Yesterday’s drone strike in North Waziristan Agency, Pakistan, was perhaps most noteworthy among the dozens of US strikes in Pakistan’s border regions in that it killed a dual citizen of Pakistan and Britain, Rashid Rauf, a terror suspect who officials have sought to link to Ayman al-Zawahri after his death.
The strike is causing more than a little concern in Britain, where two lawmakers, one from the ruling Labour Party and one from the Conservative Party, are calling into question what role, if any, the British government played in the attack. MP Patrick Mercer expressed concern that the British intelligence agencies cooperated in “what is ultimately the execution of a British subject.”
Senior UK security sources are quoted in The Independent as insisting the killing was “a unilateral American action” without any British involvement. US officials seemed to confirm this, insisting that the intelligence from Pakistani authorities.
That may satisfy Britain about the killing of its citizen, but it will likely raise eyebrows in Pakistan, where protesters rallied against the latest strike and the government continues to present a decreasingly credible public opposition to US strikes.