{"id":246247,"date":"2016-05-27T09:50:43","date_gmt":"2016-05-27T09:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-coming-drone-blowback-2\/"},"modified":"2016-05-27T09:50:43","modified_gmt":"2016-05-27T09:50:43","slug":"the-coming-drone-blowback-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-coming-drone-blowback-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Coming Drone Blowback"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The targeted assassination of Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour
\n last weekend wasn\u2019t just another drone strike.<\/p>\n

First of all, it was conducted
\n by the US military<\/a>, not the CIA, which has orchestrated nearly all drone
\n strikes in Pakistan.<\/p>\n

Second, it didn\u2019t take place in Afghanistan or in the so-called lawless tribal
\n region of Pakistan known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA.
\n The guided missile turned a white
\n Toyota and its two passengers<\/a> into a fireball on a well-traveled highway
\n in Balochistan, in southwest Pakistan.<\/p>\n

Prior to this particular drone strike, Pakistan allowed the United States to
\n patrol the skies over the northwest region of FATA, a Taliban stronghold. But
\n President Obama decided to cross this \u201cred line\u201d to take out Mansour
\n (and a
\n taxi driver, Muhammad Azam<\/a>, who had the misfortune to be with the wrong
\n passenger at the wrong time).<\/p>\n

Pakistani leaders have registered their disapproval. According
\n to former ambassador to the United States Sherry Rehman<\/a>, \u201cThe drone
\n strike is different from all others because it has not only resumed a genre
\n of kinetic action that is unilateral, but also illegal and expansionary in its
\n geographical theater of targeted operation.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, if the United States is sending drones after targets in Balochistan,
\n what will prevent it from taking out a suspected terrorist on the crowded streets
\n of Karachi or Islamabad?<\/p>\n

The Obama administration is congratulating itself on removing a bad guy who
\n was targeting US military personnel in Afghanistan. But the strike itself may
\n not produce any greater willingness on the part of the Taliban to enter into
\n negotiations with the Afghan government. Mansour, according to the administration,
\n opposed such negotiations, and the Taliban has indeed refused
\n to join talks in Pakistan<\/a> with the Quadrilateral Coordination Group \u2013
\n Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, the United States \u2013 unless foreign troops
\n are first removed from Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

This \u201ckill for peace\u201d strategy of the Obama administration may
\n backfire.<\/p>\n

According
\n to senior Taliban leaders<\/a>, Mansour\u2019s death will help the fractious organization
\n unify around a new leader. Conversely, despite such rosy insider predictions,
\n the Taliban could splinter and enable even more extremist organizations like
\n al-Qaeda and the Islamic State to
\n fill the void<\/a>. In a third scenario, the drone strike will have no impact
\n on the ground in Afghanistan at all, since the current
\n fighting season<\/a> is already underway and the Taliban want to strengthen their
\n bargaining position before entering talks.<\/p>\n

In other words, the United States cannot possibly know whether Mansour\u2019s death
\n will advance or complicate US strategic goals in the region. The drone strike
\n is, basically, a crapshoot.<\/p>\n

The strike also comes at a time when US drone policy is…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The targeted assassination of Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour last weekend wasn\u2019t just another drone strike. First of all, it was conducted by the US military, not the CIA, which has orchestrated nearly all drone strikes in Pakistan. Second, it didn\u2019t take place in Afghanistan or in the so-called lawless tribal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-246247","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}