The reported death of Baitullah Mehsud could be the biggest boost for relations between Pakistan and the United States since they joined forces against al-Qaeda and the Taleban after September 11, 2001. It could also help to quell some of the public anger over US drone strikes, which are launched from secret bases in Pakistan with the Government’s tacit approval, but often kill civilians as well as militants.
Pakistan has pressed the United States for at least two years to use its Predator and Reaper drones to target Mehsud, who has been blamed for numerous attacks on Pakistani soil, including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
Until recently, the CIA was reluctant to comply, preferring to focus on monitoring or attacking Taleban and al-Qaeda targets who, unlike Mehsud, were seen as direct threats to American interests. One senior officer in Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency told The Times recently that a US drone had had Mehsud in its sights on at least one occasion but had not fired despite requests from Pakistan. That and other incidents had fostered the perception that Washington either had no interest in killing Pakistan’s enemies or was secretly supporting them. “What else could we conclude?” the intelligence officer said.
Under President Obama, however, there had been a change of thinking on Mehsud, especially after the Taleban took control of the northwestern region of Swat in April. US officials began to see the prospect of the Taleban taking over Pakistan or creating sufficient anarchy to seize its nuclear weapons as their single biggest security threat.
Intelligence also suggested that al-Qaeda leaders, pinned down by US drone strikes, were increasingly outsourcing terrorist attacks to Mehsud. The United States put a $5 million bounty on Mehsud’s head and began targeting him and other militants regardless of whether they had attacked American forces in Afghanistan.
“This is very positive news for Pakistan: some of this criticism of the US will now vanish,” Hasan Askari Rizvi, a Pakistani political and security analyst, said. “Those not affiliated with Islamic parties will do a lot of rethinking about drone strikes and about those people who accused the US of secretly supporting the Taleban.”
Mehsud’s death will not end the debate over drone strikes, which are still fiercely opposed by many Pakistani politicians, especially those from Islamist parties. Many moderate Pakistanis are also angry that their Government secretly allowed the CIA to launch drones from bases, including the Shamsi airstrip in Baluchistan.
The drone strikes are also controversial within the United States and among its allies, where many dispute their efficacy relative to the collateral damage they cause. Britainhas three Reaper drones in southern Afghanistan, but uses them only within that country as it considers strikes on Pakistan counter-productive.
Mehsud’s death will not disrupt the Taleban for long: there are many other rival or affiliated commanders waiting to take his place. But, more than any other event in the past eight years, it will convince at least some Pakistanis of the benefits of what they have long seen as a one-sided relationship.