http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2011/06/death-ilyas-kashmiriAMERICA’S persistent, and increasing, use of drone attacks against suspected terrorists in remote parts of Pakistan remains immensely unpopular in that country. More so than the raid by American special forces, which killed Osama bin Laden last month in Abbottabad, the drone strikes incite fury: Pakistanis see their national sovereignty violated repeatedly and unlucky civilians killed in the process. Pakistan’s government, though acquiescing in the use of drones—reportedly even letting America launch some of them from its own soil—in public rejects them. American diplomats in Pakistan, at least on the record, are supposed to deny that such a programme exists.
Yet it is clear why the Americans use them: they work. Late on June 3rd, a drone strike reportedly killed Ilyas Kashmiri, a senior al-Qaeda leader, and several of his men, as they took tea in an orchard in South Waziristan. Officials in America and Pakistan alike are still wary of confirming Mr Kashmiri’s death: after all, he was reported killed by an American drone strike once before, in September 2009, only to reappear Lazarus-like a month later to give a gloating interview to a Pakistani journalist, Saleem Shahzad (who, in a gloomy coincidence, was himself was murdered a few days ago). But the death of Mr Kashmiri, if confirmed, would mean the Americans have notched up another serious blow against al-Qaeda, and one that could be welcomed unreservedly by Pakistanis, too.
The legend of Ilyas Kashmiri had been carefully cultured. The man wore dapper sunglasses and reportedly alternated the dye of his thick beard—from white to red to black—as part of a system of disguise. As with bin Laden, who took enormous care to craft his public image and so to bolster his standing among other militants and supporters around the world, Mr Kashmiri’s reported exploits over the years were mind-boggling. Trained by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, the ISI, he was deployed to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s (where he lost an eye) and then in the 1990s was encouraged to attack India, notably in his native Kashmir. He formed a militant group, 313 Brigade, which became famous in Pakistan for its ability to harass Indian forces. Bruce Riedel, who advises the American government on Pakistan, suggests that Mr Kashmiri was considered “an ISI hero” as late as 2000, especially after he walked into the organisation’s headquarters in Islamabad brandishing the severed head of an Indian soldier.
After 9/11, however, when Pakistan’s government allied with America in its fight against al-Qaeda, Mr Kashmiri and his militants broke away. Over the past decade he is rumoured to have been involved in attacks directed against the heart of the Pakistani establishment. A UN report suggested that he may have masterminded the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister, late in 2007. He probably attempted an unsuccessful plot or two a few years earlier against Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s military dictator. And he is widely thought to have had some role in the devastating attack late in May on a Pakistani naval base, Mehran, in Karachi which killed ten personnel and almost certainly involved insider support. The effect of that attack—especially given the ongoing drone programme and the unchallenged American assault against bin Laden in a cosy military town—was to further humiliate Pakistan’s armed forces.
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