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

[Kshmendra Kaul]

Dear Rakesh
 
1. It is a newspaper article which includes some Survey results.
 
2. You make fine points about the 'statistics of the survey' 
 
3. Your judgment on the quality of the questions in the survey can be argued over. It would be just being argumentative. Avoiding that.
 
4. You do not seem to have recognised the distinction between a Survey (on which you made fine points) and the rest of the article by an author. A newspaper article often has anecdotal reportings, deductions and conclusions. Please do not confuse that with the critique that can be made of the 'statistics of a survey'. 
 
Kshmendra

--- On Thu, 3/5/09, Rakesh Iyer <rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Rakesh Iyer <rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Reader-list] USA Drone attacks -FATA Pakistan (A survey)
To: kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com
Cc: "sarai list" <reader-list at sarai.net>
Date: Thursday, March 5, 2009, 6:55 PM


Dear Kshamendra (and all)

Now I am putting across a structured response, in reply to the arguments which have been raised in this particular survey.

First of all, I can understand that a survey is trying to put across the fact that the people across the NWFP, don't support the Taliban or the Al-Qaeda. This is a welcome development. The more such surveys, and the more people's voices are heard, the better.

But I can never support surveys having questions as 'Do you think the drones are accurate in their strikes?' being asked to common people. After all, how can a survey decided whether the drones were actually accurate in their strikes or not? It can be determined by first America declaring their strike points they wished to target, and matching them with the actual points targetted. 

Similarly, it is useless to ask questions like 'Do the militant organisations get damaged due to drone attacks?' to people. This is no way to decide whether the infrastructure for militancy and terrorism is nipped in the bud or not. The only way is to find out the organizations and institutions involved in propagating, managing and perpetuating this structure in the areas, and then finding out whether such attacks did manage in changing these three activities of the 'terrorists', so to speak. How can surveys decide such things?

My second concern stems from the kind of background of people who have been chosen for the survey. When it comes to the questions asked, it's just 650 people chosen, out of whom 100 don't respond, as per the site link you have given. That means about 15% of people haven't expressed their opinion at all, which is significant, considering the percentage figures given for certain questions, which are very close, in terms of their choices. 

Also, the people chosen have been from business, health, education and transport. But the way these occupations have been taken up, it may be possible that these people are actually from the upper sections of the society. Ironically coming up from a researcher only, it would be much better, that to allay the apprehensions for once and for all, an economic background of the people whose views were asked for in the survey, can also be looked at. 

The third concern is with respect to lack of data.

When it is said that

 '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.'

 or 

'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.', 

there is no numerical statistic or data to point out how many Tajiks, Arabs, Chechen, Uzbeks or Tajiks were there among those killed. Similarly, there is no assessment economically and in terms of number of innocents killed here, who are referred to as collateral damage. How does Farhat Taj say that drones have hit Taliban based upon surveys?

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

Indeed. But my point is that, there is no reference to either experiences of this being the reason for people being killed, in the above-mentioned article, neither is there data responding to the same. I don't understand how can this be accepted. 

Henceforth, it would be much better that we actually stick at least in such cases, to experiences of people at least, if not numerical data, to support our arguments, rather than giving macro-based statements which can fall flat. (although experiences can be misleading). After all, in research, it is important to first put arguments, then give constructive proofs for those arguments, and then conclude the argument. According to me, these arguments have loopholes, and may well turn into only perceptions. And perceptions are just that, perceptions.

Regards

Rakesh