Drone attacks in Pakistan ‘backfiring’

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: The US drone attacks in Pakistan are backfiring and need to be called off, top adviser to the US army chief in Afghanistan David Kilcullen has said.

Responding to a congressman on what the US government should do in Pakistan, he said: “We need to call off the drones.” According to a report published in the Los Angeles Times, Kilcullen has no objection to killing “bad guys”. However, from a practical standpoint, he says the strikes are creating more enemies than they eliminate.

The newspaper has quoted him as saying that the drone strikes are “highly unpopular” and “deeply aggravating to the population”. He said they give rise to a feeling of anger that unites the population with the Taliban and could lead to “loss of Pakistani government control over its own population”. The newspaper noted that insurgents use the drone strikes to stir up anti-Western and anti-government sentiment. Another problem, Kilcullen added, was that “using robots from the air ... looks both cowardly and weak”.