It looks like we got a top jihadi in Pakistan:
The officials said Badruddin Haqqani, who is also believed to handle the network's vital business interests and smuggling operations, may have been killed during a drone strike this week in Pakistan's tribal North Waziristan region.
But we're not sure.
Regardless of this strike, we are having success with drone strikes in Pakistan:
Should the U.S. continue to strike at al-Qaida's leadership with drone attacks? A recent poll shows that while most Americans approve of drone strikes, in 17 out of 20 countries, more than half of those surveyed disapprove of them. ...
As al-Qaida members trickle out of Pakistan and seek sanctuary elsewhere, the U.S. military is ramping up its counterterrorism operations in Somalia and Yemen, while continuing its drone campaign in Pakistan. Despite its controversial nature, the U.S. counter-terrorism strategy has demonstrated a degree of effectiveness.
I've been pleasantly surprised at our ability to keep hitting targets inside Pakistan.
I'll admit, as I've written many times over the last 4 years, that I'm surprised we are still hitting targets there. I figured that the unpopularity of our strikes in Pakistan would keep us from doing it enough to be effective. I assumed that our campaign at the end of the Bush administration was just to buy time during the presidential transition, and that it would taper off in early 2009.
Yet drone strikes continue in Pakistan's border areas despite the unpopularity of them in Pakistan and the opinion of much of the rest of the world.
The key has been that in areas where we conduct strikes: Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, there is no opposition from the top to exploit anti-drone sentiment. Somalia has no top, of course. Yemen needs the help since al Qaeda was a large portion of the enemy side in the civil war.
And Pakistan has felt the need to be our sometimes-ally against jihadis who they believe threaten Pakistan rather than America alone.
I worry that once we are largely gone from Afghanistan, Pakistan will no longer see an advantage in tolerating our drone strikes. Far from being a distant and clean weapon, drone strikes need intelligence on the ground and persistent aerial intelligence to provide good information on where (and when) legitimate targets are present. We don't get a participation ribbon for accurately blowing up a compound where a wedding reception is taking place 5 hours after the big jihadi convention wraps up.
Back in 2008, I didn't think that Pakistan's government would buck their public opinion against those strikes by our forces. But they did allow them, so we have had success with them.
There will come a time, however, when Pakistan's government will decide to stoke public opinion on drones rather than resist that opinion. What will we do then?
