Inside Pakistan's drone country. 3 October 2012Last updated at 19:42 ET By Ahmed Wali Mujeeb BBC News, Waziristan Pakistan's tribal region of Waziristan, constantly watched and regularly bombarded by US military drones, has been called the most dangerous place on earth. The relentless assault exacts a huge psychological toll on the people who live there. The US missile-attacks destroy militant training compounds and cars but they also hit mosques, homes, religious schools and civilian vehicles. I witnessed the fear, stress and depression this causes for the tribal communities on a visit to the region in May. The drones do not suddenly appear over the horizon, carry out the attack and leave. They call them "mosquitoes". Continue reading the main story Drones in Pakistan "Anybody who has been listening to the buzzing all through the day usually can't sleep at night," says Abdul Waheed, a tribesman in North Waziristan.
"It's like a blind man's stick - it can hit anybody at any time. " Everybody believes they could be next. Imran Khan Protest Convoy Against US Drones Heads toward Waziristan, Pakistan. Charismatic Pakistani opposition politician, Imran Khan, set out Saturday from Islamabad in a motorized convoy for a mobile protest by his Justice Party against continued US drone strikes on the tribal belt in northern Pakistan. His convoy, made up of all sorts of vehicles, was also joined by activists from Lahore and other cities. A group of semi-official bodyguards, the “Janissaries of Imran,” intended to provide security. Imran Khan is a Panjab-born former cricketer and Pakistani nationalist of a relatively secular bent.
His ex-wife is Jemima Goldsmith, a Briton of Jewish heritage. Imran Khan is wildly popular with the urban Pakistani middle classes, but he represents an urban, cosmopolitan, non-fundamentalist sensibility the opposite of what prevails in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), which have become bastions of the Pakistani Taliban. That his family has roots in the North-West is thus discounted up there. Imran Khan says he is not worried about security. Empire’s Ways of Knowing. During the run up to the invasion of Afghanistan, three burly American classmates jeered at me. They said, “We’re gonna kill Osama.” Presumably, I would be especially aggrieved at Osama’s death, since I am a Muslim, and therefore, an Osama sympathizer if not also a bomb-carrying terrorist. My classmates were full of assurance and triumphalist pride. They said: “We can hit even a coffee mug in a cave.” The cave stood for where I am from, the enemy territory, the blank space on the map, the primitive place.
I couldn’t stop myself from asking how they would know which cave to hit. The capacity to do violence allows the powerful to exercise the privilege of what Gayatri Spivak has called “sanctioned ignorance.” Ahmed writes, “We have programmed forgetfulness in our civic and political lives.” Geography, a sense of the place, its people, local histories, and memory, is from where Ahmed’s critique of power emerges and where it is located.
But Ahmed is no scribe of power.
To sort... Pakistan - curators... Brothers - Working Mans Death. Filmmaker: Michael Glawogger "Work is often difficult to see, and therefore difficult to depict.Physical labour is probably the only real kind of work. "Michael Glawogger In today's technological age is heavy manual labour disappearing or is it just becoming invisible? Physical work was once celebrated with hymns of praise. But today workers must be content in the knowledge that their hard work is better than no work at all.
Working Man's Death looks at the state of physical work across the world today. In this episode, we visit the ship-breaking yard of Gadani in Pakistan, where derelict vessels are beached and then dismantled for scrap metal - with a bare minimum of mechanical assistance. "Most of the workers here are Pashtuns. Another explains: "In all these years nothing has changed, everything is exactly the same. The Seen and the Unseen In Pakistan's Economy.
Pakistan 'punished' in Pipelineistan. THE ROVING EYE Pakistan 'punished' in Pipelineistan By Pepe Escobar Before the end of 2011, Pakistan will start working on its stretch of the IP (Iran-Pakistan) gas pipeline - according to Asim Hussain, Pakistan's federal minister for petroleum and natural resources. The 1,092 kilometers of pipeline on the Iranian side are already in place. IP, also known as "the peace pipeline", was originally IPI (Iran-Pakistan-India). Although it badly needs gas for its economic expansion, faced with immense pressure by the George W Bush - and then Barack Obama - administrations, India still has not committed to the project, even after a nearly miraculous agreement for its construction was initialed in 2008.
More than 740 million cubic feet of gas per year will start flowing to Pakistan from Iran's giant South Pars field in the Persian Gulf by 2014. This is an immense development in the Pipelineistan "wars" in Eurasia. Pakistan is an energy-poor, desperate customer of the grid. Another 'axis of evil'? C. Christine Fair: The Road From Abbottabad Leads to Lame Analysis. Enough fresh ink has been spilled about the harrowing straits through which the U.S. -Pakistan relationship is passing. While cooler heads such as Pakistan's Ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani and U.S.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates are seeking to explain to audiences at home and abroad the importance of the relationship, the genuine challenges that inhere in the bilateral partnership, and imagine a workable path forward; many other commentators have taken the recent events in Pakistan as an opportunity to stoke further anger and mistrust between the wary governments and their peoples. While the Pakistani press is rife with caricatures of U.S. policy, distorted versions of history, and outright falsehoods, American journalists are capable of equal chicanery. Mr. Christopher Hitchens' latest offering in Vanity Fair, "From Abbottabad to Worse," is an appalling example of American commentary that undermines the efforts of saner voices in this critical debate.
Mr. C. Drone War Exposed – the complete picture of CIA strikes in Pakistan. Pakistani villagers at funeral of drone victim – December 29 2010- AP CIA drone strikes have led to far more deaths in Pakistan than previously understood, according to extensive new research published by the Bureau. Some 175 children are among at least 2,347 people reported killed in US attacks since 2004. There are credible reports of at least 392 civilians among the dead. In a surprise move, a counter-terrorism official has also released US government estimates of the numbers killed. These state that an estimated 2,050 people have been killed in drone strikes to mid-August – of whom all but an estimated 50 are combatants.
Reassessment The Bureau’s fundamental reassessment of the covert US campaign involved a complete re-examination of all that is known about each US drone strike. ‘The Obama administration must explain the legal basis for drone strikes in Pakistan to avoid the perception that it acts with impunity. Civilian casualties do seem to have declined in the past year. Fresh evidence of CIA civilian deaths in Pakistan revealed. Local people gather at the site of an October 2010 drone attack in North Waziristan/ Noor Behram Two major investigations have provided fresh evidence that civilians are continuing to be killed in Pakistan’s tribal areas by CIA drones – despite aggressive Agency denials. In a study of ten major drone strikes in Pakistan since 2010, global news agency Associated Press deployed a field reporter to Waziristan and questioned more than 80 local people about ten CIA attacks.
The results generally confirm the accuracy of original credible media reports – and in two cases identify previously unrecorded civilian deaths. In a further case, in which an anonymous US official had previously attacked the Bureau’s findings of six civilian deaths in a 2011 strike, AP’s report has confirmed the Bureau’s work. New casualties The Associated Press investigation, authored by the agency’s Islamabad chief Sebastian Abbot, represents one of the largest field studies yet into casualties of CIA drone strikes.