About Those Drones Posted by Michael Cohen

My boss, Steve Coll has a interesting piece over at the New Yorker blog on the use of drones in Pakistan. Responding to a weekend op-ed by David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum in the NYT, which argues that the drone attacks are counter-productive because they are inflaming Pakistani public opinion and destabilizing the country, Coll says that both men are ignoring the domestic political importance of the US military going after Al Qaeda's leadership:

Even if direct U.S. action is grinding at Al Qaeda’s middle lists, it is at least responsive to the political, moral, and legal obligations of any American President—namely, to identify and respond to any “clear and present danger,” as national security law standards put it, to U.S. lives and interests. All of Obama’s intelligence and military advisers have identified Al Qaeda’s still-active planning of terrorist violence from Pakistani soil, led by Bin Laden and Zawahiri, as such a clear and present danger.

Coll gets to the nub of the problem I keep coming back to with the anti-drone argument - Kilcullen and Exum seem to place far greater importance on public opinion in Pakistan rather than the need to target Al Qaeda's leadership. Coll makes the argument that this is backwards from a domestic political standpoint; but I tend to think that from a national interests standpoint Kill/Ex's view might be wrong as well. For example, they say:

Having Osama bin Laden in one’s sights is one thing. Devoting precious resources to his capture or death, rather than focusing on protecting the Afghan and Pakistani populations, is another. The goal should be to isolate extremists from the communities in which they live. The best way to do this is to adopt policies that build local partnerships. Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies must be defeated by indigenous forces — not from the United States, and not even from Punjab, but from the parts of Pakistan in which they now hide.

I'm not so sure about this. Will protecting the Afghan and Pakistan populations necessarily make America safer - I think the jury is still out on that one. (The recent Pakistani counterattack in the Swat Valley has not necessarily made those more than 1 million refugees safe, but in the short-term it certainly has made the US feel a lot safer about Pakistan's political stability and dealt a serious blow to the Taliban). And is the course that Kill/Ex are advocating realistic in the near-term? Sure, it would be better if indigenous forces wiped out Al Qaeda, but in the 8 years since 9/11 that hasn't happened and I wonder how long the US should be prepared to wait for Pakistan to achieve that goal, particularly if we have the means within our midst to hasten that day. Should the goal of building up Pakistan's COIN capabilities and its effectiveness at governing the Swat Valley come at the expense of more direct and immediate US interests (even if they exacerbate Pakistan's problems in the short-term)?

Also, both men seem to minimize the importance of killing Osama bin Laden and decapitating the top Al Qaeda leadership. They use the experience of wasted resources being used to chase after Zarqawi in Iraq as a reason not to aggressively go after OBL. But my gosh, Zarqawi is not Osama bin Laden!

The reason why his elimination didn't end the violence in Iraq is because we were in the midst, not of an insurgency, but a civil war. There were others who could take Zarqawi's place - that is certainly not the case if we knock off Bin Laden. Killing OBL and other members of Al Qaeda's top leadership won't end the terrorist threat but it will certainly recast how we think about the war on terror. As Coll puts it, "If Bin Laden and Zawahiri are removed, it will be much easier not only to alter the rhetorical terms of American strategy in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region but also to rewrite the entire global narrative of counter terrorism inherited from the Bush Administration."

Exactly.

I wonder here if the COIN-advocates have become so wedded to the perceived success of their tactics in Iraq - and the efficacy of population-centric COIN - that they are confusing what precisely is in America's national interests. Is the focus on COIN tactics coming at the expense of what should be the US counter-terrorism strategy in Af/Pak?

America's interests in Af/Pak boil down to degrading Al Qaeda's capabilities, decapitating their leadership and preventing them from attacking America again.  I'm still having a hard time understanding how, for example, nation building in Afghanistan or Pakistan achieves that goal in the near-term - or even that the US presence there can ensure that this actually occurs over the long-term.

