US drone war in Pakistan prompts fear and anger

[Gerald]

Orla Guerin speaks to relatives of those who have been killed in drone strikes.In Pakistan, former cricketer turned politician Imran Khan plans to lead a march to the tribal areas this weekend to protest against US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) drone strikes. Under President Barack Obama there has been a six-fold increase in drone attacks. Almost 300 strikes have been carried out since he took office.

Ijaz Ahmed tends to stay at home these days, but even at home he feels afraid.

The softly spoken young man lives with the constant buzzing of CIA drones. In the Pakistani tribal region of North Waziristan, they hover overhead day and night.

And he knows only too well what they can do. A drone killed his uncle and six cousins in late January 2009. It was President Obama's first strike in Pakistan. It has been followed by nearly 300 more.

"When I got to the site, everything was destroyed," he said. "What happened was brutal. I remember how we used to sit together and chat, but now they are gone. Their children are orphans." He insists the dead men were civilians, not militants.

Karim Khan, a Pakistani journalist, says the same about the loved ones he buried - his brother Asif Iqbal and his own son, Zainullah.

"He was one of the top in his class," said Karim, a robust figure in a black and grey checked Turban. "He loved cricket and he had lots of friends. He had already learned to recite the Quran. We wanted him to become a religion teacher."

But a drone killed the 16-year-old and his uncle on New Year's Eve 2009.

His father insists there were no militants in the house at the time. "Even if there had been," said Mr Khan, "would this be the way to go after them? Isn't this a violation of international law?"

He is trying to prove that point by bringing a wrongful death case against the CIA in the Pakistani courts.

Pakistan's government says drone strikes are illegal, counterproductive, and a violation of its sovereignty - but it does nothing to stop them. Officials here deny this amounts to tacit consent.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19842410


Note: 5 October 2012 Last updated at 11:02 GMT

[sonicninja]

Funny how everyone in Pakistan insists that there are no militants operating in the area, just like Bill Clinton insisted he wasnt slipping Monica Lewinski "a length" in his office every chance he got.

The world is full of liars and cheats, finding the Big Boss (Bin Laden) in thier garden didnt help thier case, the more drones that they see the less chance there is of militants using Pakistan as a Bed and Breakfast.

My personal thoughts, for what they are worth?? I dont trust Pakistan one bit but im a military man and i just go by what my leaders tell me, when they show film and photo footage of militants crossing borders on motorcycles carrying boxes of RPG's and IED's it rubs me up, especially when my neighbours are coming home in boxes and i have to see the effect on the wives and kids faces as they try and go about thier daily lives.

Drones??? The more the merrier i say.

[soopaman2]

Osama Bin Laden wasn't in Pakistan either. (no, we swear, none of us saw him! *whistles innocently**)

I think we should leave, take our money with us, then sign a military alliance with India, guaranteeing their sovereignty, and borders. Just to annoy them.


Cut the scum loose already, please?

(sometimes the best way is to do things with a pen, rather than bomb. We tried the bomb, it does not work)

[Jimbuna]

Funny how everyone in Pakistan insists that there are no militants operating in the area, just like Bill Clinton insisted he wasnt slipping Monica Lewinski "a length" in his office every chance he got.

The world is full of liars and cheats, finding the Big Boss (Bin Laden) in thier garden didnt help thier case, the more drones that they see the less chance there is of militants using Pakistan as a Bed and Breakfast.

My personal thoughts, for what they are worth?? I dont trust Pakistan one bit but im a military man and i just go by what my leaders tell me, when they show film and photo footage of militants crossing borders on motorcycles carrying boxes of RPG's and IED's it rubs me up, especially when my neighbours are coming home in boxes and i have to see the effect on the wives and kids faces as they try and go about thier daily lives.

Drones??? The more the merrier i say.

Must agree :yep:

[Skybird]

Drones fly with China-made chips. China-made chips have backdoors.

Everyone could manufacture drones soon. And can hide the identity of the owner and operator. So drones build by several companies, with parts from several nations, can by operated by any nation or non-nation, for spying, assassination, war, against anyone, anywhere, any time.

Nations. Crime organisations. Cartels. Secret services. Proxies.

Everyone can strike everyone everywhere, at any time.

The state's monopole for military powers gets lost. We go back in time by several centuries - into the era of the worst and longest-lasting chains of wars Europe has seen.

First we redid mercenary companies. Then outsourcing military services and maintenance to private contractors. Now we do drones.

In recent months I had changed my mind on the acceptance of drones, for these reasons. The implications of their spreading are not that obvious ate first glance. But they are frightening.

Now consider the already running erosion of democratic principles and civil rights. The inner collapse of checks and balances. They takeover by business lobbies. Hightech weapon producers seeking new markets to replace losses from growing defense budgets int he west. The high demand for civil surveillance and policing hightech. Riot control. No pleasant outlook but quite a dystopic. Drones of many kinds are already used against ourselves - by our own governments. And they want more of that, like they also want the total camera surveillance of all public space. why stopping at people'S housedoors? what they do not know they cannot protest against.

Hehe, just pulling your leg. It all exists, sure, but really - it is all done for a good purpose only, to chase the bad guys only. So sweet dreams everybody - good night! [sigh of relief]

[Catfish]

If it's an american drone, to be safe just do not try to look like a wedding party.

[Jimbuna]

If it's an american drone, to be safe just do not try to look like a wedding party.

LOL :)

[Tribesman]

I think we should leave, take our money with us, then sign a military alliance with India, guaranteeing their sovereignty, and borders. Just to annoy them.

As long as you don't guarantee the sovereignty of Indian land china says is chinese and borders that neither country agrees to.

[soopaman2]

As long as you don't guarantee the sovereignty of Indian land china says is chinese and borders that neither country agrees to.


