Recently we witnessed two extreme versions concerning the so-called drone attacks. The Taliban apologists weave a tall tale of betrayal and vendetta where the survivors of such attacks are maddened by grief and decide to blow themselves up along with you and me through suicide attacks to avenge their dead. In response another class of arguments is emerging, which actually tries to justify the predator manoeuvres with the accusations of gross generalisation and fabrication. I daresay both are wrong. While the first class is consciously trying to misguide everyone with its own ulterior motives, the latter is not doing any service either. And I challenge both versions not on the basis of any complicated set of logic but through pure common sense.

Let us start with the version advanced by the Taliban apologists. The victims of trauma usually suffer from a paralysing sense of alienation and hence take considerable time to regain their bearings. They flinch even at minute noises and often lose their head completely. This is especially true of the age group that is usually alleged to be involved in suicide attacks. Trust me I have seen trauma patients of that age and I know how they behave. Then if this perspective was to be accepted, a resounding majority of the suicide attackers should have come from the tribal areas. But clearly that is not the case. It is far easier to indoctrinate an abducted child than to manipulate anyone who has endured such tragedy recently. Should we then forget that even before the drone attacks the suicide bombers were still in existence? This has more to do with the manipulation of mind than with any suffering caused by a hostile attack.

The Taliban apologists then use this tall tale to manufacture a semblance of empathy if not sympathy for the terrorists and go on to advocate capitulation through a policy of engagement and negotiations. We have seen the fruits of a similar exercise in Swat already. It is important to understand that negotiating with the terrorists is a poor policy option and if society still deems it prudent to hold dialogue with such elements, it has better means of doing so than engaging the political, administrative or the state apparatus, for every terrorist has parents, siblings and friends to dissuade them. If that fails, politics has no means to overcome the failure. Psy-ops and propaganda then perhaps remain the last chance for any non-violent strategy.

Now let us turn to the second perception. I have absolutely no doubt that in the current fog of war and general chaos the predator attacks often manage to hit many a roguish element. But remember that no matter how effective their precision guidance systems are, the missiles fired from these predators have absolutely no gift of surgically removing one terrorist safe house from among a dozen civilian residences in a settlement. The battle-hardened terrorists seem to have learnt enough lessons, thus taking extra pains to live in civilian communities. You cannot kill any civilian only because he comes in your way. The life of each innocent citizen is precious and should be protected against both the terrorists and the anti-terror operations.

It is true that like everyone else I do not have any specific facts to substantiate this argument. But that is not because of lack of trying. There are so many filters in the war-affected areas that gathering verifiable data is practically impossible. If you recall, before his assassination, late journalist Hayatullah Khan was reporting among other things the repeated ground violations of our territorial boundary by the US forces. How many of such reports have made it to the popular press since then? You need not be a great social or rocket scientist to understand that a missile attack does cause casualties and it lacks any mechanism to tell the difference between the guilty and the innocent. Even if you call the civilian casualties ‘collateral damage’, you cannot deny that our precious lives are lost and unimaginable displacement does occur. Each life lost to the terrorists or foreign assaults proves the failure of the state to protect its citizens.

Personally I am not fussed about the word ‘sovereignty’. It is an exceedingly irrelevant and incoherent term in the emerging world scenario, especially in the dynamics of modern war. Even a proud nation like the British forgot the term during World War II when it sought US help in defeating the enemy. However, I cannot defend the deaths of innocent civilians.

It is my firm belief that while it is absolutely imperative to fight the terrorists and the insurgents, I do believe that the constants of a characteristic counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operation are not visible on either side of the border. We need to have smart operations in which no civilian is killed, not an indiscriminate shelling, bombing or missile campaign from a distance or an altitude, but hot pursuits and face to face combat. And this cannot be done by any of the foreign forces. I know that it is a widely held belief in the West that there are some Taliban and al Qaeda sympathisers within our security and intelligence establishments, hence we are unfit to fight these elements, but in the absence of any effective counter-intelligence activity in the region, you cannot say for sure if such elements have not infiltrated the US and allied intelligence quarters too. Closer cooperation, transfer of cutting edge counter-insurgency technology and improved intelligence are the crucial things lacking in the strategy right now. The propaganda part is also missing in the entire exercise. I will write some other time on how the war can be won using these elements and how the trust deficit can be abolished. However, what concerns me is that the attacks as they are conducted right now and the ambiguity surrounding their origin should end. As they are being carried out right now, these predator attacks, apart from causing human suffering in the region, are also generating a political backlash. McCain, I believe, is wrong. Not the predator attacks, but Pakistan is the most useful asset in the war against terrorists. The sooner this is understood the better it is, especially in order to escape the fate of the colonisers of planet Pandora.

Farrukh Khan Pitafi

http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\01\14\story_14-1-2010_pg3_5