US Assistant Secretary of Defence Michael Sheehan told the Senate Armed Services Committee that there is no time limit or geographical boundary on drone strikes. M Sheehan said this during testimony on Friday, in which he said that military operations against Al-Qaeda would last beyond the present term of President Obama, due to end in January 2017, in fact “10 to 20 years.” That would mean that the drone strikes would continue till 2024, or even up to 2034. Since the drone strikes started in Afghanistan and Pakistan, they have been expanded to include Yemen and Somalia, and while the majority are carried out by the CIA, those in Pakistan are carried out by the Defence Department, and are the ones about which Mr Sheehan testified. These are the ones on which the USA is placing so much reliance to replace its present occupation forces after it draws down troop level in 2014.
However, it should realise how imprecise a weapon are drones from the high level of civilian casualties they inflict, a figure which American institutions have worked out. Especially in the tribal areas of Pakistan, these strikes merely generate a large number of survivors bent on revenge from the USA. Even though they may not be affected directly, the reality of these attacks has only fuelled anti-US sentiment in Pakistan without making the USA itself safe. The USA is also taking on additional burden, by declaring any Al-Qaeda affiliate an enemy of the USA. It is this approach which has prevented the USA from having fruitful talks with the Taliban, him they invaded Afghanistan to dismantle and who they now feel they will never be able to defeat militarily, with or without drones.
The drone strikes, and the US Defence Department belief that they will last far into the foreseeable future will greatly disturb the newly elected government, which has campaigned on the promise that it can convince the US to halt drone attacks. While that is not entirely possible, it may be true that some intelligence sharing deal can be worked out, whereby strikes can be vetted and thus owned by the Pakistani authorities, in case of their success in targeting those who are a threat to the Pakistani state. While the perception is that Pakistani military and civilian circles are complicit in tolerating and even agreeing with the drone strikes as a weapon, the difference of opinion on who should be targeted remains. Neither Pakistan, not US authorities would deny that the policy has not won them any friends. The incoming government has a steep task ahead, in trying to bring the country to terms with a phenomenon so entirely against all concepts of sovereignty, where collateral damage is in scores of innocent lives and "successes" are debatable, at best.