Pakistani drone victims accuse US of double standards

By Aamir Latif

KARACHI, Pakistan

After it was revealed last week that the U.S. government had agreed to pay $1.3 million in compensation to the family of an Italian aid worker killed in a drone strike in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region last year, Pakistanis have been asking why hundreds of families are not being offered the same.

The White House said it regretted the deaths of Giovanni Lo Porto, 37, and U.S. aid worker Warren Weinstein, 73, who were “inadvertently” killed while being held hostage by al-Qaeda, but activists say it has never made such plans for Pakistani families, during the 12 years of drone operations in the tribal belt that borders Pakistan.

While U.S. drone strikes have killed several key militants, including leaders of the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, according to the U.K.-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, up to almost a thousand Pakistan civilians, around 200 of them children, have also been killed since 2004, though the U.S. claimed the civilian death toll is much lower.

Malak Jalal Khan Dawar, a resident of Dattakhel town in the North Waziristan tribal area, has lost 27 family members and neighbors to drone strikes. He said he does not think the U.S will ever compensate Pakistanis.

“Compensation will not bring my relatives back but it will at least be an admission from the U.S that it has killed more civilians than militants," Jalal, who in July this year attended a session at British Parliament on drones, told Anadolu Agency. “This is the biggest lie of the century, that the drones have targeted militants only. Drones have killed not more than three dozen Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders but thousands of innocent people, including women and children.”

Karim Khan, another anti-drone activist, whose son and brother were killed in a drone strike in North Waziristan in 2009, also accused the U.S of “double-standards” by compensating the American and Italian families.

"Our lives have no value in her eyes,” he told Anadolu Agency. “President Obama publicly apologized to the Italian worker's family earlier in April 2015. My innocent son and brother were killed in 2009 and till today I have not received a word of condolence from any government.”

“I feel the U.S.'s selective vision and selective justice continues. President Obama only recognizes you as a civilian if you are national of some western country. "

– Pakistan "equally responsible"

The activists were also critical of their own government, who despite publicly objecting to the drone strikes is accused in local media of providing tacit approval.

“Why would the U.S bother about Pakistanis when our own government does not?" Lawyer Shahzad Akbar, chairman of the Islamabad-based Foundation for Fundamental Rights, which represents the families of drone strike victims, told Anadolu Agency.

Akbar said the U.S has paid compensation to civilians in Afghanistan because, he said, the Afghan government had done more than Pakistan to support its citizens.

“I do not expect anything from the Pakistan government. It has given a license to America to kill the tribesmen,” said Jalal, echoing Akbar's sentiment. “I am sorry to say that our own government has failed us. I don’t know where we should go to seek justice.”