The Pakistan Army is once again cooperating with the US on drone strikes, a renowned expert on the country\u2019s military tells the Bureau in the latest edition of Drone News.<\/p>\n
Dr Ayesha Siddiqa, an Islamabad-based independent political and defence analyst,\u00a0told Owen Bennett-Jones that there had been a shift in attitude among Pakistan\u2019s rulers, who had until recently been opposed to the CIA\u2019s covert war in their country.<\/p>\n
The change happened following a change in the leadership of the Pakistan Army, Siddiqa said, a shift galvanised by the December 2014 Taliban attack on a military high school in Peshawar.<\/p>\n
Siddiqa said that the Peshawar attack had made the Pakistani military \u201cmuch more conscientious\u2026 in cooperating with the Americans, talking to them and saying: \u2018Look, we have a common problem here. And as long as you also target the Taliban that are bothering us we\u2019ll kind of give you the intelligence to help you with the drone attacks.’\u201d<\/p>\n
This new attitude has not prevented the Pakistani army from protecting and supporting specific militant groups however, Siddiqa said.<\/p>\n
In the podcast, Owen Bennett-Jones suggested\u00a0that\u00a0Pakistan\u2019s drones policy had returned to a situation similar to that which existed under General Pervez Musharraf at the start of the decade-long campaign \u2014 a tacit agreement between the US and Pakistan, a compromise allowing the strikes. Siddiqa agreed but argued that the current informal arrangement was \u201cbetter\u201d than before with the army now willing to give more concessions to the Afghan and US governments.<\/p>\n