Time is running short for "drone strikes" in Pakistan!

[belarusian]

Well, when 5 year old kids start shooting at drones, there might be some justification.

not at all. the drone is very expendable.

if there are american or allied forces on the ground taking fire or encircled from militants mixed in with civilians then it becomes complicated.

This is not a hypothetical circumstance it can happen:

Ambassador Robert Oakley, the US special representative to Somalia, is quoted as saying: "My own personal estimate is that there must have been 1,500 to 2,000 Somalis killed and wounded that day, because that battle was a true battle. And the Americans and those who came to their rescue, were being shot at from all sides ... a deliberate war battle, if you will, on the part of the Somalis. And women and children were being used as shields and some cases women and children were actually firing weapons, and were coming from all sides. Sort of a rabbit warren of huts, houses, alleys, and twisting and turning streets, so those who were trying to defend themselves were shooting back in all directions. Helicopter gun ships were being used as well as all sorts of automatic weapons on the ground by the U.S. and the United Nations. The Somalis, by and large, were using automatic rifles and grenade launchers and it was a very nasty fight, as intense as almost any battle you would find."[22]

However, Aidid himself claimed that only 315 - civilians and militia - were killed and 812 wounded.[23] Captain Haad, in an interview on American public television, said 133 of the SNA militia were killed.[3]

Known civilian deaths include:

* The 3 year-old daughter of Maria Osman, killed when one of the Black Hawks crashed onto the Osman family home after being attacked by Somali militants.[24]

[edit]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mogadishu_(1993)

The parallel with Mogadishu is that gunmen in that battle hid behind walls of civilians and were aware of the restraint of the (Army) Rangers. These gunmen literally shot over the heads of civilians, or between their legs. They used women and children for this. It's mind-boggling. Some of the Rangers shot civilians, some of them inadvertently and some of them advertently. They made the choice to shoot at crowds. When a ten-year-old is running at your vehicle with an AK-47, do you shoot the kid? Yes, you shoot the kid. You have to survive. When push comes to shove, faced with the horrible dilemma with a gunman facing you, yes, you shoot. It's not just a choice about your own life. If you don't shoot, you're saying that your mission isn't important, and the lives of your fellow soldiers aren't important."

Does "Black Hawk Down" Portray an American War Crime? - Jeffrey Goldberg

To be honest I think the problem is that small numbers of american soldiers appear vulnerable and isolated when in fact they aren't. So the psychology of crowds comes into play and there is a collective seizing of the opportunity and a sense of impunity to strike down them down and loot their possessions. The troops that fought in Somalia were elite. I have tremendous sympathy for the national guardsman particularly who were in Iraq in 2006. The national leadership clearly failed them.

 

[batmannow]

not at all. the drone is very expendable.

if there are american or allied forces on the ground taking fire or encircled from militants mixed in with civilians then it becomes complicated.

This is not a hypothetical circumstance it can happen:

Ambassador Robert Oakley, the US special representative to Somalia, is quoted as saying: "My own personal estimate is that there must have been 1,500 to 2,000 Somalis killed and wounded that day, because that battle was a true battle. And the Americans and those who came to their rescue, were being shot at from all sides ... a deliberate war battle, if you will, on the part of the Somalis. And women and children were being used as shields and some cases women and children were actually firing weapons, and were coming from all sides. Sort of a rabbit warren of huts, houses, alleys, and twisting and turning streets, so those who were trying to defend themselves were shooting back in all directions. Helicopter gun ships were being used as well as all sorts of automatic weapons on the ground by the U.S. and the United Nations. The Somalis, by and large, were using automatic rifles and grenade launchers and it was a very nasty fight, as intense as almost any battle you would find."[22]

However, Aidid himself claimed that only 315 - civilians and militia - were killed and 812 wounded.[23] Captain Haad, in an interview on American public television, said 133 of the SNA militia were killed.[3]

Known civilian deaths include:

* The 3 year-old daughter of Maria Osman, killed when one of the Black Hawks crashed onto the Osman family home after being attacked by Somali militants.[24]

[edit]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mogadishu_(1993)

The parallel with Mogadishu is that gunmen in that battle hid behind walls of civilians and were aware of the restraint of the (Army) Rangers. These gunmen literally shot over the heads of civilians, or between their legs. They used women and children for this. It's mind-boggling. Some of the Rangers shot civilians, some of them inadvertently and some of them advertently. They made the choice to shoot at crowds. When a ten-year-old is running at your vehicle with an AK-47, do you shoot the kid? Yes, you shoot the kid. You have to survive. When push comes to shove, faced with the horrible dilemma with a gunman facing you, yes, you shoot. It's not just a choice about your own life. If you don't shoot, you're saying that your mission isn't important, and the lives of your fellow soldiers aren't important."

