US drones: Sharif in a tight spot

US drone strikes have long been a sticking point in US-Pakistan relations. The Obama administration considers these drones key tool in the fight against terrorism. To Islamabad, however, they represent a breach of state sovereignty and their tendency to kill civilians serves to undermine government writ in Pakistan’s tribal territories. If drone strikes are the crack running along the edifice of US-Pakistan relations, then US aid is the plaster used to mask it.
On hold since the 2011 Osama Bin Laden raid, the resumption suggested that Pakistan’s new Nawaz Sharif administration would defer back to the old dynamic of “US strikes, Pakistan condemns” with regards to the issue of extraterritorial drone strikes. And it might have done just that if not for a case of poor timing. Last week (Nov. 2), after four years of trying, the US managed to kill Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Tehreek-e-Taleban Pakistan (TTP), in a drone attack in North Waziristan. The strike came days after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced that government negotiators were headed to the tribal areas to initiate a peace process.
The Hakimullah strike has plunged Sharif into a trap of his own making. He campaigned heavily on ending US drone strikes during the general election that swept him into power, and though his recent trip to Washington was long on praise for US-Pakistan cooperation and solidarity, he still made it clear to reporters that he had stressed the need for ending drone strikes in his talks with President Obama.
In another case of curious timing, the Sharif visit coincided with a leaked memo being published in the Washington Post. The memo outlined tacit cooperation from past Pakistani governments on US drone strikes.
All this serves to increase the potential severity of diplomatic fallout from the Hakimullah strike. Sharif has essentially left himself with no other option than to come down hard on Washington. Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) is calling for another blockade of NATO supply lines into Afghanistan, even threatening to act independently in its capacity as ruling party of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. The prospect of another shutdown of supply routes through Pakistan would probably be taken seriously by the Obama administration.
Sharif has yet to comment one way or another on the PTI plan. The other casualty of the Hakimullah strike is the nascent peace process, which some would argue was doomed to begin with given the fundamental incompatibility between the TTP’s demands of Shariah law and guarantees within the Pakistani constitution. For one, the government’s impotence as a guarantor of security for a peace process has been laid bare. Whether one believes Sharif’s claims he received a US pledge to halt strikes during peace talks or not, the end result is the same: Washington believes that Pakistan should be fighting, not talking, with militants in its tribal regions.
Some media outlets have suggested that the Hakimullah strike could actually end up assisting the peace process, pointing to the inflexibility of Hakimullah’s views and the existence of more amenable personalities waiting in the wings. Khan Said, also known as “Sajna,” is one cited example. He became the group’s second-in-command after Waliur Rehman was killed by a US drone strike in North Waziristan in 2013. A more likely result in the short term, however, is that the new leader, whether Khan Said or Asmatullah Shaheen Bhittani, will defer to the more tried-and-tested method of going on the offensive to consolidate support within the movement. Ironically enough given his brutal modus operandi, Mehsud was more of a fit for peace than whoever his successor will be — at least for the time being.
In sum, the assassination of Mehsud has shifted the likelihood of success in TPP-Islamabad peace talks from “not likely” to “impossible” over the short term.
It has also put Sharif on the spot, as he now must choose between being a leader who backs up his tough anti-drone strike rhetoric with action, or one whose rote objections ring as hollow as those who he recently replaced.
Whatever form his decision takes, it will definitely be setting the tone for future relations between Washington and Islamabad.

-This article was written for IDN-InDepthNews.