List of children killed by drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen
PAKISTAN
Name | Age | Gender
- Noor Aziz | 8 | male
- Abdul Wasit | 17 | male
- Noor Syed | 8 | male
- Wajid Noor | 9 | male
- Syed Wali Shah | 7 | male
- Ayeesha | 3 | female
- Qari Alamzeb | 14| male
- Shoaib | 8 | male
- Hayatullah KhaMohammad | 16 | male
- Tariq Aziz | 16 | male
- Sanaullah Jan | 17 | male
- Maezol Khan | 8 | female
- Nasir Khan | male
- Naeem Khan | male
- Naeemullah | male
- Mohammad Tahir | 16 | male
- Azizul Wahab | 15 | male
- Fazal Wahab | 16 | male
- Ziauddin | 16 | male
- Mohammad Yunus | 16 | male
- Fazal Hakim | 19 | male
- Ilyas | 13 | male
- Sohail | 7 | male
- Asadullah | 9 | male
- khalilullah | 9 | male
- Noor Mohammad | 8 | male
- Khalid | 12 | male
- Saifullah | 9 | male
- Mashooq Jan | 15 | male
- Nawab | 17 | male
- Sultanat Khan | 16 | male
- Ziaur Rahman | 13 | male
- Noor Mohammad | 15 | male
- Mohammad Yaas Khan | 16 | male
- Qari Alamzeb | 14 | male
- Ziaur Rahman | 17 | male
- Abdullah | 18 | male
- Ikramullah Zada | 17 | male
- Inayatur Rehman | 16 | male
- Shahbuddin | 15 | male
- Yahya Khan | 16 |male
- Rahatullah |17 | male
- Mohammad Salim | 11 | male
- Shahjehan | 15 | male
- Gul Sher Khan | 15 | male
- Bakht Muneer | 14 | male
- Numair | 14 | male
- Mashooq Khan | 16 | male
- Ihsanullah | 16 | male
- Luqman | 12 | male
- Jannatullah | 13 | male
- Ismail | 12 | male
- Taseel Khan | 18 | male
- Zaheeruddin | 16 | male
- Qari Ishaq | 19 | male
- Jamshed Khan | 14 | male
- Alam Nabi | 11 | male
- Qari Abdul Karim | 19 | male
- Rahmatullah | 14 | male
- Abdus Samad | 17 | male
- Siraj | 16 | male
- Saeedullah | 17 | male
- Abdul Waris | 16 | male
- Darvesh | 13 | male
- Ameer Said | 15 | male
- Shaukat | 14 | male
- Inayatur Rahman | 17 | male
- Salman | 12 | male
- Fazal Wahab | 18 | male
- Baacha Rahman | 13 | male
- Wali-ur-Rahman | 17 | male
- Iftikhar | 17 | male
- Inayatullah | 15 | male
- Mashooq Khan | 16 | male
- Ihsanullah | 16 | male
- Luqman | 12 | male
- Jannatullah | 13 | male
- Ismail | 12 | male
- Abdul Waris | 16 | male
- Darvesh | 13 | male
- Ameer Said | 15 | male
- Shaukat | 14 | male
- Inayatur Rahman | 17 | male
- Adnan | 16 | male
- Najibullah | 13 | male
- Naeemullah | 17 | male
- Hizbullah | 10 | male
- Kitab Gul | 12 | male
- Wilayat Khan | 11 | male
- Zabihullah | 16 | male
- Shehzad Gul | 11 | male
- Shabir | 15 | male
- Qari Sharifullah | 17 | male
- Shafiullah | 16 | male
- Nimatullah | 14 | male
- Shakirullah | 16 | male
- Talha | 8 | male
YEMEN
- Afrah Ali Mohammed Nasser | 9 | female
- Zayda Ali Mohammed Nasser | 7 | female
- Hoda Ali Mohammed Nasser | 5 | female
- Sheikha Ali Mohammed Nasser | 4 | female
- Ibrahim Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye | 13 | male
- Asmaa Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye | 9 | male
- Salma Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye | 4 | female
- Fatima Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye | 3 | female
- Khadije Ali Mokbel Louqye | 1 | female
- Hanaa Ali Mokbel Louqye | 6 | female
- Mohammed Ali Mokbel Salem Louqye | 4 | male
- Jawass Mokbel Salem Louqye | 15 | female
- Maryam Hussein Abdullah Awad | 2 | female
- Shafiq Hussein Abdullah Awad | 1 | female
- Sheikha Nasser Mahdi Ahmad Bouh | 3 | female
- Maha Mohammed Saleh Mohammed | 12 | male
- Soumaya Mohammed Saleh Mohammed | 9 | female
- Shafika Mohammed Saleh Mohammed | 4 | female
- Shafiq Mohammed Saleh Mohammed | 2 | male
- Mabrook Mouqbal Al Qadari | 13 | male
- Daolah Nasser 10 years | 10 | female
- AbedalGhani Mohammed Mabkhout | 12 | male
- Abdel- Rahman Anwar al Awlaki | 16 | male
- Abdel-Rahman al-Awlaki | 17 | male
- Nasser Salim | 19
“Remember how you felt on 9/11? Every day, U.S. foreign policy makes innocent people feel even worse.”
—Conor Friedersdorf, on the terrorizing effects of drone strikes on life in Pakistan.
Petition on WhiteHouse.Gov asking President Obama to Stop Drone Strikes
petitions.whitehouse.govStop the authorization of the drone strikes in the Middle East that kill nearly fifty civilians for every terrorist suspect. Stop making America an assassin of innocent children. End the practice of counting every adult male in the area as an enemy combatant.