Does "Black Hawk Down" Portray an American War Crime? - Jeffrey Goldberg

To be honest I think the problem is that small numbers of american soldiers appear vulnerable and isolated when in fact they aren't. So the psychology of crowds comes into play and there is a collective seizing of the opportunity and a sense of impunity to strike down them down and loot their possessions. The troops that fought in Somalia were elite. I have tremendous sympathy for the national guardsman particularly who were in Iraq in 2006. The national leadership clearly failed them.

belarusian;sir
take it! & plz stop advocating US militry force & its brutallity on Innocent Somalian Civilians !

US Air Strikes in Somalia Condemned for Killing Innocent Civilians
global policy fourm.org.com
By Aaron Glantz
OneWorld
January 21, 2007
According to the human rights organization Oxfam, U.S. and Ethiopian air strikes in Somalia last week killed 70 nomadic herdsmen who had no connection to any international terrorist group, including al-Qaeda, which the Pentagon said was the target of its attacks. "There were no combatants amongst them," Oxfam's Wyger Wentholt said from neighboring Kenya. "We suppose that it was a mistake and that they were wrongfully targeted," he said. "It could possibly be related to a bonfire that the herdsmen had lit at night, but that's something they normally do to keep animals and mosquitoes away from their herd." Oxfam received its information from local Somali organizations that have been providing communities in the country's Afmadow district with emergency medical supplies, essential household items, and water chlorination services, as well as distributing food in areas where food is not locally available. Wenthold said essential water sources were also damaged in the bombing. The United Nations' refugee agency, UNHCR, also reported that an estimated 100 people were wounded by U.S. AC-130 gun-ships firing on the Somalia-Kenya border area of Ras Kamboni.

The human rights organization Amnesty International also protested the air strikes, noting that international humanitarian law prohibits direct attacks on civilians as well as attacks that do not distinguish between military targets and civilians, and those that, although aimed at a military target, have a disproportionate impact on civilians or civilian objects. "We are concerned that civilians may have been killed as a result of a failure to comply with international humanitarian law," Amnesty's Claudio Cordones said in a statement. "What we want to know from the U.S. government is whether their forces took the necessary precautions to distinguish between civilians and combatants when they chose the means and methods of their attack." "Air power is notoriously indiscriminate," added Sarah Holewinksi of the Campaign for Innocent Victims of Conflict, or CIVIC. "The U.S. military and their Ethiopian and Somali counterparts should take all precautions to distinguish between civilians and combatants." Holewinski's group, which successfully convinced Washington policy-makers to mandate compensation for innocent civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, urged military planners in Somalia "to adequately assess the risk to civilians before launching air attacks and to evaluate their success following the attack." Such an assessment, CIVC said, would include keeping a full count of civilians harmed. Currently, the U.S. does not keep an official count of civilian casualties in Somalia or compensate innocent victims of its air strikes there.

The U.S. air strikes came after a ground invasion of 30,000 Ethiopian soldiers that ousted the Union of Islamic Courts from power and restored a UN-backed government in Mogadishu. That government is now working with neo-conservative policy analysts in Washington to press for ongoing support from the U.S. government. At a forum at the American Enterprise Institute Thursday, Dahir Mirreh Jibreel, a representative of the new Somali government, asked Washington to establish an embassy in Mogadishu, to encourage private U.S. investment in Somalia, and to press for congressional approval of Somalia stabilization and reconstruction legislation. Shortly after the transitional government overthrew the Union of Islamic Courts, the Bush administration made an initial down payment of $40 million in revitalization assistance for Somalia. About $16 million was earmarked for humanitarian assistance, $14 million put toward a multinational peacekeeping force whose deployment is still pending, and $10 million was allocated for development aid. "The situation is not yet calming down," cautioned Oxfam's Wentholt. "There are indications that conflict will persist and I think that depends a lot on what comes out of the political developments."

Since late December, Oxfam estimates violence in Somalia has forced an estimated 70,000 people from their homes, and has exacerbated an already dire humanitarian situation. Last year, Somalia was hit first by severe drought and then the worst flooding in 50 years, leaving some 400,000 people homeless.

 

[batmannow]

GEO World
Pakistan is key to fixing Afghanistan: British military chief
Updated at: 0933 PST, Sunday, February 01, 2009

LONDON: Peace will only come to Afghanistan if Pakistan can sort out the militants on its side of the border, where US strikes are not helping, the head of Britain's armed forces told a British newspaper.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup said only politics, long term could bring peace on both sides of the frontier. The chief of the defence staff said that weaknesses in Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government were causing difficulties for the 8,300 British troops battling Taliban insurgents in the troubled south of the country. "The weakness of governance in Afghanistan worries me considerably," Stirrup told.

"But governance is not just about what goes on in Kabul. We have to look at the wider picture. "The Taliban movement -- and Taliban is now a catch-all phrase for ideologues, criminals, people with tribal grudges, people who are quite simply guns for hire to keep bread on the table -- is on both sides of the border. Some people move across. Some are based almost exclusively in Pakistan. Some are based exclusively in Afghanistan. "It's impossible to distinguish between those two and actually, in my view, not necessary. The border is not relevant."

