Predators take off from US bases in Pakistan--then strike Pakistanis
In January 2008, the United States' top intelligence officials traveled to Islamabad to request permission to hunt down militants inside Pakistan. The request was rebuffed by President Musharraf (NYT), but some analysts believe a quiet understanding was hashed out during that meeting. K. Alan Kronstadt, a specialist for South Asian affairs at the Congressional Research Service, writes in an April 2008 report that "three Predators are said to be deployed at a secret Pakistani airbase and can be launched without specific permission from the Islamabad government." Pakistan officially denies the planes exist, but reports of operational successes inside the country suggest a beefed-up U.S. presence in the tribal areas. In February 2008, the Washington Post reported that a CIA Predator had fired two Hellfire missiles inside Pakistani airspace three weeks earlier, killing a senior al-Qaeda commander. A month later, Jane's Defense Weekly reported that a strike by an unmanned aerial drone on March 16, 2008, killed fourteen people in southern Waziristan.
U.S. counterterrorism officials say such attacks are necessary. "In the past, it required getting approval from the highest levels," one former intelligence official familiar with targeting inside Pakistan told the Washington Post. "If you wait, the information is no longer valid." Some military analysts even advocate for increasing U.S. activity in the region. "Congress should encourage the CIA and other agencies in the [i]ntelligence [c]ommunity to take more active and aggressive measures to gather intelligence and act against al-Qaeda and Taliban militias [in Pakistan's tribal regions]," Steven Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, told lawmakers in April 2008 (PDF). But U.S. diplomats see things differently. According to Kronstadt, opponents of the policy, including some State Department officials, fear mounting Pakistani anger will eventually outweigh the military gains, a concern that is borne out in public opinion surveys. A national poll conducted in mid-2008 found that 74 percent of Pakistanis oppose direct U.S. military (PDF) action against Taliban and al-Qaeda militants. http://www.cfr.org/publication/16644/
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