been on pause to let U.S. diplomacy with Islamabad regroup.
The pause is evidently over. And that suggests little will actually stop the drone war.
2011 was the worst year for the U.S.-Pakistan relationship since 9/11. Not only did the bin Laden raid infuriate Pakistanis, but so did a CIA contractor who killed two in Lahore who apparently tried to rob him. Pakistan usually issues empty threats to vent popular outrage, but after the helicopter incident, it shut down logistics routes for the Afghanistan war and actually kicked the CIA out of a drone base on its soil.
And all that did was make the drone war take a knee. The drones now fly from Afghan bases; Pakistan notably did not deny the U.S. overflight rights after the helicopter incident. That’s still an option for the Pakistanis, theoretically. But absent some really big disaster — a botched U.S. raid inside Pakistan, maybe? — it’s hard to see what else the U.S. could do to prompt the Pakistanis to take more drastic steps.
Remember that the next time you read hype about the drone war “stopping.” The drone strikes are not a supplement to a war; they’re the centerpiece of how the Obama administration confronts terrorists. The White House’s plan for counterterrorism makes that clear, as does the Pentagon’s new strategy blueprint. Anonymous administration officials, evidently itching to get back to the strikes, floated the (evidence-free) proposition in the New York Times that terrorists were regrouping during the six-week pause.
Perhaps elements of the Pakistani security establishment are back on board with the drones, perhaps they aren’t. But the resumption of the drone strikes strongly indicates that if the Pakistanis have a problem with the strikes, the U.S. will route around that problem. Any pauses you see in the drone program are likely to be tactical — and brief.
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