[Reader-list] USA Drone attacks -FATA Pakistan (A survey)

[Kshmendra Kaul]

Some interesting results thrown up by this survery on the US Drone attacks in FATA, Pakistan:
 
- -- Do you see drone attacks bringing about fear and terror in the common people?
     (Yes 45%, No 55%)
 
-- Do you think the drones are accurate in their strikes? 
   (Yes 52%, No 48%)

-- Do you think anti-American feelings in the area increased due to drone attacks recently?
   (Yes 42%, No 58%)

-- Should Pakistan military carry out targeted strikes at the militant organisations? 
   (Yes 70%, No 30%)

-- Do the militant organisations get damaged due to drone attacks? 
   (Yes 60%, No 40%)
 
Some more Extracts from the Farhat Taj article in The News (05/03/09):
 
* The popular notion outside the Pakhtun belt that a large majority of the local population supports the Taliban movement lacks substance.
 
* The survey also reinforces my own ethnographic interactions ....people I personally met and ...contact ....through telephone calls and emails. .... The number is well over 2000. I asked almost all those people if they see the US drone attacks on FATA as violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty. More than two-third said they did not. Pakistan’s sovereignty, they argued, was insulted and annihilated by Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, whose territory FATA is after Pakistan lost it to them. The US is violating the sovereignty of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, not of Pakistan. Almost half the people said that the US drones attacking Islamabad or Lahore will be violation of the sovereignty of Pakistan, because these areas are not taken over by the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Many people laughed when I mentioned the word sovereignty with respect to Pakistan. 

* Over two-thirds of the people viewed Al-Qaeda and the Taliban as enemy number one, and wanted the Pakistani army to clear the area of the militants. A little under two-thirds want the Americans to continue the drone attack because the Pakistani army is unable or unwilling to retake the territory from the Taliban. 

* The people I asked about civilian causalities in the drone attacks said most of the attacks had hit their targets, which include Arab, Chechen, Uzbek and Tajik terrorists of Al-Qaeda, Pakistani Taliban (Pakhtun and Punjabis) and training camps of the terrorists. There has been some collateral damage.

* The drones hit hujras or houses which the Taliban forced people to rent out to them. There is collateral damage when the family forced to rent out the property is living in an adjacent house or a portion of the property rented out. 

* 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 drones 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. 

* People told me that typically what happens after every drone attack is that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda terrorists cordon off the area. No one from the local population is allowed to access the site, even if there are local people killed or injured. Their relatives cry and beg the terrorists to let them go near the site. But the Taliban and Al Qaeda do not allow them. The Taliban and Al Qaeda remove everything they want from the site and then allow the locals to see the site.

* What is happening in FATA is destroying the lives and culture of the FATA people, threatening the integrity of Pakistan and world peace. 
 
http://thenews.jang.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=165781