Sartaj Aziz, a top aide for Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, says that despite a recent lack of US drone strikes, there has been no formal deal for the US to stop attacking Pakistani soil.
Sharif urged Obama to end drone strikes during his visit back in October, and Aziz suggested that President Obama may have finally gotten the hint, since there haven’t been many drone strikes in the past few months.
A bigger factor than Sharif’s comments may have been the massive protests in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwah Province, where demonstrators blocked NATO supplies to Afghanistan to protest the strikes. The blockade ended recently, citing the lack of recent strikes.
Drone strikes have been slowing in Pakistan for some time, but are spiking in neighboring Afghanistan, where the UN confirmed at least 45 civilian deaths from drone strikes in 2013.
