VCheng
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Pakistan Issues Demarche to US over Drone Strikes - US Argues Strikes Legal
- Thread starter SajeevJino
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So did US followed or obeyed any of the above provision/rules/obligations of the UN charter???......Sorry to say but answer is: NONE.......
Solomon2
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So you now don't deny Pakistan's transgression but attempt to wield unsupported (if not unsupportable) allegations of your own.So did US followed or obeyed any of the above provision/rules/obligations of the UN charter???......Sorry to say but answer is: NONE.......
That's neither a logical argument nor a legal defense. Laugh it up, but do you think such an attitude, widely shared among your countrymen, increases the world's opinion of Pakistan or Pakistanis one iota?
خطے میں امریکی اقدامات اور منصوبوں کے بارے میں آپ کے ان بے بنیاد الزامات نے مجھے حیران کر دیا ہے. حقیقت یہ ہے کہ تحفظات، اختلافات اور تشويشات کے باوجود امریکہ پاکستان کے ساتھ بدستور تعاون کر رہا ہے تا کہ دہشت گرد تنظيموں کی محفوظ کمین گاہوں تک رسائ کو روکا جا سکے اور کئ مواقعوں پر القائدہ اور ان کے حلیفی گروہوں سميت مشترکہ خطرات سے نبردآزما ہونے کے ليے مشترکہ کاروائی کے حوالے سے ہماری ترجيحات کو اجاگر کيا گيا
۔
میں آپ سے گزارش کروں گی کہ دونوں ممالک کے مابين جاری ترقياتی منصوبوں، لاجسٹک سپورٹ، وسائل ميں شراکت اور امدادی پيکج کے حوالے سے اعداد وشمار کا بغور تجزيہ کريں جو ہمارے اسٹريجک تعلقات اور باہمی مفادات کی بنياد پر استوار ہونے والے طويل المدت شراکت کا منہ بولتا ثبوت ہيں۔
اور قول و عمل سے ریاست ہائے متحدہ امریکہ کی حکومت نے بھر پور طریقے سے اظہار کیا ہے کہ پاکستان کے ساتھ ہمارے تعلقات بہت ہی اہم اور ضروری ہيں. امریکہ حقیقی معنوں میں پاکستان کی سلامتی اور اقتصادی ترقی اور امریکی اور پاکستانی عوام کے درمیان مسلسل تعاون کی سمت میں وسیع پیمانے پر مصروف عمل رہا ہے.
افشاں ڈيجيٹل آؤٹ ريچ ٹيم يو ايس اسٹيٹ ڈيپارٹمينٹ
digitaloutreach@state.gov
U.S. Department of State
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۔
میں آپ سے گزارش کروں گی کہ دونوں ممالک کے مابين جاری ترقياتی منصوبوں، لاجسٹک سپورٹ، وسائل ميں شراکت اور امدادی پيکج کے حوالے سے اعداد وشمار کا بغور تجزيہ کريں جو ہمارے اسٹريجک تعلقات اور باہمی مفادات کی بنياد پر استوار ہونے والے طويل المدت شراکت کا منہ بولتا ثبوت ہيں۔
اور قول و عمل سے ریاست ہائے متحدہ امریکہ کی حکومت نے بھر پور طریقے سے اظہار کیا ہے کہ پاکستان کے ساتھ ہمارے تعلقات بہت ہی اہم اور ضروری ہيں. امریکہ حقیقی معنوں میں پاکستان کی سلامتی اور اقتصادی ترقی اور امریکی اور پاکستانی عوام کے درمیان مسلسل تعاون کی سمت میں وسیع پیمانے پر مصروف عمل رہا ہے.
افشاں ڈيجيٹل آؤٹ ريچ ٹيم يو ايس اسٹيٹ ڈيپارٹمينٹ
digitaloutreach@state.gov
U.S. Department of State
USUrduDigitalOutreach - Government Organization - Washington, DC | Facebook
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It is true that the drone strikes cause some loss of innocent life in Pakistan. There is some "collateral damage" that Pakistani's loudly complain about as being both unjust and an infringement on their sovereignty. However, by sheltering groups such as the Haqqani network, the Pakistanis are complicit in the much greater loss of innocent life occurring in Afghanistan due to "Haqqani strikes". The purpose of drone strikes is to stop Haqqani strikes in Afghanistan, which cause many women and children to die and be maimed, almost every day, including yesterday in Kabul. So, until and unless the Government of Pakistan makes a sincere effort to stop Haqqani strikes on innocent Afghanis, the drone strikes are moral and justifiable self-defense measures. Any loss of innocent Pakistani life is entirely the fault of the Government of Pakistan for refusing to stop the Haqqani strikes from emanating from its territory.
