General Advises Use of Drones to 'Kill' Taliban Leaders in Pakistan

By Newsroom America Staff at 9 Feb 2012

(Newsroom America) -- A longtime adviser to U.S. military commanders says it is essential the Obama administration change tactics and order wider use of spy drones to target and kill Taliban leaders hiding out in Pakistan.

Retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, who just returned from a two-week fact-finding tour of battlefields in Afghanistan, which included meetings with a number of commanders on the ground, said the change in strategy was imperative if the U.S. is to be successful there over the long haul.

"We kill them. We use drones to kill them, just like we did al Qaeda," Keane said in an interview with the Washington Times. "The president has to change the policy and issue a ‘finding’ that this is a covert operation under the province of the Central Intelligence Agency."

Earlier intelligence reports have said Taliban leaders operate out of safe havens in neighboring Pakistan, and use the cover there to direct operations through lower-level commanders against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

"A lot of these guys command from the rear, if you will, telling their guys by orders what to do and what not to do," a U.S. briefer said last year, the Times reported.

Up to this point, the U.S. has not targeted senior Taliban leaders out of fear of alienating Pakistan, whose intelligence service, the powerful ISI, helped put the Taliban in power in the 1990s.

Keane is recommending a strategy of utilizing covert operations to strike at Taliban leaders when they are located. That would necessitate the wider use of drones, the Times said.

"If we don’t start targeting the Taliban leadership now … the risk is much too high in terms of our ability to sustain the successes that we’ve had," Keane said.

"We cannot let that Afghan Taliban leadership that lives in Pakistan continue to preside over this war and recruit and provide resources," he added.

"We’ve got to get involved in disrupting those functions. We have to target them like we have done al Qaeda. We would not have to conduct on-ground operations, but we have to change their behavior by targeting them," Keane told the Times.

He said fears of destabilizing Pakistan are misplaced because the current strategy means "we are destabilizing Afghanistan, and that is really tragic."

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