Take for instance Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani's statement on the floor of the National Assembly on Thursday, telling the United States point blank that "the drone attacks have serious implications for the relationship...are counterproductive... and should be avoided". He also sharply condemned special screening of Pakistani visitors at the American airports in what appears to be a test case of national pride and honour.
Almost simultaneously, the Senator Raza Rabbani-headed Special Committee on National Security finalised its deliberations asking the United States to "review its footprint in Pakistan" - that is to stop drone attacks and clarify its position on hush-hush private security contractors. While the committee had received comprehensive briefings from the Foreign Office and DG ISI, the Prime Minister was given a presentation by the National Command Authority. Both of them must be truly reflective of the exact nature of Pak-US collaboration in the war against terrorism.
But are they? Senator Carl Levin, the US Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, who was in Pakistan early this week and had met [US] military top brass and political leadership doesn't think so. He is "very unhappy". "What troubles me is the public attack on these drone attacks when at the same time they've privately obviously not told us that we stop.
They have not done that". According to him, the "minimum we should expect is a silence on their part rather than a public attack on us". Senator Levin had told the Pakistani leaders on their faces that "that's wrong". Even before this, the Western media would often come up with reports accusing the Pakistani leadership of two-timing on the issue of drone attacks. And there are also reports that for sometime the drones were taking off from airstrips within the Pakistan territory, a possibility that gets vicarious authentication from Defence Minister Ahmad Mukhtar's comment that no American aircraft flies from the soil of Pakistan 'now'. To keep building up this public posture on drone attacks is indeed a dangerous proposition and can boomerang.
We need to tightly calibrate our stance on the drone attacks. Yes, they do cause collateral damage. But the fact is that the Pakistan's air force and the army are also targeting the terrorists' positions and in that they too inflict considerable collateral damage. As to the commonality of interests of both the United States and Pakistan government in eliminating the curse of terrorism, there are no two opinions. The issue must be who is causing relatively less collateral damage. We don't want to go into polemics on this, though superiority of American drone technology is recognised all over the world. It was an American drone that took Baitullah Mehsud. Isn't it a dilemma that riding a crest of misplaced patriotism we are rejecting a technology which is most sparing in causing collateral damage. If at all we tend to see drones as symbol of foreign intervention, the best we should do is to ask the United States for this technology.
At the same time, we as a nation must evolve a mature, realistic approach towards the hydra-headed menace of terrorism and adopt a policy that is pragmatic-driven by no other interest except the national interest. Some of it is already there, in that almost major political stakeholders are on board as for the question of fighting out militancy irrespective of its origin and constituency. If anyone thinks if catapulted into power the PML (N) will not follow the suit, he is sadly mistaken. Then it is also true that no good general would like to change horses mid-stream. We would like to ask the leadership to persevere in this difficult, but only available course and patiently wait for results.