Saturday, December 1, 2012

Alternative to drones?

This is a big thing in Pakistan where it is being used to fuel Anti-Americanism and also saying that it is killing innocent people. I wrote an essay three years ago stating that Drones (unmanned armed aircraft) were a violation of sovereignty of Pakistan but after reviewing all the facts, I came to the conclusion that since the Laws of Pakistan does not apply there then there is no question of sovereignty. Some will have a big argument with that but anyway other question is that it kills innocent people. But since that area of Pakistan is inaccessible, we don’t know if it is true or not. The drones are being now used in Yemen too to kill the terrorists. Now the question is which remains unanswered is there any alternative to drones to hunt down terrorists? Right now I can say that there are some alternatives but they are more deadly than the drones. For example a foreign country can go into the next country for a full invasion which will entail more losses than the drones or we can send in Special Forces to hunt them down. But again this means gross and real violation of country's sovereignty. Other thing is that if the country in question can deal with terrorists amongst them then there should not be any need for drones but right now they are not doing or are incapable of tracking these terrorists/jihadists/militants (whatever you want to call them) and killing them and until such time they do their job, the U.S. will keep on pursuing these terrorists without much loss of life on our part through our use of drones (which is sometimes talked about being done with the tacit approval of the government and military of the Pakistan and Yemen). And now there is talk about expanding drones reach to Somalia or Maybe Mali, lets see what happens there? I guess drones are the future of war.

No comments:

Post a Comment