Washington: Every third person killed by US
drone strikes in Pakistan's restive north-western region is a
civilian, says an American think-tank which described the
unmanned missile hits as an "unpopular but necessary evil".
In its latest report 'The Year of the Drone', the New
America Foundation said that 32 per cent of those individuals
killed in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in
Pakistan by US drones over the past six years have been
civilians.
According to the authors Peter Bergen and Katherine
Tiedemann, "The study shows that the 114 reported drone
strikes in northwest Pakistan, including 18 in 2010, from 2004
to the present, have killed approximately between 834 and
1,216 individuals".
"Of these, around 549 to 849 were described as militants
in reliable press accounts, about two-thirds of the total on
average. Thus, the true civilian fatality rate since 2004
according to our analysis is approximately 32 per cent," The
Dawn quoted the report as saying.
The report, however, described the drone strikes as an
"unpopular, but necessary evil."
2009 was the year of the drone under President Barack
Obama, as there were 51 reported strikes in Pakistan's tribal
areas, compared to a total of 45 during two terms under George
W Bush.
Yet the uptick in drone strikes has not resulted in
reduced levels of terrorist violence.
In 2009, there were a record 87 suicide attacks in
Pakistan, which killed around 1,300 people, up from 63 suicide
bombings the previous year and only nine in 2006.
Contemplating the mind-numbing percentage of civilian
casualties, it comes as no shock that these unmanned flying
death squads are somewhat unpopular among the Pakistani
public, with only nine per cent approving of the Predator
strikes, according to a August 2009 Gallup poll.
Pakistan's government has opposed the strikes from the
outset because, on top of killing a multitude of civilians,
they believe the drone programme violates Pakistan's national
sovereignty.
PTI
First Published: Tuesday, March 02, 2010, 21:13