SHAFAQNA PAKISTAN (Shia News Agency)
Five years ago, on January 23, 2009, a CIA drone flattened a house in Pakistan’s tribal regions. It was the third day of Barack Obama’s presidency, and this was the new commander-in-chief’s first covert drone strike. Initial reports said up to ten militants were killed, including foreign fighters and possibly a ‘high-value target’ – a successful first hit for the fledgling administration. But reports of civilian casualties began to emerge. As later reports revealed, the strike was far from a success. At least nine civilians died, most of them from one family. There was one survivor, 14-year-old Fahim Qureshi, but with horrific injuries including shrapnel wounds in his stomach, a fractured skull and a lost eye, he was as much a victim as his dead relatives. Later that day, the CIA attacked again – and levelled another house. It proved another mistake, this time one that killed between five and ten people, all civilians. Since then number of civilians have lost their lives in drone attacks which are over sighted by declaring it a collateral damage.
Now according to a report published in Dawn “The Pakistani government claimed Wednesday that more than two thousand suspected terrorists have been killed in 317 drone strikes in the past five years while only 67 innocent civilians have died in these attacks.” Surprisingly the official data also claims that no innocent civilian was struck by the drone strikes since January 2012 while more than three hundred terrorists were targeted in the strikes. The official data negates the claims by local political and religious parties that US drone strikes in Pakistan have mostly killed innocent civilians, including women and children. According to the official data, this year has witnessed the lowest number of drone strikes which are 14 as compared to 2010 when the US hit Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas 115 times through drone attacks. However, Pakistani government and political parties across the board have termed these strikes counter-productive and have repeatedly called for stopping the strikes. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during his visit to the US last week also called upon President Barack Obama to end these strikes but the US has reportedly made no commitment to end the unmanned drone operation. Human rights organizations and even US people have several times protested against unmanned killing machines but Obama administration always defended Drone strikes as effective tool against terrorists. President Obama needs to be straight with the world about the human cost of this programme. If even his government doesn’t know who is filling the body bags every time a strike goes wrong, his claims that this is a precise programme look like nonsense.
pakistan.shafaqna.com
