Yet, for a programme that is mostly murky and always controversial, there are several patterns that can be discerned over the years in the strikes.
Connecting those dots, it appears at the moment that there is renewed cooperation between the Pakistain military and the US administration/CIA on drones, for there has been very little by way of fierce verbal pushback by the Pak government over the latest strikes. Relative silence can certainly be interpreted as, at the very least, tacit acceptance and, possibly, active cooperation between the countries. In fact, from the general location of the strikes and their emphasis on North
Wazoo where the Pakistain Army is actively engaged in fighting myrmidons, it would appear that active cooperation is taking place -- for surely neither the US nor Pakistain could possibly want an errant US-fired missile hitting a Pak military target.Much of what can bring Pakistain and the US closer together in fighting militancy and terrorism is good for the bilateral relationship as well as a boon for counterterrorism in the region. However,
if you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning...
the connection between the tactical and the strategic has often been missing, so that while periods of intense drone strikes have damaged militancy networks in Fata, especially the two Waziristan agencies, they have never really extended to a convergence of overall interests of Pakistain and the US.
There is a sense then that the drone strikes programme and its details are handled in a compartmentalised way, where the only spill-over has been on the negative side rather than the positive side of developing a wider partnership with shared security interests.
Nevertheless, with Pakistain at long last having launched an operation in North Waziristan -- thereby necessarily disrupting the operations of Afghan-centric murderous Moslems with sanctuaries in North Waziristan -- and the US mission in Afghanistan vastly decreasingly at least militarily by the end of the year, there is also a possibility that renewed security cooperation, on drone strikes, for example, could lead to a closer understanding on other critical security matters.
A close Pakistain-US relationship may be anathema to some sections of the state and society here and Pakistain may have few real friends left in the US. But impatience, mistrust and suspicion cannot obfuscate the underlying truth: the US and Pakistain need each other. Going it alone has worked for neither Pakistain nor the US -- a reality borne out not just by the experience of the past decade and a half but over the course of this country's history. Better to cooperate than to posture -- especially when it's the murderous Moslems who stand to gain from the latter.