Regardless of the intended target, the local population was infuriated by the deaths of so many respected elders at the hands of the CIA. One survivor said, “It wasn’t a militant gathering, but a meeting of tribal elders from Ismail Khan village to sort out some differences over a business deal. One of Bahadur’s commanders, Sharabat Khan, was also present at the meeting as he is also a local elder, but they were discussing business.” The surviving elders demanded blood money from the Americans for their slain family members, and one elder said that the attack “will create resentment among the locals and everyone might turn into suicide bombers.” Another elder who survived said, “We are a people who wait 100 years to exact revenge. We never forgive our enemy.”20
A Pakistani government source said, “The Pakistan Army condoles with the families whose dear and near ones have been martyred in this senseless attack.” But an American official caustically rejected Pakistan’s account of the civilian deaths and claimed those who were killed in the strike were Taliban militants: “These people weren’t gathering for a bake sale. They were terrorists.”21 Another U.S. source in a similar sarcastic tone said, “There’s every indication that this was a group of terrorists, not a charity car wash in the Pakistani hinterlands.”22
Pakistan ignored the Americans’ remarks and subsequently showed its displeasure by pulling out of tripartite talks between the U.S., Afghan, and Pakistan governments on the future of Afghanistan. The Pakistani Foreign Ministry issued the following statement: “It is evident that the fundamentals of our relations need to be revisited. Pakistan should not be taken for granted nor treated as a client state.”23
THE TALIBAN KILL A CIA DRONE TEAM AND TRY TO SET OFF A BOMB IN TIMES SQUARE
The people of the FATA, and Pakistan in general, have many myths and legends about the bangana (thunder), ghangais (buzzers), or machays (wasps), as the drones are commonly known. When the rumor spread that the CIA had placed pathrai homing beacons in Lipton tea bags, for example, many Pashtuns in the region stopped drinking tea.
One of the more enduring myths is that the wave of suicide bombings that have swept Pakistan in recent years is directly related to the drone strikes. According to this myth, if there were no drone strikes, there would be no suicide-bombing slaughter of thousands of innocent Pakistanis. Such fears have been deliberately stoked by Taliban leaders, who have threatened to launch two suicide bombings per drone strike.24
I have been able to find only a few cases of terrorist attacks that appeared to be directed in response to the drone strikes. The first was the previously mentioned case of a suicide bombing on a Pakistani military base in November 2006, just days after the infamous drone strike killing eighty-one students and militants in the Chenagai suburb of Damadola.25 Suicide bombings were still rather rare in Pakistan at that time, and the timing of the attack, so soon after the Chenagai strike, seemed to be in fulfillment of the madrassa head’s promise of revenge.
Then there was the case of the failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad. On May 1, 2010, Shahzad drove an SUV packed with explosives into the middle of Times Square in New York City and set off a timer on the bomb. Several observant bystanders, however, noticed smoke coming from the truck and called the police, who then defused the bomb. A fleeing Shahzad was subsequently arrested on a plane waiting for takeoff to Dubai.
It later emerged that Shahzad, who was a Pakistani American, had been trained in a terrorist training camp in Waziristan of the very sort the CIA drones had been attacking. Shahzad claimed to have been in the region at the time of CIA drone attacks and to have known people who were killed in drone strikes.26 During his court trial Shahzad was questioned by Judge Miriam Cedarbaum. Following is an account of that questioning that shows how the drone strikes motivated him:
“You wanted to injure a lot of people,” said Cedarbaum. Shahzad said the judge needed to understand his role. “I consider myself a Muslim soldier,” he said. When Cedarbaum asked whether he considered the people in Times Square to be innocent, he said they had elected the U.S. government.
“Even children?” said Cedarbaum.
“When the drones hit, they don’t see children,” answered Shahzad. He then said, “I am part of the answer to the U.S. killing the Muslim people.”27
Shahzad also proclaimed his desire to avenge “those innocent people being hit by drones from above.”28 He subsequently responded to the question of whether he wanted to plead guilty by saying, “I want to plead guilty, and I’m going to plead guilty 100 times over. Because until the hour the U.S. pulls its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, and stops the drone strikes in Somalia and Yemen and in Pakistan, and stops the occupation of Muslim lands, and stops killing the Muslims, and stops reporting the Muslims to its government, we will be attacking U.S., and I plead guilty to that.”29
The Pakistani Taliban subsequently claimed responsibility for Shahzad’s failed terrorist attack, their second attempted bombing outside of the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater (the first being an attempt in Spain). In a video statement the Pakistani Taliban said it was revenge for the “recent rain of drone attacks in the tribal areas.”30 A Taliban commander said of the attempted terrorist attack, “We were expecting this. They were desperately looking for revenge against America inside America.”31 An American intelligence official concurred and said, “Those [drone] attacks have made it personal for the Pakistani Taliban—so it’s no wonder they are beginning to think about how they can strike back at targets here.”32
Although Hakimullah Mehsud failed in his effort to avenge the death of his predecessor, Baitullah, on this occasion, he succeeded in another attempt: the infamous Camp Chapman bombing, an account of which reads like a story in a spy novel. (It was actually featured in the Hollywood blockbuster Zero Dark Thirty.) The Camp Chapman bombing actually has its origins in Jordan, where police had arrested a Jordanian doctor named Hamam al Balawi, who had been involved with extremist groups. The Jordanian General Intelligence Directorate turned Balawi and made him a double agent. Convinced that he was now working for them against the terrorists, the Jordanians offered him to their American allies. Their hope was that Balawi would travel to Waziristan and offer his services to al Qaeda. After being accepted, he could then reveal Ayman al Zawahiri’s location to the CIA, which could dispatch him with a drone.
Balawi began to work secretly for a CIA drone intelligence team based in Forward Operating Base Camp Chapman in the Afghan border province of Khost. There this “superstar asset” appeared to gain the trust of the CIA team handling him, so much so that he was once allowed on the base without being frisked. This lack of vigilance cost the CIA heavily on December 30, 2009. As Balawi arrived on the base, he was surrounded by CIA officers and contractors. When one of them belatedly went to pat him down, Balawi triggered a bomb hidden on his body and killed everyone around him, including the CIA station chief, a forty-five-year-old mother of three; two officers involved in the CIA Counterterrorism Center’s drone-targeting program; two contractors for Xe/Blackwater; one Jordanian intelligence officer, who was a cousin of the Jordanian king; and one other person. Virtually the entire CIA drone team at Camp Chapman was wiped out by Balawi, who was actually a triple agent still working for the terrorists. Today a photo tribute to the slain agents hangs in the CIA Counterterrorism Center’s Pakistan Afghanistan Department at Langley.33