Soon after CIA contractor Raymond Davis, who brutally murdered two Pakistanis, was released from prison in Lahore and whisked away to the safety of a US airbase in Afghanistan, CIA-operated Predator drones struck with a vengeance in North Waziristan's Datta Khel tehsil, killing 41 innocent Pakistanis and injuring another 15.
The victims were tribal elders and members of the Khasadar force who had gathered for a tribal jirga to resolve a dispute over the ownership of a chromites mine. Both the civil and military leadership have strongly condemned the outrage with the prime minister laying emphasis on the repercussions it would have on efforts to eliminate terrorism, and the COAS terming it an act of aggression against the people of Pakistan, which is "unjustified and intolerable under any circumstances."
These words of condemnation and the government decision to have the Foreign Office issue a demarche to the US ambassador, seeking explanation and apology for this reckless act of aggression, are important. However, words alone will not do. As it is, the people do not trust such public statements after different stories leaked out that the Pakistani leaders said one thing to the Americans in private and the opposite in public.
WikiLeaks disclosed that the prime minister had told the Americans they could continue with the drone strikes, and that for appearance's sake the government will make condemnatory noises in Parliament. Earlier, President Zardari was quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying that the drone operations had the tacit approval of his government. In his recent book "Obama's Wars", famous American journalist Bob Woodward reports that the president while discussing drone attacks had told the CIA chief "the collateral damage bothers you Americans, not me."
It is time for the government to take meaningful action in order to show to the people that it means what it says, and that protecting Pakistani lives is its primary concern. The carnage in Datta Khel has proved two things: one that the CIA operators of drones do not always have correct intelligence to act on. In the present incident all the victims were ordinary people who had gathered to sort out local affairs. Which confirms the veracity of the repeated public complaints that many of those getting killed in drone attacks are ordinary citizens. Secondly, it demonstrates once again, that CIA's drone operators are not so meticulous in determining the genuineness of intelligence they use for the attacks because the country's leaders care little for the security of their people.
It is for the government to prove otherwise; it must fulfil its basic constitutional responsibility to protect Pakistani lives. The 'tacit approval' for CIA operations must be withdrawn. If at all drone strikes are necessary to stamp out violent extremism, the government ought to assert its old demand that Pakistan should be given drone technology so that it could carry out the necessary operations itself. Had Pakistan been in charge of drone operations, all those people in Datta Khel would still be alive.