“I do not trust [Obama]; I don't trust a single word from him. Osama bin Laden has been killed, so what does he want more? Convey my message to Americans: The CIA and America have to stop ... they're just creating more enemies and this will last for hundreds of years.”
—Jalal Manzar Khail, a Pakistani man whose friends and family were targeted in a U.S. drone strike responsible for the death of as many as 42 people, a maximum of four of whom had any Taliban associations.“The way in which "America's soul is totally poisoned" is evident in virtually every debate over US policies of militarism. Over the weekend, several pro-war national security "experts" argued: "I'd pay closer attention to critics of drone strikes if they explained their recommended alternative." This is a commonly heard defense of Obama's drone assaults: I support drones - despite how they constantly kill innocent adults and children - because the alternative, "boots on the ground", is worse. Those who argue this are literally incapable even of conceiving of an alternative in which the US stops killing anyone and everyone it wants in the world. They operate on the assumption that US violence is and should be inevitable, and the only cognizable debate is which weapon the US should use to carry out this killing (drones or "boots on the ground"?). Even though they have no idea who the US government is killing, they assume, with literally no evidence or basis, that those being killed are "terrorists" who want to attack the US and that therefore they - and anyone close to them - must be killed first. As Jonathan Schwarz noted on Sunday, they have literally embraced the same mindset as the Terrorists they claim to loathe: we must use violence and killing, even if it means we kill innocents, because we simply cannot conceive of any alternative. Never once do they stop and wonder: why are there so many people in the world who want to attack the US? Never once do they do what King so bravely and rather subversively urged: "the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence" is it "helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves". King explained: "from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition." King thus urged the nation to "understand the arguments of those who are called enemy.”
—Glenn Greenwald, MLK’s vehement condemnations of US militarism are more relevant than ever“Most of the world's media, which has rightly commemorated the children of Newtown, either ignores Obama's murders or accepts the official version that all those killed are 'militants'. The children of north-west Pakistan, it seems, are not like our children. They have no names, no pictures, no memorials of candles and flowers and teddy bears. They belong to the other: to the non-human world of bugs and grass and tissue. "'Are we,' Obama asked on Sunday, 'prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?' It's a valid question. He should apply it to the violence he is visiting on the children of Pakistan.”
—-
- The Guardian, Monday 17 December 2012 15.30 EST
- Obama: *Kills thousands of innocent people in the Middle East. Makes a law to allow assassination of American civillians. Promises to shut down Guantanamo and never does*
- Response: *Tumblr left makes some posts and gets really angry*
- Obama: *Makes a joke on tv*
- Response: *Tens of thousands of people exclaiming over the most chill and cool president ever*
“Surveillance cameras don’t prevent crime. There was no lack of video footage of the [Boston] marathon, and the images were useful in quickly identifying the suspects after the fact. Much of the useful footage came from men and women filming the finish line or from cameras installed to watch over nearby shops and stores. Government drones would not have thwarted the attack.”
—The Washington Times editorial, “Dodging Drones”US academics' report says drones kill large numbers of civilians and increase recruitment by militant groups
guardian.co.uk
The CIA’s programme of “targeted” drone killings in Pakistan’s tribal heartlands is politically counterproductive, kills large numbers of civilians and undermines respect for international law, according to a report by US academics.
The study by Stanford and New York universities’ law schools, based on interviews with victims, witnesses and experts, blames the US president, Barack Obama, for the escalation of “signature strikes” in which groups are selected merely through remote “pattern of life” analysis.
Families are afraid to attend weddings or funerals, it says, in case US ground operators guiding drones misinterpret them as gatherings of Taliban or al-Qaida militants.
“The dominant narrative about the use of drones in Pakistan is of a surgically precise and effective tool that makes the US safer by enabling ‘targeted killings’ of terrorists, with minimal downsides or collateral impacts. This narrative is false,” the report, entitled Living Under Drones, states.
The authors admit it is difficult to obtain accurate data on casualties “because of US efforts to shield the drone programme from democratic accountability, compounded by obstacles to independent investigation of strikes in North Waziristan”.
The “best available information”, they say, is that between 2,562 and 3,325 people have been killed in Pakistan between June 2004 and mid-September this year – of whom between 474 and 881 were civilians, including 176 children. The figures have been assembled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which estimated that a further 1,300 individuals were injured in drone strikes over that period.
The report was commissioned by and written with the help of the London-based Reprieve organisation, which is supporting action in the British courts by Noor Khan, a Pakistani whose father was killed by a US drone strike in March 2011. His legal challenge alleges the UK is complicit in US drone strikes because GCHQ, the eavesdropping agency, shares intelligence with the CIA on targets for drone strikes.
“US drones hover 24 hours a day over communities in north-west Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning,” the American law schools report says.
“Their presence terrorises men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities. Those living under drones have to face the constant worry that a deadly strike may be fired at any moment, and the knowledge that they are powerless to protect themselves.
“These fears have affected behaviour. The US practice of striking one area multiple times, and evidence that it has killed rescuers, makes both community members and humanitarian workers afraid or unwilling to assist injured victims.”
The study goes on to say: “Publicly available evidence that the strikes have made the US safer overall is ambiguous at best … The number of ‘high-level’ militants killed as a percentage of total casualties is extremely low – estimated at just 2% [of deaths]. Evidence suggests that US strikes have facilitated recruitment to violent non-state armed groups, and motivated further violent attacks … One major study shows that 74% of Pakistanis now consider the US an enemy.”
(Continue reading…)
I would like to place further emphasis on this statement:
The number of ‘high-level’ militants killed as a percentage of total casualties is extremely low – estimated at just 2% [of deaths].
Is it worth it? Strategically and ethically, the answer is a resounding “no.”
