Daily Times

One thing that is quite obvious is that the Pakistani leadership wants an end to the US’s publicly rarely owned drone missions. The reason is compelling: drone attacks are counter-productive. The Taliban strike more lethally in the wake of US drone attacks on their hideouts in FATA. As this article demonstrates, it is neither Pakistan’s technological inability nor its lack of seriousness on drone attacks; rather it is the constraints imposed by the international system due to which the country cannot stop US drone attacks.

Maybe Pakistan does not have the required paraphernalia of war to strike the US drones. The US MQ 1 Predator and MQ 9 Reaper have a maximum altitude of 25,000 feet and 50,000 feet respectively. Pakistan’s US-made F-16 jet flies in excess of 50,000 feet. The state of art aircraft fires both air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles. Similarly, Pakistan’s JF-17 Thunder has a service ceiling of 50,000 feet. It also fires air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles. In June the previous year, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan revealed that Pakistan’s Hamza missile can shoot down US drones. What the preceding paragraph demonstrates is that Islamabad has the capability to strike down drones. Why then does Pakistan not strike one?

Maybe Pakistan and the US are on the same page when it comes to targeting the Taliban in FATA. As one WikiLeaks cable revealed, drones have more than tacit support from both sides across the military-civilian divide in Pakistan with the ambiguity, however, whether General Pervez Kayani’s request for ‘predator coverage’ included both surveillance and strikes or not. According to the website Pakistan body count, from June 2003 to June 18, 2013, a total of 389 suicide attacks took place in Pakistan. The majority of these suicide blasts were claimed by the Taliban and if combined with other acts of violence also claimed by the militants, the resultant death toll has skyrocketed to more than 40,000 people killed, including personnel from law enforcing agencies. Although not exclusively, US drone strikes now numbering 340 are primarily responsible for the retaliation from the Taliban of Pakistan’s tribal areas. Based on logical deduction, the crescendo in militants’ activities convinces the Pakistani leadership that costs exceed benefits when it comes to US drone missions. Why then does Pakistan not stop drone operations becomes a million dollar question.

Kenneth Waltz’s neo-realism, aka structural realism, has the answer. According to Waltz, states exhibit similar policies and perform similar functions simply because they operate under similar conditions. To the distinguished author, the international system has a precisely defined structure. Anarchy — the absence of an overarching authority above the states so as to regulate their relations towards one another — is the ordering principle. Although the capabilities of states differ — there being major and small powers — they all pursue security first in the hierarchy of issues. Thus, the notion of anarchy leaves states being the most powerful actors, pitting the major powers to arm twist their smaller counterparts in the self-help environment. It is no coincidence that the latter fall in line with the former so as to ensure their existence. The post-Cold War era, when US military might goes almost unchallenged on the military chessboard, the unipolar world seriously limits the choices that states enjoy under multi-polarity and bi-polarity.

Pakistan does not strike US pilotless drone because it ensures the country’s security. It is what Robert O Keohane terms the ‘issue area’ where the US has more influence to fly drones than Pakistan to strike one. On the other hand, Pakistan’s alleged covert support to the Taliban is the issue area where Islamabad exercises more influence than Washington does. Thus what is important to mention is that power is not fungible. In other words, power derived from one area of activity where it works does not necessarily affect the outcomes in other areas. In the aftermath of 9/11, General Pervez Musharraf walked on a tightrope. The balancing act required to neither offend the Taliban nor the US. Given the fact whereby the GHQ was to opt for either the worse option or the worst, it found itself in between the proverbial devil and the deep blue sea. Being a rational actor, Pakistan decided its fate with its traditional patron, the US, at the expense of its ‘strategic assets’, the Afghan Taliban. The partnership had the additionally perceived strategic advantages of being well-armed vis-á-vis Islamabad’s traditional archrival Delhi both through the provision of paraphernalia of war and economic aid.

Segments of Pakistani society question the rationality of siding with the US often incognizant of what the consequences would have been if the country had thrown its weight behind the Taliban. Irrespective of who controls the levers of power, Pakistan would remain allied to the US. This, though a bitter reality, is the reality of power politics. For the new incumbent government to reduce the damage done by the Taliban is to impress upon them that the state does not stop drone attacks simply because it cannot. To make it a success story, enlisting the support of the political clergy is essential.

The writer is a lecturer of International Relations at BUITEMS, Quetta