Predators

by Williams, Brian Glyn

  As the Taliban and its allies regrouped in the FATA, the United States’ attention began to be diverted toward the Iraqi ruler, Saddam Hussein. As early as February 2002 the United States began preparations for a massive invasion of Socialist-Baathist Iraq, which was said to have dangerous weapons of mass destruction. The head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), Gen. Tommy Franks, summed up this redirection of NSA satellites, special operations troops, and Predator drones from Afghanistan to Iraq as follows: “We have stopped fighting the war on terror in Afghanistan. We are moving military and intelligence personnel and resources out of Afghanistan to get ready for a future war in Iraq.” Franks described the downgraded mission in Afghanistan, a conflict that would soon become known as the “forgotten war,” as a “manhunt.”5 Eventually 75 percent of U.S. drones would be transferred from Afghanistan to the new theater of action in Iraq.6

  Shortly after the Iraq War started, one U.S. official said, “If we were not in Iraq, we would have double or triple the number of Predators across Afghanistan, looking for Taliban and peering into the tribal areas. We were simply in a world of limited resources, and those resources are in Iraq. Anyone who tells you differently is blowing smoke.”7

  In a fascinating incident in 2002, one of the newly transferred Predators entered an impromptu dogfight with an Iraqi MiG 25 Foxbat fighter plane. This was the first incident in which a UAV waged combat against a manned aircraft. Unfortunately for the drone, the faster-flying MiG jet fighter easily shot down the slow-moving Predator. The last thing the drone’s remote pilots saw on their screens back in the United States was a missile shooting toward their aircraft as their own missile streaked toward the oncoming MiG. Then the screen went blank as the MiG’s missile hit and destroyed the Predator.8

  But the Predator’s major headlines in 2002 came not from the new war in Iraq but from Yemen, where one of America’s chief al Qaeda enemies, Qaed Senan al Harethi, known as the “Godfather of Terror,” was planning terrorist attacks on the United States.9 Harethi had been a wanted man ever since 2000, when he had helped plot the al Qaeda bombing of the USS Cole, which killed seventeen sailors. The U.S. government had requested that the Yemeni government arrest Harethi, and so the Yemenis sent their troops to capture Harethi, who was living in the Marib region of Yemen with allied tribes. But the arrest attempt ended in disaster as Harethi’s tribal allies fought back and killed eighteen Yemeni police.10 This incident vividly demonstrated the limitations of trying to arrest terrorists in remote tribal regions where the writ of the government is not recognized. Similar calls for the CIA to arrest suspected al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists in the remote tribal regions of Pakistan overlook the impossibility of penetrating these regions and arresting militants among thousands of their armed supporters.

  Having failed to arrest Harethi, the CIA tried tracking him down using a Predator drone based in the French-garrisoned country of Djibouti as part of Combined Joint Task Force–Horn of Africa. The U.S. ambassador in Yemen also paid off some local tribesmen to keep track of Harethi’s movements.11 This two-tracked policy paid dividends on November 4, 2002, when the NSA’s Yemen-based Cryptological Support Group tracked Harethi down by monitoring his cell phone. The NSA told the CIA, “Here’s the general location. … We have the satellite phone, now go get the guy.”12

  A patrolling drone was rushed to the scene and spotted Harethi’s vehicle. As Harethi and his compatriots made their way out into the desert, their SUV was suddenly hit with a powerful Hellfire missile that carried enough explosives to destroy a tank. Everyone inside was instantly incinerated. According to one report, all that remained of the travelers was “a mass of carbonized body parts.”13 Harethi’s body was identified by a distinctive mark found on his dismembered leg.

