Drone War

One of the frequent objections to the use of predator drones and their armaments to dispatch terrorists in Pakistan is that all we're doing is alienating the local tribesmen and thus creating more recruits for the terrorists. Strategy Page, however, offers a very different perspective on this:

While the Islamic terrorist groups in Pakistan's tribal territories are not happy with the six year CIA decapitation (kill the leaders) campaign, many of the local tribesmen are. Attacked by Predator and Reaper UAVs, armed with missiles, the terrorists (al Qaeda, Taliban and the Haqqani Network) have lost over 40 senior leaders in the last six years, most of them in the last three years. These losses are not only bad for morale at the top, but are seriously disrupting terrorist activities.

The locals love this, because the Islamic radicals have been nothing but trouble. For one thing, the radicals come across as a bunch of self-righteous bullies, and use their weapons to intimidate, or kill, anyone who crosses them. This includes coercing families to provide daughters to be wives of bachelor terrorists.

Then there is the terrorist tactic of using civilians as human shields for protection from the missile attacks. Here's where the CIA won hearts and minds, by scrupulously avoiding casualties among the innocent tribesmen. Moreover, the tribes eventually drew the line on human shields, bringing out their own guns and forcing the Islamic radicals to back off on hostages.

The locals also abandoned their compounds when the terrorists came by to spend the night. If the CIA hit the compound (after noting how the owners fled), the tribesmen blamed the Islamic radicals, not the CIA, for the damage.

The Islamic radicals know that the tribesmen have been cheering, not so much for the CIA, as against the radicals, but don't make an issue of it. On the surface, everyone is a good Moslem. But the local Moslems make no secret of wishing that the super-Moslems would go somewhere else.

The Afghan Taliban have created the same animosities, and American troops have long noted the pleas from local civilians to kill the local Taliban. This was often a matter of life and death for these civilians, because the Taliban would, if they were still alive after foreign troops left the area, come back and kill any civilians they believed had helped the foreign soldiers.

As with the war against al Qaeda in Iraq everyone benefits when one of these brutal thugs is eliminated and even though indigenous Muslims may prefer that it not be infidels to whom they should be grateful, evidently they're still glad that the infidels are doing it.