A new report released by Amnesty International, the global human rights watchdog, has caused quite a stir here in Pakistan. Titled ‘Will I Be Next?’ the study is being touted as the first truly comprehensive field study on drone strikes in Pakistan. Amnesty International has used data collected from 45 known drone strikes in North Waziristan over the period from January 2012 to August 2013 and has conducted an in-depth field study on nine of these strikes. The report has laid some blatant accusations against the US’s drone programme in Pakistan and the secrecy surrounding it by calling the killings “unlawful” and even going as far as to say that the US has carried out “war crimes”. While these are heavy claims for the international community to hear, the common people of Pakistan, particularly those living in the study area of North Waziristan, have known these harsh truths since the US started its drone campaign. While Amnesty International is probably one of the world’s most credible organisations when it comes to human rights causes, the study has left one major question in the minds of those who think to ask it: just how did members of the Amnesty International team, working on this project, manage to enter North Waziristan, carry out such large-scale field work, talk to the locals and come out unscathed from an area so inaccessible that even the media has a hard time reporting from the ground there? To document, interview and compile such a detailed study in such a troubled region is no easy task and one wonders how the watchdog pulled it off. The report talks about innocent lives lost in at least two of the strikes from an elderly woman and her family to hardworking labourers eating dinner after a hard day’s work. We have always known that collateral damage was part and parcel of the drone strikes but the report has put a human face on this notion, raising the question of these strikes being a war crime if intent to harm non-combatants was present. The report also speaks of the US’s inability to, so far, offer transparency regarding the drones, calling it a defiance of international law. What Amnesty International must understand is that now the conventional rules of warfare do not apply: it is the first time any war is dealing with a global terror movement and so, it seems, the rules of engagement and international law must evolve alongside it.
The report speaks briefly of the people in the tribal areas being caught between the drones, the militants and the army, but one feels more detail should have been given to this truth. The report, whilst studying drone strikes and their illegality, should have been less one-sided. It should have spoken of the fact that many of the militants now infesting North Waziristan have been present there since the Cold War era when the Pakistani state compromised its own sovereignty by allowing foreign militants refuge on its soil. We killed our own sovereignty first, and then came the drones.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has raised the drone issue on his current trip to the US, calling the strikes an “irritant” in the Pakistan-US relationship but he fails to mention that Pakistan allowed the drones access to our land in search of militants. Politicians like Mr Sharif like to talk about how their efforts to curb militancy are being affected because of these drone attacks but one would like to ask: what efforts? Illusionary politics of the kind Imran Khan likes to play speak of peace talks and negotiations but no real efforts to beat back the terror threat are seen. Mr Khan is currently gloating about the Amnesty International report, saying that his party, the PTI, is the only one to loudly oppose the drones but he has not shared what he plans to do about ending the militant menace apart from appeasing them with talks. The drone report is a welcome eye-opener for all those ignorant enough to not see the stark reality, but it should have been more detailed on how we landed in this mess in the first place. *