[Marxism] U.S. Bases UAV (Drones) in Pakistan as War Widens

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Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 10:07:40 
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Subject: [nousbases] U.S. Bases UAV (Drones) in Pakistan as War Widens


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-uspakistan13-2009feb13,0,4776260.story

>From the Los Angeles Times
Feinstein comment on U.S. drones likely to embarrass Pakistan
The Predator planes that launch missile strikes against militants are based in 
Pakistan, the senator says. That suggests a much deeper relationship with the 
U.S. than Islamabad would like to admit.

By Greg Miller

February 13, 2009

Reporting from Washington - A senior U.S. lawmaker said Thursday that unmanned 
CIA Predator aircraft operating in Pakistan are flown from an air base in that 
country, a revelation likely to embarrass the Pakistani government and 
complicate its counter-terrorism collaboration with the United States.

The disclosure by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate 
Intelligence Committee, marked the first time a U.S. official had publicly 
commented on where the Predator aircraft patrolling Pakistan take off and land.

At a hearing, Feinstein expressed surprise over Pakistani opposition to the 
campaign of Predator-launched CIA missile strikes against Islamic extremist 
targets along Pakistan's northwestern border. 

"As I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base," she said.

The basing of the pilotless aircraft in Pakistan suggests a much deeper 
relationship with the United States on counter-terrorism matters than has been 
publicly acknowledged. Such an arrangement would be at odds with protests 
lodged by officials in Islamabad, the capital, and could inflame anti-American 
sentiment in the country.

The CIA declined to comment, but former U.S. intelligence officials, speaking 
on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, 
confirmed that Feinstein's account was accurate. 

Philip J. LaVelle, a spokesman for Feinstein, said her comment was based solely 
on previous news reports that Predators were operated from bases near Islamabad.

"We strongly object to Sen. Feinstein's remarks being characterized as anything 
other than a reference" to an article that appeared last March in the 
Washington Post, LaVelle said. Feinstein did not refer to newspaper accounts 
during the hearing. 

Many counter-terrorism experts have assumed that the aircraft take off from 
U.S. military installations in Afghanistan and are remotely piloted from 
locations in the United States. Experts said the disclosure could create 
political problems for the government in Islamabad, which is considered 
relatively weak.

The attacks are extremely unpopular in Pakistan, in part because of the high 
number of civilian casualties inflicted in dozens of strikes.

The use of Predators armed with Hellfire antitank missiles has emerged as 
perhaps the most important tool of the U.S. in its effort to attack Al Qaeda in 
its sanctuaries along the Pakistani-Afghan border. A New Year's Day strike 
killed two senior Al Qaeda operatives who were suspected of involvement in the 
bombing of Islamabad's Marriott Hotel.

They were among at least eight senior Al Qaeda figures reportedly killed in 
Predator strikes over the last seven months as part of a stepped-up missile 
campaign.

Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, said Feinstein's 
comments put Pakistan's government on the spot.

"If accurate, what this says is that Pakistani involvement, or at least 
acquiescence, has been much more extensive than has previously been known," he 
said. "It puts the Pakistani government in a far more difficult position [in 
terms of] its credibility with its own people. Unfortunately it also has the 
potential to threaten Pakistani-American relations."

As chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Feinstein is privy to 
classified details of U.S. counter-terrorism efforts. The CIA does not publicly 
acknowledge a campaign against Pakistan-based extremists using remotely piloted 
planes, making Feinstein's comment all the more unusual.

Feinstein's disclosure came during testimony before the Senate Intelligence 
Committee by U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair on the 
nation's security threats. Blair did not respond directly to Feinstein's 
remark, except to say that Pakistan was "sorting out" its cooperation with the 
United States.

Pakistani officials have long denied that they have even granted the U.S. 
permission to fly the Predator planes over Pakistani territory, let alone to 
operate the aircraft from within the country. 

The civilian leadership that took over from an unpopular former general, Pervez 
Musharraf, last year, has gone to significant lengths to distance itself from 
the Predator strikes.

The Pakistani government regularly lodges diplomatic protests against the 
strikes as a violation of its sovereignty, and officials said the subject was 
raised with Richard C. Holbrooke, a newly appointed U.S. envoy to the region, 
who completed his first visit to the country Thursday.

But a former CIA official familiar with the Predator operations said Pakistan's 
government secretly approves of the flights because of the growing militant 
threat.

Feinstein prefaced her comment about the Predator basing Thursday by noting 
that Holbrooke "ran into considerable concern about the use of the Predator 
strikes in the FATA areas," a reference to what Pakistan calls its Federally 
Administered Tribal Area along the border with Afghanistan. 

Many Pakistanis believe that the civilian leadership, despite public anger, has 
continued Musharraf's policy of giving the United States tacit permission to 
carry out the strikes.

The CIA has been working to step up its presence in Pakistan in recent years. 
It has deployed as many as 200 people to the country, one of its largest 
overseas operations besides Iraq, current and former agency officials have 
estimated. That contingent works alongside other U.S. operatives who specialize 
in electronic communications and spy satellites.

In his prepared testimony Thursday, Blair said that Al Qaeda had "lost 
significant parts of its command structure since 2008."

greg.miller@xxxxxxxxxxx

Times staff writer Laura King in Istanbul, Turkey, contributed to this report.



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