Pak Taliban leader's death signals US drones will go after high-value targets

New York: A week after President Barack Obama’s speech marking a policy shift on the use of drones, the CIA killed Waliur Rehman, the deputy leader of the Pakistani Taliban. This clearly signals that while Obama has spoken of a curtailment of drones, attacks described by experts as “personality strikes” will continue in Pakistan where Taliban leaders are still large as life. Faced with popular pressure, the next Pakistani government led by Nawaz Sharif will rail at the strike, as they have to be seen to be standing up to the US on the issue. The Pakistani Taliban withdrew their offer of peace talks on Thursday following Rehman’s death because they believe the Pakistani government approves of the US drone strikes, despite official statements to the contrary. Most experts say Sharif may be secretly pleased as this frees him from following up on his campaign pledge to negotiate with the Taliban militants. It’s also entirely possible that the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s powerful military spy agency, gave the US the intelligence regarding Rehman’s whereabouts, says Karl Kaltenthaler, a professor at the University of Akron and specialist in these strikes. [caption id=“attachment_829399” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] US drones strikes will continue to go after high-value targets. Reuters[/caption] “Behind the scenes, there is probably relief. But they can’t say that publicly. They have to stick to the script,” Kaltenthaler told US News & World Report. “I think drone strikes are here to stay for a while in Pakistan. We will see far fewer drone strikes and they will be aimed at high value targets.” The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and US military traditionally employ two kinds of drone strikes. The Obama administration’s new limits on the drones program will include an end to so-called “signature strikes.” In typical “signature strikes” a drone targets groups of military-aged men merely suspected, due to their location or their actions, of a terrorist link. These attacks are widely criticised for running the risk of high casualties. Just over two years ago, a missile strike in Datta Khel, North Waziristan reportedly killed dozens of men, who later turned out to be a group of Pakistani tribesmen discussing a property dispute. These civilian casualties have naturally led a chorus of condemnation from Pakistan. These are the kinds of mistakes president Obama hopes to avoid under the new May 23 policy he unveiled at the National Defense University. The US will now rely more on “personality strikes,” like the one used against Rehman, in which drones hunt for specific people, not just any suspected militant. US officials said in March this year that the White House is working to shift control of the CIA’s lethal drone program to the military. By doing this, the White House hopes to shift the CIA’s covert drone program to one that is subject to international laws of war and undertaken with the consent of host governments. Currently, both the US military and the CIA manage separate drone programs in order to single-in on targets and launch missile strikes, a hallmark of America’s long-drawn wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Even if Obama rewrites the rules for the drone program, the CIA will continue its traditional role of providing intelligence to the military, which can in turn target terrorists. The CIA will remain involved in lethal targeting, but uniformed personnel will pull the trigger. The CIA began conducting drone strikes to kill al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives in Pakistan after the group’s leaders relocated there following the start of the US offensive in Afghanistan in 2001. The CIA launched a similar program in Yemen in 2011 to counter an al-Qaeda affiliate there. Though the use of drones in Pakistan dates back to 2004, US reliance on them increased under Obama. He was fed up with the Pakistani government’s failure to target Taliban militants using Pakistani territory to launch cross-border attacks against American troops in Afghanistan. Since Obama took office in 2009, there have been 290 drone missile strikes in Pakistan, compared with 45 between 2004 and 2008 estimates the Long War Journal, a website that tracks US drone hits. This year, the US has conducted 10 drone strikes in Pakistan’s lawless tribal region which is home to a rogue’s gallery of Islamic terrorists. Documents released by WikiLeaks in 2010 showed that Pakistani officials consented to the strikes in private to US diplomats, while condemning them in public. A 2008 diplomatic cable posted on WikiLeaks showed former Pakistan prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani agreed to the drone campaign. “I don’t care if they do it as long as they get the right people,” the cable quoted Gilani as saying. “We’ll protest in the [parliament] and then ignore it.” Of course, cooperation has since atrophied between the two war on terror allies. In 2011, Pakistan kicked the US out of an air base used by American drones in the country’s southwest, in retaliation for US airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.