Pakistani air force Chief Suleman had disclosed that Shamsi air base was under the control of the UAE.
The control of Shamsi air base in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province has become a bone of contention between Washington and Islamabad as the US has refused to vacate the base which is being used to carry out drone attacks in the Pakistani tribal areas.
A day after Pakistan’s Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar confirmed that the US has been asked to stop using the Shamsi base for drone attacks and to vacate the base, a senior US official in Washington maintained that neither the base would be vacated nor do the American military personnel plan to do so, leaving the government in Islamabad simply embarrassed.
The Pakistani demand for the US to vacate Shamsi predates the Abbottabad operation and bin Laden’s killing. It is traceable to the aftermath of the Raymond Davis affair in March when Pakistan got to know about the ramifications of the deep American intelligence penetration of insurgent groups and Pakistani intelligence agencies.
The Americans are adamant to use the Shamsi air base to launch drone attacks in the Pakistani tribal belt to hunt down al Qaeda fugitives. The question however remains: How can Washington defy Pakistan’s sovereignty over Shamsi? The answer lies in the fact that Pakistan doesn’t itself probably have control of Shamsi.
According to diplomatic circles in Islamabad, Pakistani air force chief Rao Qamar Suleman disclosed that the Shamsi air base was under the control of the United Arab Emirates. As a matter of fact, the air strip in Shamsi was originally made exclusively for the use of Arab sheikhs for falconry trips. However, the US had subsequently entered into a back deal with the UAE government and doesn’t consider itself answerable to Pakistan.
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