US Drone strikes in Pakistan are illegal under international law.

[TruthSeeker]

Every documented drone strike inside Pakistan since May 14th, 2005 - image overlay using Google maps. From kursed: http://www.defence.pk/forums/pakistans-war/57712-image-overlay-drone-strikes-inside-pakistan.html

U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan - Google Maps

 

[TruthSeeker]

US strike in Khyber, possibly the first


Sunday, 16 May, 2010

PESHAWAR: At least five people were killed in Khyber Agency in a purported US missile strike on Saturday. If confirmed, it would be the first such attack in the area, intelligence and government officials said.

The strike could fan fresh anger because it represented a widening of the covert US programme.

Officials gave differing death tolls in the strike, which one said involved two missiles hitting a house and two trucks carrying militants. The death toll ranged from five to 15.

Much of the supplies for US and Nato troops in Afghanistan are transported through the region and the convoys have often been attacked.

Almost all of the more than 30 missile attacks this year have hit targets in the Waziristan tribal region.—AP

Our Correspondent in Landi Kotal adds:

At least 13 militants were killed in Saturday’s incident at Bazaar-Zakhakhel area of Khyber Agency. Officials gave three different causes for the deaths — a bomb explosion, drone attack and a clash between rival militant factions.

The deaths were reported from the Mangal Bagh Kandao and Wargha localities in Bazaar-Zakhakhel sub-tehsil of Landi Kotal. The area is a stronghold of Lashkar-i-Islam, an outlawed militant group of Bara-Khyber Agency.

Khyber Agency Political Agent Shafirullah Khan said there were conflicting reports about a drone attack and a clash between the Taliban and the activists of Lashkar-i-Islam.

“The most credible report, however, is that a vehicle carrying militants was destroyed by a roadside explosive device,” Mr Khan said.

He said a group of militants believed that the May 13 air strike on one of the bases in Tirah had been carried out by government in connivance of with their rivals.

The air strike killed at least 11 Taliban who sources said had come from Swat and were staying in the house of an elder of Kukikhels.

Mr Khan said that 13 militants had been killed in the incident on Saturday and a vehicle was destroyed.

An intelligence official in Landi Kotal confirmed reports about a drone attack.

Another official said that a drone targeted the house of one Dost Mohammad where members of Taliban commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur were present. He said an explosive-laden vehicle was also destroyed in the attack.

DAWN.COM | Pakistan | US strike in Khyber, possibly the first

 

[TruthSeeker]

Drone strike kills six in NWA

MIRANSHAH: A US drone attack on a suspected terrorists compound on Friday killed six Taliban in Miranshah, North Waziristan, security officials said. The target of the attack was a house used by terrorists in Mohammad Khel village, some 25 kilometres west of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, officials said. “Two US drones fired four missiles, we have reports that six terrorists have been killed,” a senior security official in Peshawar told AFP by telephone. Two intelligence officials in Miranshah also confirmed the attack and the death toll.

Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan


NWA drone attack toll mounts to 10
Updated at: 0948 PST, Saturday, May 22, 2010
NWA drone attack toll mounts to 10 MIRANSHAH: The death toll of missile strike by US drones in North Waziristan Agency (NWA) has reached to 10.

According to sources, 10 people including women and a minor girl were killed in US drone attack.

US drones targeted a house in Asadabad village of Dattakhel tehsil in North Waziristan tribal region late Friday night. Ten people including women and a five-year old girl were killed and several others present in the house sustained injuries in the attack. The injured and bodies were rushed to tehsil Miranshah Agency headquarter hospital where three were reported in a critical state.

NWA drone attack toll mounts to 10 - GEO.tv

 

[jeypore]

The US killed 11 terrorists in airstrikes in Pakistan's lawless tribal agency of South Waziristan. The strike is the first in the tribal agency this year.

The strike, which was carried out by unmanned Predators or the more deadly Reapers, targeted "militant hideouts" in the Nezai Narai area in South Waziristan, according to Geo News. It is unclear if the strike targeted al Qaeda, the Taliban, or allied Central Asian terror groups known to operate in the tribal agency.

No senior al Qaeda or Taliban leaders have been reported killed at this time.