  But that was not all. It was later discovered that the CIA had killed two birds with one stone, for one of Harethi’s companions was found to be none other than Kemal Darwish, the head of an al Qaeda sleeper cell based in Lackawana, New York. It so happened that Darwish was a naturalized U.S. citizen, which meant that the CIA had executed an American without providing him with a trial. U.S. government officials later claimed that they had not known in advance that Darwish was in the SUV, but as one official dryly put it, “it would not have made a difference. If you’re a terrorist, you’re a terrorist.”14

  The U.S. government’s views on the assassination had clearly come a long way since George Tenet’s cautious approach on the eve of 9/11, and this did not go unnoticed. The killing of an American citizen by the CIA raised eyebrows, as did the killing of a Yemeni citizen on Yemeni soil by a foreign intelligence agency. In many ways the Yemeni reaction to the targeted killing of two terrorists and their compatriots provided a foretaste of the reaction to the Americans’ more systematic campaign of drone assassinations in Pakistan’s remote tribal zones. Although the CIA’s operations to kill Harethi had had the tacit approval of the Yemeni government, the actual drone strike had been carried out unilaterally. Some members of the Yemeni government expressed unease with the way the CIA had acted on their soil and the opposition parties howled in protest about the violation of Yemen’s sovereignty.

  The Economist presciently predicted, “The relentless advance of technology means the use of pilotless aircraft to hunt down terrorists will become more appealing to America. … The attack in Yemen will not be their last.”15

  Criticisms and fears of an expanded campaign did not, however, faze the Bush administration. President Bush subsequently declared, “The only way to treat them is [as] what they are: international killers. … And the only way to find them is to be patient and steadfast and hunt them down. And the United States of America is doing just that. We’re in it for the long haul.”16 By defending the Yemen strike, the White House was serving notice of America’s bold intention to use the latest technology available to track and kill al Qaeda members wherever they were hiding. One did not have to be versed in geopolitics to sense that that would ultimately take the Americans to Pakistan.

  By this time it was clear to all that the main sanctuary that the United States was interested in denying to the terrorists was found in Pakistan’s FATA region. Even as America began its massive invasion of Iraq, which would see U.S. CENTCOM deploy more than 150,000 troops (compared to a mere ten thousand U.S. troops in the larger country of Afghanistan), the CIA persistently kept up the manhunt for the original target of the war on terror, bin Laden.

  When bin Laden and his number two, Ayman al Zawahiri, had themselves filmed in 2002 walking together in the mountains of what was presumed to be the FATA, the Americans were reminded of the importance of their unfulfilled mission. The U.S. State Department began to pressure the Pakistanis to do something about the fact that the world’s most wanted terrorist and many of his accomplices were hiding out in territory nominally under their control. The White House wanted the Pakistani army to enter the autonomous tribal agencies and hunt down al Qaeda.

  In July 2002 Pakistan responded to U.S. pressure by sending Pakistani troops to the FATA’s Tirah Valley (Kurram Agency) for the first time ever. Their aim was to capture bin Laden, Zawahiri, and other foreign fighters and terrorists said to be hiding there. From Tirah Valley they proceeded into the Shawal Valley of North Waziristan and then into South Waziristan. This incursion into the FATA was made possible after long negotiations with prickly local Pashtun tribes that had always enjoyed their autonomy.

  But as the Pakistani troops clumsily shelled compounds and hujras where the foreign terrorists and fighters were holed up, militants among the local Waziri and Mehsud Pashtun tribes rose up against them. The Pakistani army, it seemed, had inadvertently stirred the hornet’s nest. By this time the press began to speak for the first time of the “Pakistani Taliban.” These were ad hoc militias made up of local Pashtun fundamentalist militants, many of whom had gone to fight in Afghanistan on behalf of Mullah Omar’s Taliban regime. They were joined by hundreds of Punjabi militants who had fled to Pakistan’s remote agencies in 2002
, when President Musharraf, at the behest of the Americans, banned the Pakistani jihadi groups that had fought in Kashmir.