Abu Zolfiqar
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and what about anti-Pakistan groups that are thriving in NATO-occupied Afghanistan? what to say about them?
the same logic that NATO (US) applies on Pakistan vis a vis Afghanistan is the same logic PAKISTAN applies on NATO (and its HIGHLY unpopular, corrupt, puppet government in Kabul) vis a vis Afghanistan...as long as anti-Pakistan activity is being promoted and/or as long as NATO/ANA are unable or unwilling to do something to stop anti-Pakistan activity - Pakistan will take WHATEVER measures necessary to defend its national security interests.
there is a domestic threat, but there's a serious threat emanating from occupied Afghan soil as well.....weapons are coming in, fighters are coming in (including the Uzbek movements, which NATO has ignored) drugs and smuggled goods coming in, trafficked humans coming in......hell - as it is we have to deal with 3-4 million stateless refugee Afghans.
as i said - Pakistan will do whatever it has to, to survive in this hostile climate.....just remember that it is NATO that is occupying Afghanistan. You'd have to be on drugs to think there would be no resistance to it (the way they resisted the Soviets)
learn the history of Afghanistan
somebozo
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In the 90's these mullahs wanted to go to war with Amreeka..now why dont they bring their sorry *** out and fight against Amreeka???
Secondly, what was our state institution doing when these mullahs and terrorist were being mass manufactured in tribal areas???
And finally last but not least...why is NATO / ISAF and US Sleeping when these terrorists are crossing border from Afghanistan and taking refugee in Pakistan?
Afshan we all post and read in English here but I don't know where do you get this sense to make your posts in Urdu???
Secondly, what was our state institution doing when these mullahs and terrorist were being mass manufactured in tribal areas???
And finally last but not least...why is NATO / ISAF and US Sleeping when these terrorists are crossing border from Afghanistan and taking refugee in Pakistan?
Afshan we all post and read in English here but I don't know where do you get this sense to make your posts in Urdu???
AgNoStiC MuSliM
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New Republic: Drone War Reaching A Tipping Point
by JAMES JOYNER
James Joyner is managing editor of the Atlantic Council and publisher of OutsideTheBeltway.com.
In a speech April 30 at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, John Brennan, President Obama's counter-terrorism advisor, made a forthright defense of the drone war currently being conducted against Islamic militants in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. "As a result of our efforts," he declared, "the United States is more secure and the American people are safer." Brennan's argument deserves credit for its boldness. Unfortunately, however, there's good reason to doubt its veracity.
The first point in need of recognition is that while the Obama administration has long since dropped the phrase "Global War on Terror" from its lexicon, it has, through its amplified use of drones, escalated and expanded that war in all but name. On Monday, Brennan cited his administration's achievements — the "death of bin Laden was our most strategic blow yet against al Qaida" and "al Qaida's leadership ranks have continued to suffer heavy losses" from drone strikes inside Pakistan — but he also acknowledged that the government's strategic focus simply shifted elsewhere as a result. Yemen's al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has become "al Qaida's most active affiliate and it continues to seek the opportunity to strike our homeland." Additionally, he pointed out, al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has a growing presence in North and West Africa, while the al Qaida affiliate Boko Haram is gaining steam in Nigeria.
The wider the drone war spreads, however, the more scrutiny it deserves. After all, strikes aimed at truly high-value targets like Osama bin Laden and other major terrorist leaders make obvious tactical and strategic sense. But willy-nilly targeting of people fitting a militant signature is quite likely do more harm than good. In a now-famous October 2003 memo, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reasonably figured that the key question in determining whether "we are winning or losing the global war on terror" was "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"
Brennan was at pains to insist that the Obama administration's targeting policy is judicious enough to pass Rumsfeld's test. Each and every targeted strike against a militant, he assured the audience, undergoes "a careful review and, as appropriate, will be evaluated by the very most senior officials in our government for decision." As part of that process, "we ask ourselves whether that individual's activities rise to a certain threshold for action, and whether taking action will, in fact, enhance our security." He insisted that there is a "high bar" for action, that strikes are not carried out based on "some hypothetical threat — the mere possibility that a member of al Qaida might try to attack us at some point in the future. A significant threat might be posed by an individual who is an operational leader of al Qaida or one of its associated forces."
