A Pakistani journalist quoted at the time had some interesting insights into how the CIA had begun to choose its targets with the use of local spies and surveillance: “They [the locals] see traffic coming and going from the fortress homes of tribal leaders associated with foreign elements, and they pass the information along. Some quick surveillance is done, and then someone pops a couple of hundred-pound bombs at the house.”105
In his book Obama’s Wars, Bob Woodward wrote of the importance of these spies in his discussion of the transfer of power from Bush to Obama in 2008–2009:
But, he [President Bush] said, the real breakthrough had been with human sources. That is what President Bush wanted to protect at all costs. The drones were basically flying high-resolution video cameras armed with missiles. The only meaningful way to point a drone towards a target was to have spies on the ground telling the CIA where to look, hunt and kill. Without spies, the video feed from the Predator might as well be a blank television screen.
McConnell provided extensive details about these human sources who had been developed in an expensive, high-risk program over five years. The spies were the real secrets that Obama would carry with him from that moment forward. They were the key, in some respects, to protecting the country.106
The Pakistani ISI and military also stepped up their cooperation with the CIA in providing information on targets. One Pakistani official claimed that “as a result the strikes are more and more precise.”107 To enhance cooperation with the Pakistanis who were clearly acting as spotters, the United States set up a coordination center with them at Torkham Gate, on the Afghan-Pakistani border near the Khyber Agency, and there they shared footage from drone strikes with their Pakistani counterparts.108
The Taliban quickly came to conclusion that the drones’ unique ability to target their fighters was the result of the CIA’s reliance on a network of local spies. One Taliban spokesman said, “The growing drone attacks in North Waziristan are proving that someone on the ground is guiding the spy planes to strike targets. The improvement in hitting accurate targets, as witnessed in the recent weeks, is nothing but an indication that the CIA-paid agents are very much active.”109
Spying activities were also noticed by al Qaeda, which published an online book titled Guide to the Laws Regarding Muslim Spies. In it, al Qaeda leader Abu Yahya al Libi stressed the danger of spies to his organization: “It would be no exaggeration to say that the first line in the raging Crusader campaign waged by America and its allies against the Muslims and their lands is the network of spies.”110 He went on to lament the spies’ negative impact on al Qaeda, writing, “One single piece of information transmitted to them [the Americans], by one of their spies, is able to exasperate spirits, honor, and possessions in a way that thousands of their mobilized soldiers cannot do.”111 Libi then writes in paranoid terms about the seemingly ubiquitous presence of the spies in the FATA:
The spying networks are their eyes to see the hidden things that they cannot see and are their hands that are still extending inside the houses, in the forests, up the mountains, into the valleys, and inside the dark caves in order to catch a target that their developed technology was not able to reach. The spies are the brigades, the soldiers, and they are present and absent at the same time. They were sent to penetrate the ranks of the Muslims generally, and the mujahidin specifically, and spread all over the lands like locusts.
Although the spies are busy day and night carrying out their duties in an organized and secret manner and taking directions, even orders like soldiers, still you never feel their presence. You can see their influence like killing, destroying, imprisoning, and tracking, but you do not see them.112
In May 2009 the British newspaper the Guardian published a story that revealed for the first time a fourth means by which the CIA drones had been able to track their targets with uncanny precision. The Guardian reported that the CIA spies in the FATA region had been planting small homing beacons known as pathrai (chips) in the vehicles, compounds, hujras, and camps of al Qaeda and Taliban militants. These infrared flashing beacons were previously used by the military to identify friend from foe, mark drop zones, and outline perimeters.113 Now the drones picked up the signals emitted by the beacons and were able to fire their missiles precisely at the targets beings designated, or “lit up,” by the pathrai. According to the Guardian,
“Everyone is talking about it,” said Taj Muhammad Wazir, a student from south Waziristan. “People are scared that if a pathrai comes into your house, a drone will attack it.” According to residents and Taliban propaganda, the CIA pays tribesmen to plant the electronic devices near farmhouses sheltering al-Qaida and Taliban commanders. Hours or days later, a drone, guided by the signal from the chip, destroys the building with a salvo of missiles. “There are body parts everywhere,” said Wazir, who witnessed the aftermath of a strike…. For the US military, drones have proved to be an effective weapon against al-Qaida targets, and they are becoming increasingly accurate.114
The targets of the attacks quickly understood that the drones’ precision was no coincidence. The Taliban and al Qaeda, as previously mentioned, became vitally aware that tribesmen around them, and even some of their own members, had been hired to spy on them and relay their location to the CIA drones through various means, including pathrai homing beacons. In al Qaeda’s Internet book, the organization wrote of the chips, “These result in the firing of the murderous and destructive missiles whose wrath is inflicted on the Mujahedeen and the weak.” The book includes photos of some of the devices that “spies painstakingly transport to the targets they are assigned by their infidel patrons.”115
The Taliban were shocked by the accuracy of the strikes guided by the pathrais. One Newsweek account of a drone strike on a Taliban safe house that killed several al Qaeda operatives and their Afghan allies reported,
After one of the latest U.S. Predator attacks in North Waziristan, a Taliban subcommander visited the site. He’s seen the results of many airstrikes over the past year or two, but this one really impressed him. The missile didn’t just hit the right house; it scored a direct hit on the very room where Mustafa al-Misri (“Mustafa the Egyptian”) and several other Qaeda operatives were holed up. The hit was so accurate, the subcommander says, it’s as if someone had tossed a GPS [global positioning system] device against the wall. Unfortunately for others at the scene, the mud-and-stone house collapsed, killing several Afghans along with the foreign fighters. Nevertheless, the subcommander told Newsweek, “We are stunned” by such precision.116
Al Qaeda has similarly bemoaned the existence of “spies who have spread throughout the land like locusts.”117
To combat these spies, according to local sources, the Taliban launched a witch hunt in the FATA, which has resulted in the deaths of real or suspected spies for giving away militants’ positions to the CIA.118 The beheaded or mutilated bodies of locals who were said to have been spying for the Americans or “Indian and Jewish agencies” have been turning up in record numbers since the drone campaign began.119 According to the Times of London, “After every raid witnesses say that the Taleban react with rage, abducting, torturing and killing anyone suspected of planting a chip. ‘Sometimes we see a body a day lying by the roadside,’ said Gul Rafay Jan, from Miran Shah. ‘They’ve got signs around their necks saying they were spies planting chips. Sometimes they have been tortured to make confession videos by having rods pushed through their arms or stomachs, or being suspended over a fire.’”120