The CIA just got kicked out of a major Pakistani launching pad for the drone war. But just because the agency is packing up its stuff like a dumped lover doesn’t mean the deadly flying robots will head home. They’ll just move to the airbases in nearby Afghanistan. Consider it the drone equivalent of crashing on a friend’s couch for a while.
If the CIA hasn’t totally vacated the Shamsi airbase near Quetta in Pakistan, it’s in the final stages of leaving. Pakistan’s deadline for the CIA to leave, an act of protest for a U.S. helicopter disaster that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, expired over the weekend.
But that’s not to say the drone war will end. Not even close.
The CIA would not comment for this piece. But as we wrote in July, the last time the Pakistanis demanded the U.S. leave Shamsi, the U.S.-operated airbase in Jalalabad happens to be right next door to pakistan. And the CIA already stages drone flights from it. The mega-airbase at Kandahar is yet another Afghan drone platform.
Danger Room understands that Afghanistan is going to be the new major hub for the drone war — at least until Pakistan decides to let the CIA come back after the bitterness from the helicopter incident subsides. Still, the CIA allegedly flies drones from two different Pakistani airbases, and reportedly, Shamsi had slowly been phased out as a primary base.
Still, the drone war appears to have slowed recently. According to the drone-watchers at the New America Foundation, there hasn’t been a strike in Pakistan since November 15. Bill Roggio, who monitors the drones for the Long War Journal, says that the war has actually been put on pause so as not to aggravate the Pakistanis further.
But that’s just a pause, not an end. Even if Shamsi’s gates are closed to Americans, Pakistan hasn’t taken extreme steps to shut the drone war down, like denying the U.S. overflight rights.
Washington’s relationship with Islamabad has been in a downward spiral since Navy SEALs invaded Abbottabad and killed Osama bin Laden. But Pakistani outrage is a cost of doing business for the war on terrorism. It might not take long for the CIA to show up outside Pakistan’s bedroom window with a boombox blasting Peter Gabriel so the drones can come back to Shamsi.
Photo: U.S. Marine Corps
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