Stirrup sympathised with the difficulties faced by the Pakistani military, admitting that its success so far had been "limited". "The Pakistan army has a series of very considerable problems," he said, adding it had realised that "the growing insurgency within its own borders is an existential problem for Pakistan." General Ashfaq Kayani, the head of Pakistan's army, "is absolutely clear on the size of the challenge that he faces.

 

[batmannow]

GEO World
Albright urges US-Pak cooperation
Updated at: 2355 PST, Saturday, January 31, 2009

WASHINGTON: Stressing that the United States should fight terrorism in a way that does not create more terrorists, a former top U.S. diplomat has called for making a distinction between civilians and militants while targeting the extremists in populated areas.

Responding to a series of questions at a Washington think tank about the U.S. drone attacks on suspected militant targets in the Pakistani tribal areas, Madeline Albright, who was secretary of state under President Bill Clinton’s administration, also urged greater cooperative efforts by the two countries along the Afghan border “so that we are not in this particular position.”

“These are very very difficult decisions” I have argued that we need to fight terrorism in a way that does not create more terrorists,” she told the Council on Foreign Relations in a discussion on “U.S.‑Muslim engagement.”

On the other hand, she said, Pakistan has a responsibility “ help us fulfill in that region.”

The Pakistanis, she said, have to try to figure out how their security forces and everybody can be helpful “so that we aren’t in this particular position.”

Continuing, Albright said “but this is really difficult, because we all feel that if you hit a house with civilians in it, you are actually creating a lot of problems. On the other hand, you cannot just let people with impunity try to figure out how to kill all of us.

“The bottom line is making distinctions between civilian populations Muslims and murderers. There are people that are murderers, they are not Muslims just generally to identify everybody as being a part of the problem.”

The seasoned Democrat, who was a top aide to President Barack Obama during the election campaign, called for United States broadening its cooperation with Pakistan and was confident that the United States and Pakistan will forge one of the major relationships in the years ahead.

Albright welcomed President Asif Ali Zardari’s articulation of a “series of ways”for fostering cooperative relationship with the United States as well as in dealing the Afghan situation in a newspaper article.

“I think there will be a re‑calibration in terms of how we relate to Pakistan. It is going to, in my opinion, be one of the major relationships,” she stated in response to a question about the Bush Administration asking too much of Islamabad without equipping the South Asian country adequately with security and economic tools to curb militancy along the Pak‑Afghan border.

Albright emphasized the U.S. relationship with Pakistan “has to be looked across the board in terms of not only in its relationship with Afghanistan but in terms of what is going on there economically.”

In this respect, Albright referred to the initiative on the Biden‑Lugar legislation “aimed at three‑fold expansion in economic assistance for Pakistan “ and favored doing “a variety of things and “creating an environment where people can live and practice their beliefs without feeling that they have to be aggressors against other groups.

“So, I do think that we have to look at a wider picture of this,” she stated. Vin Weber, a former U.S. congressman also discussed an array of of issues concerning U.S.‑Muslim engagement in the light of a recent report by a bipartisan group under U.S.‑Muslim Engagement Project.

The report entitled “Changing Course” A New Direction for U.S. Relations with the Muslim World,” also called for addressing regional conflicts as a way out of current turmoil.

Weber pointed that for quite a while the U.S. has treated Pakistan in relation to Afghanistan in terms of “how does Pakistan affect our objectives in Afghanistan.”

“Obviously both countries are important. I really think we have to think a little bit the other way, though. The centrality of Pakistan to foreign policy and national security of the United States ought to be obvious to us. It’s not we don’t care about Afghanistan, it is not we don’t want to succeed there but we got to increasingly think about what we are doing in Afghanistan in terms of how it affects Pakistan rather than the other way around,” he said.

 

[batmannow]

dawn news tv.com
headlinenews
03/02/2009

GEN.KIYANI asks ISAF , to protect its land from terrorists, who comming in pakistan from afghanistan.
ASIF ZARDARI asked US delegation , to halt "drone attacks" immidietly!

TIME IS RUNNING OUT FAST , FOR DRONE ATTACKS IN PAKISTAN for sure!

 

[asq]

The War on terror for Americans is perceived mainly as an existential struggle, while for Pakistanie it is interested in stopping the spread of salafist extremism, and has no interest in global war. And there lies the bases of the problem, if the Pakistan establishment looked at this in global perspective, the war would be fought very differently, and cause effect would be better then it is now.

How can you think globally when your next door neighbor continues to pull rug from under your feet by getting involve in its areas.

 

[asq]

I know there is fascination about how Indians are treating there minorities, but Pakistan is running into bigger mental problems in North Waziristan.

in north Wazirastan the problem is our neighbors who as usual interfere as it is their habit to back stab and not fight like a man, in Bangladesh, in Kashmir in Hyderabad in junagarh.

used proxies to kill Muslims migrating to Pakistan in 1947. Always looking for ways to start riots and those who do roam freely in a so called self proclaimed secular India, there is no fascination just disgust.

