Drone Attacks and Suicide Bombings: Reflections on Pakistan’s Victims

Abstract

Drones or unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) are remotely operated pilotless vehicles that are equipped with a wide range of technology to gather intelligence, conduct reconnaissance or perform surveillance (ISR) and include a capacity for attacking targets with lethal weapons (Henderson, 2011:134–136). During the War on Terror, the United States has increasingly utilised drones against the remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in a number of locations such as Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is particularly the case in areas where American forces could not operate overtly on the ground. However, the use of drones in targeted killing operations has been controversial since its inception. Before September 2001, the United States itself had criticised and condemned the Israeli policy of targeted killings in which Israeli security forces used conventional military force to kill Palestinian opponents during and after Second Intifada (Kibbe, 2012). The root of the controversy lies predominantly in the questionable precision, efficacy and accuracy of drone attacks due to their ‘latency’ — the time duration between the capture of movement on the ground and the response of the drone after capturing images via satellite (Living Under Drones, 2012:9).