Pakistan’s Army is practising shooting down unmanned drones. You know, like the US military uses. The Danger Room story notes:
The U.S. and Pakistan supposedly have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” agreement when it comes to killer drone strikes on militant camps inside the country: American officials stay mum about the attacks, and their counterparts in Islamabad only complain a little — while sneaking peeks at the drone surveillance feeds.
Here’s hoping that that’s the case. As I have said here – over and over again, I know – I don’t think there’s any role that the US can usefully play in the stabilising of Pakistan. At the same time, I don’t begrudge the US taking very narrowly targeted action in certain cases (e.g., 110% verified, high value, strategic targets taking advantage of Pakistan’s borders). No matter what, however, I think it is essential that the US not be seen as meddling in Pakistan’s internal affairs (which was one of the many reasons I was disappointed with Obama on the subject of Pakistan during the campaign). If it takes a bit of lying on everyone’s part, that’s okay.
Amit
the Afghan-Pak border is quite rugged and sparse and trying to get 110% intelligence is impossible IMHO. I also think it is a bad idea for the US to silently violate sovereign Pakistani airspace without permission in turn fueling the fire for local leaders/politicians/radicals to point the finger at the US and say we have no respect for their dignity. If Pakistan does not want to cooperate with us then I think we can stop giving them $500M/year.
MB
To be sure. And no one’s asking for – or expecting – 110%. But 50%? That’s fucked up.
~
As to silent/not silent, well, that’s the game, isn’t it?
Amit
well there are two parts of the situation. First, the actual confidence of the intelligence which is going to have to match some threshold between 50-100%. Whatever the threshold you can be sure we will somehow meet that figure because who is going to hold that number accountable?
Second is the actual execution of the attacks. This is where the US and Pakistan need to come to a formal border crossing agreement that both sides can live with. If they don’t want to play then we should pull our foreign aid out of the country.