The attack took place just one day after Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, called for the CIA to end the strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas. Alston claimed the program is not subject to accountability that would exist under a program run by the US military.

"With the Defense Department you’ve got maybe not perfect but quite abundant accountability as demonstrated by what happens when a bombing goes wrong in Afghanistan," Alston said in an interview with The New York Times. "The whole process that follows is very open. Whereas if the C.I.A. is doing it, by definition they are not going to answer questions, not provide any information, and not do any follow-up that we know about."

Alston's comments follow criticisms of the CIA program earlier this year by the American Civil Liberties Union, which has filed a lawsuit against the the Defense Department, the State Department, and the Justice Department, demanding enforcement of its January request for information on the program.

The US government has defended the air campaign in Pakistan, and insisted the program is in line with international laws of war and remains accountable to the US Congress.

Background on US strikes in Pakistan

Today's strike is the seventh reported inside Pakistan this month. So far this year, the US has carried out 38 strikes in Pakistan; all but two of the strikes this year, including today's, have taken place in North Waziristan. An airstrike on May 15 occurred in the Tirah Valley in the tribal agency of Khyber.

The US is well on its way to exceeding last year’s strike total in Pakistan. In 2009, the US carried out 53 strikes in Pakistan; and in 2008, the US carried out 36 strikes in the country. [For up-to-date charts on the US air campaign in Pakistan, see LWJ Special Report, "Charting the data for US airstrikes in Pakistan, 2004 - 2010."]

Unmanned US Predator and Reaper strike aircraft have been pounding Taliban and al Qaeda hideouts in North Waziristan over the past several months in an effort to kill senior terror leaders and disrupt the networks that threaten Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the West. [For more information, see LWJ report, "Senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders killed in US airstrikes in Pakistan, 2004 - 2010."]

Most recently, on March 8, a US strike in a bazaar in Miramshah killed a top al Qaeda operative known as Sadam Hussein Al Hussami. Hussami was a protégé of Abu Khabab al Masri, al Qaeda's top bomb maker and WMD chief, who was killed in a US airstrike in July 2008. Hussami was a senior member of al Qaeda's external operations network, and was on a council that advised the suicide bomber who carried out the attack at Combat Outpost Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan. That attack killed seven CIA officials and a Jordanian intelligence officer. The slain intelligence operatives had been involved in gathering intelligence for the hunt for al Qaeda and Taliban leaders along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

In early April, Siraj Haqqani, the leader of the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani Network, said that the effectiveness of US airstrikes in killing senior Taliban and al Qaeda leaders had “decreased 90 percent" since the suicide attack on Combat Outpost Chapman. While other factors may be involved in the decreased effectiveness in killing the top-tier leaders, an analysis of the data shows that only two top-tier commanders have been killed since Jan 1, 2010, but seven top-tier leaders were killed between Aug.1, 2009, and Dec. 31, 2009. [See LWJ report, "Effectiveness of US strikes in Pakistan 'decreased 90 percent' since suicide strike on CIA - Siraj Haqqani," for more information.]

For the past few months, most US and Pakistani officials believed that Hakeemullah Mehsud, the leader of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, had been killed in a Jan. 14 strike in Pasalkot in North Waziristan. But recently, after four months of silence on the subject, the Taliban released two tapes to prove that Hakeemullah is alive. On the tapes, Hakeemullah said the Taliban will carry out attacks inside the US.

US kills 11 in Predator strike in South Waziristan - The Long War Journal

 

[Tiger Prowling]

Than why US and its people r so upset and surprised when, human Predator from SW reached times square.

 

[DaRk WaVe]

Than why US and its people r so upset and surprised when, human Predator from SW reached times squire.

do your support the heinous acts that were to be performed by Human Predator that reached Times Square

 

[Tiger Prowling]

do your support the heinous acts that were to be performed by Human Predator that reached Times Square

No, but do u support heinous acts that were and are performed by american's in Afghanistan and Pakistan sis...................

 

[DaRk WaVe]

No, but do u support heinous acts that were and are performed by american's in Afghanistan and Pakistan sis...................

