One local described the aftermath of the strike: “There were pieces—body pieces—lying around. There was lots of flesh and blood.” The mourning people of the village were forced to “collect pieces of flesh and blood and put them in a coffin.”27 Unsurprisingly, the reaction among villagers who had lost their respected elders in the notorious strike ranged from sorrow to vows of badal-style revenge. One surviving tribesman said, “Our whole village was orphaned because all the elders were killed.” A second villager warned, “It has been a big mistake to target the jirga as it will have severe consequences.”28 Another similarly stated, “It will create resentment among the locals and everyone might turn into suicide bombers.”29 Finally, a surviving elder said, “Americans don’t spare us—not our children, nor our elders, nor our younger. That is why we have decided we will take blood revenge however we can.” The remaining elders wrote a statement titled “Announcement of Jihad against America”: “We have given permission to our loved ones to do suicide attacks against Americans. And we will take revenge so that Americans will remember it for centuries.”30
Similar anecdotal evidence suggests errant strikes that kill civilians, at the worst, drive surviving tribesmen into the arms of the militants or, at best, undermine progovernment tribal leaders. Aamir Latif writes,
Until last month, Habibullah was one of many Pakistani tribesmen who considered the Taliban and their foreign operatives as the prime reason for their woes.
But three days after President Barack Obama took the oath of office, everything changed for the 26-year-old. A missile that Habibullah believes was fired by a U.S. drone hit his house, killing his two brothers and a mentally retarded relative…
Now, Habibullah has become a Taliban militant himself, swearing to avenge the deaths of his brothers in line with a centuries-old Pashtun custom of badal, or revenge.
Many Pakistani tribesmen resent the Taliban for the self-declared Islamic rules it has imposed on the local population, as well as its backing for foreign operatives living in the tribal regions. But the increasing number of U.S. drone attacks, coupled with bombing raids by Pakistani forces, have made it harder for many to oppose the Taliban’s presence…. According to Hazar, whenever the tribal elders, and local religious leaders, who have been sidelined by the Taliban, manage to create an anti-Taliban environment, a U.S. drone attack or bombing by Pakistani jets often ruins their efforts.31
Striking a similar note, one Pashtun tribesman said, “Many people who did not support the Taliban previously support them now because the Americans are killing innocent people.”32
Just as several Pakistani government officials suspected, drone strike mistakes had the ability to drive tribesmen to anti-American militancy. In a earlier statement that could have been scripted to fit the scenarios previously described Prime Minister Gilani warned,
The political and the military leadership have been very successful in isolating the militants from the local tribes. But once there is a drone attack in their home region, they get united again. This is a dangerous trend and it is my concern and the concern of the army. It is also counterproductive in the sense that it is creating a lot of anti-American sentiment all over the country. But in order to fight the militants in Waziristan we have to carry the public with us. One cannot go into any war without the support of the masses. We need huge public support to combat terrorism. But we do not get that if there is American interference which we do not ask for.33
Gilani’s fears that the drone strikes might drive the tribes into the arms of the terrorists were not overblown. On several occasions the Taliban or enraged Pasthun tribesmen have retaliated for air strikes, most notably the Chenagai strike, with suicide bombings. One account of this sort of trend reads, “My neighbor was so furious when a drone killed his mother, two sisters and his 7-year-old brother last September that he filled his car with explosives and rammed it into a Pakistani army convoy. He had to avenge the death of his loved ones.”34 A Pashtun from the region similarly argued that the killing of innocent people was driving anti-Americanism to new highs. According to Mohammad Kamran Khan, “I recently visited North Waziristan during Eid. People were angry with me for the large number of civilians killed in these attacks. They were angry with the Pakistan government and our armed forces for not doing anything to put a halt to these attacks. Also, their hatred towards America was at an all-time high.”35
A member of the Pakistani parliament said, “The lava of anger and hatred is flowing in the tribal areas. Clearly, the drone attack strategy is not winning people over. It is only increasing hatred against the US and now more people are taking up arms.”36
The same trend of increased support for terrorists following collateral damage death from drone attacks has been observed in Yemen. One Yemeni businessman said, “The attacks are making people say ‘we believe Al Qaeda is on the right side.’” Another Yemeni whose nephew was killed as a bystander in a drone strike stated, “The Americans are targeting the sons of the Awlak. I would fight even the devil to exact revenge for my nephew.”37 A third Yemeni said, “Dear Obama, when a US drone missile kills a child in Yemen, the father will go to war guaranteed. Nothing to do with Al Qaeda.”38 After a drone strike in Yemen wounded seven civilians, an outraged Yemeni said, “Our lives are valueless in the eyes of our government, and that is why civilians are being killed without a crime.”39
An anguished survivor of another drone strike, which killed a group of Yemeni civilians, including a mother, her seven-year-old daughter, and a twelve-year-old boy, stated, “Their bodies were burning. How could this happen? None of us were Al Qaeda.”40 Another survivor of the strike said, “I would try to take my revenge. I would even hijack an army pickup, drive it back to my village and hold the soldiers in it hostages. I would fight along al-Qaeda’s side against whoever was behind this attack.” Yet another said, “Our entire village is angry at the government and the Americans…. If the Americans are responsible, I would have no choice but to sympathize with al-Qaeda because al-Qaeda is fighting America.” And finally, a Yemeni who lost a family member in the strike added, “If there’s no compensation from the government, we will accept the compensation from al-Qaeda. If I am sure the Americans are the ones who killed my brother, I will join al-Qaeda and fight against America.” Summing up such emotions, a Yemeni source said, “Every time the American attacks increase, they increase the rage of the Yemeni people, especially in al-Qaeda-controlled areas. The drones are killing al-Qaeda leaders, but they are also turning them into heroes.”41
The fallibility of the CIA’s humint and techint and its potentially fatal results are best demonstrated by the case of two U.S. servicemen, Navy Corpsman Benjamin Rast and Marine Staff Sgt. Jeremy Smith, who were mistakenly killed by a drone in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan. Rast and Smith were misidentified as “Taliban” by a drone flown from Nevada and killed in a salvo of missiles.42 If the drone operators could not identify fellow Americans on a battlefield in Afghanistan, then there is a high probability they could similarly mistake other armed men in the remote FATA (a region where arms are prevalent) for Taliban.