Drone issue, like all others associated with the global war on terror has developed and grown over a period of a decade to attain complexity, controversy and continuity. There’s a lot that has been said about it in every part of the globe but very little has changed on ground. Considered as the easiest means of maintaining a position of dominance during war times, drone attacks have become a signature strategy adopted by the western powers droning innocent people and militants alike while sitting thousands of miles away.
The Pakistanis have been protesting for a long time over the indiscriminate use of the unmanned aerial vehicles over their territory but the lack of attention that this matter receives has turned it into a very complex one where the people now have no faith in either their forces or the political parties as underhand deals of collusion with the western powers are being exposed.
Although nothing has been proven, but then nothing has been disproved either, which just shows that the matter needs more clarity for it to be tackled. This controversy of the clandestine involvement of Pakistanis weakens the Pakistani case against it. Any protest raised by Pakistanis is immediately countered by deals of consent. This vicious cycle of a never ending saga of violence and aggression towards the innocent people will never stop at this pace and pattern.
The manufactured truth that the western media feeds us is far from reality. Hundreds of innocent men, women and children are droned to death in just a split second for which no one is accountable. Despite being aware of the fact that this particular strategy is proving counterproductive with the war gains, why the US is continuing with it is an enigma. However, a deeper analysis into the subject reveals that nothing much has made sense up till now. More than a decade of counterinsurgency leaves the militants as strong as ever. Surely, there is something very wrong and until that is not changed nothing else will.
LUBNA UMAR,
Islamabad, July 31.