News
Sunday, July 03, 2011
CIA idles drone flights from Shamsi airbase
* WP report says CIA suspended use of airbase three months ago but US personnel and Predator drones remain at the facility, with security provided by Pak military
Daily Times Monitor
LAHORE: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) three months ago suspended its long-standing use of an airbase in Pakistan as a launch site for armed drones targeting members of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, according to US and Pakistani officials.
The Washington Post reports that US personnel and Predator drones remain at the facility, in the southwestern province of Balochistan, with security provided by the Pakistan military, officials from both the countries said.
In recent days, Pakistan has publicly declared that it “ended” all US flights from the base in the wake of the secret US commando raid that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May.
But, US and Pakistani officials said the aircraft launches were halted in April, weeks before the Osama bin Laden raid, after a dispute over a CIA contractor who fatally shot two Pakistani citizens in Lahore in January. An American official said the CIA’s decision to suspend the launches was part of a US effort to “pay attention to the sensitivities” of the Pakistanis, who had objected to a claim of diplomatic immunity for the contractor. Although Pakistan has continued to voice sharp public criticism over the shootings and the bin Laden raid, officials from the two countries said the rupture in their intelligence cooperation has slowly begun to heal. Pakistan had reversed its freeze on visas for US intelligence officials, they said, and allowed dozens of CIA personnel to reenter the country.
All US drone strikes in the past three months have been launched from Afghanistan, in the vicinity of Jalalabad, according to the officials, who spoke about intelligence matters only on the condition of anonymity.
The New America Foundation, which tracks the strikes, has listed 23 such raids since the beginning of April, all but one in Pakistan’s tribal regions of North and South Waziristan. A June 20 attack was reported in Kurram, an area above North Waziristan along the Afghanistan border.
The drone programme has become increasingly controversial as the Obama administration has expanded its use beyond the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Lethal missiles have been launched from unmanned aircraft in at least five countries in addition to Pakistan – Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and, most recently, Somalia.
The military’s Joint Special Operations Command last week used a drone to attack what officials said were two senior members of the al-Shabab militant group near Kismaayo, on the southern Somali coast.
A US official said Friday that the two “killed last week in Somalia were looking to conduct attacks in Europe” and that the specific target was Britain, but declined to provide details indicating the imminence or specifics of any plans. Some initial reports indicated that the two militants had been wounded but not killed. Some international law experts and human rights groups have questioned the expanded use of drones and the legality of such strikes in countries with which the United States is not at war. In Libya, where the Defence Department said 42 drone strikes have been launched by US Predator aircraft as of Tuesday, the United States is operating under NATO command in a UN-authorised mission.
Some critics have also raised questions of morality and said the drone programme goes beyond the commonly accepted standards of warfare, because the “pilots” direct the aircraft remotely, often from half a world away in the comfort of secure facilities.Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk