Pakistan to use its own drones

"Pakistan has a new weapon to combat the Taliban - a domestically made, unmanned aircraft that is expected to replace the country's use of controversial US drones."

India in response has purchased drones from Israel.

Watch the three minute video:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/09/200993101926435922.html

Does this mean that the Pakistani's are going to take more responsibility for the struggle against the Taliban? Will Pakistani drones take the heat off of the US use of drones in their region as they cannot blame Americans for civilian loses?

Discuss

 

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An odd moment in the news

Nope. Their eye is on India still.

Should we presume that "replac[ing] the country's use of controversial US drones", means no more U.S. drones would fly in Pakistani airspace?

If yes, there's your answer.

To the other, if you're more realistic, we'll still get blamed at least for the civilians our drones kill.

I'm not going to knock Al Jazeera for being Al Jazeera, but interestingly, the source report is dated September 3, 2009. A question arises, then: If Pakistan has a drone, why do they need American drones?

Former President Pervez Musharraf says Pakistan should be given drone aircraft so that it can take out top terror suspects without the help of the West ....

.... The former president said that Al-Qaeda has been significantly diminished in Pakistan, but the Taleban are thriving. Yet he believes that the unmanned aircraft which the U.S. uses to target key militants in Pakistan should be handed over to his country. They have been very controversial always, he said.

(Butt)

• • •​

Former Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf believes his country should be given drone aircraft so it can take out top terror suspects without the help of the West, he told FOX News in an exclusive interview ....

.... Musharraf said that Al Qaeda has been significantly diminished in Pakistan, but the Taliban is thriving. Yet he believes that the unmanned aircraft the U.S. uses to target key militants in Pakistan should be handed over to his country.

(FOX News)​

Okay, that wasn't the best citation for the cynical. Still, though, I'm amused that it's the same article, especially as Tariq Butt got a byline for it in the Saudi Gazette.

Anyway, those articles are dated September 9 and 10, 2009. A week after the Al Jazeera report. Interesting, that.
____________________

Notes:

Butt, Tariq. "US must give drones to Pakistan - Musharraf". Saudi Gazette. September 9, 2009.

"Musharraf: Give Pakistan Killer Drones to Target Terrorists". FOX News. September 10, 2009. FOXNews.com. September 14, 2009. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,548601,00.html

 

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That would be an increibly irresponsible decision to give Pakistan our drones. we all know that theyre not gonna use them, theyre just gonna reverse engineer them.

And how cant eh drones be controversial? The way theyre used can be, but they are all the same, and act upon their commands to the letter, how can they be controversial? The use of them CAN be.

 

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The US has grades of technology that are sold. The first, second or even third generation drones really aren't all that flashy.

~String

 

The predator grade tech is not sold to countries like Pakistan, no offense to anyone whom thought that an insult, its just a fact.

 

A very good question. I'd start off with notions like the nature and purpose of warfare.

Once upon a time, people just beat the shit out of each other with sticks and stones. That's how it was for most of human history. Swords, clubs, you name it: "No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between his shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style." (Steven Brust)

Guns? When the Americans decided to shoot the British officers instead of the rank-and-file, there was an outcry. That's not the fair or proper way to do a war, shouted the redcoats. You're supposed to line up within easy targeting distance, and then simultaneously shoot one another.

Eventually it became the "Bravery of Being Out of Range":

Hey bartender, over here;
Two more shots and two more beers.
Sir, turn up the TV sound:
The war has started on the ground.
Just love those laser-guided bombs;
They're really great for righting wrongs:
You hit the target and win the game
From bars three-thousand miles away.

Three-thousand miles away

We play the game
With the bravery of being out of range.
We zap and maim
With the bravery of being out of range.
We strafe the train
With the bravery of being out of range.
We gain terrain
With the bravery of being out of range.
Yeah, with the bravery of being out of range.
We play the game
With the bravery of being out of range.​

Drones are just another stage. I mean, think of a science-fiction future for a minute. Tiny, lethal drones swarming around one another, first at the asteroid belt, then at the moon, then in orbit, and finally they come to the cities. Spend however many quintillions of dollars you can building, programming, and arming the robots. People are still going to have to fight. What, you're going to reach the enemy capital and the people are just going to say, "Oh, well your drones beat our drones up in orbit, so we surrender."

And, yes, I admit there is a certain sense of logic in it, but why not just have the heads of state get together and play a round-robin chess tournament, then? It's pretty much the same thing at a fraction of the cost.

And then on Monday, you get an email saying President Douchebag is out and Premier Turdman from whatever country is now in charge. And on Wednesday, another one comes around saying that an insurgent has beaten Turdman in a head-to-head high-stakes game of lowball stud, so Bob Jankowski of St. Louis, Missouri, is now the President of All Things.

At least until Friday when his wife files for divorce and claims a community property stake in the Democratic People's Free Republic of Earth.

I mean, it would be easier that way. But there does theoretically come a point at which war is reduced to a phallic exercise in self-caricature, and the whole purpose is just to blow shit up.

