NEW YORK: A nearly two-month lull in American drone strikes in Pakistan has helped embolden Al Qaeda and several Pakistani militant factions to regroup, increase attacks on Pakistani security forces and threaten intensified strikes against allied forces in Afghanistan, the New York Times reported on Sunday citing US and Pakistani officials.
The insurgents are increasingly taking advantage of tensions raised by an American air strike in November that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in two border outposts, plunging relations between the two countries to new depths.
The Central Intelligence Agency, hoping to avoid making matters worse while Pakistan completes a wide-ranging review of its security relationship with the United States, has not conducted a drone strike since mid-November, the newspaper said.
Over all, drone strikes in Pakistan dropped to 64 last year, compared with 117 in 2010, according to The Long War Journal, a website that monitors the attacks.
Analysts attribute the decrease to a dwindling number of senior Al Qaeda leaders and a pause in strikes last year after the arrest in January of Raymond Davis, a CIA security contractor who killed two Pakistanis in Lahore; the Navy Seal raid in May that killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden; and the American airstrike on Nov 26.
Diplomats and intelligence analysts say the pause in CIA missile strikes — the longest in Pakistan in more than three years — is offering for now greater freedom of movement to an insurgency that had been splintered by in-fighting and battered by American drone attacks in recent months.
Several feuding factions said last week that they were patching up their differences, at least temporarily, to improve their image after a series of kidnappings and, by some accounts, to focus on fighting Americans in Afghanistan.
Other militant groups continue attacking Pakistani forces. Just last week, Taliban insurgents killed 15 security soldiers who had been kidnapped in retaliation for the death of a militant commander, the newspaper said.
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