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June 17, 2013
Mass Demonstrations Against Drones
By Ashfaq Yusufzai
Source: Inter Press Service News Agency
Coming Out in Droves Against Drones
By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan , Jun 13 2013 (IPS) - Though the constant hum of unmanned
aerial vehicles flying overhead makes a strong case for staying indoors, residents of
Pakistan’s North Waziristan Agency are emerging in droves from their humble homes,
some no bigger than huts constructed from mud and stones.
They have come out to protest the drone strikes on this devastated region, a hotbed
of militant activity located on Pakistan’s northern border with Afghanistan, which is
quickly becoming ground zero in the United States’ ‘War on Terror’.
"We watch the drones all day long in fear, even though we know that most attacks
happen after sunset.” -- Rasool Bacha
Since 2004, 355 drone strikes have killed 3,336 people and injured scores more,
according to a conservative estimate by the U.S.–based New America Foundation.
But while the U.S. government claims to be singling out militants and “Al Qaeda
affiliates” for attack by remote-controlled aircraft capable of raining missiles down from
a height of 10,000 feet, residents of this mountainous province say that civilians are
taking a bigger hit.
Imad Ali, who has lived in North Waziristan his whole life, lost two sons in a drone
attack. He told IPS that the pilotless planes appear unable to distinguish between civil
and military targets, and called the strikes “indiscriminate and unacceptable.”
Now Ali, like many others in this Agency of 30,000, is joining mass rallies spearheaded
by the Pakistan Tehreek Insaf (PTI), a major opposition party under the leadership of
former cricket legend Imran Khan, to call for an end to strikes on unsuspecting non-
combatants.
“I lost my wife and elder daughter to drone attacks in February,” Muhammad Rafiq, a
schoolteacher in South Waziristan, told IPS, adding that civilian opposition to the
attacks will keep growing as long as innocent people are losing their lives.
We pass sleepless nights due to the looming threat of drone strikes. The situation is
especially difficult for children who fear they could be killed at any minute,” he added.
With so many people busy counting the dead, the injured often get relegated to the
footnotes of this story; like Rasool Bacha, who was fast asleep in his home in
Dattakhlel, a small village close to the Afghan border, when he was struck by shrapnel
from a drone attack this past January.
“Later in the morning I discovered that the strike had also killed four of my
neighbours,” Bacha told IPS in the hospital where he is currently undergoing
physiotherapy after surgery.
“All the victims were poor farmers,” he added, “and had no relation to the militants. It
is simply not true that the drones kill only militants – when they rain down they destroy
everything that comes in their way.”
Every day, eight to 12 unmanned aircrafts hover in the sky, he said. “We watch them
all day long in fear, even though we know that most attacks happen after sunset.”
Enter the politicians
While residents are mainly concerned with the immediate threat to their daily lives,
political parties have seized on widespread discontent to advance their position that
the attacks constitute an assault on national sovereignty.
Following the latest series of strikes – that killed the deputy chief of the outlawed
Tehreek Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Waliur Rehman, on May 29 in North Waziristan –
Pakistan’s newly elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif labeled the attack “a violation of
international law” and urged the United States to “respect the sovereignty of other
countries.”
On Jun. 4, the PTI – which formed a coalition in Pakistan’s northern Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province after winning a landslide victory in the May 11 general
elections here – submitted a resolution to the KP assembly condemning, and calling
for an immediate cessation of, the attacks.
Echoing Sharif’s words on sovereignty, PTI Spokesperson Shaukat Ali Yousafzai was
quick to point out that his party was the first to take up the issue as far back as May
21, 2011 following a strike that halted a NATO convoy heading for Afghanistan
through the KP.
He told IPS his party also held a rally in Waziristan, whose population has borne the
lion’s share of the attacks.
As elections draw nearer, other parties keen to “exploit anti-American sentiments and
muster electoral support” are also stepping up opposition to the U.S. strikes and a
planned operation to cleanse border areas of militants, according to Muhammad
Azeem, former mayor of Mardan, one of 25 districts that comprise the troubled KP
province.
He told IPS that the political grouping Muttahida Majlis e-Amal (MMA), which gathered
various religious parties under one banner to win a sweeping victory in the 2003
elections, governed the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the southeastern Balochistan
province until it fell out of favour with the Taliban in 2008.
Now, parties like the Jamaat Islam (JI) and Jamiat Ulemai Islam (JUI) have taken up the
cudgels on behalf of civilians living in terror of drone strikes, and have promised to
guard tribal populations from a military offensive by the government.
But as political analyst Javid Hussain pointed out, this military operation against which
parties are now crying foul has been ongoing in all seven agencies of the Federally
Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) since 2005, leaving 300,000 of the region’s 5.8
million people homeless.
“None of the political leaders bothered about it until now,” he told IPS, adding that
politicians are only interested in the issue of drones insofar as they pay dividends in
the election.
Earlier this month, the Peshawar High Court declared drone strikes illegal and asked
the government to move a resolution against the use of drones in the United Nations,
Muhammad Arif, political science lecturer at the Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan,
told IPS.
The court made its announcement in response to a legal petition filed last year by the
Foundation for Fundamental Rights, an Islamabad-based legal charity, on behalf of
the families of up to 50 people killed when missiles stuck a tribal gathering, or jirga, in
March 2011.
“The National Assembly has passed several resolutions terming these aerial attacks
unlawful, and demanding that they be stopped, but they continue unabated,” Wali
Khan said.
On May 23, the tribal population was further disappointed when U.S. President Barack
Obama made it categorically clear that drones will continue to target “Al Qaeda and its
affiliates” because they killed U.S. citizens.
