Sit-in against U.S. drone attacks begins in Pakistan

[News_Editor]

Sit-in against U.S. drone attacks begins in Pakistan

2011-04-24 01:23:14 GMT+7 (ICT)

PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN (BNO NEWS) -- Thousands of people are expected to gather for a two-day sit-in over U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan's tribal areas, Ary news television reported Saturday.

Supporters of cricket hero-turned-politician Imran Khan's party, Tehrik-e-Insaf, gathered in Attock city, a town 70 kilometers (43 miles) west of the capital Islamabad, to start the campaign against the attacks, which killed more than 900 civilians in 2010.

"The U.S. bombardment on innocent men and women and their casualties in deadly strikes are attacks on our sovereignty", Khan, who is leading the protest, said while addressing the crowd.

"We will set free this country from U.S. slavery and its stooges," Khan vowed.

The government has suspended delivery of supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan via land border for three days as protesters blocked the main supply route in the outskirts of Peshawar, according to Ary news.

Party leaders said they expected more than 20,000 people to gather for the protest, while convoys of various civil groups are heading towards the site.

Controversy has surrounded the drone strikes as local residents and officials have blamed them for killing innocent civilians and motivating young men to join the Taliban. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said in its annual report that the U.S. drones strikes were responsible for 957 extra-legal killings in 2010.

The protest comes just a day after U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan's volatile tribal region of North Waziristan killed at least 25 suspected militants and injured several others. According to reports, however, among the 25 recovered bodies were three women and five children.

This was the second drone strike in the area since March 17, when more than 40 civilians were killed. Controversy then broke out once again following the air strikes and increased tension within the Pakistan-U.S. alliance.

Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence chief Lieutenant-General Ahmad Shuja Pasha has met with CIA Director Leon Panetta in the U.S., reportedly seeking an end to the drone strikes, and last week, Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani said diplomatic pressure would continue in order to stop the U.S. drone attacks.

Last Monday, the provincial Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly approved a resolution that requested the federal government to summon the U.S. envoy to Pakistan, demanding the U.S. to hand over its drone technology to Pakistan, asserting that drone attacks are against the sovereignty of Pakistan, which would not be tolerated.

Pakistan's Afghan border is known to be a stronghold of the Taliban's Haqqani Network, considered one of the top terrorist organizations and threats to U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

The border region has been targeted by at least 20 U.S. drone attacks this year. Since August 2008, there have been over 250 drone attacks that have reportedly killed more than 1,500 people in north and south Waziristan.

-- © BNO News All rights reserved 2011-04-24

[TAWP]

No doubt mistakes happen, but I think they might have a slight loose definition of innocent, much like the Red Shirts killed during the clashes last year. If you stand next to a gun-wielding Taliban fighter that is setting up a road-side bomb chances are you aren't squeaky-clean etc.

[bangkokeddy]

No doubt mistakes happen, but I think they might have a slight loose definition of innocent, much like the Red Shirts killed during the clashes last year. If you stand next to a gun-wielding Taliban fighter that is setting up a road-side bomb chances are you aren't squeaky-clean etc.

In other words: When a drone attacks kills you, you were a suspect. And if a suspect lives in your village you are guilty. Bombs away!

[geriatrickid]

An Alternative solution is to cut off all aid to Pakistan under the proviso that once the attacks and hostile interference in Afghanistan end, aid will resume. At the same time, deny all visas for Pakistanis seeking entry into the west. They can still be free to visit wonderful destinations like Russia and China where the locals will no doubt greet visible minorities and muslims in the warm friendly fashion that the Russians and Chinese are famous for. That should give the Pakistanis some incentive to behave.

And if a terror attack is launched from Pakistani soil with the tacit support of the Pakistani military or intelligence services, then a few Cruise missiles sent to the Presidential Palace and the military HQ in Lahore will provide some incentive to behave.

[Steely Dan]

An Alternative solution is to cut off all aid to Pakistan under the proviso that once the attacks and hostile interference in Afghanistan end, aid will resume. At the same time, deny all visas for Pakistanis seeking entry into the west. They can still be free to visit wonderful destinations like Russia and China where the locals will no doubt greet visible minorities and muslims in the warm friendly fashion that the Russians and Chinese are famous for. That should give the Pakistanis some incentive to behave.

