This June marked a decade of the CIA’s drone programme in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas on the borderland between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The ghastly anniversary coincided with Operation Zarb-e-Azb, a major military offensive against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Waziristan, which has seen more drone strikes than any other area in the region. The CIA’s unmanned planes and the Pakistan Air Force are important parts of the ongoing operation, which was launched in response to an 8 June militant attack on Karachi airport. The assault has driven more than 450,000 people from their homes, in blistering summer heat. Despite the mass displacements and mounting casualties—roughly three thousand people have reportedly died in an estimated 390 CIA strikes in Pakistan—there is no end to the drone programme in sight. Critical but largely unpublicised debates are underway about how to count the members of the dead—as civilians, militants or simply the unknown. These issues are by no means new. Aerial bombardment has been taking place in Waziristan for nearly a century. For just as long, the technologies with which bombing is conducted and the terms in which it is understood have kept such warfare, and its consequences, largely free from public scrutiny. In Perspectives, Vazira Zamindar considers what a century of aerial bombardment in Waziristan tells us about the CIA’s drone programme.
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 09:30:28 +0000
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