Daily Times

Stopping the drone attacks on terrorist dens has been stirred into the most sizzling national concern and crucial policy agenda for the government. Most parts of the media had long trumpeted them as the most obdurate and wilful violation of our airspace, sovereignty and national honour and the cause of collateral damage that breeds more terrorism. Some petty palooka politicians like Imran Khan and anti-American clergy staged dharnas (sit-ins) at Peshawar and Karachi provoking the PML-N to brand their ballistics as a covert effort by the agencies to create new test-tube politicians. But the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad added a new twist to the tempest. Our ignominy and the inability to explain the presence of the world’s most wanted terrorist in the proximity of the premier military academy had few parallels in the annals of the incompetence and deceit by the forces ostensibly assigned to capture that quarry. Yet through a strange spin, the agencies and the media manoeuvred to manage the popular mood and memories of the bloodshed, bombs, brutalities and destruction perpetrated by Osama and the anger and hatred against him and diverted instead the entire focus to drones and unauthorised incursions. Even our parliament, rather than parsing the circumstances and collaring the culprits for the blunder, passed a resolution to stop the drones.

The solutions suggested to stop them, however, have been ridiculously naïve, myopic and counterproductive. Chaudhry Nisar pressed to use nuclear missiles to shoot them, prompting the air chief’s relatively more logical retort that the predators then would be protected by NATO. Imran and his cohorts also growled to interdict NATO supplies. The demand was subsequently also adopted by parliament. Scrubbing the Shamsi Air Base contract and authorising hunting sprees to the UAE Amirs was also elicited as an effective antidote. Some incendiary clerics even asked to sever diplomatic relations with our allies. The government circles also keep orchestrating an equally bizarre alternative to transfer the predators to Pakistan. This evidently is no solution as drones used by Pakistan certainly would not be showering flowers or sumptuous cuisine on the terrorists or sprinkling water, nutrients and pesticides on the crops and orchards in this remote region. This could certainly be carried out by ordinary planes and helicopters already amassed by the agencies. So the solution can be written off as a mere fixation to gather more fancy arsenals.

Proposals like stopping NATO supplies are equally ineffective as some safer substitutes are already being exploited, leaving Pakistan to face hefty penalties for reneging upon its international commitments. The loss of remuneration, employment and covert contribution to our nether markets through smuggling and pilferage from them would actually far exceed any intended impact on the allies. Dharnas, similarly, are not only futile but rather more damaging as they distract and drain the law enforcement agencies bracing the sprawling terrorist networks. Dharnas could, however, be made effective if the enthusiasts actually move to encircle, impede and incapacitate terrorist centres and operations. This is because there lies the real root and the rot that precipitated these raids.

These solutions, in fact, project the drones as an issue in isolation from its real cause just like stressing the symptoms of a scourge without realising and remedying its causative factors. The dilemma of the drones, evidently, cannot be solved without extirpating terrorist havens. There were no drones before their eruption in these terrains roiled and roused the entire industrialised and democratic world and our neighbours to dismantle these hatcheries. Drones were selected as an innovative viable option for lack of writ or access to these areas. A real panacea thus would evidently be to initiate an effective alternative action like surrounding these spots, severing contraband supplies and revamping the reconnaissance to neuter the terrorist potential. We also accept this need yet plead for a more opportune schedule because of constraints like being already too tied on the eastern border, consolidating the cleansed segments and countering the threats in other areas. Realising this, the allies plug in to accomplish a part of our own avowed mission. But this stirs our notions about the sanctity of our sovereignty and the infringement of our soil and space. The question evidently is to dispassionately dissect this diatribe in the backdrop of the world’s resolve and consensus against a far more colossus devastation, disturbance and denial of the ascent of human thought and civilisation. Our sovereignty actually was shredded long ago by the terrorist hordes of varying breeds who trespassed to ravage our lands, lives, peace and aspirations. The drone raiders, on the contrary, happen to be our allies in the war against them. They never make any claims on our soil, space or resources but merely move in for a few moments to mop up some of the menace. The collateral damage from these strikes is an inevitable and unfortunate aspect of every war craft. Sovereignty among the allies stuck against the same enemy also subsumes a secondary concern. Over 160,000 American and British soldiers landed on the French shores to expel the Germans. Poland was carved despite its neutrality. Hectoring terrorist havoc is too overwhelming and overpowering to be deterred by the nuances of autonomy and collateral damage. They are rather construed as a cloak to protect the terrorists because suspending drone raids without any effective alternative would obviously escalate their potential. Pakistan and terrorists can no longer exist together and Pakistan can never crush them alone. So rather than trading the nuances of autonomy and the conditions of action by its own forces, it must go for genuine unrestricted and unconditional global cooperation. Drones can only be stopped by pursuing a really effective and collectively verifiable alternative. The allies, of course, also must assist and ease some of our genuine constraints including an assurance to restrain India, as they did following the flare up fanned by the onslaughts against the Indian parliament and Mumbai sites.

But the real key to the conundrum is a genuine realistic change in the mindset that terrorism or covert actions in any form have no future or relevance in the modern democratic polities shaped by explicit expression of the dominant aspirations of a nation. As a result, Haqqani or Gul Bahadur bands would be utterly ineffective in any multilateral consensus arrangements in Afghanistan. Relying on them for any putative strategic depth in Afghanistan would be perilously counterproductive. Even the obsession of a strategic depth by a nation haunted by hunger, disease, illiteracy, scarcity of resources and avenues, inability to defray its mounting debts and ignominy of a perennial begging bowl syndrome has to be realistically toned down.

The writer is an academic and freelance columnist. He can be reached at habibpu@yahoo.com