Mosharraf Zaidi

The Consensus About Drones – Part I – by Mosharraf Zaidi

Tuesday, May 11, 2010
News analysis

http://thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=28773

Children in Waziristan call them “Ghangai” (emitter of constant humming). Like Scottish folk hero William Wallace — who purportedly shot bolts of thunder from his nether-regions —the legend of the drones grows. Faisal Shahzad’s failed attack on Times Square is the latest stimulant for the drone debates.

What this latest Pakistani terrorist has stimulated is a monster. The truth about the Ghangai has been contested —not only by the supposedly “rabid Pakistani press”, and the “fanatics” that make up this country of 180 million people. It has been contested by American think tanks. It has been contested by US military advisers. It has been contested even by researchers in their own studies, less than six months apart. As always, the truth is the first casualty of war. The contested and amputated truth about the Ghangai is a victim of partisanship and ideology. This is not the first time. In Pakistan, a country whose military and political elite have perfected the art of the dilution of truth, the myth-making is on.

We’ve seen this script before, of course — with Aafia Siddiqui, with the hullabaloo over Blackwater, and with the Kerry Lugar Bill. Each time, Pakistanis are told that their patriotism and sense of dignity is a cover and a code for anti-Americanism. Each time, Americans are told that Pakistan’s rabid anti-Americanism is an existential threat to their lives and the lives of their children. These issues become litmus tests. President Barack Obama’s is a decidedly more thoughtful and constructive approach to dealing with the Muslim world, than George W. Bush’s. Yet it is Bush’s words that continue to define the story of Americans and Pakistanis: “You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists”.

This false choice is at the heart of the dilemma presented by the ghangais or the drones. It is entirely possible to be vehemently, and even existentially opposed to the terrorists, and to also be opposed to the clumsy and insensitive manner in which the United States has conducted its pursuit of terrorists in Pakistan. That is a fact that almost every survey conducted in the last two years keeps confirming.

The truth about the drones is located within this context. If it is difficult for Pakistanis to understand why they are expected to celebrate the missiles called “Hellfire” falling on innocent civilians, it is equally difficult for Americans to understand why Pakistanis are resistant to the killing of terrorists, terrorists that wreak more havoc on Pakistanis than they do on Americans.

As the smoke from Times Square suffocates the already emphysemic relationship between Pakistan and the US, clarity is paramount. In a wide series of discussions with key actors, including tribesmen, senior correspondents from FATA, analysts that study the region, and political actors, there is black, and white and grey. In the rush to validate the pre-determined positions that different camps have taken on the drones, some common truths are missed out entirely.

When we conduct debate on the basis of how we feel, the facts don’t matter. In the drone debate, people are being motivated by factors that do not relate to reason. A lot of the debate is being driven by emotions, and by ideology. That is why supporters of drone attacks within Pakistan will cite facts as selectively as opponents of drone attacks. When the facts are accumulated, it is rather easy to draw some big picture conclusions that might even resemble a consensus. If you are motivated by emotions however, those conclusions won’t change how you feel.

What are those conclusions? Essentially, there are three. The first is that drones are not popular. The second is that innocent civilian deaths are real. The third is that drone attacks have been the most effective instrument in beheading the organizational capacities of Al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Pakistan’s FATA. Beyond these three simple facts, there are nuances, and there are variations in degrees. There are differences in definitions, and there are differences in approach. But nobody in any credible position can dispute these three facts. Drone attacks are not popular, drone attacks kill innocent people and drone attacks have compromised Al-Qaeda and its affilaites’ ability to operate.

These are not easy facts to digest during the same meal.

The first is that drones are not popular. There is no such thing as unqualified enthusiasm for drone attacks in Pakistan—either in the tribal areas, or in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa proper, or in the cities and villages of the rest of Pakistan. Anyone that suggests that drone attacks are popular is presenting an amputated and distorted fact. The only enthusiasm that exists for drone attacks is within the context of having to choose between different poisons. If given a choice between drone attacks, and Pakistani artillery and aerial bombardment campaigns, many tribal people will choose the drone attacks because no matter how many civilians they kill, it is less than the blunt force of the Pakistani military. So in a room with only two very ugly options, the drone attacks are the less ugly. That is not the same thing as being popular. I asked Christine Fair, who is a long-time expert of South Asian security, and teaches at Georgetown University, about whether there is any truth to rumours that drone attacks made tribesman very happy and caused them to distribute sweets. Fair did not corroborate that level of joy, but said, “there is considerable evidence that folks in the proximity of the drone strikes do not oppose and indeed even welcome them because they know who was killed, and equally important, who was not.”

When I spoke to journalists with first-hand accounts of North and South Waziristan, Bajaur and Orakzai, there was considerably less expression of any sense that the people of FATA welcome drone attacks. The “ghangai” are feared, not loved. Reporters for Geo News, Jang, The News, and Dawn all emphatically rejected the notion that drones are, in any way, something that the people of the tribal areas enjoyed. One Peshawar-based correspondent told me that “the people of Waziristan are so traumatized by the Taliban on one hand, and the drones on the other, that people can’t even conduct wedding ceremonies—the idea that they celebrate drone attacks is preposterous”.

The relative popularity of drones is almost as emphatic as their absolute unpopularity. Pakistani military operations have a reputation in the region now, for being so brutal, that entire parts of towns are destroyed. Drones that destroy one or two homes at a time, obviously represent less damage, and therefore, an option that is preferable to the military’s artillery campaigns.

One of the commonly cited sources for the “pro-drone” narrative is the Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy (AIRRA). I spoke to AIRRA’s top researcher, Khadim Hussain, expecting a pro-drone manifesto. Indeed, Hussain vigorously defended the ability of drones to seek and destroy specific terrorist targets. His information, he maintains, is based on a vast network of on-the ground sources in the tribal areas. But Hussain also surprised me. He confirmed what every other person I spoke to, tribesman, correspondent and analyst told me. That drones are the lesser of two evils. Hussain went further, and stated quite emphatically that “Drones cannot win this war. Only the Pakistan military can. It doesn’t have to be classical counterinsurgency, necessarily, but it has to be comprehensive, requires boots-on-the-ground, political process and economic incentives.”

Mussarat Qadeem, who runs a non-profit that does extensive advocacy, research and survey work in Malakand and some of the tribal agencies, shared with me, data from a survey her organization, the PAIMAN Trust conducted in March 2009. The survey covered 223 people in Bajur, Orakzai, South Waziristan and Mohmand Agencies. Her survey does not confirm the relative enthusiasm expressed by Christine Fair, or by the Aryana Institute. Instead, it shows more than 80% of respondents saying they do not favour drone attacks, because they kill innocent people, and only 20% supporting the drones. Perhaps more tellingly, the PAIMAN Trust survey shows that drones are one of the primary reasons that people in the tribal areas mistrust the US, with 26.5% of respondents citing drones as the reason for their mistrust.

The second fact is that innocent civilian deaths are real. Advocates for drone attack can nitpick all they’d like, sometimes legitimately, about the difficulty of classifying people as innocent or guilty. But that knife cuts both ways. Without trials of the terrorists that are the targets of drone attacks, how can we sentence them to death? We can, and we do, both Americans and Pakistanis. There is consensus that significant number of deaths in the FATA region caused by drone attacks are of innocent civilians.

….to be continued….