Of course, the US has another goal for the region: preventing a Taliban or Islamic takeover of Pakistan and ensuring that Al Qaeda is prevented from building a base of operations in Afghanistan. Kill/Ex argue that the drone attacks are further destabilizing both countries. But then shouldn't we figure out how to conduct the drone attacks more effectively rather than ending them altogether? Kill/Ex seem to be arguing that protecting population must trump other larger strategic considerations. I'm not sure I would see it that way; and I'm nearly positive that no American president (particularly one who has to run for re-election) will see it that way.

Can't we have a modicum of stability in Af/Pak - or at the very least ensure that US interests are protected -- without necessarily devoting fulsome resources to protecting the populations in both countries? Of course, this is many ways the crux of the COIN/CT divide.

This is not to say that Kill/Ex are wrong about the drone attacks. Perhaps the strategic benefits don't outweigh the costs - and maybe there is a better way to calibrate the program so it is more effective. My problem is not necessarily with the conclusion they draw, but the road they take to get there - and the way they balance US interests in the region.

Or perhaps I'm drawing the wrong conclusion . . . commentors please feel free to weigh in.

Comments

[war-bot]

nobdy understands paki public opinion!
not even the paki's.. how can u destabilize something thats already chaotic? there r stratifications in paki society that americans find impossible to see much less deal with. and then the paki isi/military who's side r they on?
whn its said civilians r kild by bots.. who's a civy?
woman and children provide logistical support and both can use
weapons.. thats modern warfare!

[Peace]

The only way to have a more effective drone attacks with less civivlian casaulties is to have more effective intelligence gathering whether it be spies of electronic ease dropping. This a more effective approach than COIN warfare since there is no foreign troops to antagonize the local population. Unfortunately the Obama administration seems to be taking the wrong approach by increasing troops in Afghanistan and firing an army officer, who specializes in the Arabic langauge, because he openly admitted that he was gay. This gay officer is an unfortunate loss because he would have been critical in any intelligence gathering operation against Al-Qaeda.

[dofus kamas]

Devoting precious resources to his capture or death, rather than focusing on protecting the Afghan and Pakistani populations, is another.this sentence is very good,

[Zathras]

Kilcullen and Exum are not wrong about the risks and downside of drone attacks on al Qaeda figures within Pakistan, but they don't address the question: Compared to what?

Whatever one thinks about the efficacy of counterinsurgency in Iraq, there is no American army to apply it in Pakistan. Getting the Pakistanis to apply anything like it would take many years under the best of circumstances. And we don't have the best of circumstances; the Pakistani public -- not just the government -- has been dismissive of the whole idea that terrorists operating from Pakistani soil is a problem they need to deal with. It wasn't until the domestic Pakistani Taliban infested Buner province, mere miles from the capital, that the Pakistani army suspended its preoccupation with the phantom threat from India long enough to strike back.

Drone attacks aren't a great tool against al Qaeda in Pakistan, but they're what we've got. An alternative to their use has to have more to it than doing nothing about international terrorists in Pakistan or proposing population security measures that American lacks the ability to initiate.

[Bob Narus]

All of which ignores the fact that the primary effect of our drone attacks is to slaughter innocent people. That's just evil.

[Don Bacon]

There's no evidence that Osama bin Laden, the official US bogeyman, is still alive. Seven years ago he had terminal renal disease and required dialysis every three days, pretty hard to get in a cave. Presidents Karzai and Musharraf said in 2002 that they believed he was dead, and President Zadari said the same thing recently. Anyhow, there is no evidence linking OBL to 9/11 -- the FBI 'Ten Most Wanted" page does not list 9/11 as one of OBL's alleged crimes. It's time to put away childish things and stop citing OBL as a threat to the US.

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This is not to say that Kill/Ex are wrong about the drone attacks. Perhaps the strategic benefits don't outweigh the costs - and maybe there is a better way to calibrate the program so it is more effective. My problem is not necessarily with the conclusion they draw, but the road they take to get there - and the way they balance US interests in the region.
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