When the CIA commenced a lull in drone strikes in late 2011, a group of Pakistanis launched an online petition calling for the Americans to restart their campaign in order to “save the lives of thousands.”87 Similarly a former Pakistani intelligence agent said, “Most of the population is a sort of hostage, and they know that these people have made our life miserable. They say—if there’s a correct target—good riddance.”88 A 2010 Deutsche Presse Agentur article on the drone strikes offers further evidence that some people in the FATA region who are terrorized by the Taliban and al Qaeda support the drone strikes:
The cooperation from reluctant Pakistani intelligence agencies might be due to constantly increasing pressure from Washington, but many residents in Pakistan’s tribal region have come to see the drones as a blessing.
“These drones give us a sense of protection—that there is someone who is doing something against these people who kill innocent people in the name of Islam,” said a resident of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, who asked to be identified as Shin Gul. Gul, 29, fears Taliban persecution if his real name was known. His brother was murdered two months ago when his father refused to marry his young daughter to a Taliban fighter.
“People in the tribal region have varying opinions on the drone attacks,” said Nasir Dawar, a North Waziristan journalist who has covered dozens of the strikes. “Some people think they are doing some good, and some believe they are killing innocent people and challenge the Pashtu national honour,” he said.
Dawar said he was convinced that the drone aircraft were mainly targeting the militants and that most of the civilians killed in the attacks were either from the extended families of the militants or victims of collateral damage. “I have never seen a missed hit,” Dawar said, adding that the strikes were creating panic and fear among the militants. Once used to moving freely, senior Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders are now being forced to spend their nights in sleeping bags under a tree in the fields or in a mountain cave and hold emergency meetings in a moving vehicle instead of a building, Dawar said.89
A recent report by the Jamestown Foundation based on interviews in the FATA, titled “Drone Attacks: Pakistan’s Policy and the Tribesmen’s Perspective,” supported these conclusions. After interviewing students from the region, the report concluded,
They agree that the government of Pakistan has no writ whatsoever over the tribal agencies. They hold the militant occupation responsible for:
■ Damaging their culture and traditions.
■ Eliminating their entire traditional and indigenous leadership.
■ Weakening the tribal society.
■ Occupying their houses by force.
■ Destroying their traditional and democratic institution of jirga (an assembly of elders that makes decisions based on consensus) and tribal code of Pashtunwali (“The Way of the Pashtuns”), instead replacing it with the militants’ own strict brand of Shari’ah.
■ Bringing destruction to homes and businesses by inciting Pakistani military operations.90
Regarding the drones, the Jamestown Foundation pollsters discovered that the interviewees thought the following:
■ The drone attacks are killing the leadership of those al-Qaeda and other militant groups who have made ordinary tribesmen and women hostages. Ordinary people are powerless against the militants and drones are seen as helpful by eliminating the militants and frustrating the designs of ISI.
■ The drone attacks have resulted in substantial damage to the militants, especially the elimination of the Arab and Punjabi leadership of al-Qaeda.
■ The drone attacks cause a minimum loss of innocent civilians and their property. The respondents appreciated the precision of such attacks.91
In addition the article stated,
The respondents expressed a strong desire for drones as a means to attack the leadership of the local Pashtun Taliban. Half of those who supported drone attacks said that people’s daily lives are affected most by the local Taliban and not the Arabs or other al-Qaeda militants who generally mind their own business, or have perhaps assigned the duty of harassment to the local Taliban. One of the respondents suggested that if only ten people amongst the leadership of the local Taliban were killed, the hierarchy of the organization would collapse like a house of cards.92
Christine Fair, an American scholar who visited the tribal zone, gave an account that backs up the Jamestown Foundation findings:
These FATA residents are strong proponents of the drones. They report that the drones are so precise that the local non-militants do not fear them when they hear the drones above as they are confident that they will hit their target. Locals attribute this precision in part to the placement of “targeting chips” which direct the ordnance to the exact location of the militants in their redoubts. The accurate placement of these chips requires local cooperation to provide the whereabouts of these militants. This has driven an important wedge between the locals and militants with the former shunning the latter.93
As these findings demonstrate, the notion that many in the West and the settled parts of Pakistan have of the FATA region being inhabited by pro-Taliban tribesmen who are driven to join the terrorist group en masse as a result of “indiscriminate” drone strikes is false. In fact evidence suggests that some of the Pashtuns of FATA who are most exposed to both the drones and the Taliban are the Pakistanis that are most tolerant of the former and intolerant of the latter. A journalist writing about the issue for Reuters reported, “What I have noticed is that at least some among the Pashtun intelligentsia say the drone strikes are precise, and that opposition to them increases the further away you get from the tribal areas.”94 Salman Masood, writing for the New York Times, said, “A lot of the people have pointed [out] that there have been lesser protests in the tribal areas over drones as compared to Pakistan proper. The issue has become a bit of a political football.”95 Farhat Taj similarly noticed the tendency for Pakistanis who live across the Indus River in Punjab and Sindh Provinces to be more intolerant of the drone strikes than the Taliban-dominated tribesmen from the FATA region. In an article in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, she wrote,
There is a deep abyss between the perceptions of the people of Waziristan, the most drone-hit area and the wider Pakistani society on the other side of the River Indus. For the latter, the US drone attacks on Waziristan are a violation of Pakistani’s sovereignty. Politicians, religious leaders, media analysts and anchorpersons express sensational clamour over the supposed ‘civilian casualties’ in the drone attacks. I have been discussing the issue of drone attacks with hundreds of people of Waziristan. They see the US drone attacks as their liberators from the clutches of the terrorists into which, they say, their state has wilfully thrown them….
The people of Waziristan have been complaining why the drones are only restricted to targeting the Arabs. They want the drones to attack the TTP leadership, the Uzbek/Tajik/Turkmen, Punjabi and Pakhtun Taliban. I have heard even religious people of Waziristan cursing the jihad and welcoming even Indian or Israeli support to help them get rid of the TTP and foreign militants. The TTP and foreign militants have made them hostages and occupied their houses by force. The Taliban have publicly killed even the religious scholars in Waziristan.