Raining death from the sky – By Latheef Farook

 

The former head of the CIA's Clandestine Service, Jose Rodriguez, recently stated that President Obama's war against Islam is far more brutal than that of his predecessor, with the administration opting for deadly drone attacks over arrests.

 

The indiscriminate US drone attacks and the senseless killing of innocent people   have reached scandalous proportions, prompting even the pliant Pakistani Government to condemn it and call for an apology.

 

Most of the victims of these attacks live in mud huts in the isolated and rugged mountainous tribal areas of Afghanistan, North West Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. These areas do not have modern roads, schools, health, electricity and water services. The mostly illiterate and poverty stricken people known for their honesty and integrity have been governed by centuries old tribal traditions, which they cherish and strictly abide by.

 

However, they are a contented and God fearing lot, now demonized by the United States and Europe as terrorists in their military agenda to plunder the world.

 

These people have been mercilessly targetted under the guise of killing so called Islamic terrorists. Terrorism remains the common label to justify the Obama’s killing spree, perhaps to please his billionaire masters  who carefully screened, selected, promoted and installed him in the White House to do their dirty work of killing Muslims worldwide.

 

Since Obama assumed office, killing tribal people with drone attacks has become a routine affair. The heartless nature of these  killings have been such that it is not only innocent people attending wedding parties who are killed, but also those who attend the funeral of these  unfortunate victims.

 

'I ask this sincerely: what kind of country targets rescuers, funeral attendees and people gathered to mourn?” questioned a columnist recently. Commenting on the shameful crimes American columnist Glenn Greenwald wrote on 04 June 2012;

 

Bureau of Investigative Journalism

 

“In February, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism documented that after the US kills people with drones in Pakistan, it then targets for death those who show up at the scene to rescue the survivors and retrieve the bodies, as well as those who gather to mourn the dead at funerals…….. The CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals.”  

 

By all means these are calculated cold blooded slaughter of poorest of poor people. However, President Obama gets away with his crime as did his predecessor George Bush, as there is no force which could challenge America. This is the reason why the proud tribal people are waging fearless war against America and its NATO partners who started running away in the face of repeated casualties.

 

The New York Times this month reported that President Obama has a ‘kill list’ that contains names and pictures of individuals targeted for assassination. Appalling.US Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta said recently that the US would continue to target the militants, especially the Haqqani network, in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Whilst being unapologetic about the civilian deaths, the Obama administration continues with its determination to uphold its own sovereignty while weakening that of other countries.

 

One may ask what this drone is and how these unmanned flying killing machines indiscriminately kill people. 

 

Explaining this, Chris Cole and Jim Wright, stated in an article in ‘Peace News’    that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVS), also known as drones, are aircraft either controlled by ‘pilots’ from the ground or increasingly, autonomously following a preprogrammed mission. While there are dozens of different types of drones, they basically fall into two categories: those that are used for reconnaissance and surveillance purposes and those that are armed with missiles and bombs.

 

The use of drones has grown quickly in recent years because unlike manned aircraft they can stay aloft for many hours (Zephyr a British drone under development has just broken the world record by flying for over 82 hours nonstop); they are much cheaper than military aircraft and they are flown remotely so there is no danger to the flight crew. While the British and US Reaper and Predator drones are physically in Afghanistan and Iraq, control is via satellite from Nellis and Creech USAF base outside Las Vegas, Nevada. Ground crews launch drones from the conflict zone, then operation is handed over to controllers at video screens in specially designed trailers in the Nevada desert. One person ‘flies’ the drone, another operates and monitors the cameras and sensors, while a third person is in contact with the ‘customers’, ground troops and commanders in the war zone.

 

While armed drones were first used in the Balkans war, their use has dramatically escalated in Afghanistan, Iraq and in the CIA’s undeclared war in Pakistan.

 

Pentagon has 7,000 drones at work

 

It is assumed the Pentagon alone has 7,000 or so drones at work. Ten years ago there were fewer than 50. Their origins go back to the Vietnam War and beyond that to the use of reconnaissance balloons on the battlefield. Last year a diplomatic crisis with Iran broke out after a sophisticated US drone, the RQ-170 Sentinel, was brought down by Iran on Iranian soil. Iranian forces claimed it had been downed by sophisticated jamming technology.

 

"Obama did not reverse what Bush did, he went beyond it. Obama is just able to wrap it up in a better looking package. He is more liberal, more eloquent. He does not look like a cowboy," said James Bamford, journalist and author of numerous books about the National Security Agency (NSA) in the US.

 

In January 2009, when Obama came to power, the drone programme existed only for Pakistan and had seen 44 strikes in five years. With Obama in office it expanded to Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia with more than 250 strikes. Since April there have been 14 strikes in Yemen alone.

 

Drone strikes, which had been in abeyance, restarted with a vengeance after the failure of the recent Chicago NATO Summit, with three attacks in three days this month reported to have killed up to 29 people.

 

Obama was once a liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war. Now, according to reports, he personally oversees a 'kill list' for drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan. Then there's the CIA renditions, increased surveillance and a crackdown on whistleblowers.No wonder Washington insiders are likening him to 'George W. Bush on steroids'.

 

Pakistan

 

In the latest in a series of remote-controlled attacks, raining death from the sky, four missiles launched by a US drone has killed up to 17 people in North-West Pakistan  straining relations between Washington and Islamabad. The most recent drone operation targetting a hamlet in North Waziristan reported to have killed Abu Yahya al-Libi, a senior al-Qaida leader.

 

CIA drone strikes have led to far more deaths in Pakistan than previously understood, according to extensive new research published by the Bureau. Some 175 children are among at least 2,347 people reported killed in US attacks since 2004. There are credible reports of at least 392 civilians among the dead.  

