Evacuating Pakistan’s Remote Shamsi Airbase

In response to the NATO air strikes over the weekend that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, Islamabad is demanding that the US vacate a base inside Pakistan used to launch drone attacks in the region. Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with Spencer Ackerman of Wired.com’s “Danger Room” blog about the base and its strategic value.

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MARCO WERMAN: As we noted a bit earlier, Islamabad is ordering the US to vacate an airbase located inside Pakistan. American personnel have been told to leave the remote Shamsi airbase within the next two weeks. Spencer Ackerman is a senior reporter for “Danger Room.” That’s Wired Magazine’s national security blog. You know, a lot of people, I think, will find it surprising, Spencer, that Americans have been operating out of Pakistani territory to begin with. How long has this been going on, and how come Pakistan’s letting it happen?

ACKERMAN: Oh years, it’s been going on for. Shamsi is one of the major launching pads for the US’s drone war in Pakistan, and that cooperation has been going on since at least 2009. Basically there’s this two-step that’s going on whereby for public consumption, uh, the Pakistani government acts , you know, furious at any US military incursions onto its territory, like with the Osama bin Laden raid in May. But more regularly, in private, uh Pakistan assists the US with a rather furious and secret campaign of bombardment that’s been happening , using unmanned US planes commonly known as drones.

WERMAN: So is the Pakistani government serious when it says it’s going to oust the US from this area, which is a pretty remote area of Pakistan. I guess it used to be a falconry. Does it really want the US out now?

ACKERMAN: These difficulties in the US-Pakistan relationship tend to be characterized more by mutual acrimony than by sharp breaks, departures or finality. Losing Shamsi would be a serious inconvenience , uh, for the US drone [drug ?]war, but it wouldn’t stop it. The US has other options ,including across the border into Afghanistan; bases like Jawalabad or Kandahar also host US drones. The US could just base the war out of those, for instance. So, it remains to be seen how serious this latest flare-up will actually become.

WERMAN: Given what you call this two-step that the Pakistani government does, I wonder if it could be that for public consumption it’s ordering American troops out, and uh, in reality that perhaps the US could simply just stay there and be under the radar in all ways.

ACKERMAN: Well, it’s significant that, according to the Pentagon, a few other things haven’t happened, even despite this, uhm really as they put it, regrettable, loss of life in the killing of Pakistani soldiers. Pakistan hasn’t demanded more US military personnel leave Pakistan as happened after, I believe, the Raymond Davis incident where a CIA contractor killed a few Pakistani civilians earlier this year. And it also as I reported on “Danger Room” at wired.com today, hasn’t denied the US any access to its air space, which be a far more significant step impeding the drone war.

WERMAN: Meaning, it’s saying “OK, get out of this one base but you can still use our air space for drones or aircraft strikes.”

ACKERMAN: Exactly.

WERMAN: But so why is it allowing that to happen if it’s getting such heat from Pakistanis?

ACKERMAN: Well it’s an indication that the Pakistanis rely on the US for a variety of things, and they want to still rely on them. For instance, there’s a massive US civilian aid package to the Pakistanis, 7.5 billion dollars over five years; Pakistan’s premier jets in its air force are US-provided F-16s and they need consistent supplies of US spare parts to operate, and on and on down the list. The Pakistanis and the US governments don’t really like one another, but they also don’t like the idea of living without one another, either.

WERMAN: There’s one thing that seems as if it’s serious: Maybe you can set us straight on this and this is that the Pakistanis in response to the deaths of so many of its troops are now saying that it’s going to shut down this key supply route from Pakistan to Afghanistan. A supply route that the Americans use to bring gas and food among other provisions to Americans and allied forces in Afghanistan. How serious is that?

ACKERMAN: It remains to be seen. The Pakistanis shut down these overland supply routes, uh, repeatedly. They’ve done it several times, usually to protest one US military accident or another. At the same time, a tremendous percentage of US supplies, cargo, etc comes through Pakistan, so impeding that, particularly to fuel, is a major obstacle for the war. The Pentagon said today, repeatedly, that the war effort continues but it’s definitely something that weighs on their minds quite seriously.

WERMAN: The White House said today that the US relationship with Pakistan is complicated, but it’s important to maintain cooperation between Washington and Islamabad. Do indications show today that Pakistan believes the same thing?

ACKERMAN: Um, I think the more serious indication isn’t what the Pakistanis say but what they do, and if they’re shutting down supply routes but not forcing the US out of its air space, it’s going to continue to send this mixed message that it won’t actually end that relationship, but at the same time it wants to show the US that it considers the blood of its soldiers sacred and viable, and so it’ll raise the price of military accidents like this in the future.

WERMAN: Spencer Ackerman, Thank you.

ACKERMAN: Thank you very much for having me.

WERMAN: You can find Spencer Ackerman’s story for Wired magazine’s national security blog “Danger Room.” It’s at theworld.org.

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