- See more at: http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/06/coming-out-in-droves-against-
drones/#sthash.sTZunijr.dpuf
Mass Demonstrations Against Drones
By Ashfaq Yusufzai
Source: Inter Press Service News Agency
Coming Out in Droves Against Drones
By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan , Jun 13 2013 (IPS) - Though the constant hum of unmanned
aerial vehicles flying overhead makes a strong case for staying indoors, residents of
Pakistan’s North Waziristan Agency are emerging in droves from their humble homes,
some no bigger than huts constructed from mud and stones.
They have come out to protest the drone strikes on this devastated region, a hotbed
of militant activity located on Pakistan’s northern border with Afghanistan, which is
quickly becoming ground zero in the United States’ ‘War on Terror’.
"We watch the drones all day long in fear, even though we know that most attacks
happen after sunset.” -- Rasool Bacha
Since 2004, 355 drone strikes have killed 3,336 people and injured scores more,
according to a conservative estimate by the U.S.–based New America Foundation.
But while the U.S. government claims to be singling out militants and “Al Qaeda
affiliates” for attack by remote-controlled aircraft capable of raining missiles down from
a height of 10,000 feet, residents of this mountainous province say that civilians are
taking a bigger hit.
Imad Ali, who has lived in North Waziristan his whole life, lost two sons in a drone
attack. He told IPS that the pilotless planes appear unable to distinguish between civil
and military targets, and called the strikes “indiscriminate and unacceptable.”
Now Ali, like many others in this Agency of 30,000, is joining mass rallies spearheaded
by the Pakistan Tehreek Insaf (PTI), a major opposition party under the leadership of
former cricket legend Imran Khan, to call for an end to strikes on unsuspecting non-
combatants.
“I lost my wife and elder daughter to drone attacks in February,” Muhammad Rafiq, a
schoolteacher in South Waziristan, told IPS, adding that civilian opposition to the
attacks will keep growing as long as innocent people are losing their lives.
We pass sleepless nights due to the looming threat of drone strikes. The situation is
especially difficult for children who fear they could be killed at any minute,” he added.
With so many people busy counting the dead, the injured often get relegated to the
footnotes of this story; like Rasool Bacha, who was fast asleep in his home in
Dattakhlel, a small village close to the Afghan border, when he was struck by shrapnel
from a drone attack this past January.
“Later in the morning I discovered that the strike had also killed four of my
neighbours,” Bacha told IPS in the hospital where he is currently undergoing
physiotherapy after surgery.
“All the victims were poor farmers,” he added, “and had no relation to the militants. It
is simply not true that the drones kill only militants – when they rain down they destroy
everything that comes in their way.”
Every day, eight to 12 unmanned aircrafts hover in the sky, he said. “We watch them
all day long in fear, even though we know that most attacks happen after sunset.”
Enter the politicians
While residents are mainly concerned with the immediate threat to their daily lives,
political parties have seized on widespread discontent to advance their position that
the attacks constitute an assault on national sovereignty.
Following the latest series of strikes – that killed the deputy chief of the outlawed
Tehreek Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Waliur Rehman, on May 29 in North Waziristan –
Pakistan’s newly elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif labeled the attack “a violation of
international law” and urged the United States to “respect the sovereignty of other
countries.”
On Jun. 4, the PTI – which formed a coalition in Pakistan’s northern Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province after winning a landslide victory in the May 11 general
elections here – submitted a resolution to the KP assembly condemning, and calling
for an immediate cessation of, the attacks.
Echoing Sharif’s words on sovereignty, PTI Spokesperson Shaukat Ali Yousafzai was
quick to point out that his party was the first to take up the issue as far back as May
21, 2011 following a strike that halted a NATO convoy heading for Afghanistan
through the KP.
He told IPS his party also held a rally in Waziristan, whose population has borne the
lion’s share of the attacks.
As elections draw nearer, other parties keen to “exploit anti-American sentiments and
muster electoral support” are also stepping up opposition to the U.S. strikes and a
planned operation to cleanse border areas of militants, according to Muhammad
Azeem, former mayor of Mardan, one of 25 districts that comprise the troubled KP
province.
He told IPS that the political grouping Muttahida Majlis e-Amal (MMA), which gathered
various religious parties under one banner to win a sweeping victory in the 2003
elections, governed the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the southeastern Balochistan
province until it fell out of favour with the Taliban in 2008.
Now, parties like the Jamaat Islam (JI) and Jamiat Ulemai Islam (JUI) have taken up the
cudgels on behalf of civilians living in terror of drone strikes, and have promised to
guard tribal populations from a military offensive by the government.
But as political analyst Javid Hussain pointed out, this military operation against which
parties are now crying foul has been ongoing in all seven agencies of the Federally
Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) since 2005, leaving 300,000 of the region’s 5.8
million people homeless.
“None of the political leaders bothered about it until now,” he told IPS, adding that
politicians are only interested in the issue of drones insofar as they pay dividends in
the election.
Earlier this month, the Peshawar High Court declared drone strikes illegal and asked
the government to move a resolution against the use of drones in the United Nations,
Muhammad Arif, political science lecturer at the Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan,
told IPS.
The court made its announcement in response to a legal petition filed last year by the
Foundation for Fundamental Rights, an Islamabad-based legal charity, on behalf of
the families of up to 50 people killed when missiles stuck a tribal gathering, or jirga, in
March 2011.
“The National Assembly has passed several resolutions terming these aerial attacks
unlawful, and demanding that they be stopped, but they continue unabated,” Wali
Khan said.
On May 23, the tribal population was further disappointed when U.S. President Barack
Obama made it categorically clear that drones will continue to target “Al Qaeda and its
affiliates” because they killed U.S. citizens.
- See more at: http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/06/coming-out-in-droves-against-
drones/#sthash.sTZunijr.dpuf