WHILE the jury is still out on the desirability and impact of US drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas the argument that innocent civilians’ deaths in these strikes constitute inevitable collateral damage has never been accepted by legal experts or human rights activists.

The case for due compensation to victims of drone strikes has been forcefully argued in a recently published Open Society study titled US and Pakistani responsibilities to victims of drone strikes that must receive due attention from both US and Pakistan policymakers.

The study is based on research carried out by a Pakistani organisation in North and South Waziristan during 2012 and 2013. In all, 27 cases of drone strikes carried out between June 2009 and December 2012 were investigated. Those interviewed included 96 witnesses, victims and their relatives, and 18 current and former US and Pakistan government officials, as well as academics, experts and journalists.

Goodwill will be lost if Islamabad does not raise a strong voice against bombing of civilians.

A few case studies are enough to establish the urgency of assessing civilian losses in drone attacks. For instance, on Oct 24, 2012 drone missiles struck the house of Waresheem Jan, a former school principal and a candidate for a National Assembly seat in the 2008 election. Jan’s wife was killed and several of their grandchildren were injured.

Also read: Pakistani family fear for ‘disappeared’ anti-drone activist

Another case that made headlines involved the killing of several Taliban, including two prominent commanders of the Maulvi Nazir group, when their vehicle was struck by a drone missile on March 13, 2012, in South Waziristan. However, one of the victims, Noor Mohammad, was a civilian and did not belong to the Taliban. Amnesty International’s report on the incident was taken note of by the White House spokesman, who recalled one of President Obama’s speeches in which “he had made it clear that it is a hard fact that US strikes have resulted in civilian casualties, a risk that exists in every war”.

A 12-year-old boy, Arif, was one of the civilians who were killed, along with 20 ‘possible militants’ when a drone targeted a guest house in North Waziristan on April 22, 2011. Associated Press claimed that its investigation showed that Arif was one of the five women and children killed in this attack.

The study argues that the US is conducting drone attacks in areas where the people “feel extremely vulnerable, abandoned, and besieged by both militants and the military”. Many Pakistanis say that the drone attacks have undermined the short-term military capabilities of militant groups in Fata and perhaps provided tactical advantage to the Pakistani military. Also taken note of is the other view that the expansion of the drone attacks “has had significant political and strategic costs for the Pakistani military and its government”.

The study takes exception to the Pakistan government’s policy of not documenting civilian casualties in drone attacks although the Fata secretariat has sometimes demonstrated its capacity for doing this.

“While the Pakistani government collects information, verifies civilian casualties and provides compensation and redress to those killed or injured by terrorist and militant attacks, as well as in some cases Pakistani security forces,” says the report, “there are no policies or funds dedicated to systematically verify civilian harm from US drone strikes and provide compensation and redress.”

Three factors have been identified as having undermined efforts to deal with the consequences of drone attacks. First, the US failure to acknowledge and probe claims of civilian losses. Secondly, the pro-drone/anti-drone debate too often “ignores long-standing, systematic political marginalisation and human rights abuses in Fata”. And, thirdly, Islamabad’s inability to ensure “transparency, accountability, and redress for civilian harm by US drone strikes within its territory”.

The report makes recommendations to Washington and Islamabad that are quite unexceptionable.

The US government has been asked to ensure that its lethal force operations in Pakistan comply with international law, to disclose its targeted killing standards and criteria, investigate civilian losses, and provide financial and technical assistance to Pakistan government to enable it to investigate and compensate victims of drone strikes.

The Pakistan government is requested to create a transparent mechanism to identify, acknowledge and provide compensation, relief and rehabilitation to civilians killed or wounded in drone attacks.

This report should strengthen the efforts Pakistan has been making to censure drone attacks through the Human Rights Council, especially the work done by the UN Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights to deal with the civilian impact and human rights implications of the use of drones and other forms of targeted killing.

Although Islamabad’s protests against the drone attacks on the ground of violation of its sovereign rights carry as little weight as Pervez Musharraf’s claim that he had consented only to a single drone attack, the current debate should cover the victims of all forms of aerial bombing.

The policymakers in Islamabad will be well-advised to benefit from the thesis developed in Bombing Civilians, edited by Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn B. Young, on the indiscriminate and deliberate killing of civilians by aerial bombing, that Howard Zinn has aptly described as “one of the great horrors of modern times”.

Islamabad must not ignore the danger that its failure to raise a stronger voice against bombing of civilians and compensate the victims might deprive it of the tribal population’s goodwill for protecting it from the scourge of terrorism.

Tailpiece: Truth is under attack from narrow-minded, chauvinistic nationalists. The Japanese conservatives are targeting the retired journalist who broke the story about the abuse of Korean comfort women by the Japanese military in the Second World War.

In Bangladesh a British journalist has been convicted of the charge of doubting the figure of casualties during the country’s war of liberation. Karachi University cancelled its invitation to an eminent Bangladesh scholar because some students and teachers did not like his name or research. The lesson for Pakistan is not to join the mad race and, instead, raise effective barriers to the deadly disease of intolerance and lunacy.

Published in Dawn, December 11th, 2014