A R Jerral Reportedly, the US administration has refused to vacate the Shamsi Air Base located in Balochistan that is being used by the CIA to launch drone attacks in FATA. According to an American official, the US personnel have not left the base and have no plans to abandon it. This comment has come in response to the Pakistani Defence Ministers statement that Washington has been asked to vacate the base. However, the US officials claim that Islamabad has not asked them to vacate any facility; in fact, the Ministers statement is for home consumption to pacify domestic anti-US feelings. In bilateral military relationships, the bases to operate from are provided with mutual consultations. For instance, Pakistan had provided a base near Khyber Peshawar (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, or KP) in early 1950s to the USA from where it used to operate spy missions over the then USSR till a U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Red Army and Khrushchev had openly declared marking the province (KP) as a target on his hit list. After that Pakistan asked the Americans to close down the base and they complied; it showed that there were mutually agreed conditions that regulated the base operations. However, it is not known what are the conditions that govern the provision of bases under US control now, or if there are any. It is now amply clear that our present alliance was perhaps obtained through coercion, under coercion the terms are dictated and not discussed. The fact that the US has outright refused to vacate the air base confirms that dictation, otherwise a demand from a sovereign state is not ignored. So, our Ministry of Defence should determine under what conditions these bases were provided and for how long to the USA. Drone-borne missile attacks on suspected terrorist hideouts and safe havens are the main methods of engaging the enemy. These attacks are now becoming the major strategic options in fighting terrorism. For the US, this strategy will be less costly and can be sustained over a longer duration with minimum essential troop deployment on ground. The new plans unveiled by Washington calls for a sustained long-term engagement of Al-Qaeda till the threat to US home security is eliminated for good. Moreover, a decade-long war on ground has financially hurt the US immensely. According to an estimate, the US is spending about a billion dollars every week in Afghanistan. This estimate may be on a higher side, but its economy is under debt of trillions of dollars; at this rate, surely it is not possible to execute the war in a conventional manner. Thus, the new strategy provides the Obama administration opportunities to withdraw maximum forces from the war zone for domestic political gains and cut costs to the level that can be managed easily. John Brennans new approach calls for delivering precise, targeted surgical pressure to the groups that threaten the US. This means that the drone attacks, precise Special Forces operations a Ia Abbottabad will be the new face of the war on terror. To launch such operations in a timely manner, the US forces will need air bases in close vicinity of the areas that are suspected of supporting Al-Qaeda hideouts. According to Brennans assessment, Al-Qaeda activists have their central headquarters located in Pakistan. This is a loaded statement and gives the US wide options to mount operations according to their perceived priorities without bothering for local sentiments. Nevertheless, this statement is an extension of Obamas statement where he said: Pakistans FATA area still provides the sanctuaries to AI-Qaeda operatives and the US will launch vigorous precision strikes against these safe heavens. This strategy will probably need all the bases in the areas identified by the US Presidents Chief Counterterrorism Advisor. Under these circumstances, abandoning or vacating the bases already in occupation will be counterproductive. The indications are that the CIA, who controls the drone attacks, is expanding the places from where these strikes can be launched with minimum loss of time. The reports that it has developed launch facilities at Jalalabad and Bagram confirm this expansion. The new strategy will have three facets; an elaborate spy network on ground to acquire accurate intelligence about the location of suspected terrorist hiding places, timely transmission of this information and close proximity places from where the punitive attacks can be launched without giving reaction time to the terrorists. Pakistan is likely to face more CIA operatives of the Raymond Davis genre; how it will handle the situation only time will tell. But one thing is certain, there will be more drone attacks on the Pakistani soil in which more innocent people will perish. According to reports, up till now more than 253 drone attacks have been launched in FATA in which hundreds of innocent civilians have died causing immense misery to the people of the area. The US has been constantly insisting that Al-Qaeda and its affiliate Taliban use Pakistans FATA area as their safe sanctuaries from where they launch attacks on the coalition forces deployed in Afghanistan. They perceive the Taliban Shura hiding somewhere near Quetta. Hence, the drawdown plan given by the US envisages a total elimination of terror potential existing in these areas. This calls for stepped up raids against the enemy; the drone attacks and possibly the physical special operation raids will be increased on the Pakistani soil in the near future. It seems that Pakistans political and military establishment is not openly coming out with the true situation on ground. The military leadership is silent on the Shamsi status; the political bosses are not on the same wavelength; and Pakistans Information Minister has contradicted her Cabinet colleague and declared that Islamabad has not asked the US to vacate the base. She maintained that the Defence Ministers claim is a statement for the media only as the vacation of the air base has never been even discussed in any meeting of the Defence Committee of the Cabinet. This stance confirms the US observation that the statement by the Defence Minister was for home consumption to pacify mounting anti-US emotions. The US cannot stay in this region indefinitely; the withdrawal plan gives it time until the end of 2014 to eliminate Al-Qaeda related security threats. The projected increase in the attacks will correspondingly result in increased collateral damage to life and property, which will generate more hatred for America and Pakistan; the US will eventually move out leaving Pakistan to face the local wrath for a very long time to come. Islamabad has yet to develop and come up with a strategy of its own to deal with the situation it will be left in. Needless to say that there is a pressing need for Pakistan to engage the Parliament members from FATA in a political process to convince the local population of the area to deny sanctuaries to the militants. Also, the local Taliban must be brought to the negotiating table; if the US can seek this route with the Afghan Taliban, Pakistan has that right too. This strategy will reduce the threat perception and thus reduce or curtail drone and physical attacks by the US. Hence, Pakistan needs a clear politico-military policy in this direction and a vigorous implementation of the same; resolutions alone will take us nowhere. The writer is a retired Brigadier.