Pakistan Says Drone Attacks Spoil Efforts to Isolate Militants

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601091&sid=aupqm_cJC7XU

 

Pakistan Says Drone Attacks Spoil Efforts to Isolate Militants

 

By Anwar Shakir and Paul Tighe

Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. drone attacks are ruining Pakistan’s efforts to isolate militants sheltering with tribes in the border region with Afghanistan, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said.

“Our top government and military people are very successful in driving wedges between the militants and the local tribes,” Gilani said, according to the official Associated Press of Pakistan. “But after every drone attack they close ranks again.”

Pakistan says the attacks targeting terrorist leaders have killed civilians, making it harder to win the support of the tribes for the fight against terrorism. The government has called on the U.S. to provide technology so it is able to use remote-controlled aircraft against militant bases.

Pakistan’s army is engaged in its biggest offensive against pro-Taliban militants in the South Waziristan tribal region. The operation has provoked retaliatory attacks and suicide bombings that have killed more than 300 people since mid-October in towns and cities, including the capital, Islamabad.

“If we want to fight against the insurgents in Waziristan, we will have to have the support of the people,” APP cited Gilani as saying in an interview with the news magazine Der Spiegel before he began a visit to Germany yesterday.

“We need enormous public support to defeat terrorism,” Gilani said. “We will not get that if the Americans interfere without us having asked for it.”

The drone attacks “do no good because they boost anti- American resentment throughout the country.”

Foreign Elements

The revolt in the tribal areas is driven by foreign elements, the prime minister said. The terrorists “are not Pakistanis, they are Uzbeks, Chechens, Arabs and Afghans.”

Pakistan has received about $7.6 billion in military reimbursements from the U.S. since 2001 for counterterrorism. The military campaign against the Taliban is costing the government more than $8.5 billion a year, Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin has said.

The International Monetary Fund in August agreed to increase a loan to Pakistan by $3.2 billion, after the country was forced to turn to the Washington-based lender for a $7.6 billion bailout in November 2008.

The U.S. Senate on Sept. 24 voted to triple annual economic and social-development assistance to Pakistan to $1.5 billion for the next five years.

Weak Recovery

While South Asia’s second-largest economy has “stabilized” as a result of the IMF program, the “best that can be hoped for is a weak recovery,” Kevin Grice, an economist at Capital Economics Ltd. in London, said last week.

Gross domestic product may expand 3 percent in the year through June 2010, “not much better” than the 2 percent growth of the previous 12 months, he said.

The army has killed 600 fighters, at least 7 percent of the main Taliban force, in the six-week-old offensive in South Waziristan, military spokesman Athar Abbas said yesterday.

As troops expand their control in South Waziristan, some Taliban fighters have escaped through mountain footpaths to regroup in districts near Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province, the military said.

Troops recently killed 71 militants fighting in the Khyber and Kurram districts, between Peshawar and the border with Afghanistan, officials said. The Tehsil Bara area in the Khyber Agency has been cleared of extremists, the Frontier Corps said late yesterday.

Militants also have been captured in Peshawar, police chief Liaquat Ali Khan said in a phone interview from the city.

Seventy soldiers have died in the campaign, Abbas said. The area is closed to reporters and casualty figures have been impossible to verify.