Although the country’s leaders have complained bitterly about CIA drones targeting militants on the country’s soil, they seem powerless to stop them. Now attorneys for drone strike victims want to know why the government has failed to act.
Two cases filed last week raise an uncomfortable point for the Pakistani government: despite three resolutions by parliament calling for a halt to the drone attacks, they have not only continued but escalated. “This is the first time that victims are suing their own government for failing to protect their lives against drone strikes,” said lawyer Shahzad Akbar of the Foundation for Fundamental Rights.
Akbar filed the lawsuits in the Peshawar High Court on behalf of relatives and victims of a March 17, 2011 drone strike in North Waziristan. Fifty people were killed, including members of a traditional tribal jirga. The gathering of tribal elders had convened to resolve a mining dispute, according to the court papers. The lawsuits call on the government not only to categorise strikes as war crimes and seek prosecutions, but also to appeal to the United Nations Security Council, the United Nations Human Rights Council and the International Court of Justice to stop them. “We would like to know if Pakistan consents or has tacitly approved the drone strikes. Or if they have an agreement with the US government on these drone strikes, and if so, it should be open to judicial scrutiny,” Akbar said. US officials have said targeting has improved and collateral damage is minimal. US President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, John O Brennan, last month characterised civilian casualties from drone strikes as “exceedingly rare”. “We only authorise a strike if we have a high degree of confidence that innocent civilians will not be injured or killed, except in the rarest of circumstances,” Brennan said in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Besides treating the drone attacks as an act of war, the lawyer says Pakistan has several other options, including severing diplomatic relations with the Washington, expelling the US ambassador in Islamabad, recalling the Pakistani ambassador in Washington, calling on the United Nations to send its special rapporteurs to investigate and issue a legal opinion, demanding reparations for the victims, initiating domestic criminal prosecutions and shooting down the drones within Pakistani air space.
