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Pak ‘secret’ drone deal with US: Keep off camps training Kashmiri militants

The CIA-ISI plan Under secret pact between Pakistani spy agency ISI and America's CIA during 2004, the terms of the bargain were set, says a New York Times report Pakistani officials wanted drones to stay away from its nuclear facilities and the mountain camps where Kashmiri militants were trained for attacks in India Officials insisted they be allowed to approve each strike, giving them tight control over the list of targets

New York, April 7
In a secret deal, Pakistan allowed American drone strikes on its soil on the condition that the unmanned aircraft would stay away from its nuclear facilities and the mountain camps where Kashmiri militants were trained for attacks in India, said a media report.

Under secret negotiations between Pakistani intelligence agency ISI and America's CIA during 2004, the terms of the bargain were set, the New York Times reported today.

“Pakistani intel officials insisted that drones fly only in narrow parts of the tribal areas — ensuring that they would not venture where Islamabad did not want the Americans going: Pakistan’s nuclear facilities, and mountain camps where Kashmiri militants were trained for attacks in India,” the paper said.

The "secret deal" over drone strikes was reached after CIA agreed to kill tribal warlord Nek Muhammad, a Pakistani ally of the Afghan Taliban who led a rebellion and was marked by Islamabad as an "enemy of the state," the NYT reported, citing an excerpt from the book 'The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth'.

A CIA official had met the then ISI chief Ehsan-ul Haq with the offer that if it killed Muhammad, "would the ISI allow regular armed drone flights over the tribal areas," the report said.

The ISI and the CIA also agreed that all drone flights in Pakistan would operate under the American agency's "covert action authority", which meant that the US would never acknowledge the missile strikes and that Pakistan would either take credit for the individual killings or remain silent.

While Pakistani officials had in the past considered drone flights a violation of sovereignty, it was Muhammad's rise to power that forced them to reconsider their line of thought and eventually allow predator drones. — PTI