There is immense hatred for America': how drones affect life in Pakistan – video

Kareem Khan discusses living in North Waziristan, Pakistan, with US drones overhead. A 2009 strike on his home killed three people, including Khan’s nephew


What happens in a drone attack? 'Suddenly there were explosions'




Nabila Rehman, now 13, remembers the 2012 drone strike in North Waziristan, Pakistan that killed her grandmother and injured her



'They are experimenting on us with drones': a Yemeni man tells his story – video




Faisal bin Ali Jubair, whose brother and nephew were killed in a 2012 drone strike in Yemen, believes the drones ultimately benefit al-Qaida

After drones: the indelible mark of America's remote control warfare

When drone strikes are discussed by political leaders they're portrayed as being surgical , precise, warfare without casualty and those killed? They're militant's , terrorists or terrorist sympathizers.  The media plays along with this fiction.  Yet, many of those killed in these surgical strikes aren't militants or terrorists, but the innocent who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  


The strikes last a moment, but the consequences last forever. Six families explain how Obama’s secret drone war has left them struggling for answers after loved ones were wiped out without warning

Nabila’s favorite memories of her grandmother come from weddings. It didn’t matter who was getting married – relative or neighbor – her grandmother, Mamana, was an active participant, owing to her matriarchal perch above their village.

Mamana was as responsible as she was festive. An uneducated woman, she was the local midwife, and served as an impromptu primary care physician, even a veterinarian, when the need arose.

On a fall afternoon in 2012, Mamana called Nabila and a squad of her siblings and cousins outside to the family’s okra fields, part of their sprawling garden in tribalPakistan. It was about to be the Eid festival and the Rehman family needed to gather and prep vegetables. Nabila, nine years old, had set to work when the drone fired its missiles.

The Peacemaker With The Peace Prize And His Drones

Victim of Obama's first drone strike: 'I am the living example of what drones are'

Faheem Qureshi was 14 when a drone attack on his home left him with horrific injuries, several family members dead and his dreams for the future in tatters


Faheem Qureshi’s uncles sat with their neighbors, chatting, cracking jokes and sipping tea, in their family’s lounge for male guests. Qureshi, almost 14, stood nearby, bored and restless, thinking about when he could go to the nearby playground where he and the other Ziraki village kids played badminton and cricket.

It had been a long day – Friday prayers, a food shopping errand at his mother’s behest, hosting – but also a happy occasion, as people stopped by to welcome an uncle home to North Waziristan, in tribal Pakistan, from a work excursion to the United Arab Emirates. Then he heard a sound like a plane taking off.

About two seconds later, the missile punched a hole through the lounge. Qureshi remembers feeling like his body was on fire. He ran outside, wanting to throw water on his face, but his priority was escape. The boy could not see.

Even though no known terrorists or terrorists sympathizers were killed in this attack the ever compliant media in the US would report that "several terrorists militants" had been killed even though most of the victims of these attacks seem to be innocent  civilizations.

 “The US government takes seriously all credible reports of non-combatant deaths and injuries. In those rare instances in which it appears non-combatants may have been killed or injured, after-action reviews have been conducted to determine why, and to ensure that we are taking the most effective steps to minimize such risk to non-combatants in the future.

“Although we will not comment on specific cases, were non-combatants killed or injured in a US strike, condolence or other ex gratia payments, such as solatia, may be available for those injured and the families of those killed,” Price told the Guardian.

“Are we not the same human beings as these two westerners who were killed?” Qureshi asked in his first interview with an American journalist, conducted through translation. The interview was facilitated by the human rights group Reprieve.

Here's the best part: “The US government takes seriously all credible reports of non-combatant deaths and injuries. If they truly took these of incidents seriously  there would have been an investigation into what happened and how it came to be that this young man's' home was attacked. Further there the U.S. government should have provided monetary support to the family for those lost, injured and the house that was destroyed in the mistaken attack.  That will never happen.

Pakistan Is It's Own Worst Enemy Where The Taliban Are Concerned

Following the withdrawal of Soviet Forces from Afghanistan in 1988 a political and military vacuum was created Pakistan which shares a long border with that country saw opportunity to influence and perhaps control (from the background) any future government in Afghanistan.  Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) sought to create a proxy movement which could, with ISI's  oversight, funding and training achieve a political and military victory in a country torn apart by war.  Further assistance was provided by Nasrullah Barbar the Pakistan's Minister of the Interior under Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Pakistan founded the Taliban.  

