U.S. attacks on Pakistani villages draw mass response

CIA-controlled drones attacked two Pakistani villages on Jan. 23, killing at least 22 people according to reports in the Pakistani press. The Dawn, a Pakistani Web site, reported that President Asif Ali Zardari conveyed his concerns to the U.S. ambassador in a meeting that afternoon.

Between December 2007 and August 2008, when Pervez Musharraf was in power, there were only six U.S. missile attacks on the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) along Pakistan’s northwest border with Afghanistan. There have been over 30 U.S. missile attacks since August.

The Washington Post on Nov. 16 reported on a tacit agreement between the U.S. and Pakistan allowing the air strikes in return for suspension of commando raids. Both sides denied that such an agreement is in place, but Pakistan does not appear to have done much to stop the air strikes, other than issuing verbal protests. The strikes increased significantly after Zardari was elected.

According to the News of Islamabad, “Thousands of tribesmen on Saturday attended the funeral prayers of the victims of Friday’s drone attacks. ... They condemned the killings and asked U.S. President Barack Obama to spend the money on the welfare of the tribal people instead of killing them with sophisticated weapons.”

The News reported further: “Tribal militants and religious scholars present on the occasion were critical of the reporting of the international wire agencies and the national electronic media which, they said, reported that al-Qaeda operatives were killed in the CIA-operated spy-plane attack. They claimed that all those killed in the attack were innocent and local villagers, who had nothing to do with militancy or the Taliban.”

Other reports in the Pakistani press claimed that a number of children were among the casualties.

The outcry in Pakistan the day after the attacks took place confirms the repeated charge from high-placed Pakistani officials that these strikes “alienate the people from the U.S. and undermine the government in Islamabad.”

The U.S. media are also getting into the act, trying to portray the Pakistani government as not doing enough to be effective in the struggle against the Taliban.

The New York Times, in a front-page article on Jan. 25, described how a particularly repressive and brutal faction of the Pakistani Taliban has taken control of the Swat, a prosperous area south of the FATA, “within reach of Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Islamabad.” The article claims “The military must be conspiring with the Taliban” in Swat for them to be so successful.

Whether or not this claim is correct, the article does not examine how the anger created by all these U.S. attacks on civilians in Pakistan has been used by the Taliban to garner support.

What Pakistan and its neighbor Afghanistan need is an end to terrorist attacks from the U.S. military and the CIA, along with peace and economic development.