Pakistanis rally against drone ‘assassination campaign’
Two thousand Pakistanis join a rally against drone attacks, labelled a “global assassination campaign” by thinker Noam Chomsky as security sources say the latest strike has killed 13 militants.
The latest report from security sources in Pakistan claims 13 Tailban militants were killed in a suspected US drone attack in Pakistan’s South Waziristan region on Wednesday. The sources say that a senior commander, Taj Gul Mehsud, was among those killed.
Tribal elders in neighbouring North Waziristan put the death toll higher, saying that up to 22 people died, all of them members of the Pakistani Taliban. The remote location of the strike was given as the reason for it not being reported earlier.
On Thursday, a US drone strike killed five commanders of a powerful Taliban faction which attacks western forces in Afghanistan, according to one of its leaders. The group threatened to escalate attacks on US-led Nato troops in Afghanistan in June in response to intensified drone strikes.
The Obama administration has been increasingly relying on drone strikes to hit al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in Pakistan’s tribal border areas. The stated aim is to stabilise Afghanistan before the end of 2014 when all Nato combat troops are due to leave.
Thousands rally against drone attack
On Friday around 2,000 Pakistanis demonstrated outside the country’s parliament to demand an end to the drone strikes, claiming innocent civilians are being killed.
The rally was led by cricket player turned politician Imran Khan and was attended mostly by members of his Tehreek-e-Insaf party, which is gearing up to contest it’s first general election.
The Obama administration has extended earlier procedures to a global assassination campaign. Noam Chomsky
Some young people in the crowd set fire to a wooden model of a drone, shouting “No more drone attacks,” “No to USA.”
“The USA says Pakistan is a terrorist country, but they come and kill in Pakistan, who is the true terrorist then?” said Nawad Kayani, 28, a Khan activist and businessman. “We come here to support the Waziri people: 90 or 95 per cent of the drone victims are innocent civilians. Our government is just a puppet directed by America, they just polish American shoes, ” He added.
But critics of US foreign policy say that targeted killing by drone attack is “state terror”.
Writer and philosopher Noam Chomsky, talking in an interview with Public Service Europe, said that the use of drones is unacceptable.
He said: “There is no justification for targeted assassination.
“The Obama administration has extended earlier procedures to a global assassination campaign directed at people suspected of encouraging others to carry out what the US calls terrorist acts.
“What are called ‘terrorist acts’ also raises rather serious questions. Take, for example, the Guantanamo Bay case of a 15-year-old boy, who was accused of having picked up a rifle to defend his village in Afghanistan when it was being attacked by American soldiers. He was accused of terrorism and sent to Guantanamo for eight years. This is terrorism, a 15 year old boy defending his village from terrorism?”
Earlier this year a lawyer representing the families of drone victims in Pakistan said the escalation in America’s use of the unmanned aircraft would become the “next Guantanamo”.
But a senior US official responded, telling Channel 4 News they are “the most precise system we’ve ever had in our arsenal.”