But these assertions are contrary to recent news reports that Obama has quietly loosened rules for targeting suspected terrorists with drone strikes. The Washington Post reports that the new policy "allows the CIA and the military to fire even when the identity of those who could be killed is not known" and "marks a significant expansion of the clandestine drone war against an al Qaida affiliate that has seized large *pieces of territory in Yemen and is linked to a series of terrorist plots against the United States."
How loose are the new rules? The Post article explains that "the expanded authority will allow the CIA and JSOC to fire on targets based solely on their intelligence 'signatures' — patterns of behavior that are detected through signals intercepts, human sources and aerial surveillance, and that indicate the presence of an important operative or a plot against U.S. interests." Compared to the previous standard — drone strikes had once been permitted only against known terrorist leaders who had been vetted and added to a classified list — this is a strikingly ad hoc policy. It's true that relying on mere "signatures" as a basis for kill orders will likely result in the death of some militants who would have escaped under stricter rules. But it also radically ups the risk of killing innocents, which, in turn, produces legitimate anti-American anger that terrorist recruiters can exploit.
What's even more shocking is that the Obama administration seems to have considered further loosening the standards for drone strikes in Yemen: In a recent report, the Wall Street Journal relayed information from "senior U.S. officials" to the effect that "the White House stopped short of authorizing attacks on groups of lower-level foot soldiers who are battling the Yemeni government," without registering outrage that such attacks were being considered at all. In any case, even that standard would be quite restrained in comparison with the existing policy in Pakistan, where, the Post reports, "CIA drones flying over Pakistan's tribal belt are allowed to strike groups of armed militants traveling by truck toward the war in Afghanistan, for example, even when there is no indication of the presence of al Qaida operatives or a high-value terrorist."
Such a steady escalation of the drone war — and the inevitable increase in civilian casualties that will accompany it — could easily tip the delicate balance that assures we kill more terrorists than we produce. To be sure, Yemen deserves the scrutiny of U.S. national security officials: It is Osama bin Laden's ancestral homeland and many of the major pre-9/11 attacks were either planned there or carried out by Yemeni nationals. But there are already signs that the drone campaign there is producing a backlash:Toronto Star national security reporter Michelle Shepard recently highlighted the effects of an infamous December 2009 strike in Abyan province that killed 55, including 14 women and 21 children. Shepard quotes a Yemeni analyst, Abdul Ghani al-Iryani, who attributes the rise of Ansar al Sharia, a key AQAP ally, directly to the outrage over that incident. "Of the thousands of Ansar al Sharia now fighting in Abyan, the majority were not al Qaida; they were angered by what they saw as American aggression," Iryani said, calling it "one event that radicalized an entire [province]."
There's every reason to think the same is true in Pakistan, where the shaky alliance between Washington and Islamabad has been pushed to the point of breaking. CNN terrorism expert Peter Bergen noted last summer that, "On average, only one out of every seven U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan kills a militant leader. The majority of those killed in such strikes are not important insurgent commanders but rather low-level fighters, together with a small number of civilians. In total, according to our analysis, less than two percent of those killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan have been described in reliable press accounts as leaders of al Qaida or allied groups." This has clearly taken a toll on public opinion. A major survey conducted in Pakistan by the New America Foundation found that "nearly nine out every ten people in FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas] oppose the U.S. military pursuing al Qaida and the Taliban in their region" and that "the intensity of opposition to the American military is high. While only one in ten of FATA residents think suicide attacks are often or sometimes justified against the Pakistani military and police, almost six in ten believe these attacks are justified against the U.S. military."
These are numbers that should concern all Americans, especially the President's national security advisers. In that way, Brennan's presentation on Monday would have been more reassuring if it included some acknowledgment that the administration's bombing campaign against terrorists could at some point — if it hasn't already — cross the Rumsfeld threshold of producing negative returns. Indeed, when it comes to the rapidly expanding drone war, the possibility of blowback has always been a decidedly known unknown.
