Pakistan Still Wants Drones After Successful U.S. Strike

Reaper Drone

From The Hill:

Pakistan's prime minister reiterated the country's call for control over U.S. drone strikes even as a captured Taliban spokesman reportedly confirmed that the group's leader had been killed in an Aug. 5 American attack.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, who met with U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke in Islamabad on Monday, said the Obama administration should put the missile strikes by the unmanned aerial vehicles in his government's hands.

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My Comment: The hidden secret behind all of these Pakistani calls for controlling the drones in their territory is that they already do. The human operators that pull the trigger that unleashes the missile may be based in the U.S., but the intelligence is provided by Pakistani informers/agents, and the drones themselves are maintained on Pakistani territory.

I am also confident to say that in the command control hierarchy for these drone attacks, a Pakistani decision maker is (probably) somewhere in the loop.

So why is Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani asking the U.S. to have control authority for these drones. I think that it is a combination of PR .... telling the Pakistani people that they do not have control over the situation (when they actually do) .... and (2) to have another weapon system to be directed at India.

It is the #2 that the makes the U.S. reluctant to relinquish this authority.