And if a terror attack is launched from Pakistani soil with the tacit support of the Pakistani military or intelligence services, then a few Cruise missiles sent to the Presidential Palace and the military HQ in Lahore will provide some incentive to behave.

Exactly. Why send ground troops thousands of miles over mountainous territory to root out the terrorists, who would no doubt use human shields making the number of civilian casualties the same as using drones did? It is also obvious Pakistani society is so riddled with fanatics that a proportion of whatever aid you send then gets channeled to your enemy, so why bother at all?

[Steely Dan]

This article is a couple of years old, but is still relevant today.

http://www.slate.com/id/2239339/

This is, and always was, a sick relationship, and it is now becoming dangerously diseased. It's not possible to found a working, trusting, fighting alliance on such a basis. Under communism, the factory workers of Eastern Europe had a joke: "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us." In this instance, the Pakistanis don't even pretend that their main military thrust is directed against the common foe, but we do continue to pay them. If we only knew it, the true humiliation and indignity is ours, not theirs.

[Ulysses G.]

Maybe they should not be out planting IEDs.

[koheesti]

An Alternative solution is to cut off all aid to Pakistan under the proviso that once the attacks and hostile interference in Afghanistan end, aid will resume. At the same time, deny all visas for Pakistanis seeking entry into the west. They can still be free to visit wonderful destinations like Russia and China where the locals will no doubt greet visible minorities and muslims in the warm friendly fashion that the Russians and Chinese are famous for. That should give the Pakistanis some incentive to behave.

And if a terror attack is launched from Pakistani soil with the tacit support of the Pakistani military or intelligence services, then a few Cruise missiles sent to the Presidential Palace and the military HQ in Lahore will provide some incentive to behave.

You get my vote!

[Ricardo]

Perhaps Mr Khan's party should hold a second sit-in, in protest against the Taliban bombs, which also kill innocent local people too, or would that be less-popular politically ?

[cdnvic]

Two inflammatory posts removed.

[coma]

An Alternative solution is to cut off all aid to Pakistan under the proviso that once the attacks and hostile interference in Afghanistan end, aid will resume. At the same time, deny all visas for Pakistanis seeking entry into the west. They can still be free to visit wonderful destinations like Russia and China where the locals will no doubt greet visible minorities and muslims in the warm friendly fashion that the Russians and Chinese are famous for. That should give the Pakistanis some incentive to behave.

And if a terror attack is launched from Pakistani soil with the tacit support of the Pakistani military or intelligence services, then a few Cruise missiles sent to the Presidential Palace and the military HQ in Lahore will provide some incentive to behave.

That is music to my ears. Now you are seeing what I am about. If Pakistan aint go the balls to go in there and clean it up, and Afghan is a loss. It is time to cordon off that part of the world and let them do what they like within thier borders. However,as you said, if any attacks on the West come from that region then they get paid back in spades. Cheaper, easier, less man power and less dangerous.

[geriatrickid]

egads. Agreement of sorts. I hope CdnCivic ducks lest he get hit by a flying pig.

[TAWP]

Perhaps Mr Khan's party should hold a second sit-in, in protest against the Taliban bombs, which also kill innocent local people too, or would that be less-popular politically ?

Together with all the European leftist's that would join them they might occupy a full Fiat Uno.

[koheesti]

Perhaps Mr Khan's party should hold a second sit-in, in protest against the Taliban bombs, which also kill innocent local people too, or would that be less-popular politically ?

Together with all the European leftist's that would join them they might occupy a full Fiat Uno.

Throughout history whenever leftists take power they begin to slaughter their own people so of course they never criticize other countries for killing their own (Stalin in USSR, Mao in China, Fidel & Che in Cuba, Pol Pot in Cambodia, Taliban in Afghanistan, Saddam in Iraq, Milosevic in former Yugoslavia, et, etc) and they always criticize and protest against other countries for trying to stop it because they know they wouldn't like someone coming in and stopping them if they ever get the chance to run things and begin killing off their own people.

