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Whither Pakistan?

The West might consider Pakistan an ally, but what is going on inside Pakistan is more than troubling (this is a democracy?) and what America, in particular, is doing to the country isn't reflective of an ally.   American drones killing local villager Pakistanis?     Steve Coll, writing in The New Yorker magazine, visits Pakistan and reports:

"Pakistan’s generals believe that one chronic problem is America’s drone-targeting policy. Many lethal drone strikes are not directed against a specific terrorist whose name is known and whose real-time location has been pinpointed. There are a few cases like that, but often the American drones strike more adaptively at what are known as “force protection” and “signature” targets.

A force-protection target can be a truck full of bearded men wearing turbans and holding rifles, driving toward the Afghan border. There are, as it happens, more than a few of these."

****

"As for force-protection targets, the Pakistanis ask why the American military can’t just track hostile trucks that might be heading for war in Afghanistan until they cross the border—and then strike them on Afghan soil.

Most analysts acknowledge that unilateral, cross-border drone strikes are destabilizing Pakistan. Yet Pakistan’s stability remains a putative goal of the American military campaign in Afghanistan. American troops must be in Afghanistan to help assure, through Al Qaeda’s defeat, the long-term stability of nuclear-armed Pakistan, but in order for the American troops to protect themselves, they must destabilize Pakistan. Is America destroying villages in order to save them again?"


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