  In the FATA the militants began to organize resistance to the Pakistani army and to exert their own control. They extended their power through killings and intimidation. Any malik suspected of being a moderate, a secularist, or a supporter of the “apostate” Pakistani government was brutally murdered. Hundreds of tribal leaders were hunted down and killed in this assassination campaign, especially in the agencies of Bajaur and North and South Waziristan.17 The Pakistani ISI’s Taliban chickens had finally come home to roost. A typical report from the Pakistani press described this sort of creeping conquest by the informal Pakistani Taliban as follows:

  “Talibanisation has taken strong roots in Orakzai and the region is now run by the Taliban council, which has introduced sharia (Islamic) law,” tribesmen who have moved from Orakzai to escape Taliban-style rule told Daily Times on Tuesday. …

  They said the Taliban council had banned women from travelling outside their homes without the escort of male family members. “There is a ban on music and dancing during wedding ceremonies; working of NGOs; and development works,” they added. Each area now has its own Taliban chief and is patrolled by Taliban militants to keep the local population under the control of the TTP, the residents said.18

  Another report by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) captures the horrors faced by average tribesmen living under the harsh rule of the ever-expanding Taliban: “They [the Pakistani Taliban] were beheading people, they were shooting innocent people without any warning, they were terrifying us. … They were stopping our kids from going to school, they were kidnapping young boys. … With my own hands I have buried 18 people who were beheaded, even children. … They are not friends, they are not our allies, they’re our enemies, they are criminals, they are gangsters.”19

  The Agence France-Presse similarly reported, “‘Everything has changed in 10 years: most of the tribal leaders have been killed and the tribal system destroyed by the Islamists. We can’t dance any more, or play music at weddings,’ said Miramshah shopkeeper Qader Gul, 56. ‘Anyone who protests risks having a member of his family kidnapped, beaten or killed.’”20

  Having brutally achieved widespread control over many of the people and much of the countryside of the FATA by late 2003, the Pakistani Taliban prepared to resist the Pakistani army. The conflict came to a head in March 2004, when Pakistani infantry and mountaineering divisions tried to storm positions held by hundreds of Pakistani Taliban troops protecting al Qaeda fighters near the South Waziristan town of Wana. The Pakistani forces were convinced that al Qaeda leader Zawahiri was among the Taliban militants and were determined to capture or kill him. But the estimated three hundred to four hundred militants fought back ferociously from their compounds and killed between sixty and a hundred Pakistani troops, once again highlighting the difficulties in using conventional means to arrest terrorists in this sort of dangerous tribal region.21

  To defuse the situation, the Pakistani government did an about-face and signed the first of many placating peace deals with the emboldened Pakistani Taliban in April 2004. The man who emerged to sign the so-called Shakai Peace Accords on behalf of the local Taliban was a charismatic South Waziristani Pashtun tribesman named Nek Muhammad. He was said never to have retreated in battle and had earned the nickname “Bogoday” (the Stubborn One).

  Nek Muhammad had been forced to flee Afghanistan in 2001, when the United States invaded and the Taliban army melted away under U.S. bombs and Northern Alliance Uzbek cavalry charges. At this time Muhammad led many of his Arab and Uzbekistani jihadi compatriots across the Pakistani border to his native South Waziristan. There he and his fellow Waziri Pashtun tribemen offered the foreigners the hospitality of melmastiia. The Pakistani government insisted that the foreigners be turned over to them, but Muhammad adamantly refused to surrender fellow Muslim fighters to the U.S. puppet government of President Musharraf.

  As previously mentioned, soon thereafter the Pakistani government signed the Shakai Peace Treaty with Nek Muhammad, who interpreted this treaty as a capitulation by the Pakistani army. To sign the treaty, a Pakistani general actually flew to Nek Muhammad’s territory and symbolically recognized his authority by placing a garland of flowers around his neck. As part of the treaty, Muhammad was told he had to turn over foreigners in his territory, but he promptly declared that there were no foreigners in his lands to turn over.22 Nek Muhammad had thus broken a major stipulation of the treaty before the ink on it had dried. As if to pour salt in the Pakistani army’s wounds, at this time he also promised to launch terrorist attacks throughout Pakistan to punish the government for invading South Waziristan in the first place.23

  Like Mullah Omar, who refused to turn over bin Laden back in 2001, Nek Muhammad had made a decision to stand up to the Americans. No amount of military incursions or appeasing peace treaties could convince the Stubborn One to turn over his Arab and Uzbekistani guests. Instead, he began launching small-scale attacks on Pakistani troops and declared that his people had “fought a jihad against the Russians and before them the British. Now that the Americans are here we will wage jihad against them.”24

  As the Pakistani Taliban metastasized and began to threaten both Pakistan and the United States, it became clear that Nek Muhammad was the major impediment to joint Pakistani-U.S. operations designed to flush out al Qaeda operatives hiding in the tribal areas. For his part Muhammad seemed to relish the notoriety that came from his decision to stand up to both the Pakistani army and the Americans. In many interviews by the media, he boldly promised to wage total jihad against the Pakistani government and its U.S. allies. Safe in his inaccessible tribal land, surrounded by thousands of armed followers, Muhammad seemed untouchable.