  "In 1994, with the failure of [Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's alliance] attempt to oust [the Afghan] Rabbani [administration], Pakistan found itself in an awkward position. Hekmatyar had proved incapable of seizing and controlling defended territory: in this respect he was a bitter disappointment to his patrons. ... In October 1994, [Pakistani interior minister] Babar [took] a group of Western ambassadors (including the US Ambassador to Pakistan John C. Monjo) to Kandahar, without even bothering to inform the Kabul government, even though it manned an embassy in Islamabad. ... On 29 October 1994, a convoy of trucks, including a notorious ISI officer, Sultan Amir ... and two figures who were later to become prominent Taliban leaders, entered Afghanistan."^[9]    

Following the attacks of 11 September 2001 Pakistan's government claimed they were no longer providing logistical, military training or funding to the Taliban.  It just wasn't true.

It's believed that Pakistan during the rule of General Pervez Musharraf was complicit in providing safe harbor for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.  General Musharraf at one point signed a peace treaty with the Taliban which they promptly broke with attacks in the Swat valley.  

Thus when stories spread of Pakistani military barbarity in the campaign against the Taliban in Pakistan – reports which included the execution of Taliban prisoners in Waziristan, whose bodies were left to lie upon the roads to be eaten by animals – the more certain became the revenge of the Taliban. The children of the military officers, educated at the army school just down the road from the famous Edwardes College in Peshawar – were the softest and most obvious of targets. For many years, the ISI and the Pakistani army helped to fund and arm the mujahedin and then the Taliban in Afghanistan. 

For years, the Pakistani authorities have insisted that the old loyalties of individual military and security police officers to the Taliban have been broken – and that the Pakistani military forces are now fully dedicated to what the Americans used to call the “war on terror”.

"Wounds of Waziristan": Broadcast of New Film on Pakistanis Haunted by U.S. Drone War

The Pakistani government is warning of a new rift with the United States after a CIA drone strike that killed the head of the Pakistani Taliban. Hakimullah Mehsud and six other militants died on Friday when U.S. missiles hit their vehicle in North Waziristan. Mehsud had a $5 million bounty on his head and was accused of responsibility for thousands of deaths.

Civilians are dying. Campaigners are being kidnapped. The world cannot turn a blind eye to America’s drone attacks in Pakistan

Why was Karim Khan prevented from speaking out against drone warfare?

Karim Khan is a lucky man. When you’re picked up by 20 armed thugs, some in police uniform – aka the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) – you can be “disappeared” forever. A mass grave in Balochistan, in the south-west of the country, has just been found, filled with the “missing” from previous arrests.

In Madiha Tahir’s recent documentary film Wounds of Waziristan, Mr Khan had talked about his family loss. His son Hafiz was a security guard at a local girls’ school, and also studying for Grade 10. Asif, who had a Master’s in English, was a government employee. Karim Khan saw what was left of their bodies, “covered in wounds”. He found some of their fingers in the rubble of his home.

Thanks to constant reports of his kidnapping in the courageous Pakistani media and to the Rawalpindi bench of the Lahore High Court who ordered the Pakistani government to produce Karim Khan by next Thursday, the anti-drone campaigner is safe. For the moment.

Pakistan To Once Again Hold Peace Talks With The Taliban

Pakistan and the Taliban are to once again hold peace talks yet all previous attempts at a negotiated end to the insurgency have ended in complete failure.  The Taliban is a creation of Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) following the the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan as an attempt to influence the political future of that country.      

According to Pakistani Afghanistan expert Ahmed Rashid, "between 1994 and 1999, an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 Pakistanis trained and fought in Afghanistan" on the side of the Taliban.^[76] Peter Tomsen stated that up until 9/11 Pakistani military and ISI officers along with thousands of regular Pakistani armed forces personnel had been involved in the fighting in Afghanistan.^[77]In 2001 alone, according to several international sources, 28,000-30,000 Pakistani nationals, 14,000-15,000 Afghan Taliban and 2,000-3,000 Al Qaeda militants were fighting against anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan as a roughly 45,000 strong military force.^{[23][24][78][79]} Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf – then as Chief of Army Staff – was responsible for sending thousands of Pakistanis to fight alongside the Taliban and Bin Laden against the forces of Ahmad Shah Massoud.^[24][60][80] Of the estimated 28,000 Pakistani nationals fighting in Afghanistan, 8,000 were militants recruited in madrassas filling regular Taliban ranks.^[23] A 1998 document by the U.S. State Department confirms that "20–40 percent of [regular] Taliban soldiers are Pakistani."^[60] The document further states that the parents of those Pakistani nationals "know nothing regarding their child's military involvement with the Taliban until their bodies are brought back to Pakistan."^[60] According to the U.S. State Department report and reports by Human Rights Watch, the other Pakistani nationals fighting in Afghanistan were regular Pakistani soldiers especially from the Frontier Corps but also from the army providing direct combat support.^[19][60]Human Rights Watch wrote in 2000:

