New York, Apr. 7 (ANI): The CIA had carried out the first drone strike in South Waziristan in June 2004, which killed a Pakistani ally of the Taliban, and several others, as part of a secret deal with Pakistan, it has been revealed. Shortly after the attack, a Pakistani military spokesman claimed responsibility for the strike, saying that Pakistani forces had fired at the compound. That, however, was a lie. Nek Muhammad and his followers had been killed by the CIA- the first time it had deployed a Predator drone in Pakistan to carry out a “targeted killing”. Muhammad, who led a tribal rebellion, was marked by Pakistan as an enemy of the state. In a secret deal, the CIA had agreed to kill him in exchange for access to airspace it had long sought so it could use drones to hunt down its own enemies, reports the New York Times. Details of the strike that killed Muhammad, along with those of other secret strikes, are still hidden in classified government databases. The deal is critical to understanding the origins of a covert drone war that began under the Bush administration, was embraced and expanded by President Obama, and is now the subject of fierce debate. The deal paved the way for the CIA to change its focus from capturing terrorists to killing them, and helped transform an agency that began as a cold war espionage service into a paramilitary organization, the report said. The CIA has since conducted hundreds of drone strikes in Pakistan that have killed thousands of people, Pakistanis and Arabs, militants and civilians alike. In secret negotiations, the terms of the bargain were set. Pakistani intelligence officials insisted that they be allowed to approve each drone strike, giving them tight control over the list of targets. And they insisted that drones fly only in narrow parts of the tribal areas. Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, Pakistan”s top military spokesman, told reporters at the time that “Al Qaeda facilitator” Muhammad had been killed in a “rocket attack” by Pakistani troops. He dismissed suggestions that Muhammad was killed by the Americans, calling it “absolutely absurd”. (ANI)
