The Pakistani military raised the biggest objection. Using bellicose terms more suited for an enemy than an ally, the new head of Pakistan’s army, Gen. Pervez Kayani, said that Pakistan’s territorial integrity would be “defended at all cost” and that “reckless actions only help the militants and further fuel the militancy in the area.”53 Lest there be any ambiguity, Kayani added, “There is no question of any agreement or understanding with the coalition forces whereby they are allowed to conduct operations on our side of the border…. No external force is allowed to conduct operations inside Pakistan.”54
Although the Pakistanis were willing to countenance the occasional civilian death or attacks on militants if they were administered by unmanned drones, U.S. troops landing on Pakistani territory was essentially construed as an act of war. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) had grand dreams of commencing a “hot pursuit” targeting campaign against Taliban insurgents operating from safe havens in Pakistan, but clearly the hunt would have to be left to the unmanned drones if the Pakistanis were to be placated.
In fact a drone strike was launched the following day, September 4. The strike was again in North Waziristan, this time hitting a house whose owner was “known to host foreigners,” according to locals who spoke to the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news service.55 Four people were killed in that strike on territory said to be under the control of Jalaludin Haqqani. None of the slain were reported to be civilians.
A drone launched another attack one day later on a village near the Afghan border of North Waziristan known as Al Must. One report claimed that six to twelve people were killed in the strike, including “men of Arab descent,” two women, and three children. According to a local source, “Three missiles hit the two compounds, which he said belong to two residents of Al Must, Hakeem Khan and Arsala Khan. It is common for families in these areas to rent part of their compound to foreigners, especially Arabs who are involved in planning attacks against NATO forces in Afghanistan, residents said.”56 Once again the rule seemed to be that Arabs were lightning rods for drone strikes and those who rented rooms to them or were related to them ran the real risk of being killed by a Predator or Reaper.
The next strike, on September 8, 2008, was against the aforementioned Afghan Taliban leader Jalaludin Haqqani, whose terrorist insurgents had killed more than fifty people in a suicide attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul just two months earlier. The drone strike targeted a madrassa in the North Waziristan town of Dande Darpakhel, which was the Haqqani Network’s Pakistani headquarters. Although the strike aimed to kill Jalaludin Haqqani, or his son Sirajuddin, who was gradually taking control of operations from his aging father, it missed both men. Instead twenty-three people, including one of Jalaludin’s two wives, his sister, his sister-in-law, and eight of his grandchildren, were killed.57 Four al Qaeda operatives were also said to have been killed in the attack.58 A large number of civilians were killed in this attack, which raises the question, Why would Haqqani house al Qaeda Arabs who could attract drone attacks near his wife and grandchildren? Also, did the CIA know there were civilians present at the time and decide to carry out the attack with the aim of killing the notorious Haqqani, despite the risk of civilian casualties?
Another strike took place in a suburb of Miranshah just four days later on September 12, 2008.59 One source reported twelve “rebel fighters” killed in the strike, whereas another source claimed “seven Taliban” were killed.60 Reports from the strike on two buildings said that once again it appeared that civilians had been killed as well.61
Five days later a drone strike killed Abu Ubaydah al Tunisi, a Tunisian al Qaeda leader, and between four and six other men in the Bangar Cheena region of South Waziristan. There were no reports of civilian deaths on this occasion, and Dawn claimed that the Tunisian leader and his men were “delivering rockets to a militant camp near the Afghan border.”62 This appeared to be a clean strike on a person who could be described as an enemy combatant.
That same day, September 17, 2008, the Pakistani news site Geo.TV reported, “The Pentagon has claimed that U.S. led coalition forces carried out another drone strike on an ammunition storage facility of Taliban, in which one al-Qaeda member and 3 Taliban militants were killed. The U.S. authorities said they shared the news with Pakistani officials after conducting the strike.”63 This intriguing Pentagon statement can be interpreted in several ways. One interpretation is that the Pentagon (and not the CIA) chose to inform the Pakistanis of a military drone strike on Taliban and al Qaeda that occurred inside Afghanistan. This alternative seems strange, however, for the U.S. military had no reason to share with Islamabad an after-action report on a rather limited drone engagement in a neighboring country. The Pentagon report of a drone strike is also strange in that the military is primarily allowed to operate in recognized combat zones, but not in civilian areas in a country where the United States is not officially at war. The other interpretation is that the U.S. military launched a cross-border drone strike on an undisclosed location in Pakistan in what can best be described as a force protection role and then informed the Pakistanis. This scenario in which the U.S. military attacked an ammunition dump in Pakistan seems more plausible as the CIA had, and still has, a policy of not officially discussing its individual drone strikes.
This second scenario seems even more plausible in light of writer Jeremy Scahill’s revelations about the existence of a limited U.S. military drone campaign in Pakistan. In a piece for the Nation he described “a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes.” One insider military source speaking of the JSOC drone campaign described it as “a parallel operation to the CIA” and called the CIA and JSOC campaigns “two separate beasts.”64 Another referred to the military campaign as “a separate fleet of U.S. drones operated by the Defense Department [that] will be free for the first time to venture beyond the Afghan border under the direction of Pakistani military officials.”65
Scahill further reported, “In 2006, the United States and Pakistan struck a deal that authorized JSOC to enter Pakistan to hunt Osama bin Laden with the understanding that Pakistan would deny it had given permission. Officially, the United States is not supposed to have any active military operations in the country.”66 According to one account, JSOC Navy SEAL teams had raided Pakistan as many as twelve times before raids were stopped after the assault on Angoor Ada in September 2008.67 Following this public relations fiasco, there were several instances in which Taliban fighters who had attacked U.S. troops were chased by U.S. airpower into Pakistan and killed. In the most notable of such incidents, fifty Haqqani Network fighters were killed after fleeing into Pakistan.68
Further evidence of an ultrasecret drone campaign led by Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s JSOC (McChrystal later became head of all NATO forces in Afghanistan) came from Noah Shachtman writing for Wired.com. During a visit to a secret U.S. military base (most likely in Karshi-Khanabad, or K2, Uzbekistan), he reported,
Today, those [cross-border JSOC drone] missions have become a regular occurrence. The U.S. Air Force has a fleet of Predator and heavily armed Reaper drones, stationed at Kandahar and Jalalabad Air Fields in Afghanistan. All of these robotic aircraft are allowed to venture occasionally into Pakistani airspace to pursue militants. The government in Islamabad just has to be notified first. Some of the Predators also fly into Pakistan on operations in conjunction with or in support of Islamabad’s military.