Like Tariq, Saadullah travelled to Islamabad for last week’s jirga. Seated alongside him was Haji Zardullah, a white-bearded man who said he lost four nephews in a separate attack. “None of these were harmful people,” he said. “Two were still in school and one was in college.” Asghar Khan, a tribal elder in a cream turban, said three of his relatives paid with their lives for visiting a sick neighbor. “My brother, my nephew and another relative were killed by a drone in 2008,” he said. “They were sitting with this sick man when the attack took place. There were no Taliban.”53
Another similar civilian death was featured in Salon.com in 2010:
Gul Nawaz, from North Waziristan, was watering his fields when he heard the explosion of drone missiles: “I rushed to my house when I heard the blast. When I arrived I saw my house and my brother’s house completely destroyed and all at home were dead.” Eleven members of Gul Nawaz’s family were killed, including his wife, two sons and two daughters as well as his elder brother, his wife, and his four children. “Yes, the drone strikes hurt the Taliban. Most of the strikes are effective against the Taliban but sometimes innocent people also become the victim of such attacks. Take my case,” said Gul Nawaz.
“I blame the government of Pakistan and the USA, they are responsible for destroying my family. We were living a happy life and I didn’t have any links with the Taliban. My family members were innocent…. I wonder, why was I victimized.54
Other civilian victims of drone strikes have been covered in the media. For example, Noor Behram, a resident of North Waziristan, has spent years photographing the civilian aftermath of drone strikes in his native region. He has organized an exhibit of his photographs in London and a similar one, titled “Bugsplat,” was held in Lahore. Following are some of the captions that accompanied photographs Behram published:
Dande Darpa Khel (North Waziristan), Aug. 21, 2009
The stench that Behram smelled when he arrived at Dande Darpa Khel came from the charred bodies of Bismullah Khan and his wife. Near the bombed-out remains of their house, Behram found the Khans’ three living children. The children—the younger two girls on the left, their older brother on the right—were in shock, and clutched the ruins of their neighbor’s house as if the rubble could comfort them. “These kids had no idea where their parents were. They didn’t know their parents were killed,” Behram says. Also killed in the blast: their brother, Syed Wali Shah, age 7. Behram later heard that the children were taken in by their uncle. “There’s no government here, no social network or security,” he explains. “People have to look after each other.”
Dande Darpa Khel, Aug. 21, 2009
By the time Behram reached Bismullah Khan’s mud house, partially destroyed in the strike, Khan’s youngest son, Syed Wali Shah, had already died. Behram watched as the boy’s body was laid out on a prayer rug, a “very small” one, in preparation for his funeral. “The body was whole,” Behram recalls. “He was found dead.” The villagers wrapped a bandage around the boy’s head, even though they had no chance to save his life. Behram doesn’t know who the target of the Dande Darpa Khel attack was. (“You’d have to ask the CIA that,” he says.) But he observed people’s anger as they prepared bodies for burial and cleared the wreckage. “The people were extremely angry. They were talking and shouting against the U.S. for the attack,” Behram says.
Datta Khel, Oct. 18, 2010
Pakistan’s Express Tribune reported a drone attacked “two suspected militant hideouts” in Datta Khel near Mirin Shah. Behram never saw the scene. He headed instead to a Mirin Shah hospital, where he heard residents had frantically driven one of the strike’s victims: Naeemullah, a boy of about 10 or 11. Naeemullah was said to be injured in the strike after a missile struck the house next door. Shrapnel and debris travelled into Naeemullah’s house, wounding him in his “various parts of his body,” Behram says. “You can’t see his back, but his back was wounded by missile pieces and burns.” An hour after Behram took this picture, Naeemullah died of his injuries.55
While Behram admits that he did not take pictures of dead Taliban victims (who were likely removed from the scenes by fellow militants), he does not necessarily have to present the whole picture. The pictures and stories of dead Pakistani civilians are enough to confirm to Pakistanis that the U.S. drones do in fact kill civilians. As for the locals’ responses to the drone attacks, the Guardian writes,
According to Noor Behram, the strikes not only kill the innocent but injure untold numbers and radicalize the population. “There are just pieces of flesh lying around after a strike. You can’t find bodies. So the locals pick up the flesh and curse America. They say that America is killing us inside our own country, inside our own homes, and only because we are Muslims.
“The youth in the area surrounding a strike gets crazed. Hatred builds up inside those who have seen a drone attack. The Americans think it is working, but the damage they’re doing is far greater.”56
Another account of a drone strike reads, “Their bodies, carbonized, were fully burned. They could only be identified by their legs and hands. One body was still on fire when he reached there. Then he learned that the charred and mutilated corpses were relatives of his who lived in his village, two men and a boy aged seven or eight. They couldn’t pick up the charred parts in one piece.”57 Regarding the acceptability of civilian casualties, another Pakistani angrily said, “I think, even if they said, ‘we’ve killed 100 terrorists,’ and just one child was also killed…. If you, at that time, you see that child’s body, you talk to his mother and father—I think, for me, this is a very serious thing. That one child, sitting in his house, could be killed like this.”58
Researchers at Stanford University and New York University have compiled a report of stories from drone victims that brings to life those whose lives have been shattered by drone strikes. One account reads,
“Before the drone strikes started, my life was very good. I used to go to school and I used to be quite busy with that, but after the drone strikes, I stopped going to school now. I was happy because I thought I would become a doctor.” Sadaullah recalled, “Two missiles [were] fired at our hujra and three people died. My cousin and I were injured. We didn’t hear the missile at all and then it was there.”
He further explained, “[The last thing I remembered was that] we had just broken our fast where we had eaten and just prayed…. We were having tea and just eating a bit and then there were missiles…. When I gained consciousness, there was a bandage on my eye. I didn’t know what had happened to my eye and I could only see from one.”
Sadaullah lost both of his legs and one of his eyes in the attack. He informed us, “Before [the strike], my life was normal and very good because I could go anywhere and do anything. But now I am not able to do that because I have to stay inside…. Sometimes I have really bad headaches… [and] if I walk too much [on my prosthetic legs], my legs hurt a lot. [Drones have] drastically affected life [in our area].59