No, I support killing of as many terrorist as possible but i dont support them when they drop a JDAM over Marriage ceremonies but at the same time i don't support Shehzad & his likes either

 

[Tiger Prowling]

No, I support killing of as many terrorist as possible but i dont support them when they drop a JDAM over Marriage ceremonies

That's exactly my point, when they target any terrorist, they dont give a dame about collatral damage, that breads more terrorists.

But some one sitting in langley, controlling drone's, dont know sh*t about local custom's and ceremonies, what u expect.

What goes around comes around. EmO

 

[DaRk WaVe]

That's exactly my point, when they target any terrorist, they dont give a dame about collatral damage, that breads more terrorists.

But some one sitting in langley, controlling drone's, dont know sh*t about local custom's and ceremonies, what u expect.

What goes around comes around. EmO

no doubt there are incidents & collateral damage is part of every war, there isn't any war fought till this day which has zero civilian casualties, drones are highly accurate weapons & have taken out some big thugs, what do you suggest we do, just leave them by their own & wait for bombs to go off in public places

 

[Spring Onion]

That's exactly my point, when they target any terrorist, they dont give a dame about collatral damage, that breads more terrorists.

But some one sitting in langley, controlling drone's, dont know sh*t about local custom's and ceremonies, what u expect.

:

Most of the times the information provided by field spies of US is incorrect and for settling scores which result in death of civilians.


Drone attacks are killing more civilians than militants.


As far as the word terrorist is concerned than US forces are also terrorists who are killing innocent people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

 

[Tiger Prowling]

It's difficult to win argument with u EmO, iam logging out for some work, and yes;;;;;; ur previous avatar was much better

 

[DaRk WaVe]

Drone attacks are killing more civilians than militants.

Drone attacks: Challenging some fabrications​

The people of Waziristan are suffering a brutal kind of occupation under the Taliban and al Qaeda. Therefore, they welcome the drone attacks

There is a deep abyss between the perceptions of the people of Waziristan, the most drone-hit area and the wider Pakistani society on the other side of the River Indus. For the latter, the US drone attacks on Waziristan are a violation of Pakistani’s sovereignty. Politicians, religious leaders, media analysts and anchorpersons express sensational clamour over the supposed ‘civilian casualties’ in the drone attacks. I have been discussing the issue of drone attacks with hundreds of people of Waziristan. They see the US drone attacks as their liberators from the clutches of the terrorists into which, they say, their state has wilfully thrown them. The purpose of today’s column is, one, to challenge the Pakistani and US media reports about the civilian casualties in the drone attacks and, two, to express the view of the people of Waziristan, who are equally terrified by the Taliban and the intelligence agencies of Pakistan. I personally met these people in the Pakhtunkhwa province, where they live as internally displaced persons (IDPs), and in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

I would challenge both the US and Pakistani media to provide verifiable evidence of civilian ‘casualties’ because of drone attacks on Waziristan, i.e. names of the people killed, names of their villages, dates and locations of the strikes and, above all, the methodology of the information that they collected. If they can’t meet the challenge, I would request them to stop throwing around fabricated figures of ‘civilian casualties’ that confuse people around the world and provide propaganda material to the pro-Taliban and al Qaeda forces in the politics and media of Pakistan.

I pose that challenge because no one is in a position to give a correct estimate of how many individuals have been killed so far in drone attacks. On the basis of American media estimates, 600 to 700 ‘civilian population’ have been killed. The Pakistani government, pro-Taliban political parties like Jamaat-e-Islami, Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam, Tehrik-e-Insaf, and the media are quoting the same figure. Neither the government of Pakistan nor the media have any access to the area and no system is in place to arrive at precise estimates. The Pakistani government and media take the figure appearing in the American media as an admission by the American government. The US media too do not have access to the area. Moreover, the area is simply not accessible for any kind of independent journalistic or scholarly work on drone attacks. The Taliban simply kill anyone doing so.