Of all the foreign powers involved in efforts to sustain and manipulate the ongoing fighting [in Afghanistan], Pakistan is distinguished both by the sweep of its objectives and the scale of its efforts, which include soliciting funding for the Taliban, bankrolling Taliban operations, providing diplomatic support as the Taliban's virtual emissaries abroad, arranging training for Taliban fighters, recruiting skilled and unskilled manpower to serve in Taliban armies, planning and directing offensives, providing and facilitating shipments of ammunition and fuel, and ... directly providing combat support.^[19]

In February of 2009 Pakistan and the Taliban reached a ceasefire agreement following a victory by the army.   Under the terms the Sharia law would be allowed with supervision by the Pakistani government.  President Asif Ali Zardari changed the terms of the agreement allowing for appeals of convictions to Pakistan's Supreme Court that change would lead to a second battle in the Swat valley.


Pakistan's government, military and the ISI have only themselves to blame for the Taliban insurgency within their country.

Pakistani government representatives have failed to meet Taliban negotiators in Islamabad as preliminary peace efforts got off to a chaotic start.
The government side said before talks began they wanted clarification from the team named by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Furious TTP negotiators expressed disappointment at the news.
The two sides had been due to start charting a "roadmap" for talks.
The militants have been waging an insurgency inside Pakistan since 2007.
The government's lead negotiator, Irfan Siddiqui, made clear he still expected talks to go ahead, but sought more information on the make-up of the Taliban team and how much authority it had to negotiate.

Documentary: Fear and stress define life under drones

A new documentary, ."Wounds of Waziristan," reveals the story of drones as told by the people who live under them.

"There is an entire generation that has grown up under the eye of the drones," director Madiha Tahir said in a recent interview. "People tell me there are multiple drones that hover during the day, but they tend to usually strike at night. You never know when they are going to strike, and that has created an incredible amount of psychological stress."


And Tahir says many Pakistani civilians resent the United States for that reason. Of all the families she spoke to for the film, "There is not a single one that is for the drone attacks."

"There is no bigger terrorist than Obama or Bush," Karim Khan, whose brother and son were killed in a drone strike, says in the film. "Those who have weaponry like drones, who drop bombs on us while we are in our own homes, there are no greater terrorists than them."

Struggling to control North Waziristan-video

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The Islamic militants in Waziristan are said to have close affiliations with the Taliban. Waziristan is often mentioned as a haven for al-Qaeda fighters, who will be required to either leave the area or act peacefully as a condition of the negotiated peace accord. Some of these militants call their organization the "Taliban."[2] - "The tribal militants call themselves "Pakistani Taliban," or members of a newly coined and loosely knit entity, the Taliban."[2] Tribal leaders control the area of the North Waziristan Agency and the South Waziristan Agency of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).[citation needed] In practice they have replaced these two agency-level governments as the political body controlling the area,[citation needed] although formal dissolution of the agencies is not part of the truce agreement. Partisans in North Waziristan declared an "Islamic state" in February 2006.[3] According to anonymous sources, the Pakistan government effectively acknowledged the organization in the Waziristan accord of 5 September 2006 which referred to the organization in the agreement, however the agreement does not recognize the Taliban as an independent state, but only as a security body charged with fulfilling the obligations of the treaty. [4] There is speculation that some al-Qaeda leaders have found refuge in the area controlled by the Emirate, which is a staging ground for militant operations in Afghanistan.[5] A condition of the truce is that no support be given for these operations. Local observers view the truce accord as a prelude to hot pursuit chases of mujahideen into Pakistan by NATO forces in Afghanistan.[6] Details of the agreement may be found under Waziristan accord.