Sunday, June 03, 2012

We are sleepwalking into the Drone Age, unaware of the consequences...

Last October I was at a jirga in Islamabad where 80 people from Waziristan had assembled to talk about the US Predator drones that buzz around overhead, periodically delivering death by Hellfire missile. A jirga is the traditional forum for discussing and resolving disputes, part parliament, part court of law. The turbaned tribal elders were joined by their young sons on a rare foray out of their region to meet outsiders and discuss the killing. The isolation of the Waziris is almost total – no western journalist has been to Miranshah for several years.

At our meeting I spoke as the representative westerner. I reported the CIA claim that not one single innocent civilian had been killed in over a year. I did not need to understand Pashtu to translate the snorts of derision when this claim was translated.

During the day I shook the hand of a 16-year-old kid from Waziristan named Tariq Aziz. One of his cousins had died in a missile strike, and he wanted to know what he could do to bring the truth to the west. At the Reprieve charity, we have a transparency project: importing cameras to the region to try to export the truth back out. Tariq wanted to take part, but I thought him too young. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Drone porn: why killing "criminals" with drones is a war crime...
  2. NATO air strike massacres family of eight, including six children...
  3. Twelve children killed in another US massacre in Afghanistan...
  4. US drones massacre children in Pakistan...
  5. Women and children killed in US drone attack in Pakistan...
  6. US soldier 'shoots 16 Afghan civilians including nine children'
  7. The civilian victims of the CIA's drone war... 
  8. Victims of US drone attacks in Pakistan are mostly civilians...
  9. Another massacre in Pakistan as US drones kill 45 people... 
  10. Twelve children killed in another US massacre in Afghanistan... 

No comments:

Post a Comment