Let’s dispense with our doublespeak on drones
Let me drink to that horrible cliche, down memory lane! So, here goes. Scene: A federal minister’s house in Islamabad, sometime mid-2008. I asked, “Why doesn’t the (PPP) government acknowledge that it is in on the Predator strikes?” Answer: “Too risky politically. It can’t be sold.”
That afternoon, I argued that because these strikes would continue and their tempo would likely increase, on balance, it is better to take the risk now and get a buy-in than wait when the contradiction becomes too obvious and increasingly unmanageable. I failed to make the point stick.
Change of scene: The inner sanctum of GHQ during a deep-end briefing for a select group, sometime late 2010. During the Q&A, I asked General Kayani why we were protesting the drone strikes when they were useful and we had agreed to them. Answer: “I have been telling the Americans in several meetings that they are domestically unviable.” Hmm, I thought. So, we are in on them, except that we think the idea can’t be marketed.
Back to 2008. Captioned “Implausible deniability”, I wrote this in Daily Times (November 21, 2008):
“Effective intelligence... is an absolute must. But equally important is the capability to take out the target(s), once intelligence has established their presence in an area. This is where drone strikes come in.
“The recent strikes have been largely successful. There are also reports, despite denials by Pakistan, that there is some agreement on this score.... Reports also suggest the al Qaeda leadership is alive to this — and worried. Most drone strikes have taken out foreigners and their local supporters...
“The question then is: Why is the government fulminating against these strikes? Politics can be the only reason. But as I have written before, this policy of denial violates a basic tenet of deniability — plausibility... As things stand, its denials make it look both weak (vis-a-vis the US) and ludicrous (since no one believes them).
“In which case, even while doing something right, it comes across as stupid and insincere. Some rethink, perhaps?”
I followed this up with two more pieces “Islamabad’s heavy cross” (Daily Times; February 16, 2009) and “Droning about drones” (Daily Times; January 31, 2009). Both argued that it made sense, if one has effective intelligence, to use offensive aerial platforms to target the different tiers of insurgent/terrorist leadership. There is, of course, the downside of the policy. No capability is precise enough always and there would be collateral damage, though such damage must be weighed against the greater inaccuracy of other platforms (aerial bombing and strafing, for instance, or even artillery fire). There is also the possibility of the leadership dispersing. Neither is such targeting campaign likely, in and of itself, to finish off insurgency or terrorism.
But then no single approach can. Operational strategies must complement each other and, as a whole, must be backed up by the larger strategy of dislocating the terrorist from the milieu that sustains and supports him.
And from the operational perspective, enhanced real-time SIGINT (signal intelligence) and ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) capabilities form the backbone of both aerial strikes and ground offensives. Hence the request by General Kayani for “continuous Predator coverage of the conflict area”. While it is not clear from the cable if Kayani’s request meant the use of the Predator’s Hellfire missiles, I am fairly confident that it did for a simple reason: No military commander, at any level of command, likes to lose men. He would use whatever means he can, from simple tactical moves, using the terrain, weather, surprise, speed etcetera as basic force-multipliers to the highest level of technology, if it is available, to inflict losses on the enemy while minimising human and material losses to his own forces.
The request, in a cooperative framework, makes eminent sense. What doesn’t make sense is my original point. Why should the GoP and the Pakistani military allow the policy to wilt under the weight of its own contradiction?
The question becomes even more important given the environment in which governments and militaries have to operate. Nothing can be kept secret for too long. Exhibit: The US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates, as also US Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, are crying murder over the leaks that have followed the US raid on the Bin Laden compound in Abbottabad.
What some of us suspected, and knew for a long time, is now out in the open. Doublespeak is the hallmark of states and governments. But it is important to remember that there is a difference between dissembling and petty lying. A diplomat once put it brilliantly to me: “Our job is not to lie but withhold truth.”
This policy of supporting drone strikes privately and condemning them publicly goes beyond withholding truth to outright lying. And while withholding truth is more sustainable, lying, after a while, becomes unsustainable as a policy measure.
The Pakistani military cannot make the kind of requests revealed by the cables and then also embark on policies that it cannot sustain. If it is accepted that extremism poses a threat to Pakistan, which it clearly does, then we have a convergence point, at least to that extent, with the Americans. Strategy is not always about a sleight of hand; sometimes, a straight hand gets the job done much better. Of course, the American motives in this region and elsewhere are not benign. But the question is: Can they be countered, given our current state and through this set of policies?
As for our security threat from India, that again is an issue that needs to be debated afresh. In fact, closer relations with India may be the key to not only reducing any potential threat from that country but also to diluting the exclusionary extremism that is corroding the body politic of Pakistan. The modalities of a more nuanced national security strategy need to be worked out in fine detail, but it should be obvious to anyone, even the blind men trying to figure out the elephant, that the current set of policies have not made Pakistan secure.
The cables also show, these as also the previous ones, that Pakistani policymakers continue to put their faith in the old and failed paradigm instead of sitting down and thinking anew. And lest it be misunderstood: Developing non-military responses to threats is not about going soft. It is about creating space for credible military responses if and when the need arises. In essence, what goes under the rubric of realism in Pakistan has a more apt term in the English language: Stupidity. Let’s now try cold realism a la the United States.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 21st, 2011.
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