 

[TruthSeeker]

Drone strikes unsettling Al Qaeda in FATA

Daily Times Monitor, Tuesday february 3, 2009

LAHORE: Strikes by unmanned US Predators on targets in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas have ‘stunned’ local Al Qaeda commanders, according to a report in the coming issue of Newsweek.

“Al Qaeda’s hideouts in Pakistan’s tribal areas aren’t quite as safe as they used to be,” it says, citing the example of a recent strike in North Waziristan that killed Al Qaeda commander Musataf Al Misri.

“We are stunned” by such precision,” a local sub-commander told the magazine.

“He’s seen the results of many airstrikes over the past year or two, but this one really impressed him,” Newsweek said. “The missile didn’t just hit the right house; it scored a direct hit on the very room where Mustafa Al Misri and several other Qaeda operatives were holed up.”

The unnamed sub-commander said the hit was so accurate that “it’s as if someone had tossed a GPS device against the wall”.

According to the article, Pakistan’s intelligence services have started to “help the Americans track and kill fugitive terrorists”, “after years in which they were suspected of shielding Osama Bin Laden’s lieutenants—or, at least, not pursuing them very vigorously”.

Quoting the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, the magazine says 11 of the top 20 ‘high-value’ Al Qaeda operatives have been killed in US drone strikes in six months.

But while the US “blast the bad guys in the Tribal Areas”, Pakistan is “trying to undo the harm to its international image from the ISI’s alleged links to the December terrorist rampage in Mumbai”, Newsweek says.

Quoting an unnamed senior diplomatic official in Washington, it says about 140 “pro-Islamist” officers have been thrown out of the ISI since September.

The report also says Pakistan has realised that it “has good reasons to work with the Americans”, one of which is a $15 billion aid package over the next 10 years.

“But beyond those details, Pakistanis finally seem to be figuring out that Al Qaeda and its friends are not merely America’s problem,” Newsweek says, citing a recent comment by the ISI chief in a recent interview with German magazine Der Spiegel.

“We may be crazy in Pakistan, but [we’re] not completely out of our minds,” ISI Director General Ahmed Shuja Pasha had told the German magazine. “We know full well that terror is our enemy, not India.”

Newsweek says Islamabad has good reasons to worry about Al Qaeda, and cites unidentified Taliban sources as saying that the Ayman Al Zawahiri wants to destabilise the ‘apostate’ Pakistani government, despite opposition from Bin Laden.

Naqib Khan, a Taliban intelligence operative, told Newsweek some Qaeda fighters and their friends from Pakistan have been relocating to quieter places in eastern Afghanistan.

“Reports that Al Qaeda is on the decline have been frequent in the past—and always inaccurate,” says former CIA analyst Bruce Riedel, who advised the Obama transition team on Pakistan issues.

 

[fatman17]

Drone Attacks In Pakistan Under Review

by Jackie Northam

An MQ-4 Predator controlled by the 46th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron stands on the tarmac at Balad Air Base, 50 miles north of Baghdad in June 2007. Unmanned aircraft similar to this are being used in Pakistan. AP


Morning Edition, February 2, 2009 · Since August, the United States has intensified an aerial offensive using unmanned drones in Pakistan's lawless tribal regions. Formally known as Predators, the drones — usually armed with Hellfire missiles — are targeting al-Qaida and the Taliban in western Pakistan, partly to stem cross-border attacks against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. But there is increasing concern that the U.S. could be dragged into a much wider conflict in Pakistan.

On Jan. 23, a few short days after President Obama took office, three missiles hit the village of Zharki in North Waziristan, a mountainous region in Pakistan's tribal belt. Within hours, another missile strike was reported in South Waziristan.

According to Pakistani officials, at least 18 people were killed in the attacks, among them half a dozen foreign militants and their families. It's widely believed the missiles were fired from U.S. drones circling high above western Pakistan.

"The fact that these drone attacks occurred in the first week of President Obama's administration was seen as a surprise," says Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council and author of the book Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within.

Nawaz says Pakistan protested the drone attacks, which "seemed to indicate a new resolve on the part of the U.S. administration and the military to use this weapon. They don't want to give up that option, it seems."

There have been more than 35 suspected U.S. missile strikes against Islamist militant sites inside Pakistan since August. At least 130 civilians have been killed so far — and that's a conservative estimate.

The majority of those killed are believed to be militants, says Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution's Foreign Policy Studies program. Cohen says with good intelligence, the drones are accurate.

"What they do is allow any country that possesses them to pinpoint a target without much collateral damage to specific sites," he says.

While the drones conjure up images of a mechanical monster, they are in fact "far more effective and more humane than dropping tons of bombs on an area," Cohen says.