New Republic: Drone War Reaching A Tipping Point : NPR
Michael KugelmanSouth Asia associate, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
In Pakistan, Death Is Only One of the Civilian Costs of Drone Strikes
Posted: 05/ 2/2012 12:29 pm
As the world marks the one-year anniversary of the May 2, 2011, assault on Osama Bin Laden's Abbottabad abode, there has been much talk about the various components of the U.S. counterterrorism toolbox. Few have received more attention than the drone.
On April 30, for the first time, the Obama administration admitted to using this weapon against terrorism suspects abroad. In an address at the Woodrow Wilson Center, White House counterterrorism czar John O. Brennan described these "targeted strikes" as both legal and just. Yet perhaps most extraordinarily, he declared that civilian casualties have been "exceedingly rare."
Human rights activists reject -- rightly so -- such sanguine statements, and the case of Pakistan arguably buttresses their argument the most. A Bureau of Investigative Journalism report released earlier this year projects that drone strikes have killed dozens of civilians who were rescuing victims or attending funerals for those killed in previous strikes. The organization also concludes that up to 535 civilians have been killed by drone strikes in Pakistan since President Obama took office (Washington disputes such figures). Meanwhile, the New America Foundation estimates that up to 17 percent of deaths from drone strikes in Pakistan have been those of civilians.
It is important, however, that debates about humanitarian impacts not be fixated solely on civilian deaths. This is because in Pakistan, drone strikes do so much more than kill civilians.
Consider the communities most affected by drones. They are situated in Pakistan's tribal zone, a region long buffeted by war. According to Save the Children, fighting has displaced 250,000 Pakistanis -- most of them women and children -- in one tribal agency alone (Khyber). Throughout the tribal belt on the whole, more than a million have been uprooted by violence. The tribal region, like other areas of Pakistan, was also hit hard by catastrophic flooding in 2010, and many people remain internally displaced from this humanitarian disaster.
So imagine, for a moment, what may ensue when a drone detonates in this region rife with displacement. Even if the strike does not kill civilians, it may destroy a family's home only recently rebuilt, or maim a child ravaged by displacement-related hunger or ill health. Little wonder an investigation by the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) published in late 2010 found that Pakistani civilians affected by drone strikes are in particularly desperate need of assistance, given that they were suffering from poverty or displacement long before they became civilian casualties.
Equally heartbreaking is the psychological toll. One need not have his or her home destroyed, or a loved one killed, by a drone strike to be traumatized. The mere sound of an approaching drone, in fact, can be just as devastating as its detonation. I have heard Pakistanis speak about children in the tribal areas who become hysterical when they hear the characteristic buzz of a drone. CIVIC's report has found that drones frequently "hum overhead" 24 hours a day, and that six of them sometimes linger above the same area -- "often flying close to the ground and putting people in constant fear of being hit." Imagine the effect this has on psyches, and particularly on young ones already scarred by war and displacement.
Ironically, Washington points to these tactics as proof of the efficacy of drone strikes. In his April 30 speech, Brennan noted that having drones linger over their targets for days allows for "surgical precision," thereby hastening "the ability, with laser-like focus, to eliminate the cancerous tumor called an al-Qaeda terrorist while limiting damage to the tissue around it."
My point here is not to condemn drone strikes outright. After all, they are less deadly to civilians than are many other tools of warfare. And they have eliminated brutal militants such as Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud and al-Qaeda-linked extremist Ilyas Kashmiri. Yet the complex human cost cannot be overstated.
Fortunately, Washington's apparent new transparency on drones provides a silver lining. Now that the U.S. government officially acknowledges their use, it no longer has an excuse not to provide compensation to civilian victims (Washington has in fact already employed such programs to aid civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan). Such a measure may not win many Pakistani hearts and minds. But it would at least illustrate that Washington is, at last, willing to address the tragic consequences of what Brennan describes as an "essential" tool of counterterrorism.
Michael Kugelman: In Pakistan, Death Is Only One of the Civilian Costs of Drone Strikes
Asia Times Online :: Precision-guided PR for drones falls short
by JAMES JOYNER
James Joyner is managing editor of the Atlantic Council and publisher of OutsideTheBeltway.com.
