The report also paints a harrowing picture of the experience of the ordinary people, among the most impoverished in Pakistan, who live in the region.
Witnesses repeatedly speak of how the destruction of their house, the loss of a wage-earning relative with many dependents, or the need to borrow in order to pay for the treatment of injuries has left their families destitute after a drone strike. One of the interviewees, Ahmed Jan, who told the researchers that he used to work as a driver before he was injured in a strike,. Since then, he has lost most of his hearing and the use of one foot.
He can no longer work and relies on his sons to support his household. After the drone attacks, it is as if everyone is ill. Every person is afraid of the drones. Parents report taking their children out of school because of fears for their safety, and students speak of their diminished ability to concentrate. US drone attacks have likely played no small part in this deterioration. Pew found that 97 percent of Pakistanis who were aware of the strikes were opposed to them.
Perhaps as a reaction, the Obama administration has recently tried to make drone attacks more discriminating. TBIJ calculates that the minimum civilian share of drone casualties has fallen from 14 percent in to 2.
But this is likely to be too little, too late. The US drone campaign continues to bedevil US—Pakistan relations, featuring prominently in the Pakistani media and in the statements of leading Pakistani politicians. What we have witnessed is a perverse turn of events. The US began its military intervention in Afghanistan in ostensibly to reduce the risk of terrorist attacks on America.
Today, al-Qaeda has largely moved on from Afghanistan, and US troops there are engaged primarily in counterinsurgency operations, not counterterrorism. Counterinsurgency is also the main objective of US drone attacks in Pakistan.
But these drone attacks may well be undermining counterterrorism efforts in Pakistan itself. And this matters greatly because extremists in Pakistan pose a threat to Pakistan, to its neighbors, and to other countries, including the US. The threat is especially pronounced for the people of Pakistan, where some 40, have already died in a dozen years of terrorist and counterterrorist violence.
Pakistan is far too big for outsiders to police. At million, its population is almost three times the combined total of Afghanistan and Iraq, countries where recent foreign military interventions have proved less than successful.
Also, Pakistan, notwithstanding its continuing corruption and manipulation of votes, has a democratically elected government, over one hundred nuclear weapons, and an army of , soldiers. The country must be responsible for dealing with its own extremist groups.
Fortunately, despite its frequent inclusion in lists of failing states, Pakistan is not a basket case. It has well-established political parties, noisy private media, and an independent-minded supreme court.
It ranks among the largest global producers of cotton, milk, and wheat, and has over million users of mobile phones. Between and , its annual GDP growth averaged 5 percent. The main steps Pakistan needs to take in order to improve its situation seem clear: it should strive for a lasting peace with both India and Afghanistan; confront the extremist groups who kill foreigners abroad and Pakistanis at home, including Baloch, Ahmedi, Christian, Hindu, and Shia Pakistanis; and bring about a shift in spending from defense to investment in economically productive areas such as education and infrastructure including water and electricity, which are both severely inadequate.
Yet there are encouraging signs that the Pakistani armed forces may be changing. Pakistani politicians, too, are showing increasing maturity. An elected government has unprecedentedly served out its five-year term, and new elections will be held in May. Moreover, there has been improvement in relations with Afghanistan, where a groundbreaking deal for Pakistan to help train the Afghan army is being discussed, and with India, where liberalization of trade and visa policies now seems likely despite recent tensions between the militaries of the two countries in Kashmir.
Still, it is undeniable that Pakistan has not yet done enough to counter the extremist groups on its soil, whether the Taliban or others. Imran Khan, right, leading the rally against drone attacks, Karachi, May The problem, for those who wish Pakistan to take more responsibility for itself, is that these conspiracy theories are not necessarily false. Indeed, many have elements of truth.
Afghanistan has in fact refused to accept the territorial integrity of Pakistan. Saudi Arabia and Iran do back Sunni and Shia militant proxies in the country.
The US has used a vaccination campaign as cover for an intelligence operation on Pakistani soil. Conspiracy theorists have numerous examples they can cite in support of their positions. But perhaps none is as emotionally potent as the claim that flying robots from an alien power regularly strike down from the skies and kill Pakistani citizens. There's also the question of what exactly Pakistan would gain by carrying out strikes now.
Islamabad-based defence analyst Dr Maria Sultan says: "Irrespective of the question of whether Pakistan has the [drone] capability or does not have it, there does not seem [to be] any strategic advantage in carrying out such a strike. Justin Bronk adds that given the outcome of the struggle to control Afghanistan is already guaranteed, "it's not clear if strategically it would make sense at this point for the Pakistanis to intervene so directly.
Reporting and research by Farhat Javed in Islamabad. Read more from Reality Check. Send us your questions. Image source, AFP. Anti-Taliban forces have been resisting a push into the Panjshir area. What are the claims about drones? Image source, Reuters.
There have been claims that anti-Taliban forces have been targeted by Pakistani drones. What does the rise of the Taliban mean for Pakistan? Does Pakistan have its own drones? Yes, it does. Image source, Getty Images. Although Attorney General Eric Holder denied such a possibility in his response to Senator Paul, questions have continued as to the legal authority of CIA targets and the fact that United States citizens cannot demand any sort of accountability for them.
Moving the drone program from the CIA to the Department of Defense is thus being painted as a victory, even a capitulation, to those critics who have criticised the lack of transparency, accountability, and legal basis of the drone program. However, the details of the move do not suggest a reversal or even a rethinking of the strategic imperatives that the Obama Administration and the CIA have used to justify the drone program.
First, the gradual process of the transition without any publicly disclosed details of how and when it will be completed are likely to create a situation in which, at least for a time, it would be difficult if not impossible to tell which agency, the Department of Defense or the CIA, would actually be responsible for a strike. Finally, even if the drone program is actually moved to the Department of Defense, it will be incorporated into its most secret portion, the Joint Special Operations Command, whose top-secret operations are also covert and never released to the public.
When these factors are considered, the effort to provide more transparency and an institutional framework for the drone program seem chimerical at best and deceptive at worst.
All of them point to a continuation of a national security mindset, within the Obama Administration and the State Department, both believing that drones, cheaply bought and unmanned, are a perfect way to bombard other countries with minimal cost the United States.
With the risk of dead American soldiers reduced to nothing, military officials are also gobbling up the idea of waging remote-control wars all over the world, wherever a possible or even supposed threat can be identified. Starkly absent from the debate are any meaningful critiques of the actual effectiveness of drone strikes. Figures obtained from the South Asia Terrorism Portal indicate, for example, that the drastic escalation in drone strikes in Pakistan during the Obama Administration has caused no decrease in the capacity of drone-targeted groups to carry out terrorist attacks in the region.
In turn, there were approximately bomb bla sts in Pakistan that year, most of which were concentrated in the northwestern tribal areas of Pakistan. In , President Obama ordered drone strikes which were again reported to have killed various prominent Taliban figures and various Al-Qaeda commanders. The number of bomb blasts carried out by terrorist groups in Pakistan that year was , with most of them again concentrated in the tribal areas and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
However, despite this being the third year of drone strikes, terror groups within Pakistan were still able to carry out bomb blasts.
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