Drone Kills Taliban Chief; Assassination Is Now Key To US Anti-Terror Ops

The assassination of Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour in Balochistan by a US drone on Saturday (21 May) signals one continuity and a possible discontinuity: the continuity is that under President Barack Obama extra-legal assassinations of suspected “terrorists” will be preferred over direct interventions involving boots on the ground. The possible discontinuity (and we can’t be sure of this as yet) is the US’s growing acceptance that Pakistan cannot be treated with kid gloves anymore. After Osama bin Laden, Mullah Mansour’s is the second major assassination where the US directly breached Pakistani sovereignty to get the man it wants.

The preference for assassination over capture and trial by the world’s oldest democracy points to one larger truth: the rule of law does not apply to the powerful. Not only is the US sanctioning extra-judicial killings at the level of its President, but the European Union, which has brought tinpot dictators and ethnic cleansers to justice at the International Court of Justice in the name of rule of law, is making no such fuss about its major alliance partner’s behaviour. This confirms that justice is about dealing with the lesson criminals and not a superpower. The fact that Europe too is facing terror threats from Islamists has helped stifle its collective conscience.

As Mark Mazetti demonstrates in The Way of The Knife, the CIA’s role changed post-9/11. The US’s international spy agency has morphed into a “killing machine” from being just an intelligence gatherer. While intelligence operations continue, the purpose of these operations is often about finding the right terrorist to kill, an idea captured best in Frederick Forsyth’s novel “The Kill List”. The CIA has thus come full circle: in the 1960s and 1970s, the agency was into plotting coups and assassinations, especially in Latin America, which the US sees as its backyard. From Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic to Salvador Allende in Chile, the CIA was about getting rid of “their SOBs” and installing “our SOBs” – a euphemism for pro-Russian and pro-US political groups.

Now, it is back to the assassination game in the name of dealing with terror. There will be a price to pay at some point, but right now the US seems to think that terrorists who can’t be captured or brought to justice should just be eliminated. This is the international version of our own “fake encounters”. Double standards are running riot.

The killing of Mullah Mansour on Pakistani soil has other implications. It is possible that the Pakistanis may have winked at some assassinations, including Osama bin Laden, when they were becoming a burden, and one can’t rule this out even in the killing of Mullah Mansour. The Pakistanis still have the Haqqani network and other terrorist groups to trouble the Afghans with. So the protests against the invasion of sovereignty may be just for the record.

But there could be a more important reason too: with Pakistan decidedly moving into the Chinese camp, the US sees a new cold war developing with China, and in this cold war it may need India more than Pakistan. In recent weeks, there have been moves to put India on a par with Nato allies when it comes to selling military technology. The US Congress has also blocked funding to Pakistan to buy F-16s, which can only be used against India.

We will have to check for more signs to check if the US disenchantment with Pakistan is for real, or just a brief message before the bonhomie starts again.

Image shows vehicle hit by drone strike in which Mullah Mansour was believed to be travelling (Credit: /AFP/Getty Images)