Word: drones
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...advantage during this fight may come, however, from abroad. In contrast to the previous offensives in South Waziristan, there are signs of closer cooperation between Islamabad and Washington. Just hours before Ghani's Sunday announcement, a CIA-operated drone fired missiles near Makeen, Mehsud's hometown. Five suspected militants were killed. It was the 20th such strike this year. Since February, the U.S. has stepped up attacks on Mehsud and his allies, broadening its range of drone targets across the tribal belt. The day before the drone strike, Pakistani air-force jets were pounding the same area in retaliation...
...operation in the Swat Valley, the audiotape broadcast on Al-Jazeera accused Washington of "having planted new seeds to increase hatred for and revenge against America". The Marriott attack is believed to have been orchestrated by Usama al-Kini, a senior al-Qaeda operative who was killed in a drone attack on Jan 1. There is also obvious potential for the two allied militant groups to have collaborated in the attack on the only luxury hotel in al-Qaeda's birthplace...
...backcountry, but the military concedes that fancy technology is no substitute for human intelligence-gathering. In one instance, as another U.S. officer explains, a tower camera relayed live footage of what appeared to be an IED team busy at work after midnight. Approval was quickly secured for a drone strike. Then, to gain a fuller picture, the camera zoomed out to reveal a brickmaking factory just a few feet away. It was the Islamic fasting holiday of Ramadan, and the energy-depleted laborers were working late to avoid...
...machay will grow louder in Pakistani skies this summer. The arrival of more U.S. troops in Afghanistan will make it all the more important to deprive al-Qaeda and the Taliban of their safe haven in Pakistan. Obama is widely expected to authorize a broadening of the drone attack to include the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan and its capital, Quetta, where the Taliban high command is thought to be hiding...
...long term, the Pakistani frontier can be safe only when the tribes are more favorably disposed toward the U.S. and the Pakistani government than toward the militants. The U.S. hopes that can be achieved by supplementing the drones with development aid, much of it earmarked for the tribal areas. But can that money start working its magic before the resentments roused by the drone campaign metastasize into an irreversible jihad? On that question of timing may hinge the success or failure of a modern war fought in an ancient environment...