In a speech April 30 at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, John Brennan, President Obama's counter-terrorism advisor, made a forthright defense of the drone war currently being conducted against Islamic militants in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. "As a result of our efforts," he declared, "the United States is more secure and the American people are safer." Brennan's argument deserves credit for its boldness. Unfortunately, however, there's good reason to doubt its veracity.
The first point in need of recognition is that while the Obama administration has long since dropped the phrase "Global War on Terror" from its lexicon, it has, through its amplified use of drones, escalated and expanded that war in all but name. On Monday, Brennan cited his administration's achievements — the "death of bin Laden was our most strategic blow yet against al Qaida" and "al Qaida's leadership ranks have continued to suffer heavy losses" from drone strikes inside Pakistan — but he also acknowledged that the government's strategic focus simply shifted elsewhere as a result. Yemen's al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has become "al Qaida's most active affiliate and it continues to seek the opportunity to strike our homeland." Additionally, he pointed out, al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has a growing presence in North and West Africa, while the al Qaida affiliate Boko Haram is gaining steam in Nigeria.
The wider the drone war spreads, however, the more scrutiny it deserves. After all, strikes aimed at truly high-value targets like Osama bin Laden and other major terrorist leaders make obvious tactical and strategic sense. But willy-nilly targeting of people fitting a militant signature is quite likely do more harm than good. In a now-famous October 2003 memo, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reasonably figured that the key question in determining whether "we are winning or losing the global war on terror" was "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"
Brennan was at pains to insist that the Obama administration's targeting policy is judicious enough to pass Rumsfeld's test. Each and every targeted strike against a militant, he assured the audience, undergoes "a careful review and, as appropriate, will be evaluated by the very most senior officials in our government for decision." As part of that process, "we ask ourselves whether that individual's activities rise to a certain threshold for action, and whether taking action will, in fact, enhance our security." He insisted that there is a "high bar" for action, that strikes are not carried out based on "some hypothetical threat — the mere possibility that a member of al Qaida might try to attack us at some point in the future. A significant threat might be posed by an individual who is an operational leader of al Qaida or one of its associated forces."
But these assertions are contrary to recent news reports that Obama has quietly loosened rules for targeting suspected terrorists with drone strikes. The Washington Post reports that the new policy "allows the CIA and the military to fire even when the identity of those who could be killed is not known" and "marks a significant expansion of the clandestine drone war against an al Qaida affiliate that has seized large *pieces of territory in Yemen and is linked to a series of terrorist plots against the United States."
How loose are the new rules? The Post article explains that "the expanded authority will allow the CIA and JSOC to fire on targets based solely on their intelligence 'signatures' — patterns of behavior that are detected through signals intercepts, human sources and aerial surveillance, and that indicate the presence of an important operative or a plot against U.S. interests." Compared to the previous standard — drone strikes had once been permitted only against known terrorist leaders who had been vetted and added to a classified list — this is a strikingly ad hoc policy. It's true that relying on mere "signatures" as a basis for kill orders will likely result in the death of some militants who would have escaped under stricter rules. But it also radically ups the risk of killing innocents, which, in turn, produces legitimate anti-American anger that terrorist recruiters can exploit.
What's even more shocking is that the Obama administration seems to have considered further loosening the standards for drone strikes in Yemen: In a recent report, the Wall Street Journal relayed information from "senior U.S. officials" to the effect that "the White House stopped short of authorizing attacks on groups of lower-level foot soldiers who are battling the Yemeni government," without registering outrage that such attacks were being considered at all. In any case, even that standard would be quite restrained in comparison with the existing policy in Pakistan, where, the Post reports, "CIA drones flying over Pakistan's tribal belt are allowed to strike groups of armed militants traveling by truck toward the war in Afghanistan, for example, even when there is no indication of the presence of al Qaida operatives or a high-value terrorist."
