Should drone attacks now cover Baluchistan?
U.S. assertions that the Afghan Taliban leadership is hiding in and around the Pakistani city of Quetta have raised fears among residents that American missile-firing drone aircraft could launch strikes on the area.
Fear grows of U.S. strikes in Pakistan’s Baluchistan | Reuters
The United States, grappling with an intensifying insurgency in Afghanistan, has carried out 41 drone strikes in northwestern Pakistan this year after 32 such strikes last year, according to a tally of reports from security agents, officials and residents.
Pakistani officials deny that a Taliban leadership council known as the “Quetta shura” is based in the Afghan refugee camps outside the city, capital of Baluchistan province that borders violence-plagued southern Afghanistan.
But as President Barack Obama ponders his options in Afghanistan, some U.S. officials have suggested the pilotless aircraft strikes be expanded from the northwest to Baluchistan.
Baluchistan, with a fragile ethnic mix of Baluchis and Pashtuns, is Pakistan’s biggest but poorest province despite having the country’s largest reserves of natural gas.
Many Baluchis resent what they see as exploitation of the province’s resources by richer provinces. Baluch separatist rebels have been fighting a low-level guerrilla war for decades.