I think of Wilde's criticism of people and charity:

They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.

But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty.​

For Wilde, "The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible".

It doesn't make for a straight transliteration to warfare, but something similar is afoot. In attempting to reduce the human costs of warfare, we trivialize the whole idea of war. A bunch of robots shooting the fuck out of one another? Hell, people pay for tickets to watch that sort of thing.

The proper aim, as such, is to reconstruct society on such a basis that warfare will be unnecessary. Not that it will happen anytime soon, but keeping war alive and amusing isn't going to do jack shit to bring peace and stability to the human endeavor.
____________________

Notes:

Wilde, Oscar. "The soul of man under Socialism". 1891. Flag.Blackened.net. September 14, 2009. http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/wilde_soul.html

 

How long before the Taliban make their own drones?

 

Ain't no martyr status handed out for piloting a drone...

 

spider, the taliban can barely find their ass with two hands, what makes you think any of them are particularly inteligent in any way whatsoever?

Theyre version of a drone is a car with a brick on the accelerator.

 

Do you remember when the Taliban were just a bunch of religious folk running Afghanistan? No wars with the west? They did not attack anyone and were trying to paste a fragmented Afghanistan together after years of resistance to Russian imperialism. They even eliminated the opium trade. Civilians were not slaughtered on a regular basis. They were the legitimate government of Afghanistan. How quickly we forget.

The issue is long past the details of ordnance. The issue today is one of occupation and resistance to occupation. Terminology such as "responsibility" and "struggle", accepted without thought is pathetic given that the Taliban never chose a "struggle". The occupation and conflicts have been running for so long now, and the influence of the US so ingrained that the conversion has now turned to whose drones are going to kill who, and who will get off the hook and who will get the blame.

The real question should be, what in the world are foreign troops still doing in the region?

 

Tiassa: Nope. Their eye is on India still.

I find it so strange they are still fixated on India when there is a threat in the country. Fight this battle first and then they can worry about India later. I’m also surprised that India responded by getting their own drones, surely they don’t want a Pakistan over-run with Taliban. Anyway...

Tiassa: Should we presume that "replac[ing] the country's use of controversial US drones", means no more U.S. drones would fly in Pakistani airspace?

Yes its to replace US drone activity in Pakistan.

Tiassa: A question arises, then: If Pakistan has a drone, why do they need American drones?

I don't find it so strange. It takes some time to use a new technology and turn over responsibility.

Strawdog: Do you remember when the Taliban were just a bunch of religious folk running Afghanistan? No wars with the west? The real question should be, what in the world are foreign troops still doing in the region?

Yeah well that was in the before time, the long long ago before US regime change. Well the troops are there and we have no reason to believe that the US will pull out any time soon. Why they are there is no longer relevant, what is relevant is how to get troops out.

Spidergoat: How long before the Taliban make their own drones?

Not very ambitious considering they can take over the country and have nukes.

 

Are you kidding? They put together bombs with cell phones, they are clever. how about a hang glider with a suicide bomber?

 

Remember, Hezbollah built and flew its own drones in the recent Lebanon war. Presumably they were very basic, little more than souped-up remote-controlled hobby craft. So before everyone panics or worries about drone capabilities, they should look into what the drones Pakistan wants to build are actually capable of doing. I for one am fine with this idea, I think Pakistan should have taken sole responsibility for hunting terrorists on its soil from day one, and if they'll commit to actually doing it this time, I don't see why America needs the controversy. Pakistan can displace a million of its own citizens and no one blinks, imagine if America did that how much outrage there would be.

 

Nope.

I remember the time when they were just a bunch of radicals rampaging around Afghanistan with the sponsorship of Pakistani intelligence and military, though.

They attacked lots of people.

Did you mean to say "they did not launch attacks on other countries?"

Because that is also false: they killed several Iranian diplomats. Which is an act of war, under international law, that nearly led to an Iranian invasion (hundreds of thousands of Iranian troops massed on the border before the Taliban backed down). Tensions with Iran flared again after Taliban-led incursions into Iranian territory.

Sure they were. The Taliban have publicly, regularly slaughtered civilians in every region where they have ever held power.

And if we include their "irregular" slaughters (such as the massacres that accompanied their re-taking of Mazar-e-Sharif), the total becomes even more bloody. It would be interesting to see estimates of how many Afghan civilians have been killed by the Taliban over the years.

For example, in the last year alone, the Taliban killed almost 1200 civilians, compared to about 800 killed by the coalition.

According to who? By the time of the American invasion, only a single country recognized them as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. Not coincidentally, this happened to be the same country whose military and intelligence services had previously installed the Taliban as their client rulers.

Who are the "occupiers," in Pakistan?

 

All of which was funded and run by the CIA. Part of an destabilization program, that continues to this day.

Yes, that is correct and remains a fact.

Yes. That is regrettable. These murders were committed by a criminal element within the Taliban forces, and certainly was not condoned by the Taliban leadership at the time. Remarkably Iran restrained itself from invading, unlike certain Western civilizations. And, of course, the fact remains, the Taliban did not attack another nation.

