The party of Imran Khan was not able to make government in Pakistan but as a leader, he was and still is the most favorite among the public. His newly born party and majority of its fresh electoral candidates may not have attracted the attention of many in this year’s general elections but he emerged as a powerful and an impressive political figure. Anyhow, Mr. Khan’s political views about some of the issues have been very clear cut; though in some issues he took a risky stance but he was not ready to accept something which was wrong; either legally or morally. The close follow-up of the stance and views of Mr. Khan about the US drone attacks in northern areas of Pakistan is one of the few issues where he seems to be more confident. Although he has been blamed to be anti-American but the other day, he cleared in his speech that he was not anti-American but he was against some of the wrong policies of the United States. In his election campaigns, he made it clear that he would never allow the US drone attacks in Pakistan and he was the most critical of these attacks. But in elections, he could not make the government in center but his party swept almost all the seats of the province of KPK (Khyber Pakhtoon Khwa). The tribal areas of this province are the victims of US drone attacks. At the same time, the route from Afghanistan to the seaport of Karachi in Pakistan goes through the same province. When the government of newly elected prime minister Mian Nawaz Sharif could not do anything to stop these attacks, Mr. Khan announced to block the route of NATO goods out of Afghanistan in KPK province and this problem is still in limbo.
While talking about the drone attacks, Mr. Khan’s tone really becomes confident and assertive. He is not one of those who only rely upon the newspapers and electronic media to make their opinion but he has met and listened to many who lost their innocent relatives in these deadly attacks. Unfortunately, except for a very few reports and daring investigation, both the electronic and print media relies upon the press releases of the governments that carry out these attacks and they always claim to have targeted ‘extremely dangerous terrorists’. These have made a general perception that these drone attacks are very useful and their targets are always perfect but the ground realities show another picture. In Pakistan, almost 1000 people have been killed of these drone attacks and according to the informed sources, only 2 % of the casualties were ‘high value targets’. It must be mentioned here that, not only in Pakistan but also in other parts of the world where these drone attacks are carried out by US military, there were large number of incidents in which dozens of children and women were slaughtered and there was a great hue and cry against them but their voices were silenced with the passage of time. They were also weak to do anything against the perpetrators except to become silent. There were also present many strong but secret hands to make them silent
The biggest problem associated with reporting and finding facts about these attacks are innumerable dangers to travel into these areas. FATA or Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan are dangerous because of numerous militant groups and one can never be sure as who is fighting against whom. At the same time, there is Pakistani military busy in operations against terrorists, there are drug dealers, there are kidnapping mafias and most dangerous, there are warlords who can do anything for the money provided to them in handsome amount. Moreover, such a reporter can also become a target him or herself as was the case with Yemeni journalist, Abdulelah Haider Shaye, who demonstrated how targeted these killings can actually be in practice – by exposing the US slaughter at Majala – he was framed and jailed in Yemen as an Al-Qaeda collaborator, and his release was initially blocked by the personal intervention of Obama. In such circumstances, it is easy and safe to sit home and rely on the sources which are easily available to the journalists.
But this trend is changing a bit. For some years, people were not much aware of the casualties of these drone attacks but then people started shouting against them. A number of people reached to the Supreme Court of Pakistan with the sad stories of their innocent and neutral relatives being killed in these attacks and a Pakistani citizen Noor Khan, whose father was one of more than 40 killed in a US drone attack in Pakistan, reached to the appeal court in London. In the same way, more and more journalists are trying to get the exact figures about the victims of these attacks and the extent of their accuracy in targeting the actual terrorists.
These drone attacks are carried out in countries where so many factors force their governments to accept them reluctantly or at least show their indifference or criminal negligence towards them, leaving their people absolutely vulnerable. In all the different countries where these drone and its accompanying ‘covert operations’ are present like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Mali, and Libya, governments are too weak to do anything practical against them. The repeated hue and cry of President Karzai against the misguided operations of NATO forces in Afghanistan and the harsh language of Pakistani premier against the drone attacks in Pakistan could make no effect on the US strategy in this regard and the things seem to have got worse a bit.
It would also be worth here to mention the killings on the ground by the covert US Special Forces, proxy warlords and mercenaries in multiple countries. Although the war seems to have stopped in these countries but the number of casualties, majority of them innocent, has increased sharply and these all are nurturing the terrorism and factors responsible for it.
On media, drone strikes are presented as clean and surgical attacks but increasing ratio of innocent casualties in attacks show that entire mechanism is wrong. Usually these attacks are based on the intelligence reports and unfortunately, majority of these intelligence have proved to be hopelessly wrong.
The increasing trend of drone and Special Forces killings are extrajudicial summary executions. Though these attacks are safe for their perpetrators but they are not solving the problem for which they were intended. They are adding to the human miseries and many people have turned into terrorists after they lost all their relatives in one of these attacks.
These illegal operations are also setting a dangerous trend for the strong to follow. If the United States and its allies are using them to armed attacks around the world at will, other states now acquiring drone capabilities may well follow the path. Most absurdly, what is justified in the name of fighting terrorism has spread terror across the Arab and Muslim world.
The biggest role in this case can be of media; to take some risks, both against terrorists and the governments carrying out these attacks and bring out the truths and then force the culprit nations to change their way of action. Except this, there seems to be no clear solution for this deadly and blood-bathed problem.