'Bugsplat': The ugly US drone war in Pakistan

[The Northerner]

This weekend, Pakistan ordered the closure of the US drone base after a US attack killed 26 Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border. This news will be welcomed by the people of Waziristan, where communities have borne the brunt of the "collateral damage" of the US covert drone war. But for many, this decision comes too little too late. For too long, authorities ignored the deaths of innocent civilians being "bugsplat" by drones. After a recent trip to Pakistan to investigate the human consequences of the US drone attacks, I had no idea how close I was to come to understanding the horror of it.

In Islamabad I took part in a jirga - the traditional Pashtun forum for public discussion and dispute settlement - where tribal elders and villagers from the Pakistan tribal areas (FATA) came to meet with us to explain their personal experiences of US drone attacks. Sitting just two rows behind me was a 16-year-old boy named Tariq Aziz. Listening to story upon story of the extrajudicial murder of innocent civilians and children, the heartache for loved ones lost and the constant terror instilled by the now familiar roar of drones overhead, I could not have imagined that Tariq and his family would soon suffer the same fate.

Three days later Tariq was killed along with his 12-year-old cousin Waheed when their car was targeted by a Hellfire missile as they headed home to Norak, a village in Waziristan near the Afghan border.

Drones are described not only as the future of warfare, but as risk-free war. But Tariq's death - and the hundreds of other civilian deaths recorded in a recent Bureau of Investigative Journalism study - demonstrate that this PlayStation warfare is only risk-free for operators of these remote-controlled killers. From the safety of an office building in Langley, Virginia, CIA operatives play games with Pakistanis' lives.

Read more: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/201111278839153400.html

[bvar22]

1. What really "changed"?

:shrug:

Whatever happened to THIS?




You will know them by their WORKS,
not by their excuses.
Solidarity99!
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[Liberal_in_LA]

2. k&r

[gratuitous]

3. And while it's risk-free for the playas in Virginia

Sooner or later, those guys with the controllers in their hands turning persons into red vapor will have an attack from a wholly unexpected quarter - their own minds and consciences. They will get to grapple with the notion that by looking at a computer screen and pushing a button, real people thousands of miles away actually died. And the military on whose orders they executed civilians by remote control will refuse to do anything for them.

Land of the Free, Home of the Brave. That's us!