Daily Times

US drones have reached a peak of deep unpopularity in Pakistan and the international community. Despite the partisan political nature of Pakistan, all political parties agree on only the issue of drones and have unanimously passed two resolutions in the National Assembly condemning the drone strikes and demanding their end. The drones have triggered so much agitation inside Pakistan that a political party unilaterally blocked the Torkham border of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to stop the passage of NATO supplies from Afghanistan as an attempt to pressurise the US to quit drone hits. The global outpouring of criticism at the strikes has incessantly been rising over innocent deaths. In the UN General Assembly, Pakistan and some other countries have tabled a resolution against the drones.

The first US drone strike inside FATA against al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists was in 2004. Nine more drone strikes occurred until 2007. The strikes were limited, calculated and based on ample intelligence. Since the Obama presidency, signature strikes have been in vogue inside the tribal agencies of Pakistan, Afghanistan and in Somalia. Signature strikes are not aimed at particular individuals but at the suspect movement of people. In this kind of strike, first a drone carries out surveillance of an area by hovering over it and strikes if it sees any suspect activity. Signature strikes have been a source of massive criticism in the given countries and on the global stage. Recently, there was a signature strike on a marriage ceremony in Afghanistan, mistaking it as a horde of terrorists.

The contemporary uproar on these signature strikes did not develop overnight. The masses in Pakistan have long been protesting against drones, alleging that the rulers were in tacit agreement with the US while, at the same time, pressing them to bring an end to the drones, which are an infringement of the sovereignty of the country. The statistics of drone strike casualties vary in reports from different organisations. The New American Foundation Organisation figures reveal that there have been 364 drone strikes inside Pakistan since 2004 to September 2013 putting militant deaths at 2,274 and civilians at 286. The US has perpetuated the drone strikes, ignoring intermittent protests across Pakistan and the globe since 2009, citing the success rate of the drone programme and the Pakistani state’s reluctance to take on the terrorists hiding in North Waziristan.

The US has been under severe pressure since the beginning of 2013 regarding its signature strikes, particularly in Pakistan. In March this year, the UN terrorism and human rights envoy said after a three-day fact finding visit to Pakistan, “The US drone strikes in Pakistan are a violation of international law.” In October this year, in a UN debate, Brazil, China and Venezuela openly opposed the US drones, terming them illegal.

However, the US and its supporters declare the drone strikes legal, citing the ‘hot pursuit principle’ enshrined in Article 111 of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. However, after close scrutiny, it clearly emerges that the US has quickly been losing the moral and legal ground for the signature strikes as international support is quickly slipping away and opposition is mounting.

Peter Danchin from the University of Maryland School of Law says, “This idea of hot pursuit is just an attempt to twist the Law of the Sea doctrine into a self defence idea.” US Congressman Dennis Kucinich asserted that the US was violating international law by carrying out drone strikes against a country that never attacked the US.

Importantly, US drones have reportedly killed many top leaders of al Qaeda and the Taliban inside FATA. But efficacy is not legitimacy. The violation of the sovereignty of Pakistan and the deaths of innocent people can never be condoned morally and legally. Amnesty International’s joint report with Human Rights Watch said the drone strikes could be classified as war crimes.

In reaction to the act of a political party’s blockade of NATO supply routes in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa combined with the state of Pakistan’s and international pressure, reports are that the US has planned to pass a resolution in Congress to attach the precondition of ‘uninterrupted passage of NATO supplies through Pakistan to the NATO base Afghanistan’ to the US Coalition Fund and other aid to Pakistan. This is the only available stick it can wield against the US’s carrots to Islamabad.

Many political parties, and the common masses, take the single political party action of blockade of a NATO supply route as a deviation from established political norms and adoption of street politics in the presence of parliament with very harmful future effects for the country and the fragile democratic set up. Pakistan has lost six times more money than the US aid to it in the war on terror and has sacrificed over 60,000 civilians and uniformed men — more than the combined losses of the US and its NATO allies.

This newspaper said in a recent editorial that the Pakistan army retaliated for a militant ambush at the Mirali check post and killed the attackers inside North Waziristan (NW). The reports are that Pakistan has ultimately started an army operation against the terrorists in NW. Pakistan was repeatedly accused by the US and the west of not launching the operation, being soft on terrorists and playing a double game in the war on terror. Also, the US has repeatedly justified its drones by citing that there was no army operation against the terrorists in NW. The CIA director time and again has said, “We take such activity (drones) as a last resort to save lives when there is no alternative.”

The passing of resolutions in the NA and the UN, and the latest unavoidable offensive in NW by Pakistan in the meantime, seem to be a joint strategy of the civilian leadership and the army apparatus to defuse tensions at home and send a clear message to the west that it has no sympathy for the terrorists. In the given landscape, the US threat of withholding aid to Pakistan may revive the old notion that the former is only a fair weather friend. It is time the US take stock of whether its policy of signature strikes inside Pakistan is now needed and whether it stands morally and legally justified, when Pakistan itself has engaged in the long demanded offensive in NW.

The writer is a freelance columnist and a blogger. He can be contacted at inayatullah_rustamani@yahoo.com and twitter: @maverickir