In a statement that is close to Pakistan’s longstanding position, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has urged that the drones be used for what he called photography (for intelligence gathering) and that their use as a weapon must be subject to international law.
So what’s next? Will Islamabad now move a resolution in the UN or see to it that the force of the opinion generated by his words does not peter out as symbolic monologue? Not surprisingly, the Secretary General was concerned about civilian casualties, something that is far from sympathetic to US posture. The concerns are enough to call for their cessation or better still if a mechanism is worked out with which Pakistan is given the liberty to control the programme, the aspect of legality will be addressed to a certain degree.
But sadly such requests have been turned down in the past; and what is worse Islamabad has even been levelling the charge that the aerial attacks go so far as to discriminate between groups that are active in Afghanistan and those that are no harm to Pakistan.
But there is no guarantee that their use by Pakistani authorities would completely take out the element of civilian casualties. So even considered from that angle, they fall on the wrong side of the humanitarian law and hence the call to stick only to surveillance gathering purposes.
Notions such as the end justifies the means are only a dangerous precedent since already more and more countries are arming themselves with UAVs and not only that, some of them are intent on flaunting their new toys. At times just to provoke their opponents like Israel that recently carried out an attack in Syria. Ban Ki-moon’s exhortation that international law ought to be followed must be heeded, lest these UAVs and the lack of compassion that fuels them spiral out of control.