Life under drones in Pakistan

A conversation with Madiha Tahir

Madiha Tahir is an independent journalist who worked in Pakistan for two years covering conflict, culture, and politics. Her work has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Wall Street Journal, Democracy Now, and BBC and PRI’s The World. In July she gained some notoriety for surprising NSA recruiters at the University of Wisconsin with tough questions about the nature of the NSA. She is currently finishing a short documentary called “Wounds of Waziristan” about the stories of those directly impacted by the drones in Pakistan.

Paul Gottinger: Most of the US drone strikes in Pakistan are happening in North Waziristan along the border of Afghanistan. Could you give us some background on the culture and the way of life there?

Madiha Tahir: The dominant ethnic group in the area is the Pashtuns, who are fairly marginalized in Pakistan. In North Waziristan the states services are much less visible than in most of the rest of Pakistan. It’s an area that is governed by a different set of rules than the rest of the country. For example, the Pakistani constitution does not apply in the tribal areas (formerly known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA). The people in this area didn’t even have the right to vote until 1996, and it was only in this last election that political parties were allowed to function. The area is still largely governed by 1901 British regulations where people are legally subject to collective punishment policies. It’s really just colonial rule that the Pakistani state has inherited from the British.

The line the Pakistani state uses to justify governing the region like this is that they want to preserve Pashtuns by not interfering into their life. However, this is nonsense because since the time of the British the area has been governed quite heavily.

There are draconian laws, and the state intervenes in every aspect of people’s life. The people of the area have no way to ask for redress: the courts don’t function. So when the Pakistani military conducts operations and kills people, there is no ability to seek justice. Traditions like the jirga (a traditional system where elders gather and make decisions) have been thoroughly appropriated by the state for a long time. One example of this would be a tribe’s malik (their elder or tribal leader). A malik usually receives payment by the government for his services of keeping the tribe in check. He then doles out this money to people in his tribe. The control the malik has over money has a large affect on the societal structures of the tribe. This whole process has been taking place since the time of the British.

PG: What do people make of the Taliban presence in the area?

MT: People’s attitudes toward the Taliban are complicated. On the one hand everyone that I spoke to was incredibly angered by the presence of the US in Afghanistan. People were angered not just by the simple fact of the US presence, but specifically what the US is doing there. Things like the night raids have angered a lot of people.

People may or may not agree with the broader cause of the Taliban, but they are deeply angered by the conditions that the US occupation has created there. A lot of the groups have splintered within the tribal areas: there is a lot of infighting. As a result the social structure where age and hierarchy went together has broken down. Suddenly you have young boys who are part of these insurgent groups gaining power in a way that they didn’t before. This creates strains on tribal loyalties, family, and kinship loyalties, and people get stuck in the middle of the infighting. There are multiple levels of violence. The Pakistani military is killing people, insurgents are killing people, and on top of that you have drones.

PG: Does all of this represent a major change in the Pakistani government’s policy toward the Tribal Areas since the “War on Terror” has begun, or is this something that is more or less a continuation of previous policies?

MT: The Pakistani state has not provided these people with any services for a long time and has viewed this area as not part of Pakistan proper. The area is geographically and politically on the margins. The Pakistani state has also used the area as a staging ground for its own uses: the current US war in Afghanistan, the assistance of the US in the funding and creating the Mujahideen in the 1980s, and fighting with India in Kashmir are all examples of this. So the Pakistani state and the Pakistani military, which has the upper hand in all of this, has been using the area for its own ends for a very long time. This was just ratcheted up after the start of the US “War on Terror”, but the Pakistani state hasn’t been able to control the area as well as they thought they’d be able to.

PG: Can you talk about the victims of drone strikes and the effect drones have on the people of the area?

MT: Drones strikes have been going on now for almost a decade, in 2014 it will be 10 years. There is an entire generation that has grown up under the eye of the drones in Waziristan. People tell me there are multiple drones that hover during the day, but they usually tend to strike at night. You never know when they are going to strike, and that has created an incredible amount of psychological stress. Psychiatrists I’ve spoken with told me drones cause a different kind of stress than the stress caused by insurgent groups. They said the difference between the two is that with the insurgents you have a sense, whether it is true or not, that you have control. The thought is ‘as long as I stay out of your way, I don’t get killed.’ With the drones there is nobody on the other side. Clearly there is someone on the other side, but it’s not something that can be dialoged with. And you don’t know at what point you’ve been market, or why you’ve been marked, and when you are going to meet your death. This creates incredible, acute stress among people of the area.

PG: Is there a political solution possible in Waziristan?

MT: The US has to leave, but they also have to stop funding the Pakistani establishment, and they have to start taking the Pakistan civilian government seriously. The tribal areas also need to be incorporated into Pakistan. How this is done is up to them, but the services of the state need to be extended to that area. There is a whole range of socio-political issues, which need to be resolved. They will require money and also will among political leaders, but this is impossible as long as the United States continues its meddling, occupation, and funding of the Pakistani political establishment.

PG: What do Americans most need to understand about the drones in Pakistan?

People who I’ve talked to who have been directly impacted by drone strikes simply want the US to leave and for the bombing to stop. They don’t care about distinctions about if the CIA is bombing them or if it’s the military. If you’re standing in Waziristan these distinctions don’t matter. These people simply want the bombs to stop—end of story.

I also would connect the drones to the NSA surveillance that is happening in the US. The US watches everyone and has the power to determine who lives and who dies. Drones are surveillance technologies. There is a particular ideology that is imbedded in the surveillance state, which is that if you have the data you understand things. This idea that if you watch someone go to some certain place then you know that they are X, but in actuality you don’t know very much.

Paul Gottinger is a writer from Madison, WI where he edits The White Rose Reader. He can be reached at paul.gottinger@gmail.com