ISLAMABAD/PESHAWAR: The head of a UN team investigating casualties from US drone strikes in Pakistan declared after a secret research trip to the country that the attacks violate Pakistan’s sovereignty.
Ben Emmerson, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, said the Pakistani government made clear to him that it does not consent to the strikes — a position that has been disputed by US officials.
President Barack Obama has stepped up covert CIA drone strikes targeting Al-Qaeda and Taleban militants in Pakistan’s tribal region along the Afghan border since he took office in 2009.
The strikes have caused growing controversy because of the secrecy surrounding them and claims that they have caused significant civilian casualties — allegations denied by the United States.
According to a UN statement that Emmerson emailed to The Associated Press yesterday, the Pakistani government told him it has confirmed at least 400 civilian deaths by US drones on its territory. The statement was initially released on Thursday, following the investigator’s three-day visit to Pakistan, which ended Wednesday. The visit was kept secret until Emmerson left.
Imtiaz Gul, an expert on Pakistani militancy who is helping Emmerson’s team, said yesterday that the organization he runs, the Centre for Research and Security Studies, gave the UN investigator case studies of 25 strikes that allegedly killed civilians during his visit.
The UN investigation into civilian casualties from drone strikes and other targeted killings in Pakistan and several other countries was launched in January and is expected to deliver its conclusions in October. The US rarely discusses the strikes in public because of their covert nature, but officials have said privately that they have caused very few civilian casualties.
A 2012 investigation by the AP into 10 of the deadliest recent drone strikes in Pakistan found that a significant majority of the casualties were militants, but civilians were also being killed.
Pakistani officials regularly criticize the attacks in public as a violation of the country’s sovereignty, a popular position in a country where anti-American sentiment runs high. But the reality has been more complicated in the past. For many years, Pakistan allowed US drones to take off from bases within the country. Documents released by WikiLeaks in 2010 showed that senior Pakistani officials consented to the strikes in private to US diplomats, while at the same time condemning them in public.
Cooperation has certainly waned since then as the relationship between Pakistan and the US has deteriorated. In 2011, Pakistan kicked the US out of an air base used by American drones in the country’s southwest, in retaliation for US airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.
But US officials insist privately that cooperation has not ended altogether, and key Pakistani military officers and civilian politicians continue to consent to the strikes.
However, Emmerson, the UN investigator, came away with a black and white view after his meetings with Pakistani officials.
“The position of the government of Pakistan is quite clear,” said Emmerson. “It does not consent to the use of drones by the United States on its territory and it considers this to be a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” The drone campaign “involves the use of force on the territory of another state without its consent and is therefore a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty,” he said.
Pakistan claimed the drone strikes were radicalizing a new generation of militants and said it was capable of fighting the war against extremism by itself, said Emmerson.
Emmerson met with a variety of Pakistani officials during his visit, as well as tribal leaders from the North Waziristan tribal area — the main target for US drones in the country.
Restore ‘CIA’ medics jobs, says court
A Pakistani court has ordered the authorities to reinstate the jobs of 17 health workers sacked over CIA efforts to track down Osama Bin Laden, officials said yesterday.
The order was made Thursday in Abbottabad, where Bin Laden was found and shot dead by US special forces in May 2011.
“We will formally reinstate them after receiving written court orders,” Mohammad Qasim, an Abbottabad district health officer, told AFP. The 17 medics worked on the same fake vaccination program set up by the CIA in a bid to confirm that Bin Laden was living in the city.
Fifteen women health workers were dismissed in August 2011, and a woman doctor and an assistant coordinator were sacked in March 2012.
Defense lawyer Sultan Ahmad Jamshed confirmed the court order, which does not relate to surgeon Shakeel Afridi, who was jailed for 33 years for treason.
