The Pakistani defense minister claimed the strikes were generating “anti-American sentiments” and creating “outrage and uproar among the people.” Another military official said that the missile strikes were “counterproductive” and “driving a wedge between the government and the tribal people.”8 Certainly there have been mass protests against the drone strikes, especially following the Damadola strikes. These may have turned local tribesmen against the government and certainly caused an uproar throughout the country.
Pakistani prime minister Yousuf Gilani described the strikes as “disastrous” and said, “Such actions are proving counter-productive to efforts to isolate the extremists and militants from the tribal population.”9 He also said, “We are trying to separate militants from tribesmen, but the drone attacks are doing exactly the opposite.”10 On another occasion he stressed, “The political and the military leadership have been very successful in isolating the militants from the local tribes. But once there is a drone attack in their home region, they get united again. This is a dangerous trend, and it is my concern and the concern of the army. It is also counterproductive in the sense that it is creating a lot of anti-American sentiment all over the country.”11
In other words, this high-ranking Pakistani official felt the strikes might align aggrieved tribes that lost civilians as collateral damage in drone strikes with the Taliban, which would be catastrophic for the wars in both the FATA and Afghanistan. The Pakistani army’s Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas similarly claimed that the missile strikes “hurt the campaign rather than help.”12 And Abdul Basit, a Pakistan foreign office spokesman, expressed his opposition to the strikes saying, “As we have been saying all along, we believe such attacks are counter-productive. They involve collateral damage and they are not helpful in our efforts to win hearts and minds.”13
This statement is an understatement when it comes to the damage done to America’s image in Pakistan. One has only to extrapolate how Americans would feel about the CIA killing real or suspected American extremists without trials in the United States (much less a foreign Muslim intelligence agency such as the ISI doing the same thing) to see how most Pakistanis feel about America’s secretive drone assassination campaign in their country. On several occasions Pakistanis anecdotally told me they “liked to know what was going on in their own backyard,” and this phrase seemed to have begun to circulate in regard to the drones. The secretive nature of the drone strikes and the CIA’s lack of accountability to anyone in its own government (much less the Pakistani government) disturbed many Pakistanis I met.
Thus, powerful figures in Pakistan see the strikes as undermining the country’s fragile civilian government and creating problems with the tribesmen who are caught between the drones and the Taliban. The undermining of the already unstable Pakistani government has grave strategic implications. For example, it is difficult for the Pakistani military to carry out its own anti-Taliban operations in places such as North Waziristan because the drone campaign makes it appear as if the army is doing so only in furtherance of U.S. goals. Pakistanis perceive their army as a “stooge” fighting fellow Muslims on behalf of the Americans.
The drone strikes also provide the Taliban with more reason to hate the Pakistani military and the United States. According to one Pakistani army officer quoted in the London Times, the drone strikes have provided the Taliban with a “huge motivation to fight against the Government and the army.” Another Pakistani general said, “We complained about it [the strike]. It was detrimental to our operations. I was about to mount an operation and the moment the drone did its attack I had to change dates. Our success lies with the writ of the Government and our popularity with the people. We have to take into account the influences and perceptions these people have.”14 Major General Abbas complained, “The US might have achieved tactical gains through the drone strikes, but they too had caused enormous damage to Pakistan’s efforts towards fighting the terrorism.”15 Similarly, progovernment tribal elders have pleaded for an end to the strikes because they “made them look like puppets” and “gave lie to the argument that we’ve made for a long time, this fight is theirs too.”16 Michael J. Boyle, an assistant professor of political science at La Salle University, summed up the previous Pakistani positions aptly: “Despite the fact that drone strikes are often employed against local enemies of the governments in Pakistan and Yemen, they serve as powerful signals of these governments’ helplessness and subservience to the United States and undermine the claim that these governments can be credible competitors for the loyalties of the population.”17
Criticism of the drone strikes is not limited to the Pakistani government. There has been no person more critical of the strategic setbacks caused by the drone campaign than retired admiral Dennis C. Blair, a former director of national intelligence. Since being forced out of his post in 2010 for voicing his criticism of the strikes, Blair has called for the CIA to hand over the drone campaign to the military. He went so far as to suggest that the United States “pull back on unilateral actions… , except in extraordinary circumstances.” He further said, “We’re alienating the countries concerned, because we’re treating countries just as places where we go [to] attack groups that threaten us. We are threatening the prospects for long-term reform raised by the Arab Spring… which would make these countries capable and willing allies who could in fact knock that threat down to a nuisance level.”18 Speaking specifically about the drones, Blair said,
As the drone campaign wears on, hatred of America is increasing in Pakistan. American officials may praise the precision of the drone attacks. But in Pakistan, news media accounts of heavy civilian casualties are widely believed. Our reliance on high-tech strikes that pose no risk to our soldiers is bitterly resented in a country that cannot duplicate such feats of warfare without cost to its own troops.
Our dogged persistence with the drone campaign is eroding our influence and damaging our ability to work with Pakistan to achieve other important security objectives like eliminating Taliban sanctuaries, encouraging Indian-Pakistani dialogue, and making Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal more secure.19
Blair has also said that there is “little point in killing easily replaceable foot soldiers if the cost is public outrage in Pakistan.” He believes that the reliance on unpopular drone strikes undermines America’s credibility in Pakistan and hurts the Pakistani army’s ability to gain support to fight the war to seize territory from the Taliban. The only way to keep from further alienating the Pakistanis, in Blair’s opinion, is to “put two hands on the trigger,” that is, allow the Pakistanis veto rights and a voice in choosing drone targets. The war against the Taliban, Blair thinks, cannot be won from the air; it can best be won with aid and assistance to impoverished villages in the FATA. This would help improve the U.S. and Pakistani government’s images and win over tribesmen who might be on the fence by offering positive instead of negative incentive. Blair also complained, “The steady refrain in the White House that ‘This is the only game in town’—reminded me of body counts in Vietnam.”20