Senator Kerry is due in Pakistan for a visit soon, and the public has been made to believe – and expect – a breakthrough by the new government on the drones issue. This is not going to happen. Or at least not in a way that will ever fulfil the currently impossible expectations.
For an American audience, informed on the drones issue by mainstream media reports such as, "Pizza Sent by Drone Makes for Special Delivery," it makes no sense why the Pakistanis are so upset. "All we’re trying to do is take out people who are primarily interested in killing Pakistanis.”
From the Pakistani layman’s perspective, there is an assessment that the unwelcome visitors cause more trouble than they solve. The intended targets may lessen in numbers, but ironically for the Pakistanis, this reduced ability manifests itself as, “Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes whatever was trying to kill you, try harder.”
Where the Americans want to reach in and cut out the tumour, we, the Pakistanis scream that it hurts too much, and we haven’t signed the consent form. We think we can cure this with a shaman as an oncologist, and it’s our right to believe that – even if it kills us anyways, in the end.
Nobody really knows how involved the Pakistani state is in the drone programme…anymore. At one time it was very much involved. General Musharraf admitted in an interview, that even the army top commands, and intelligence high brass at the time (which, by implication, included present COAS General Kayani), were consulted on decisions.
The first drone strikes were “goodwill kills”, explained Christine Fair, assistant professor on South Asian Studies at Georgetown University. Starting with Nek Mohammad, a bane of the Pakistan army. Efforts to neutralize him by offering a peace agreement had failed, in the face of his betrayal of the terms of the truce.
Eventually, when the CIA station chief in Islamabad extended a hand of help (as detailed in Mark Mazzetti’s book, The Way of the Knife), the Pakistan Army took it, anticipating the satisfaction of seeing Nek Mohammad wiped out. Nek Mohammad was the very first target of a drone strike in Pakistan, in 2004.
A lot has happened between then and 2013, including Salalah, Raymond Davis, OBL, and so on and so forth. Now, far from such cooperation between the two countries, even the consultation courtesy appears to no longer be extended to the Pakistanis.
Protests, demarches, parliamentary resolutions, all have followed in a steady stream. The constant refrain: “Pakistan’s sovereignty is being violated”. Of course it is. And the repetition of the rebuke also carries the implicit admission that Pakistan’s sovereignty is not inviolable. The issue as Stephen Cohen, at the Brookings Institute puts it, is that, apart from appearing helpless in halting drone attacks, “Pakistan is unable to exercise sovereign control over its own property. (In) Balochistan, KPK, even large parts of Karachi – the state has no control”.
Meanwhile, public pressure makes the politicians up their rhetoric, even as they dig a hole for themselves in the process. Campaign promises are made to “shoot them down”. Do it, rules the Peshawar High Court. Simple enough prescription to protect the penetration of airspace without the state’s permission.
It could probably even be done. Drones hover for days, at low altitudes and slow speeds, monitoring and tracking, before eventually targeting. When asked whether it was possible, the Air Chief informed an in-camera briefing of Parliament, that it was not difficult to do.
So why don’t we take aim? There would be no loss of life; it's an unmanned plane. Why not take one down? To answer, the Air Chief is said to have replied with another question: “Then what?”
The consequences have to be understood outside our layman’s native “nuke-‘em-if-you-got-‘em” thinking process. There will be no US Air Force accompanying them into Pakistani airspace. There won’t be a 5th Fleet deployed to Karachi (…we hope). The result will not be in Pakistan facing military action. It will be something we fear much more than that: We’ll have less stuff.
Our relationship with the US is quite possibly the most tangibly beneficial one we have, for all the grief it gives us. As detailed in the Pakistan Economic Survey 2012-2013, the United States is our biggest export market (15.1%), followed by the UAE (10.1%), the UK (5.4%) and Germany at (4.1%).
Our overwhelming reliance on – and preference for –military equipment is on the US. Our “higher than the Himalayas” friendships in the neighbourhood notwithstanding, qualitatively, American equipment is just better. The real punch in our air force is the fleet of 60-odd American F-16s, not the 50 Chinese JS-17s. Remember the Pressler Amendment? Senator Dana Rohrbacher probably does. With great nostalgia, at that. He may have not have to reminisce about the good ol’ days for long, if Pakistan provides him the opportunity.
The Indians would say, “We told you so. Pakistan is protecting terrorist sanctuaries on its soil,” and would begin preparing to enlarge their footprint in Afghanistan, with even less resistance than before.
The money would dry up. And it’s not the aid we’re most worried about, it’s everything else. The quarter-to-quarter running of things. All the money we spend is not on things we can buy within Pakistan, and the all the money we earn is not restricted to funds raised from taxation. For all our well-articulated hatred of it, we really can’t even get a foot in the door at the IMF, without a sifarish.
It’s not that the consequences are impossible to predict, it’s just that acknowledging them challenges the view of the world that exists only in our heads. Our delusions of grandeur, curiously accompanied by a narrative of intense victimisation, would become impossible to support.
As Shuja Nawaz, at the Atlantic Council, puts it, “There’s no will. You’re in bed with them, yet you still complain.” But, if we are to take the Pakistani position at face value, what, if anything can Pakistan really do to stop them?
PML-N’s stand that a new government taking over should prompt a rethink in US policy about the way the drone programme is conducted, is unrealistic. Looking at the protests from the PML-N government, they seem to be every bit as serious as the PPP. And that’s not a compliment.
Why do they even bother? In the words of Christine Fair, “Politicians hate the drone strikes, because their constituents hate them.” So, for the constituents and politicians both, what can Pakistan really do to stop them? Besides the “not much” option, which has been exercised thus far.
There is no chance the Americans will trust us with their drone technology. Military-to-military ties are gradually recovering from twelve months ago, but they are nowhere close to them letting us pull the trigger. For the simple reason that they don’t really trust us to point our weapons at the right people.
We can procure the drone technology– if anyone is willing to sell it to us. The Chinese? The Indians? Heck, according to a Haaretz report (vehemently denied by both sides), maybe the Israelis? Pakistan might even be behind on this, as speculation is rife that the proliferation of the technology is imminent, and will only add to Pakistan’s woes.
There’s always the Security Council, where Pakistan is a member. Christine Fair sees the absence of any complaints filed by Pakistani on the drones issue as a mark of continuing complicity by the Pakistani government. Problem is, a complaint filed at the UNSC against the US would be the diplomatic equivalent of shooting down a drone. And we come back to the question, “Then what?”
Perhaps the best option we may have is to work out a new deal on the drones. The COAS and Prime Minister both address the nation, stating that if there was any deal with any previous governments, it now stands null and void.
From now on, if there are to be any drone strikes conducted on Pakistani soil, it will be with a representative of Pakistan present in the targeting centre, and involved in the process. There are new codes of vigilance over the Western border airspace, and any unidentified aircraft in Pakistani airspace may suffer because of the confusion – don’t say we didn’t tell you so.
If the new government manages to negotiate such an agreement, they will at least get Pakistan a seat at the table, when at the moment it’s not even on the guest list for the party it’s hosting in its own house.
If – and it’s a big 'if' – they manage it, the government will then have to sell this as a win to its own people. With anti-American sentiment so high, and not much effort from politicians to explain the complexity of the relationship as a whole, this will be impossible.
The only honest motivation in the world is self-interest. We simply have to decide: do we need them or not? And in making that decision, Pakistan stands to learn more about itself, than anyone else.