 

Writing in the Daily Mail columnist  Neon Tommy said ”The Obama administration’s launch of more than 280 drone attacks in Pakistan alone has resulted in the brutal deaths of more than 800 civilians, resulting not only in psychological confusion among the citizens but also in a burgeoning hatred towards NATO countries, especially the US.  Even the leaders standing in the Pakistani election next year, especially the renowned ex-cricketer Imran Khan and his party members are gathering crowds of millions from every region to support a total opposition of US intervention. It seems that the goal of the Obama administration is to kill as many as possible before the US pulls out of Afghanistan in 2014. However, the way the administration has decided to further that aim has resulted in accusations that the US’ attacks have been not only ill targeted, but also callous in their operation.

 

Hundreds of civilians are dead. No apology has been made. Attacks are upheld as a necessity, even as a notoriously few number of militants are killed. Each new drone attack only results in more killings than before. Given this cycle of events, if there is a solution out there, it doesn’t lie in murdering innocents. A dangerous and historical threat of terror is not being alleviated; it is being reinforced through the unwarranted loss of civilian blood.

 

People in North Waziristan point out that the strikes were "pulling apart the social and economic fabric" of the tribal areas and about half the people have had to move to other areas to escape the drones. "Anyone who stays lives in terror will be killed." In Pakistan's view, the attacks have to stop. 

 

US drone attacks raise serious legal questions

 

 

The seriousness of the situation is such that early this month UN human rights chief Navi Pillay said that “The US military drone attacks  to kill militants raise serious legal questions.Drone attacks do raise serious questions about compliance with international law, in particular the principle of distinction and proportionality”. She added that “ensuring accountability for any failure to comply with international law is also difficult when drone attacks are conducted outside the military chain of command.”  Pillay who raised concerns that the strikes were being conducted ‘beyond effective and transparent mechanisms of civilian or military control’, suggested that Pakistan invite the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Summary or Arbitrary Executions to investigate some of the incidents.

 

Pakistan closed its borders to NATO supply vehicles in November 2011 after US forces killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in a border incident. Pakistan continues to demand an apology for the killing of its soldiers, an end to drone attacks and a sharp increase in the tariff paid by NATO for moving cargo across Pakistani territory as conditions to reopen them.  Obama  who was quick to say sorry to Poland this month for saying ‘Polish death camps’ rather than ‘death camps in Poland’ in a speech  refused to apologize for the American air strikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November last year. 

 

Protesting against these strikes, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry in a statement called them “Unlawful, against international law and a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty; Parliament had emphatically stated that they were unacceptable. Drone strikes represented a clear red-line for Pakistan.”

 

Addressing a press conference in Islamabad hours after the US launched its latest attack on the Waziristan region,  killing five Taliban commanders, up and coming Pakistani politician Imran Khan, Chairman of the Tehrik-e-Insaf politcal party  launched a stinging rebuke of drone attacks on militants in the country.

 

Khan said that many of the victims of the attacks were women and children and that the Pakistani government, responsible for their deaths, should resign if they cannot protect the people. He pointed out that the country’s air force had the technology to shoot down drones, but   most of the attacks were backed by the government.

 

Imran Khan was joined in the press conference by his ex-wife Jemima and British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who is fighting the case for drone victims in the British courts. 

 

Yemen

 

Meanwhile former head of the CIA's counter-terrorism centre has warned that the use of drone strikes risks turning militants into ‘dedicated enemies of the west’. Robert Grenier, who was director of the intelligence agency's counter-terrorism unit from 2004 to 2006, said the US risked turning Yemen into the "Arabian equivalent of Waziristan", a reference to the strife-torn Pakistani region.

 

It was a drone strike, carried out by the CIA that killed Fahd al-Quso in Yemen this month. Quso was killed by a missile as he stepped from his vehicle in the southern Shabwa province. Some reports stated that entire families were killed by drone attacks in Yemen. Since Obama began the campaign, 300 to 500 civilians have been killed, more than 60 of them kids. The situation is such that President Obama has arrogated himself the power to kill his own American citizens under the guise of killing Al Qaeda terrorists. He killed American citizen of Yemeni origin Imam Anwar Al Awlaki, a well known   Islamic scholar.

 

Commenting on the killing of Anwar Al Awlaki, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism stated, “Awlaki’s alleged crimes were more recent. A popular preacher, his sermons began to circulate widely on the web. As anti-US sentiment rose in the wake of the invasion of Iraq, the sermons’ content became more militant. Copies of his sermons have been found in the possession of a number of terrorists arrested in recent years – not a sign of guilt, but certainly an indicator of Awlaki’s popularity in dark corners.”

 

What role did Awlaki actually play in al Qaeda?  None, according to some. “They [the western media] have claimed he’s going to be the next leader of al-Qaida, but it’s nonsense. Anwar is not a leader, he’s just a man with strong views and a big mouth,’ his father told The Guardian this year.

 

The American Civil Liberties Union tried to bring a case against the government, challenging its right to kill US citizens at will. That case was struck down. And rumors persist that a small number of other US citizens have also been approved for assassination – a subject on which the government remains silent.

 

Stephen M. Walt of International Relations at Harvard University said on 05 June 2012: “We keep wondering ‘Why do they hate us?’  Well, maybe some people are mad because we are doing things that we would regard as unjustified and heinous acts of war if anyone dared to do them to us.  I'm not really surprised that the US is using its power so freely — that is what great powers tend to do. I'm certainly not surprised that government officials prefer to keep quiet about it, or only leak information about their super-secret policies when they think they can gain some political advantage by doing so. But I also don't think Americans should be so surprised or so outraged when others are angered by actions that we would find equally objectionable if we were the victims instead of the perpetrators.  And if we keep doing unto others in this way, it's only a matter of time before someone does it unto us in return.