Thread: U.S. Drone Hits Pakistan for 2nd Time in 12 Hours

U.S. Drone Hits Pakistan for 2nd Time in 12 Hours

By DECLAN WALSH and ISMAIL KHAN JUNE 12, 2014

LONDON — An American drone struck a militant compound in Pakistan’s tribal belt for the second time in 12 hours on Thursday, killing at least 10 suspected members of the Haqqani network in a suddenly intense resurgence of the C.I.A. offensive in Pakistan.

The American drone strikes, after an almost six-month lull in the operations while Pakistani officials tried and failed to negotiate a peace deal with the Taliban, come as Pakistan is mulling a new offensive of its own against militants in the northwestern tribal belt.

But early news reports on Thursday offered conflicting comments about whether the Pakistani authorities might have approved the drone strikes or worked in tandem with the Americans — a politically caustic idea in a country where the C.I.A. program is widely hated.

The strikes, both of which were reported to have killed Haqqani operatives, also came two weeks after the release of the American soldier Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had been a hostage of the Haqqanis for five years.

A former American military commander has suggested that Sergeant Bergdahl’s safety will give the United States more freedom to strike at the Haqqanis, who are fighting to overthrow the American-backed civilian government in Afghanistan.

Pakistani security officials said Thursday that a C.I.A. drone had fired six missiles at the compound four miles north of Miram Shah, the main town in North Waziristan. The attack, which occurred just after 2 a.m. on Thursday, targeted a building and an explosives-laden truck parked outside, they said.

Seven hours earlier, an American attack on the same compound had killed at least four people. Initial reports from that attack described the dead as mostly ethnic Uzbek fighters, but the second strike appeared to have been aimed squarely at the Haqqani militants.

The Haqqani group, led by Sirajuddin Haqqani, has carried out numerous attacks on American and Afghan security forces, as well as hotels and embassies in Kabul, the Afghan capital. The group’s strength derives in part from its sanctuary in North Waziristan, where it is believed to have held Sergeant Bergdahl for much of his five years in captivity, until his release on May 31 in exchange for five Taliban commanders held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The attacks on Wednesday and Thursday were an emphatic resumption of the American drone program in Pakistan’s tribal belt after a nearly six-month hiatus. The last known C.I.A. strike inside Pakistan took place on Dec. 25.

American drone strikes are deeply unpopular in Pakistan and are usually met with vehement criticism from the government, which on Thursday issued a pro forma statement that condemned both attacks as a “violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Still, the strike received no mention from lawmakers during national assembly proceedings on Thursday.

In private, some Pakistani officials say they quietly support drone strikes when they suit Pakistan’s perceived self-interest. On Thursday, Reuters quoted two unnamed Pakistani government officials who described the latest strikes as a “joint Pakistan-U.S. operation” that, they said, had the “express approval” of the Pakistani government.

But a senior Pakistani security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, insisted that the actions did not have prior approval from the Pakistani authorities.

The long lull in C.I.A. strikes coincided with a concerted effort by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government to draw the Pakistani Taliban into peace talks. But that effort has all but collapsed in recent weeks, undercut by tensions between Mr. Sharif and the military leadership and by a damaging leadership split in the Taliban ranks.

Moreover, an audacious Taliban assault on the Karachi airport on Sunday, resulting in 36 deaths, bolstered public support for a military operation. Any military operation is a political risk for Mr. Sharif, who fears a violent backlash in his home province, Punjab. His main political rival, the former cricket star Imran Khan, has been a strident critic of both American drone strikes and Pakistani military operations.

But in the days since the Karachi attack, military officials have hinted that plans are underway for a major operation, most likely in Waziristan. And the collapse of peace talks with the Taliban forced even Mr. Khan to concede, some weeks earlier, that force should be used against militants who refuse to lay down their weapons.

The Pakistani Taliban presented the Karachi airport assault as a joint operation with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which has firmly established itself in the jihadi firmament of Waziristan since September 2011. Pakistani officials said that at least three Uzbek fighters died in the C.I.A. strike on Wednesday night.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/13/wo...stan.html?_r=0

The strikes, both of which were reported to have killed Haqqani operatives, also came two weeks after the release of the American soldier Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had been a hostage of the Haqqanis for five years . . .

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