No sir, we could selectively enforce it, only against Pakistan. (kinda like we do with Israel and their shenanigans.)

God forbid we piss of the great and benevolent China. The bastion of high society.

We (and the WTO) let them manipulate their currency to their own advantage, so I see your point.

People fear the arabs. Tribesman is on to something, there is a bigger threat than a bunch of shoeless jihadists.

(don't start your crap on the fed doing it too, alot of commodities are pegged on the dollar value, and can cost fatcats alot of money, so Bernanke does his magic to protect his elites of all nations (who exploit our national resources for profit), China does it to undermine the west, and take all for themselves) I do not excuse either.

We all are really despicable. And I mean you fatcats with nothing constructive to do with the money, but manipulate prices, not me, the guy who depends on paychecks.

[TLAM Strike]

People fear the arabs. Tribesman is on to something, there is a bigger threat than a bunch of shoeless jihadists.

I don't know, I've never seen a group of Chinese behead an American journalist, or the PLAAF fly a passenger jet into a NYC high rise.

The Chinese just want your money, the Jihadists want your life.

[soopaman2]

I don't know, I've never seen a group of Chinese behead an American journalist, or the PLAAF fly a passenger jet into a NYC high rise.

The Chinese just want your money, the Jihadists want your life.


The chinese will use the Jihadists to take your life, and your money, they seem to be allies with most of them animals. Think about it.:)

[TLAM Strike]

The chinese will use the Jihadists to take your life, and your money, they seem to be allies with most of them animals. Think about it.:)

Actually the PRC is having their own problems with Jihadists out in Xinjiang.

The overriding goal of the Chinese government is stability. As soon as any customer (say Jihadists) becomes a liability to their trade relations they will drop them like a sack of rocks.

[Gerald]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19861020

Note: update record, 7 October 2012 Last updated at 06:50 GMT

[soopaman2]

Actually the PRC is having their own problems with Jihadists out in Xinjiang.

The overriding goal of the Chinese government is stability. As soon as any customer (say Jihadists) becomes a liability to their trade relations they will drop them like a sack of rocks.

Fair point, they do put economic growth above everything.

[Oberon]

Fair point, they do put economic growth above everything.

Primarily because their growth is built on a house of cards, if stability becomes too much of a problem the whole thing collapses in on itself. They're working towards improving that stability and cementing it into place but at the moment, despite looking so strong that they've wowed the average American to fear them, they are incredibly weak. Their strongest power is soft power, something that they and Russia have gotten very good at using.

[soopaman2]

Alot like the house of cards that is currently collapsing here in America and Europe.?

Good thing they can shoot at their protestors, good thing the UN ignores their civil rights violations, then in the same breath condemns N korea, or Iran, who China supports with all their hearts.

Why did we let the defeated nation of China into the UN? Russia at least deserved it, they clawed their way back, China did nothing but accept outside charity through the war, and whine their ways in.

Now the world pays with their currency manipulating, and blatant civil rights violations.

The UN ran on into the Balkan conflict for less, than what they (China) do.

[Oberon]

We let China in because they won the Chinese civil war :O: It's a bit hard to ignore a nation of god alone knows how many, in preference to a nation which is composed of a tiny island (I know, I know pot kettle black).
However, the primary reason we let China in, the most important one...was because of the Sino-Soviet split. We let the PRC into the UN, and they act as a counterbalance against the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact lackeys. Furthermore, it prevents them teaming up with the Soviets and becoming a dominant military force.

That worked until the Cold War ended. :haha:

Not that Russia and China are exactly BFFs, but they're closer now than the days of Mao and Krushchev, that's for certain, and the likelihood of a 'Bear and the Dragon' scenario remains limited to the works of Clancy.

The American and European house of cards is different to the Chinese one, our economies have been steadily built up over a hundred, to two hundred years of steady industrialisation, admittedly a lot of that industrialisation has been abandoned now, but the groundwork is still there.
China took the short-cut, what we did in two hundred years, they did in two decades. You don't do that without cutting corners, and as any engineer will tell you, you cut corners and the whole thing becomes structurally unstable.
Sticking with that analogy, the American and European houses are houses that are well built but have been neglected, they've lost their shine and they need working on to prevent them from decaying.
The Chinese house is in danger of falling down, it looks great but that's because there's always people working on it to keep it standing. They're shoring it up and in a few years it will be strong enough to stand on its own, but for now a strong gust of wind will knock it over, whereas that same strong gust of wind would probably take out some windows and knock the roofing tiles off the American and European houses, collapse a bit of the roof at worst.
Furthermore, and this is something I think a lot of Americans don't realise...is that China is tied to the US economically, not in the manner that China rules the US as many Americans fear, but that the US rules China, if the US economy falls, Chinas follows shortly afterwards, and the PRC will fall further and hit the bottom harder than America will. The riots in Washington would look like childs play compared to the likelihood of civil war (again) in the PRC, or a succession of military coups. Either way, more blood would be spilt over there than in America.
This does not mean that one should be complacent about American dominance, China is taking its best route...biding its time, only flexing its muscles slightly in regional disputes, trying not to provoke anything that it cannot come out of without damage. This is why there will be nothing other than small coastguard skirmishes over the Senkaku islands, because if Japans economy suffers, then Chinas does too, China and Japan have a BIG trading relationship and China can't risk ruining that, likewise with China and the US, China and Taiwan and in fact, China and most of its neighbours.
So, China bides its time, until it can reach a point where its economy is balanced (which is part of the Five Year Plan beginning this year) and that it can survive a major economic upset...and THEN it will begin any plans it has in the region.
China is a patient nation, it will only act when the conditions favour it, not before, and not after, and right now the conditions do not favour it.

[Jimbuna]

That worked until the Cold War ended.


Far too quick for me :)