Killer drones strike again in Pakistan

The remote-controlled war over Pakistan shows no sign of letting up: News reports say a missile fired by a U.S. drone struck a house in the Bannu district of North-West Frontier Province, killing five suspected militants. According to the New York Times, the attack Sunday night targeted the compound of a local militant commander, Taj Ali Khan, in the vicinity of Jani Khel; local sources and intelligence officials told the Times that two Arabs were killed in the strike. Bannu borders North Waziristan, usually described as a key transit route and safe haven for al Qaeda and Taliban. Five people were killed in a strike in the same area last November. This is the sixth reported instance of a U.S. drone attack since President Barack Obama took office, and the second such attack within five days. Last Thursday, missiles fired by pilotless U.S. aircraft struck a militant hideout and training camp in the Kurram tribal agency, killing at least 14 people. What started out as an extension of the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan has morphed into something else entirely: A "don't ask, don't tell" bombing campaign over Pakistan. And the surge in drone strikes there has raised serious questions about larger U.S. goals. As influential counterinsurgency adviser David Kilcullen recently told Wired.com, these kinds of strikes can be counterproductive -- and should only be used as a last resort. "Sometimes we might have to [attack with drones] -- but only where larger interests (say, stopping another 9/11) are directly affected," he said. "We need to be extremely careful about undermining the longer-term objective -- a stable Pakistan, where elected politicians control their own national-security establishment, and extremism is diminishing -- for the sake of collecting scalps." Meanwhile, militants managed to torch at least eight NATO supply trucks and damaged a dozen others in an assault on a convoy on the outskirts of Peshawar, capital of the North-West Frontier Province. The main land route to Afghanistan passes through Pakistan's lawless Khyber region; in recent months, militants have staged a series of dramatic attacks on NATO supply depots around Peshawar.