The reason why these estimates about civilian ‘casualties’ in the US and Pakistani media are wrong is that after every attack the terrorists cordon off the area and no one, including the local villagers, is allowed to come even near the targeted place. The militants themselves collect the bodies, burry the dead and then issue the statement that all of them were innocent civilians. This has been part of their propaganda to provide excuses to the pro-Taliban and al Qaeda media persons and political forces in Pakistan to generate public sympathies for the terrorists. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) or other militants have never admitted to the killing of any important figure of al Qaeda or the TTP. One exception is the killing of Baitullah Mehsud that the TTP reluctantly admitted several days after his death. According to the people of Waziristan, the only civilians who have been killed so far in the drone attacks are women or children of the militants in whose houses/compounds they hold meetings. But that, too, used to happen in the past. Now they don’t hold meetings at places where women and children of the al Qaeda and TTP militants reside. Moreover, in this case too no one is in a position to give even an approximate number of the women and children of the terrorists killed in drone attacks.

The people of Waziristan are suffering a brutal kind of occupation under the Taliban and al Qaeda. It is in this context that they would welcome anyone, Americans, Israelis, Indians or even the devil, to rid them of the Taliban and al Qaeda. Therefore, they welcome the drone attacks. Secondly, the people feel comfortable with the drones because of their precision and targeted strikes. Especially the people of Waziristan have been terrified by the use of long-range artillery and air strikes of the Pakistan Army and Air Force. People complain that not a single TTP or al Qaeda member has been killed so far by the Pakistan Army, whereas a lot of collateral damage has taken place. On the other hand, drone attacks have never targeted the civilian population except, they informed, in one case when the funeral procession of Khwazh Wali, a TTP commander, was hit. In that attack too, many TTP militants were killed including Bilal (the TTP commander of Zangara area) and two Arab members of al Qaeda. But some civilians were also killed. After the attack people got the excuse of not attending the funeral of slain TTP militants or offering them food, which they used to do out of compulsion in order to put themselves in the TTP’s good books. “It (this drone attack) was a blessing in disguise,” several people commented.


I have heard people particularly appreciating the precision of drone strikes. People say that when a drone would hover over the skies, they wouldn’t be disturbed and would carry on their usual business because they would be sure that it does not target the civilians, but the same people would run for shelter when a Pakistani jet would appear in the skies because of its indiscriminate firing. They say that even in the same compound only the exact room — where a high value target (HVT) is present — is targeted. Thus others in the same compound are spared. The people of Waziristan have been complaining why the drones are only restricted to targeting the Arabs. They want the drones to attack the TTP leadership, the Uzbek/Tajik/Turkmen, Punjabi and Pakhtun Taliban. I have heard even religious people of Waziristan cursing the jihad and welcoming even Indian or Israeli support to help them get rid of the TTP and foreign militants. The TTP and foreign militants had made them hostages and occupied their houses by force. The Taliban have publicly killed even the religious scholars in Waziristan.


I have yet to come across a non-TTP resident of Waziristan who supports the Taliban or al Qaeda. Till recently they were terrified by the TTP to the extent that they would not open their mouth to oppose them. But now, having been displaced and out of their reach, some of them speak against them openly and many more than before in private conversations. They express their fear of the intelligence agencies of Pakistan whenever speaking against the Taliban. They see the two as two sides of the same coin.

What we read and hear in the print and electronic media of Pakistan about drone attacks as a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty or resulting in killing innocent civilians is not true so far as the people of Waziristan are concerned. According to them, al Qaeda and the TTP are dead scared of drone attacks and their leadership spends sleepless nights. This is a cause of pleasure for the tormented people of Waziristan.

Moreover, al Qaeda and the Taliban have done everything to stop the drone attacks by killing hundreds of innocent civilians on the pretext of their being American spies. They thought that by overwhelming the innocent people of Waziristan with terror tactics they would deter any potential informer, but they have failed. On many occasions the Taliban and al Qaeda have killed the alleged US spies in front of crowds of hundreds, even thousands of tribesmen. Interestingly, no one in Pakistan has raised objection to killings of the people of Waziristan on charges of spying for the US. This, the people of Waziristan informed, is a source of torture for them that their fellow Pakistanis condemn the killing of the terrorists but fall into deadly silence over the routine murders of tribesmen accused of spying for the US by the terrorists occupying their land.

Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan

 

[arya-is-here]

Than why US and its people r so upset and surprised when, human Predator from SW reached times square.

do you support terror act

what your point of view when they kill peoples in Pakistan

 

[jeypore]

Most of the times the information provided by field spies of US is incorrect and for settling scores which result in death of civilians.

And of course Mrs. Jana you have a hard proof of this vital information....