Such a steady escalation of the drone war — and the inevitable increase in civilian casualties that will accompany it — could easily tip the delicate balance that assures we kill more terrorists than we produce. To be sure, Yemen deserves the scrutiny of U.S. national security officials: It is Osama bin Laden's ancestral homeland and many of the major pre-9/11 attacks were either planned there or carried out by Yemeni nationals. But there are already signs that the drone campaign there is producing a backlash:Toronto Star national security reporter Michelle Shepard recently highlighted the effects of an infamous December 2009 strike in Abyan province that killed 55, including 14 women and 21 children. Shepard quotes a Yemeni analyst, Abdul Ghani al-Iryani, who attributes the rise of Ansar al Sharia, a key AQAP ally, directly to the outrage over that incident. "Of the thousands of Ansar al Sharia now fighting in Abyan, the majority were not al Qaida; they were angered by what they saw as American aggression," Iryani said, calling it "one event that radicalized an entire [province]."
There's every reason to think the same is true in Pakistan, where the shaky alliance between Washington and Islamabad has been pushed to the point of breaking. CNN terrorism expert Peter Bergen noted last summer that, "On average, only one out of every seven U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan kills a militant leader. The majority of those killed in such strikes are not important insurgent commanders but rather low-level fighters, together with a small number of civilians. In total, according to our analysis, less than two percent of those killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan have been described in reliable press accounts as leaders of al Qaida or allied groups." This has clearly taken a toll on public opinion. A major survey conducted in Pakistan by the New America Foundation found that "nearly nine out every ten people in FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas] oppose the U.S. military pursuing al Qaida and the Taliban in their region" and that "the intensity of opposition to the American military is high. While only one in ten of FATA residents think suicide attacks are often or sometimes justified against the Pakistani military and police, almost six in ten believe these attacks are justified against the U.S. military."
These are numbers that should concern all Americans, especially the President's national security advisers. In that way, Brennan's presentation on Monday would have been more reassuring if it included some acknowledgment that the administration's bombing campaign against terrorists could at some point — if it hasn't already — cross the Rumsfeld threshold of producing negative returns. Indeed, when it comes to the rapidly expanding drone war, the possibility of blowback has always been a decidedly known unknown.
New Republic: Drone War Reaching A Tipping Point : NPR
Michael KugelmanSouth Asia associate, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
In Pakistan, Death Is Only One of the Civilian Costs of Drone Strikes
Posted: 05/ 2/2012 12:29 pm
As the world marks the one-year anniversary of the May 2, 2011, assault on Osama Bin Laden's Abbottabad abode, there has been much talk about the various components of the U.S. counterterrorism toolbox. Few have received more attention than the drone.
On April 30, for the first time, the Obama administration admitted to using this weapon against terrorism suspects abroad. In an address at the Woodrow Wilson Center, White House counterterrorism czar John O. Brennan described these "targeted strikes" as both legal and just. Yet perhaps most extraordinarily, he declared that civilian casualties have been "exceedingly rare."
Human rights activists reject -- rightly so -- such sanguine statements, and the case of Pakistan arguably buttresses their argument the most. A Bureau of Investigative Journalism report released earlier this year projects that drone strikes have killed dozens of civilians who were rescuing victims or attending funerals for those killed in previous strikes. The organization also concludes that up to 535 civilians have been killed by drone strikes in Pakistan since President Obama took office (Washington disputes such figures). Meanwhile, the New America Foundation estimates that up to 17 percent of deaths from drone strikes in Pakistan have been those of civilians.
It is important, however, that debates about humanitarian impacts not be fixated solely on civilian deaths. This is because in Pakistan, drone strikes do so much more than kill civilians.
Consider the communities most affected by drones. They are situated in Pakistan's tribal zone, a region long buffeted by war. According to Save the Children, fighting has displaced 250,000 Pakistanis -- most of them women and children -- in one tribal agency alone (Khyber). Throughout the tribal belt on the whole, more than a million have been uprooted by violence. The tribal region, like other areas of Pakistan, was also hit hard by catastrophic flooding in 2010, and many people remain internally displaced from this humanitarian disaster.
So imagine, for a moment, what may ensue when a drone detonates in this region rife with displacement. Even if the strike does not kill civilians, it may destroy a family's home only recently rebuilt, or maim a child ravaged by displacement-related hunger or ill health. Little wonder an investigation by the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) published in late 2010 found that Pakistani civilians affected by drone strikes are in particularly desperate need of assistance, given that they were suffering from poverty or displacement long before they became civilian casualties.
