In Pakistan, lethal drones could open a new front in militancy

Militant groups are byproducts of adverse circumstances and challenging operational environments. They survive and excel through adaptation, learning, innovation and resilience. As technology has evolved, these groups have been quick to embrace it to recruit, radicalize, fundraise, propagandize and perpetrate attacks. Terrorism is propaganda by the deed, i.e., it is about the theatrics of violence more than the violence itself. The groups continuously diversify their operational toolkits to retain an element of surprise in their attacks to draw attention to their ideological cause and grievances. 

Though militant and criminal actors in the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America have been using drones since 2016, their use in Pakistan’s threat landscape has been observed only recently. Though Al-Qaeda planned drone attacks in Pakistan using multiple unmanned aerial vehicles as early as 2013, law enforcement agencies foiled the plot. Likewise, prior to their return to power in Afghanistan, the Taliban constituted a 12-member secret drone unit comprising engineers and tech experts to alter and weaponize commercially available unmanned aerial vehicles, which successfully hit targets with small payloads from the air on the ground. The Taliban’s drone unit carried out six to seven attacks between 2020 and 2021, mostly targeted assassinations of anti-Taliban figures and hitting security checkposts. However, after coming to power in August 2021, the Taliban disbanded the unit. Other militant groups, especially Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Daesh-Khorasan, did not show a keen interest in weaponizing drones due to the easy availability of more lethal and battle-tested weapons, such as assault rifles, rocket propelled grenades, improvised explosive devices and suicide bombings. The other reasons for Afghanistan-Pakistan militant groups’ lack of interest in drones earlier could be the lack of expertise in modifying them into weapons.

In 2024, between July and August, Pakistani security forces observed the use of drones by a militant group in North Waziristan district targeting military convoys and camps. According to the Khorasan Diary, an online digital platform which tracks militant groups in South and Central Asia, six attacks have been reported in North Waziristan where explosive-filled bottles weighing 400-700 grams, laced with nails and ball bearings and attached to commercially available quad-copters were exploded with grenades. Furthermore, multiple videos have been circulating on social media, especially X, where militants can be seen operating commercially available drones. 

Other reasons for Afghanistan-Pakistan militant groups’ lack of interest in drones earlier could be the lack of expertise in modifying them into weapons.

Abdul Basit Khan

Though Pakistani militant groups’ experimentation with drones is in its incipient phase, it has been observed that non-state actors master the art of using emerging technologies after several try-and-fail attempts. Once they cross that barrier and hone the use of emerging lethal technologies, they aggressively employ them in their repertoires for attacks. Against this backdrop, a dangerous threshold has been crossed in Pakistan and it has some critical implications for the country’s internal security.

First, with technological advances as drones will become more efficient with enhanced battery timings resulting in longer flight durations, precise munitions adding to their lethality as well as lower costs and easy availability, militant groups will use them more frequently for attacks. The use of drones could allow militant groups to enhance their reach to Pakistan’s major urban centers and cause more harm without getting in the way of harm. In built-up urban environments, drones are hard to detect and even more difficult to interdict. 

Second, the successful use and employment of drones will attract vulnerable youth prone to radicalization with technological backgrounds toward militant groups. In the last two decades, research has established that people with natural sciences background have joined militant groups in greater numbers as compared to those with social sciences backgrounds. For instance, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog’s book Engineers of Jihad found that most of the educated people joining faith-based militant organizations in the 1990s and early 2000s had engineering backgrounds. At any rate, drone enthusiasts and hobbyists with a propensity toward radicalization could be drawn toward militant groups. 

Finally, in Pakistan’s competitive threat landscape, the reported use of drones by one group will pave the way for others to follow suit.

Pakistani authorities will have to closely monitor this incipient and dangerous trend and simultaneously work on two parallel tracks: a) devise strategies to counter drone warfare by militant groups, and b) pass laws to regulate the purchase of commercially available technologies with dual use. The above-mentioned trend points to the rapidly changing nature of asymmetric warfare in Pakistan where emerging lethal technologies will further empower non-state actors through democratization of violence.

– The author is a Senior Associate Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore. X: @basitresearcher.