Brian Williams - Predators

While Behram admits that he did not take pictures of dead Taliban victims (who were likely removed from the scenes by fellow militants), he does not necessarily have to present the whole picture. The pictures and stories of dead Pakistani civilians are enough to confirm to Pakistanis that the U.S. drones do in fact kill civilians. As for the locals’ responses to the drone attacks, the Guardian writes,

According to Noor Behram, the strikes not only kill the innocent but injure untold numbers and radicalize the population. “There are just pieces of flesh lying around after a strike. You can’t find bodies. So the locals pick up the flesh and curse America. They say that America is killing us inside our own country, inside our own homes, and only because we are Muslims.

“The youth in the area surrounding a strike gets crazed. Hatred builds up inside those who have seen a drone attack. The Americans think it is working, but the damage they’re doing is far greater.” 56

Another account of a drone strike reads, “Their bodies, carbonized, were fully burned. They could only be identified by their legs and hands. One body was still on fire when he reached there. Then he learned that the charred and mutilated corpses were relatives of his who lived in his village, two men and a boy aged seven or eight. They couldn’t pick up the charred parts in one piece.” 57Regarding the acceptability of civilian casualties, another Pakistani angrily said, “I think, even if they said, ‘we’ve killed 100 terrorists,’ and just one child was also killed…. If you, at that time, you see that child’s body, you talk to his mother and father—I think, for me, this is a very serious thing. That one child, sitting in his house, could be killed like this.” 58

Researchers at Stanford University and New York University have compiled a report of stories from drone victims that brings to life those whose lives have been shattered by drone strikes. One account reads,

“Before the drone strikes started, my life was very good. I used to go to school and I used to be quite busy with that, but after the drone strikes, I stopped going to school now. I was happy because I thought I would become a doctor.” Sadaullah recalled, “Two missiles [were] fired at our hujra and three people died. My cousin and I were injured. We didn’t hear the missile at all and then it was there.”

He further explained, “[The last thing I remembered was that] we had just broken our fast where we had eaten and just prayed…. We were having tea and just eating a bit and then there were missiles…. When I gained consciousness, there was a bandage on my eye. I didn’t know what had happened to my eye and I could only see from one.”

Sadaullah lost both of his legs and one of his eyes in the attack. He informed us, “Before [the strike], my life was normal and very good because I could go anywhere and do anything. But now I am not able to do that because I have to stay inside…. Sometimes I have really bad headaches… [and] if I walk too much [on my prosthetic legs], my legs hurt a lot. [Drones have] drastically affected life [in our area]. 59

There are also cases of people who allowed armed Taliban, often uninvited, into their houses and then paid the price for the visit with a drone strike. For example, the Pakistani paper the News reported,

The Taliban and Al Qaeda have unleashed a reign of terror on the people of FATA. People are afraid that the Taliban will suspect their loyalty and behead them. Thus, in order to prove their loyalty to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, they offer them to rent their houses and hujras for residential purposes.

There are people who are linked with the Taliban. Terrorists visit their houses as guests and live in the houses and hujras. The drone attacks kill women and small children of the hosts. These are innocent deaths because the women and children have no role in the men’s links with terrorists.

Other innocent victims are local people who just happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. 60

A similar case was reported in the Asia Times : “In an interview with a researcher for CIVIC, a civilian victim of a drone strike in North Waziristan carried out during the Obama administration recounted how his home had been visited by Taliban fighters asking for lunch. He said he had agreed out of fear of refusing them. The very next day, he recalled, the house was destroyed by a missile from a drone, killing his only son.” 61

Although it is common knowledge in the FATA that the drones are hunting militants, not civilians, many Pashtuns fear that they will be killed by accident, and so they live in a state of fear. A Pakistani journalist interviewed one tribesman named Khaista Khan: “The people in North Waziristan, currently the main target of the drone strikes, are developing psychological disorders because of the constant fear and anxiety caused by the drones regularly flying over the area. ‘Everyone is scared here,’ Khan said. ‘It is like someone is pointing a loaded gun at you when you are working, eating your meal, sitting with the children or sleeping. It is becoming very difficult to live this way.’” 62

A journalist for the Miami Herald painted a similar picture of the tribesmen’s fear of drones:

They described a terrifying existence under the drones in North Waziristan, the focus of the strikes. A 13-year-old boy, Saddam Hussain, said that he lost his 10-month-old niece and sister-in-law in a strike on their house on the night of Oct. 9, in the Datta Khel area of North Waziristan. Saddam carried a large picture of the baby girl with him at the protest. “The drones patrol day and night. The sound comes when they fly lower down. Sometimes we see six in the air all at once,” Saddam said. “When they come down, people run out of their houses, even at night.” 63

A Globe and Mail reporter in the FATA reported,

People who sleep under the buzzing of the drones say it’s hard to settle down for the night, listening to the sound of armed machines nearby. Muhammad Amad, executive director of Idea, an aid group that works in the tribal areas, was telling a visitor that the drones are counterproductive because they stir up local anger, when he was interrupted by one of his local staffers from Waziristan, interjecting in broken English: “Mental torture,” said the bearded man, with sun-weathered skin. He repeated himself, struggling to enunciate: “Mental torture.” “Yes, it’s mental torture,” Mr. Amad said. “When we lie down under the noise of the drones, nobody sleeps.”

Several people from the tribal areas said the same thing. Sleeping pills and anti-depressants have become a regular part of the diet, they said, even in poor villages where few people can afford meat. 64

The Xinhua news agency similarly reported, “Dr. Faizur Rehman Burki, a local physician, said that the drone strikes have not only panicked people, but also catalyzed uncertainty because of which people were now using sedatives. ‘Usage of tranquilizers has been increased,’ Xinhua news agency quoted Dr. Burki, as saying. ‘I am not scared, but haunted by the uncertainty that anything can happen anytime to my home and the loved ones,’ said Naseemullah, a native of Wana.” 65

A local source told the Los Angeles Times , “These drones fly day and night, and we don’t know where to hide because we don’t know who they will target. If I could, I would take revenge on America.” 66Another Pakistani said, “People are very worried, very tense all the time. When the missile is fired from the plane, there is a loud explosion. When it hits the ground, it makes a terrifying noise. The people below, they just start running. Pieces of missile, they fly everywhere, very far, into other people’s houses.” 67