Edited April 24, 2011 by koheesti

[chuckd]

Let me add my vote for geriatrickids idea.

Having worked with Pakistanis for years, I have a fairly good idea how they feel in general about the West, not just the US.

Cut off the money and get their attention.

[cdnvic]

egads. Agreement of sorts. I hope CdnCivic ducks lest he get hit by a flying pig.

Fainting works too.

[coma]

egads. Agreement of sorts. I hope CdnCivic ducks lest he get hit by a flying pig.

Fainting works too.

LOL

[bangkokeddy]

Controversy has surrounded the drone strikes as local residents and officials have blamed them for killing innocent civilians and motivating young men to join the Taliban.

I think they have a valid point here. I also think they have the right to protest against the drone attacks.

[coma]

Controversy has surrounded the drone strikes as local residents and officials have blamed them for killing innocent civilians and motivating young men to join the Taliban.

I think they have a valid point here. I also think they have the right to protest against the drone attacks.

They do have a point. That is why Pakistan needs to send its OWN military in there and clean that place up. That area is more lawless than Somalia. And that is saying something.

[SteeleJoe]

Interesting. My impression (based on admittedly very little -- just the reading of a few posts here and there) is that my politics tend to fall roughly somewhere between Coma and Geriatric.

But I too would pretty much sign on with Geriatrickid's proposal. (I've been complaining/warning about Pakistan since the 90s -- much more reason to now)

[bangkokeddy]

Let me add my vote for geriatrickids idea.

Having worked with Pakistanis for years, I have a fairly good idea how they feel in general about the West, not just the US.

Cut off the money and get their attention.

Reading geriatrickids proposal and suggestions what could give the give the Pakistanis some incentive to behave i think its quite understandable what they think about the West.

[dananderson]

Violence only adds fuel to the fire of radical Islam. A much more effective tactic would be to undermine the narrow view of extremisim and further isolate them from the modern world.

[coma]

Violence only adds fuel to the fire of radical Islam. A much more effective tactic would be to undermine the narrow view of extremisim and further isolate them from the modern world.

If they want to live like cavemen in the mountainous Afghan / Pakistan borger region . Then good. Seal them and cut them off. That is thier corner of the earth so let them do with it what they will.

[SteeleJoe]

Violence only adds fuel to the fire of radical Islam. A much more effective tactic would be to undermine the narrow view of extremisim and further isolate them from the modern world.

I absolutely agree that that is ONE part of the solution and one that needs to be done far better. But the judicial use of force, to one extent or another, is also an essential element in my opinion.

[Nawak]

If they want to live like cavemen in the mountainous Afghan / Pakistan borger region . Then good. Seal them and cut them off. That is thier corner of the earth so let them do with it what they will.

Exactly, and the same with all other muslim countries who want to live under a law of the middleage. Forget them, and lock the western borders.

[metisdead]

An inflammatory post has been removed.

[JUDAS]

If they want to live like cavemen in the mountainous Afghan / Pakistan borger region . Then good. Seal them and cut them off. That is thier corner of the earth so let them do with it what they will.

Exactly, and the same with all other muslim countries who want to live under a law of the middleage. Forget them, and lock the western borders.

Already too late to "lock the western borders." Radicalization of those inside the borders has been taking place for some time now. A glaring example would be the UK 7-7 suicide bombings in which 3 of the four bombers were born in the UK.

[Steely Dan]

If they want to live like cavemen in the mountainous Afghan / Pakistan borger region . Then good. Seal them and cut them off. That is thier corner of the earth so let them do with it what they will.

Exactly, and the same with all other muslim countries who want to live under a law of the middleage. Forget them, and lock the western borders.

Already too late to "lock the western borders." Radicalization of those inside the borders has been taking place for some time now. A glaring example would be the UK 7-7 suicide bombings in which 3 of the four bombers were born in the UK.

Sadly you are 100% correct and the only political party which will go anywhere near the issue is UKIP - Indeed looking at Europe as a whole the gates of Vienna have been stormed with scarcely a shot fired and the UK has drawn about the shortest of short straws with it's colonial links to Pakistan.