How US drone strikes in Afghanistan led to increase terrorism in Pakistan? Reveals research study
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*ISLAMABAD - Recent research study has revealed that US drone strikes in Afghanistan led to increase terrorism incidences in Pakistan.*
*Drone strikes have a bigger impact on Taliban and Al Qaeda violence in Pakistan than in Afghanistan, researchers have found when looking at data from 2007 to 2011.*
An attack by the Taliban in Pakistan is 9% more likely to occur 5 days after a drone strike and 7.4% more likely to occur 6 days after a drone strike.
“We also find that Taliban violence in Pakistan is negatively associated with Taliban violence in Afghanistan,” they said, “[as] 0.02 fewer terrorist attacks occur 16 days after one terrorist attack in Afghanistan.”
Their findings were published in a research paper titled, ‘Are Drone Strikes Effective in Afghanistan and Pakistan? On the Dynamics of Violence between the United States and the Taliban link’. The paper is by David A Jaeger and Zahra Siddique and was published in CESifo Economic Studies, in December 2018.
America’s policy has been to use drones as the main weapon to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is how they carried out targeted killings of terrorists in both countries. This strategy was considered successful so America started using this tactic globally.
The CIA and its military greatly increased the use of drones around the world. Drone strikes have killed important Taliban leaders but their use has been unpopular in Pakistan because civilian casualties have been associated with them. People also think that drone strikes have caused the Taliban to retaliate against the general public. Baitullah Mehsud had said, for example, that they had attacked the Lahore police academy in 2009 as revenge for drone strikes.
Jaeger and Siddique examined the impact of successful and unsuccessful drone strikes (which did or did not succeed in targeted killing of a militant leader) on terrorist attacks by the Taliban. They found “strong effects of unsuccessful drone strikes on Taliban violence in Pakistan, suggesting important vengeance and deterrent effects”.
