Word: droning
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Pakistan's domestic militants have faced a four-pronged assault since last summer, with counterinsurgency campaigns by Pakistani troops in Swat, Bajaur and the town of Dara Adam Khel - home to a notorious militant arms industry - along with stepped-up CIA-directed missile strikes from pilotless drone aircraft. The seriousness of the Pakistani effort was underlined by the scores of casualties suffered by the military, particularly in Bajaur. The military believes it has the Taliban on the ropes in Bajaur and says the truce there is simply to give Taliban members an opportunity to surrender their weapons. The cease-fire...
...While the U.S. seeks to eliminate the sanctuaries inside Pakistan from which militants operate in Afghanistan, Pakistan's priority has been to restore its own security. And Islamabad's domestic-pacification effort has not been helped by U.S. tactics, particularly the militant-targeted missile strikes from pilotless drones, which have inflicted civilian casualties and fanned local anger. Amid last year's fighting in Bajaur, the Pakistani army protested a flurry of drone strikes against the compounds of veteran militant leader Jalaluddin Haqqani in North Waziristan, arguing that such actions would open up another front at a time when Pakistan...
...truth, Islamabad's protests may camouflage a tacit backing of the drone attacks, of which there have been more than 30 since August. Pakistan's governments have ritually condemned the attacks as "counterproductive," going as far as to summon the U.S. ambassador on one occasion. However, after Senator Dianne Feinstein inadvertently revealed to the Senate Intelligence Committee that the drones operate from a base inside Pakistan, it has emerged that the attacks carry Islamabad's silent imprimatur...
...government official have confirmed that the previous government agreed to allow the CIA to target militants operating on Pakistani soil. Both sources refused to be named because of the sensitivity of the information. "Musharraf gave them the base in Shamsi [in a remote part of Baluchistan] to use for drones, logistics, everything," says the current government official, who insists that the air strikes are "counterproductive" because they inflame public opinion against Islamabad's alliance with Washington. "We have inherited all these problems from the previous government. There is an opinion in Pakistan that says that the Americans are doing...
...complex web of alliances is also illustrated by the U.S.'s use of drones to target two groups of militants, led by Maulvi Nazir and Hafiz Gul Bahadar, based in Waziristan. These men, from the Ahmedzai Wazir tribe, which straddles the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, had formed an alliance with the Pakistani army against Mehsud and other militants. In fact, backed by the army, Nazir and his men had routed some 250 al-Qaeda-aligned Uzbek militants from Wana, in South Waziristan, in 2004. But despite their nonaggression pact with the Pakistani military, both men continued to mount cross-border attacks...