Equally heartbreaking is the psychological toll. One need not have his or her home destroyed, or a loved one killed, by a drone strike to be traumatized. The mere sound of an approaching drone, in fact, can be just as devastating as its detonation. I have heard Pakistanis speak about children in the tribal areas who become hysterical when they hear the characteristic buzz of a drone. CIVIC's report has found that drones frequently "hum overhead" 24 hours a day, and that six of them sometimes linger above the same area -- "often flying close to the ground and putting people in constant fear of being hit." Imagine the effect this has on psyches, and particularly on young ones already scarred by war and displacement.
Ironically, Washington points to these tactics as proof of the efficacy of drone strikes. In his April 30 speech, Brennan noted that having drones linger over their targets for days allows for "surgical precision," thereby hastening "the ability, with laser-like focus, to eliminate the cancerous tumor called an al-Qaeda terrorist while limiting damage to the tissue around it."
My point here is not to condemn drone strikes outright. After all, they are less deadly to civilians than are many other tools of warfare. And they have eliminated brutal militants such as Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud and al-Qaeda-linked extremist Ilyas Kashmiri. Yet the complex human cost cannot be overstated.
Fortunately, Washington's apparent new transparency on drones provides a silver lining. Now that the U.S. government officially acknowledges their use, it no longer has an excuse not to provide compensation to civilian victims (Washington has in fact already employed such programs to aid civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan). Such a measure may not win many Pakistani hearts and minds. But it would at least illustrate that Washington is, at last, willing to address the tragic consequences of what Brennan describes as an "essential" tool of counterterrorism.
Michael Kugelman: In Pakistan, Death Is Only One of the Civilian Costs of Drone Strikes
Asia Times Online :: Precision-guided PR for drones falls short
VCheng
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The line in bold is important to keep in mind, given that Pakistan is unable to offer any better alternative to eliminate these terrorists. If Pakistan steps up effective governance in its own territory, then the use of drones would simply not be needed.
AgNoStiC MuSliM
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Pakistan has offered alternatives, which have been pointed out several times already:
1. Jointly operated Drone Strikes based on US & PAK Intel
2. Pakistan Operated Drone Strikes based on US & PAK Intel
3. PAF Airstrikes based on US & PAK Intel
To argue that there is 'no alternative' to the current US policy is completely dishonest.
VCheng
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My point was that no alternative other than effective governance will reduce the collateral damage from drone attacks, no matter who pushes the button, unless you wish to present some suggestions as to how 1, 2, or 3 above prevent that.
What you are saying is that it is okay for Pakistan to kill the same proportion of civilians to militants while condemning the US for doing so. Why should the suggestions above not be regarded as a way to gain access to highly classified US technologies under the garb of offering "alternatives" that are really the same thing??
regular
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I will always try to speak the truth cuz US always created terrorists and forced the poor countries not to harm them behind the scenes and always blamed the same poor/weaker countries for supporting the terrorism, its a damn shame. Simply US is not obeying the charter of the UN. Poor Pakistan is hell bent on destroying the terrorists but the US factories are busy 24/7 churning them out fresh ones......
Solomon2
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No, you're trying to propagate a self-serving unsupported meme as truth. You are thus trying to deceive others, if not yourself as well.
It don't think it's enough, regular, to retreat into silence at this put-down. Rather, you have to pick up the ball and run with it if you are going to change things for the better: to seek accountability in yourselves, rather than push accountability onto others. It is the difference between free men working together and peasants who blame their putative lord and master for every ill and wrong, real or imagined.
regular
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I totally agree with U my brothr but what U have to do if somebody is pointing a gun at ure head and U can't do anything to save ure life but to obey their demandz......this is the situation here we poor and weak country are being pointed Gun at us by the USA to run terrorism under their supervision to destroy their enemies....there are hundreds of evidences...secret CIA camps are run all over in Afghanistan and our tribal areas......whoever tries to bring out the truth gets shot down and his dead body found in some deserted place........with the tag that he was working for the USA......pplz get scared and never understood the situation except the smart pplz.........OBL was got caught by ISI in 2003 I guess during the Tora Bora operation....US/CIA forced Pakistan/ISI not to expose him and took his custody in Pervaiz Musharraf time.....I guess this hint shold be enough for ure kind info......
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