Yes, regrettably, Human Rights Watch uncovered evidence of some ethnic cleansing and atrocities that occurred under the Taliban. These incidents seem to be limited however. Nonetheless, I condemn this outright.

Can you identify your source please?

Most importantly, according to them. And most importantly, foreign nations had no right to intervene.

Those who violate national borders via aggressive military intervention. In this case, the US is guilty as sin.

 

That can't be right ....

I'm having a bit of difficulty with the statistic, but I did find an article from a Chinese news outlet, and while the markup is so fouled that you get the html instead of the actual web display, I was able to pull this bit from, well, seven years ago:

National Security Advisory Board of India on October 16 night decided at a meeting held by the Prime Minister that the 700,000 Indian troops would be withdrawn by stages for re-deployment as they had fulfilled the tasks entrusted to them. The decision was universally welcome by international community as soon as it was announced.

(People Daily)​

Is that right? Still? 700,000 troops on the border?

I mean, that can't be right. Anyone? Anyone?

Seven hundred thousand?

Fuck, I knew there were Indian troops on the border, but that number is staggering. If it's correct, suddenly I see why Pakistan is really nervous about diverting its own forces to fight the Taliban.

I don't disagree about time and implementation, but the idea of, "We have drones, so give us yours," doesn't make as much sense to me as, "We have drones, now get the fuck out."

I haven't looked into it yet, but I did catch an interesting bit on NPR the other day in which an analyst suggested that the whole Pakistani nuke fear is overplayed. Allegedly, the army is in firm control of the weapons (okay, makes sense), stores them unassembled in different locations (huh? why have a nuclear weapons program, then?), and isn't anxious to be ordered around by a bunch of zealots (more than understandable).

Yet here's an interesting question: So the Taliban makes enough progress that the Pakistani government falls. Religious extremism becomes the new authority, and the international community responds. But how do they respond? That's one thing that would probably get international troops into the country in a hurry, but what kind of outcome could we expect? Pakistani collaborators with the international community? House-to-house fighting against nationalist zeal? Would the Taliban, when cornered, actually blow up Pakistan in a nuclear suicide bombing?

It could be a long, hard slog, or it could be over in a flash. But I'm having a hard time coming up with a scenario that isn't ghastly.
_____________________

Notes:

Li Yan. "Why Does India Withdraw Troops from Indo-Pak Border Area?" People Daily. October 21, 2002. PeopleDaily.com.cn. September 14, 2009. http://english1.peopledaily.com.cn/200210/18/eng20021018_105296.shtml

 

Very VERY apt ... but who play's Max?

 

A tidbit from May, 2009:

Wikipedia states that an Indian division:

So if the above can be taken as a ballpark figure, it means 253,000 Indian troops are deployed on the Pakistan border.

It makes sense when you consider that this Falco UAV thing their going to build can apparently carry a payload of 70kg, whist the MQ-9 Reaper can carry 1700kg, which translates into:

In other words, they got a flying camera, not death from above.

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Interesting.
Apparently they actually do store the weapons disassembled:

I thought perhaps this referred to storing warheads seperated from the missiles which served as delivery systems.

 

A strange situation

Thank you. I hadn't thought to count that way. I was just looking for a bulk troop count like we get for our forces.

And 253,000 ... okay, so it's not 700,000, but that's the kind of number that would worry me enough to complicate the decision between standing off on the border against an incursion that probably won't happen but still might, and devoting those troops to combatting an internal threat that I can be comfortable the most powerful nations in the world wouldn't accept as victors.

In a fight between India and Pakistan, I would expect the UN to come down on India's side unless the invasion was completely egregious. But there is no way the United States and whatever partners in adventure they can rouse would let Pakistan fall to the Taliban and its cohorts.

Or so says my utter speculation.

That explains it, then.

I'll be damned. I guess it really is about the money. Well, okay, it gets Freudian from there, but still.

 

Can you support that claim.

It's not altogether bad speculation either (the part about not allowing Pakistan to fall to the Talibs).

IMHO a lot is made about Pakistani instability, but most of it comes from inside the government, not the people. The vast, VAST, majority of Pakistan's 180 million people are supporters of democracy, and still are to this day. Extremists in Pakistan seem to have fooled people into believing they are bigger than what they are.

Dr. Maliha Lodhi (former commissioner to the UK and ambassador to the US and possible contender for the Pakistani presidency sometime soon) lectures endlessly (and often appears on TV when the topic is Pakistan) on Pakistani security. She pointed out recently that if India and Pakistan somehow went to war, the US and Europe would intervene almost immediately because of the nuclear threat between the two.

I really don't know how the UN would come down on the issue. The UK and the US are closer to Pakistan. Russia, India and France are closer to India. China still technically has a border dispute with India, but really doesn't meddle too much between the two. IMO, they'd come down against none, or maybe against both.

My speculation: India is dying to get a permanent security council seat. A war with Pakistan would totally end any chance of getting one. India has EVERY reason to stay its hand with their not-so-friendly neighbor.

~String