  Then, on June 19, 2004, the Pakistani English-language newspaper Dawn reported that the Stubborn One had been killed two days earlier:

  Security forces have killed Nek Mohammad and four other tribal militants in a missile attack on a village in Wana, the regional headquarters of the South Waziristan Agency. “Nek Mohammad was suspected to be present in a hideout with his associates and our security forces acted swiftly on the information and that is how he was killed,” a [Pakistani] military spokesman said on Friday.

  Residents of Shah Nawaz Kot, a small hamlet about two kilometers south of Scouts Camp, said the 27-year-old militant was killed when his hideout was hit by a missile. The attack was reportedly carried out at 10pm on Thursday night when Nek Mohammad was taking dinner along with his colleagues in the courtyard of the house of his long-time friend, the late Sher Zaman Ashrafkhel, an Afghan refugee from his Ahmadzai Wazir tribe.

  Witnesses said that Nek Mohammad’s face bore burn marks and his left hand and leg appeared to have been badly injured in the explosion. “Why aren’t you putting a bandage on my arm,” were his last words, those accompanying Nek Mohammad to the hospital quoted him as saying.25

  Pakistani security forces were thus said to have “acted swiftly” to kill Muhammad with a surprisingly accurate missile strike at night. But the Pakistanis had never carried out such a precise, nighttime strike before, and military experts doubted they had the technology to do so. Pakistani reporters began asking questions in hopes of clarifying how exactly the Pakistani army had carried out this feat. The Dawn story suggested that although the Pakistanis claimed the strike as their own, in actuality it was conducted by an American drone flying from Afghanistan. After dutifully sharing the Pakistani military’s official version of the death of Nek Muhammad, Dawn contradicted the official claim:

  Witnesses said that a spy drone was seen flying overhead minutes before the missile attack. There were also reports that Nek Mohammad was speaking on a satellite phone when the missile struck, fuelling speculations that he might have been hit by a guided missile. The precision with which the missile landed right in the middle of the courtyard where Nek Mohammad and his colleagues were sitting, lent credence to the theory
. Locals said that the missile created a six feet crater.

  An associate of Nek Mohammad, who called the BBC Pushto office in Peshawar, also said that the tribal militant had been killed while speaking on a satellite phone. The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) declined to speculate on how the militant had been killed.

  “We have various means and a full array of weapons at our disposal. We have artillery that can fire with precision and we have helicopters with night vision capability which can fire guided missiles. But I am not going to give out operational secrets on how he was killed,” ISPR Director-General Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan told Dawn by phone from Islamabad.

  “Absolutely absurd,” was his response when asked about rumors that Nek Mohammad had been killed with the US assistance. “Intelligence is like a jigsaw puzzle, it does not come from a single source on a single time,” Gen Sultan said.26

  Despite the Pakistani military’s claims that it was “absolutely absurd” that the strike had been carried out with U.S. assistance, the eyewitness quoted in the Dawn article claimed to have heard a drone flying overhead just prior to Muhammad’s assassination. The witness also claimed that the victim was speaking on a satellite phone at the time of his death. It should be recalled that Harethi was previously tracked down in Yemen by the NSA after he used a cell phone. It seems likely that Muhammad was killed by a drone after making the same mistake. Clearly the Pakistani military was trying to deflect criticism away from itself for collaborating with the infamous CIA by claiming the strike as its own.

  Regardless of who actually assassinated Muhammad, no anti-American protests followed his death because the Pakistanis were successful in their efforts to take credit for the assassination. But CIA drones were operating from Pakistani soil at this time; in January 2003 a Predator had crashed after takeoff at the Jacobabad airfield in Baluchistan.27