The drones have been used occasionally in other countries, including Yemen and Somalia. But the use of the drones in Pakistan is sustained and shows no sign of letting up. The attacks violate Pakistan's sovereignty.

Retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich, a professor of history and international affairs at Boston University, says the U.S. needs to admit it's opened another front and another war.

"This is a war that is mostly conducted by remote control, unmanned aerial vehicles launching missiles at targets on the ground," Bacevich says. "But it is a war … that deserves very critical scrutiny by the new administration."

Bacevich says there's been very little debate or dialogue about the growing U.S. military offensive in Pakistan — whether in Congress, in the public realm or the UN. For the most part, the aerial attacks on Pakistan's soil are still seen as an appendage to the Afghan conflict, rather than an independent issue.

Seth Jones, a South Asia expert at the Rand Corporation, says while the Pakistan government may publicly protest the attacks, it has given its tacit blessing primarily because it also wants to put down the militancy.

"Most of these attacks have been done with cooperation from Pakistani authorities in the national security establishment, — the military, especially the army, as well as the intelligence service," Jones says.

When Congress passed the Use of Military Force resolution in September 2001, it authorized the U.S. to go into any area to attack the nations or people involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Brookings Institution's Cohen says the U.S. isn't attacking Pakistan per se; it's attacking militant bases in a lawless area. Cohen says the Pakistan government is incapable of exercising sovereignty over the tribal region.

"It's open territory. And under international law, ungoverned territories … can be subject to attack," he says.

Some analysts say the problem is the longer the U.S. continues its military action in Pakistan — using Predators — the greater the chances of becoming embroiled in a much broader conflict in Pakistan.

Nawaz, with the Atlantic Council, says militants have already started moving from the remote border region into more built-up areas of Pakistan.

"What would happen when the next drone attack occurs on a city or a town or a village inside the Northwest Frontier province? Or inside central or southern Punjab? What then?" Nawaz asks.

Drone attacks in the more densely populated areas of Pakistan could result in a greater civilian death toll, which in turn could produce a backlash and undermine the nuclear-armed nation's fledgling government.

The Rand Corporation's Jones says the drones may be helpful in a short-term, tactical sense. "But in the long run, they need to be supplemented by much broader, longer-term activities to clear hold and build in these areas," he says.

Analysts say there are a couple of high-level reviews about a Pakistan strategy underway. Until they're completed, they say it's likely the drone attacks will continue apace.

 

[batmannow]

Drone Attacks In Pakistan Under Review

by Jackie Northam

An MQ-4 Predator controlled by the 46th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron stands on the tarmac at Balad Air Base, 50 miles north of Baghdad in June 2007. Unmanned aircraft similar to this are being used in Pakistan. AP


Morning Edition, February 2, 2009 · Since August, the United States has intensified an aerial offensive using unmanned drones in Pakistan's lawless tribal regions. Formally known as Predators, the drones — usually armed with Hellfire missiles — are targeting al-Qaida and the Taliban in western Pakistan, partly to stem cross-border attacks against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. But there is increasing concern that the U.S. could be dragged into a much wider conflict in Pakistan.

On Jan. 23, a few short days after President Obama took office, three missiles hit the village of Zharki in North Waziristan, a mountainous region in Pakistan's tribal belt. Within hours, another missile strike was reported in South Waziristan.

According to Pakistani officials, at least 18 people were killed in the attacks, among them half a dozen foreign militants and their families. It's widely believed the missiles were fired from U.S. drones circling high above western Pakistan.

"The fact that these drone attacks occurred in the first week of President Obama's administration was seen as a surprise," says Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council and author of the book Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within.

Nawaz says Pakistan protested the drone attacks, which "seemed to indicate a new resolve on the part of the U.S. administration and the military to use this weapon. They don't want to give up that option, it seems."

There have been more than 35 suspected U.S. missile strikes against Islamist militant sites inside Pakistan since August. At least 130 civilians have been killed so far — and that's a conservative estimate.

The majority of those killed are believed to be militants, says Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution's Foreign Policy Studies program. Cohen says with good intelligence, the drones are accurate.

"What they do is allow any country that possesses them to pinpoint a target without much collateral damage to specific sites," he says.

While the drones conjure up images of a mechanical monster, they are in fact "far more effective and more humane than dropping tons of bombs on an area," Cohen says.

The drones have been used occasionally in other countries, including Yemen and Somalia. But the use of the drones in Pakistan is sustained and shows no sign of letting up. The attacks violate Pakistan's sovereignty.

Retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich, a professor of history and international affairs at Boston University, says the U.S. needs to admit it's opened another front and another war.

"This is a war that is mostly conducted by remote control, unmanned aerial vehicles launching missiles at targets on the ground," Bacevich says. "But it is a war … that deserves very critical scrutiny by the new administration."

