A report quoting top-secret CIA documents and Pakistani diplomatic memos has revealed that Pakistan’s top government officials have secretly endorsed the drone strikes and routinely received classified briefings on strikes and casualty counts.
Islamabad, Oct 24/Nationalturk -In a major embarrassment for Pakistan government, a report quoting top-secret CIA documents and Pakistani diplomatic memos has revealed that Pakistan’s top government officials have secretly endorsed the drone strikes and routinely received classified briefings on strikes and casualty counts.
American newspaper, The Washington Post quoted CIA documents and Pakistani diplomatic memos as saying that many of the drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas were prepared by CIA’s Counterterrorism Center specifically to be shared with Pakistan’s government.
Pakistan’s tacit approval of the drone program has been one of the more poorly kept national security secrets in Washington and Islamabad. During the early years of the campaign, the CIA even used Pakistani airstrips for its Predator fleet.
The files describe dozens of drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal region and include maps as well as before-and-after aerial photos of targeted compounds over a four-year stretch from late 2007 to late 2011 in which the campaign intensified dramatically.
‘Documents detail 65 drone strikes’
The newspaper said the CIA documents and Pakistani diplomatic memos detailed at least 65 drone strikes in Pakistan. The records expose the distrust and dysfunction that has afflicted US-Pakistani relations even amid the undeclared collaboration on drone strikes.
The earliest of the files describes 15 strikes from December 2007 through September 2008. All but two of the entries identify specific al-Qaeda figures as targets.
The campaign has since killed as many as 3,000 people, including thousands of militants and hundreds of civilians, according to independent estimates.
There have been 23 strikes in Pakistan this year, far below the peak in 2010, when 117 attacks were recorded. The latest strike occurred Sept. 29, when three alleged fighters with ties to the militant Haqqani network were killed in North Waziristan.
“Several documents refer to a direct Pakistani role in the selection of targets. A 2010 entry, for example, describes hitting a location at the request of Pakistan government. Another from that year refers to a network of locations associated with a joint CIA-ISI targeting effort,” the newspaper reported quoting highly classified documents.
It said several of the files are labeled as “talking points” prepared for the DDCIA, which stands for deputy director of the CIA. Michael J. Morell, who held that position before retiring this year, delivered regular briefings on the drone program to Husain Haqqani, who was the Pakistani ambassador to the United States at the time.
The CIA, according to Washington Post, also shared maps and photographs of drone operations in Pakistan that have not previously been shown publicly. “The maps contain simplistic illustrations, including orange flame emblems to mark locations of strikes. The photos show before-and-after scenes of walled compounds and vehicles destroyed by Hellfire missiles, some marked with arrows to identify bodies amid the rubble”.
The documents indicate that these and other materials were routinely relayed “by bag” to senior officials in Islamabad.
US drone attacks are said to be a constant irritant between US-Pakistan ties. Pakistan’s top civilian leadership has publicly reiterated its objections against the attacks and demanded end to US drone attacks, which they say are violating country’s sovereignty and integrity.
The revelations by Washington Post that the Pakistani government tacitly approved the strikes might embarrass Pakistan government.
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met US president Barrack Obama in Washington yesterday and raised drone issue with him. According to media reports, he demanded an end to drone strikes.
Earlier, few days back, a report by international human rights watchdog Amnesty International had said that some of the civilian killings by the US drone strikes amounted to war crimes and US must investigate them.
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Faiz Ahmad / NationalTurk Pakistan News
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