Friday, October 12, 2012

Living with death by drone...

Last week, Stanford University and New York University released a major study about the use of drones in the ever-evolving but never-ending war on terror. Unfortunately, many commentators missed the report's key message: Drones are terrorizing an entire civilian population.

I was one of the researchers for the study, and spent weeks in Pakistan interviewing more than 60 people from North Waziristan. Many were survivors of strikes. Others had lost loved ones and family members. All of them live under the constant threat of annihilation.

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People in the United States imagine that drones fly to a target, launch their deadly missiles with surgical precision and return to a U.S. base hundreds or thousands of miles away. But drones are a constant presence in the skies above the North Waziristan tribal area in Pakistan, with as many as six hovering over villages at any one time. People hear them day and night. They are an inescapable presence, the looming specter of death from above.

And that presence is steadily destroying a community twice the size of Rhode Island. Parents are afraid to send their children to school. Women are afraid to meet in markets. Families are afraid to gather at funerals for people wrongly killed in earlier strikes. Drivers are afraid to deliver food from other parts of the country. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. ‘Drones causing mass trauma among civilians,’ major study finds...
  2. It's a drones' drones' drones' drones' world...
  3. US drone attack massacres 21 people, injures 72 others in Somalia...
  4. Yemen: 10 civilians killed as US drone hits wrong target...
  5. Yemenis furious about US assassination drone strikes...
  6. US drone strikes target rescuers in Pakistan – and the west stays silent...
  7. Obama moves to block drone death figures...
  8. A killer in the White House...
  9. At least 21 people massacred in US drone attack in Pakistan...

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