Bacevich says there's been very little debate or dialogue about the growing U.S. military offensive in Pakistan — whether in Congress, in the public realm or the UN. For the most part, the aerial attacks on Pakistan's soil are still seen as an appendage to the Afghan conflict, rather than an independent issue.

Seth Jones, a South Asia expert at the Rand Corporation, says while the Pakistan government may publicly protest the attacks, it has given its tacit blessing primarily because it also wants to put down the militancy.

"Most of these attacks have been done with cooperation from Pakistani authorities in the national security establishment, — the military, especially the army, as well as the intelligence service," Jones says.

When Congress passed the Use of Military Force resolution in September 2001, it authorized the U.S. to go into any area to attack the nations or people involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Brookings Institution's Cohen says the U.S. isn't attacking Pakistan per se; it's attacking militant bases in a lawless area. Cohen says the Pakistan government is incapable of exercising sovereignty over the tribal region.

"It's open territory. And under international law, ungoverned territories … can be subject to attack," he says.

Some analysts say the problem is the longer the U.S. continues its military action in Pakistan — using Predators — the greater the chances of becoming embroiled in a much broader conflict in Pakistan.

Nawaz, with the Atlantic Council, says militants have already started moving from the remote border region into more built-up areas of Pakistan.

"What would happen when the next drone attack occurs on a city or a town or a village inside the Northwest Frontier province? Or inside central or southern Punjab? What then?" Nawaz asks.

Drone attacks in the more densely populated areas of Pakistan could result in a greater civilian death toll, which in turn could produce a backlash and undermine the nuclear-armed nation's fledgling government.

The Rand Corporation's Jones says the drones may be helpful in a short-term, tactical sense. "But in the long run, they need to be supplemented by much broader, longer-term activities to clear hold and build in these areas," he says.

Analysts say there are a couple of high-level reviews about a Pakistan strategy underway. Until they're completed, they say it's likely the drone attacks will continue apace.

on the frist part of the plan "Pakistani authorities in the national security establishment"(RETD.GEN DURRANI) has been kicked out of the authority to stop all this crap!
2ndly PM & PRESIDENT, had been told to intensify thier international contacts to end this "un -justifyied drone attacks" , which is undermining the PAKARMYs athourity in the eyes of its citizns !
"un -justifyied drone attacks" are making the job of PAKARMY , very difficult as the locals were finding it hard to trust thier ARMY, which cant protect them against drone attacks, & thats the very reason , how millitants finding new soilders, for thier terrorists activities.
on the 3rd part, ARMY is talking clearly that it isnt ready to accept, "drone attacks" WHY?
its very simple that, PAKARMY is sensing growing danger, in which it would be pushed to fight a war, which is being waged to push all the terrorists from afghanistan to pakistani tribal areas, its a very dangerous situation on 1 front pakarmy is facing growing preasure from indian army, on the other hand it was fighting the most difficult war on the earth.
now for the frist time in 10 years , PAKARMY rightly decided to finish the socalled WOT, with a clear approch & with lightning speed, it needs the real support , & real help from our allay USA? but not drone attacks any more!

 

[fatman17]

now for the frist time in 10 years , PAKARMY rightly decided to finish the socalled WOT, with a clear approch & with lightning speed, it needs the real support , & real help from our allay USA?

i agree to this point batmannow!
thanks

 

[rubyjackass]

Drone strikes unsettling Al Qaeda in FATA

Daily Times Monitor, Tuesday february 3, 2009

LAHORE: Strikes by unmanned US Predators on targets in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas have ‘stunned’ local Al Qaeda commanders, according to a report in the coming issue of Newsweek.

“Al Qaeda’s hideouts in Pakistan’s tribal areas aren’t quite as safe as they used to be,” it says, citing the example of a recent strike in North Waziristan that killed Al Qaeda commander Musataf Al Misri.

“We are stunned” by such precision,” a local sub-commander told the magazine.

“He’s seen the results of many airstrikes over the past year or two, but this one really impressed him,” Newsweek said. “The missile didn’t just hit the right house; it scored a direct hit on the very room where Mustafa Al Misri and several other Qaeda operatives were holed up.”

The unnamed sub-commander said the hit was so accurate that “it’s as if someone had tossed a GPS device against the wall”.

According to the article, Pakistan’s intelligence services have started to “help the Americans track and kill fugitive terrorists”, “after years in which they were suspected of shielding Osama Bin Laden’s lieutenants—or, at least, not pursuing them very vigorously”.

Quoting the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, the magazine says 11 of the top 20 ‘high-value’ Al Qaeda operatives have been killed in US drone strikes in six months.

But while the US “blast the bad guys in the Tribal Areas”, Pakistan is “trying to undo the harm to its international image from the ISI’s alleged links to the December terrorist rampage in Mumbai”, Newsweek says.

Quoting an unnamed senior diplomatic official in Washington, it says about 140 “pro-Islamist” officers have been thrown out of the ISI since September.

