Situation, Facts and Events
23.10.2024

Use of UAVs by Pakistani militants as a new challenge to domestic and regional security

At least six armed attacks have been carried out in the North Waziristan tribal areas of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in the past two months. Local authorities believe they were carried out using drone-borne improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The attacks targeted security facilities and transport infrastructure.
 
Although the incidents caused insignificant damage, the trend has raised concerns among local officials, who for the first time have acknowledged the use of drones by militant groups in Pakistan. Officials said the attacks were concentrated in the Mir Ali and Miranshah districts of North Waziristan Agency. No local group has officially claimed to have used drones in sabotage activities.

Local experts say the technology used by militants is still at an early stage of development: the IEDs appear to be homemade and detonated by a grenade attached to the drone. According to the results of the examination, the quadcopter found on site was manufactured by the Chinese company Da-Jiang Innovations. The use of unmanned aerial vehicles by terrorist groups can be traced back to at least 1994, when members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult attempted to spray the nerve agent sarin using remotely controlled aircraft with aerial spraying systems. However, the plan failed, as the aircraft crashed during testing. 

In 2002, there were a series of attempted drone attacks by Al-Qaeda: the first one involved Moazzam Begg who planned to launch a drone carrying anthrax spores against the British House of Commons. He was imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for planning the attack, but was released in January 2005, as the initial charges lacked credible evidence. A second attempt in 2002 involved using remote-controlled aircraft carrying IEDs against passenger airlines, but this also failed to materialize. 

A few years later, there were two incidents on September 13 and 14, 2005, involving terrorist groups operating in Pakistan. In the first case, Pakistani forces destroyed an Al-Qaeda hideout in North Waziristan. During the operation, troops seized a Chinese-made remote-controlled aircraft model that allegedly was used to locate Pakistani government security forces before carrying out strikes. There was also talk of using the aircraft model as a weapon using IEDs. The day after that, Ala Asad Chandia (Abu Qatada) was arrested in the United States for obtaining the MP 1OOOSYS electronic automatic piloting system. Chandia had been trained by Lashkar-e-Taiba and was later convicted of attempting to transfer the technology to the terrorist group for use in Pakistan.
 
Between 2006 and May 2012, there were two UAV-related incidents with al-Qaeda involved. In 2007, an American named Christopher Paul, recruited by al-Qaeda, conducted research into drones to see if they could transport weapons of mass destruction while planning terrorist attacks in Europe and the United States. The next incident, on September 28, 2008, was the arrest of al-Qaeda supporter Rezwan Ferdaus in the US state of Massachusetts. Ferdaus was caught while preparing a terrorist attack that involved smuggling scale models of F-86 Sabre and F-14 Phantom fighter jets packed with C-4 explosives into the Pentagon and Capitol buildings. 

The Islamic State (IS) terrorist organization carried out three terrorist attacks using UAVs in August and September 2014. The first incident occurred on August 23, 2014, near the Raqqa province in northern Syria. ISIS militants used a DJI Phantom FC40 for reconnaissance of Syrian Military Base No 93 before a ground attack. Video footage from the drone was later used in ISIS propaganda videos. A few days later, on August 30, 2014, an unspecified ISIS drone was used over Fallujah, Iraq, to film attacks on the city for online propaganda purposes. In an ISIS operation on September 12, 2014, in Kobani, northern Syria, another unspecified drone was used to film suicide bombers and ground attacks on the city for propaganda purposes. 

UAVs have long been perceived as a persistent threat by the leadership of foreign and regional terrorist groups due to their widespread use in counter-terrorism operations. However, the jihadists were also actively seeking to acquire the technology to use similar tools against their own enemies.
  
Thus, the first recorded Taliban drone attack occurred in November 2020. The strike targeted the residence of the governor of Kunduz, killing four people and leaving eight wounded. This case marked the beginning of a new phase in the Taliban's subversive activities.

Drone attacks then spread to the northern and eastern provinces of Afghanistan, primarily targeting government forces and pro-Western regime officials.

In 2024, a regional branch of ISIS known as ISIS-Khorasan (ISKP) published two brochures demonstrating quadcopters and how to use them in terrorist activities.

Although the recent use of low-power drones in Pakistan may be a localized phenomenon limited to the northwestern parts of the country, government officials fear that it could spread to more populated areas, particularly urban ones. If predictions come true, the use of drones by Pakistani militants would dramatically worsen the domestic security situation, and the regional terrorist threat could enter a new phase. 


Source: Институт Ближнего Востока