USA:s drönare dödar 80% civila

RT 2012-10-17 (Text på engelska)
The absolute majority of the people killed by American UAVs in Pakistan are innocent civilians, claims Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik. If given the drone technology, Pakistan can do the job better, he argued earlier.

Malik revealed that according to Islamabad calculates, the number of drone attacks in recent years totaled to 336 episodes, of which 96 were launched from Afghanistan.

There are no exact statistics of people killed in drone strikes in Pakistan.

Estimates vary from about 2.500 to over 3,000 victims.

Reportedly as many as 174 of them were children.

The latest US study claimed that only 2 per cent of drone strike casualties in Pakistan are top militants.

The researchers at Stanford and New York University also claimed that the American drone strike policy in Pakistan has not helped Washington achieve its goal of curbing terrorism in the region.

The civilian deaths that mark practically every drone strike on terror suspects in Pakistan’s tribal regions have achieved the opposite goal: locals hate the US because of the unceasing fear that death may come from above at any moment.

Most of the strikes have been made in North Waziristan province, a militant stronghold against which Islamabad is considering a fully-fledged military operation. Civilian deaths have been causing outcry in Pakistan, which ultimately forbade the US military transit to

Afghanistan for months as a result. Pakistani government has repeatedly demanded Washington to cease drone strikes, but the program continues despite all the odds.

‘Give us drones’

In early October, Interior Minister Rehman Malik urged the US to share drone technology with Pakistan, saying Islamabad could put it to better use against terrorism.

He made the statement speaking at a media briefing at Pakistan’s Embassy in Washington.

“They had given us F-16’s, we haven’t used them against India, instead they were used in [the] War against Terror. Now [the] United States should provide drones to Pakistan in order to target militants in areas bordering Afghanistan,” argued the minister.

"If we are given drones, we will use them responsibly as we used the F-16s," Rehman Malik is reported as saying.

Just like Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar before him, Malik also mentioned that Pakistan had no objection to using drones against militants, but that it is the method by which the strikes are made the country disagrees with.

http://rt.com/news/pakistan-civilian-victims-drones-695/

http://rt.com/news/pakistan-drones-study-civilians-933/

^{US drones kill up to 80% civilians
– Pakistan Interior Minister}

^{CIA demands drones despite
80% civilian death rate}

Oct 19, 2012 by RussiaToday
The CIA wants to significantly expand its fleet of drones - and is pressing the White House to give the go ahead.

It would allow the agency to sustain - or even increase - lethal strikes abroad, including those in Pakistan. The news comes just a day after the Pakistani Interior Minister quoted statistics suggesting 80 per cent of people killed in US drone attacks have been civilians.

Rehman Malik said in 300 strikes, more than two thousand people have died. RT's Irina Galushko looks into the bloody history of U.S. drone operations in Pakistan.

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