LAHORE: Drone attacks to target Osama Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan are futile, as the rogue leadership is not on this side of the border but in Afghanistan, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said on Sunday.
"If Osama was in Pakistan we would know, with all the thousands of troops we have sent into the Tribal Areas in recent months," Malik told The Sunday Times. "If he and all these four or five top people were in our area they would have been caught, the way we are searching."
Malik said that according to intelligence information, "Osama is in Afghanistan, probably Kunar, as most of the activities against Pakistan are being directed from Kunar."
The interior minister said the US attacks had only compromised "mid-level people, not the big fish".
"And they are counterproductive because they are killing civilians and turning locals against our government. We try to win people's hearts, then one drone attack drives them away. One attack alone last week killed 50 people," he said.
Malik argued that NATO troops in Afghanistan should have first sealed the border before stepping up the fighting. "If we can't seal it totally we should seal it as much as possible," he said. "If we can't have a wall, at least let's put up barbed wire."
However, US officials in Islamabad said the country was being "disingenuous" and was opposing the drone attacks only to win domestic support, but was actually "happy to benefit from them".
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