In September 2009, a high-ranking FATA Secretariat officer told a US diplomat at the nearby Peshawar consulate that the US could help an upcoming Pakistani military operation in South Waziristan with "continued [drone] strikes."
The FATA bureaucrat even offered a specific strategy.
"He explained that after a strike, the terrorists seal off the area to collect the bodies; in the first 10-24 hours after an attack, the only people in the area are terrorists," the Peshawar consulate officer, Candace Putnam, wrote.
"You should hit them again - there are no innocents there at that time,'" Putnam quoted the man as saying.
"The official also drew a diagram essentially laying out the rationale for signature strikes that eliminated terrorist training camps and urged that the US do more of these," she wrote.
Pakistani air force officials recently admitted during a closed-door parliamentary session - called to discuss the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden - that the US flies drones out of Shamsi airbase in the Balochistan province, according to news reports. The officials said the drones flown from Shamsi are for surveillance, and are not armed.
American Special Operations activity in Pakistan has been reported for years but never confirmed by officials in either country. Three US soldiers, who died in a February 2010 Taliban suicide bombing in northwest Pakistan, were among at least 60 to 100 Special Operations troops tasked with training the Frontier Corps in counterinsurgency techniques. Read More.
No comments:
Post a Comment