The report also says Pakistan has realised that it “has good reasons to work with the Americans”, one of which is a $15 billion aid package over the next 10 years.

“But beyond those details, Pakistanis finally seem to be figuring out that Al Qaeda and its friends are not merely America’s problem,” Newsweek says, citing a recent comment by the ISI chief in a recent interview with German magazine Der Spiegel.

“We may be crazy in Pakistan, but [we’re] not completely out of our minds,” ISI Director General Ahmed Shuja Pasha had told the German magazine. “We know full well that terror is our enemy, not India.”

Newsweek says Islamabad has good reasons to worry about Al Qaeda, and cites unidentified Taliban sources as saying that the Ayman Al Zawahiri wants to destabilise the ‘apostate’ Pakistani government, despite opposition from Bin Laden.

Naqib Khan, a Taliban intelligence operative, told Newsweek some Qaeda fighters and their friends from Pakistan have been relocating to quieter places in eastern Afghanistan.

“Reports that Al Qaeda is on the decline have been frequent in the past—and always inaccurate,” says former CIA analyst Bruce Riedel, who advised the Obama transition team on Pakistan issues.

Great job ISI!!
Total credit for the precision.

 

[fatman17]

CIA Gloats Over Airstrikes In Pakistan

Here we go again. CIA officials are gloating over the effectiveness of the U.S. airstrikes in Pakistan's tribal areas. NPR reports:


CIA-directed airstrikes against al-Qaida leaders and facilities in Pakistan over the past six to nine months have been so successful, according to senior U.S. officials, that it is now possible to foresee a "complete al-Qaida defeat" in the mountainous region along the border with Afghanistan. The officials say the terrorist network's leadership cadre has been "decimated," with up to a dozen senior and midlevel operatives killed as a result of the strikes and the remaining leaders reeling from the repeated attacks.


Not so fast, a senior U.S. military intelligence official who is an expert on al Qaeda's organization wrote in an email to me earlier today, a portion of which is excerpted below:


I'm not even going to get into the karmic quality of these types of cavalier declarations being offered on the day that our supply lines got cut into Afghanistan. With Swat now recognized by the press as being under TNSM control after more than a year's worth of fighting there and Peshawar essentially in a state of siege, these types of triumphalist declarations from Langley are dubious at best.


The official points to the de-classified 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which states that al Qaeda has regenerated its network in northwestern Pakistan and maintains a safe haven there.


Al-Qa’ida is and will remain the most serious terrorist threat to the Homeland, as its central leadership continues to plan high-impact plots, while pushing others in extremist Sunni communities to mimic its efforts and to supplement its capabilities. We assess the group has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability, including: a safehaven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership.


Despite the ramped up U.S. attacks, which admittedly have had an impact on al Qaeda's operational capabilities, the group still maintains a safe have in Pakistan and is still capable of regenerating its leadership. Of the seven al Qaeda leaders killed (and not eight as many are reporting as Rashid Rauf has not been confirmed killed; you can see the list here), three were members of al Qaeda Shura Majlis,or executive council. "Losing 'only' three Shura Majlis members in the span of 12 months is probably considered acceptable losses to AQSL [al Qaeda senior leadership] given the far more horrific tallies that were inflicted against them in 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004 that led a lot of observers in and outside of government to declare the group more or less dead by 2005," the official stated.

We need to recognize successes in the war, but need to be extremely careful about making such over-optimistic statements. Taliban and al Qaeda control in Pakistan and Afghanistan has expanded since the 2007 NIE. Despite Pakistani claims to the contrary, the Pakistani Army is losing ground in the northwest while NATO is still searching for the right strategy in Afghanistan, where the Taliban legitimately claim much of the rural regions are under their control. The U.S. attacks have had an impact on al Qaeda's ability to strike at the United States, but by no means does this mean the group has been "decimated." Making such overly optimistic claims only damages our ability to properly assess the nature of the threat.

Posted by Bill Roggio on February 3, 2009

sorry guys about bill roggio!

 

[batmannow]

CIA Gloats Over Airstrikes In Pakistan

Here we go again. CIA officials are gloating over the effectiveness of the U.S. airstrikes in Pakistan's tribal areas. NPR reports:


CIA-directed airstrikes against al-Qaida leaders and facilities in Pakistan over the past six to nine months have been so successful, according to senior U.S. officials, that it is now possible to foresee a "complete al-Qaida defeat" in the mountainous region along the border with Afghanistan. The officials say the terrorist network's leadership cadre has been "decimated," with up to a dozen senior and midlevel operatives killed as a result of the strikes and the remaining leaders reeling from the repeated attacks.


Not so fast, a senior U.S. military intelligence official who is an expert on al Qaeda's organization wrote in an email to me earlier today, a portion of which is excerpted below:


I'm not even going to get into the karmic quality of these types of cavalier declarations being offered on the day that our supply lines got cut into Afghanistan. With Swat now recognized by the press as being under TNSM control after more than a year's worth of fighting there and Peshawar essentially in a state of siege, these types of triumphalist declarations from Langley are dubious at best.


The official points to the de-classified 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which states that al Qaeda has regenerated its network in northwestern Pakistan and maintains a safe haven there.


Al-Qa’ida is and will remain the most serious terrorist threat to the Homeland, as its central leadership continues to plan high-impact plots, while pushing others in extremist Sunni communities to mimic its efforts and to supplement its capabilities. We assess the group has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability, including: a safehaven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership.


Despite the ramped up U.S. attacks, which admittedly have had an impact on al Qaeda's operational capabilities, the group still maintains a safe have in Pakistan and is still capable of regenerating its leadership. Of the seven al Qaeda leaders killed (and not eight as many are reporting as Rashid Rauf has not been confirmed killed; you can see the list here), three were members of al Qaeda Shura Majlis,or executive council. "Losing 'only' three Shura Majlis members in the span of 12 months is probably considered acceptable losses to AQSL [al Qaeda senior leadership] given the far more horrific tallies that were inflicted against them in 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004 that led a lot of observers in and outside of government to declare the group more or less dead by 2005," the official stated.

We need to recognize successes in the war, but need to be extremely careful about making such over-optimistic statements. Taliban and al Qaeda control in Pakistan and Afghanistan has expanded since the 2007 NIE. Despite Pakistani claims to the contrary, the Pakistani Army is losing ground in the northwest while NATO is still searching for the right strategy in Afghanistan, where the Taliban legitimately claim much of the rural regions are under their control. The U.S. attacks have had an impact on al Qaeda's ability to strike at the United States, but by no means does this mean the group has been "decimated." Making such overly optimistic claims only damages our ability to properly assess the nature of the threat.

Posted by Bill Roggio on February 3, 2009

sorry guys about bill roggio!

actully there is a whole hidden mafia, working side by side to protect the drug baroons in afghanistan! dron attacks were used to kill the rival groups more thn terrorists?

 

[TruthSeeker]

Drone strikes killed high-value targets, US tells Pakistan

By Anwar Iqbal, Dawn, February 9, 2009

WASHINGTON, Feb 8: The United States wants to continue drone strikes inside Pakistan’s tribal areas because US military experts believe the strikes have killed a large number of Al Qaeda leaders and local militants and have destroyed their hideouts.

A US account of the strikes, conveyed to Pakistan and obtained by Dawn, depicts a picture which is very different from the public perception in Pakistan that the strikes only kill innocent civilians and children.

The document includes information conveyed to Washington by US military officials in Afghanistan about more than a dozen drone attacks carried out by US unmanned aircraft since December 2007.

The document identifies militant leaders as HVT or high value targets.

According to this document, on Dec 3, 2007, a Predator strike injured Shaykh Issa al-Masri in Jani Khel, Bannu.

On Jan 28, 2008, a Predator killed HVT Abu Layth Al-Libi and associates in Salam Kot, North Waziristan.

On Feb 27, 2008, a drone killed foreign Al Qaeda trainees. On March 16, 2008, more Al Qaeda trainees were killed. The document does not identify those killed in these attacks and does not reveal the places hit by the drones.

On May 14, 2008, a Predator killed HVT Abu Sulayman Al-Jazairi and associates in Damadola, Bajaur.

On July 28, 2008, a Predator strike killed HVT Abu Khabab Al-Masri and other Al Qaeda activists.

On Aug 12, 2008, a Predator killed foreign fighters and militants associated with HVT Usama Al-Kini and commander Nazir.

On Aug 20, 2008, a drone killed and injured multiple foreign Al Qaeda members and local associates, including some Haqqani network associates. An Al Qaeda facilitator Haji Yacoub was injured.

On Aug 27, 2008, a Predator attempted to target an Al Qaeda-associated meeting but missed target. It did not cause collateral damage.

On Aug 30, 2008, a Predator strike killed Al Qaeda paramilitary operatives subordinate to Al Qaeda commander and East Africa Embassy bomber Usama Al Kini.On Aug 31, 2008, a Predator killed several Al Qaeda operatives, including two prominent Al Qaeda paramilitary commanders.

On Sept 2, 2008, a Predator killed four to 10 persons associated with Al Qaeda commander and logistician Abu Wafa Al Saudi.

On Sept 4, 2008, a Predator strike killed Abu Wafa Al Saudi.

On Sept 8, 2008, a Predator killed several Haqqani sub-commanders and a number of Arabs. Members of the extended Haqqani family were killed.

On Sept 11, 2008, a Predator killed 10 to 15 militants associated with Al Qaeda facilitator Qari Imran’s training camp.

On Sept 17, 2008, a Predator killed 4-6 militants delivering rockets to a militant camp near the Afghan border and probably HVT Abu Ubaydh Al Tunisi.

___________________________________________

No drone strikes since ~ January 23, 2009. The policy must be under review by the Obama people.