Reko Diq Gold & Coppermine, Pakistan (Balochistan)

Balochistan is a key province in Pakistan that is filled with natural resources as well as a volatile mix of Afghan Taliban leaders, anti-Shiite militants, and ethnic separatists. Why is Balochistan important? - Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest province in terms of size, and its smallest in terms of population. The province has always been seen as occupying a geo-strategic position. It has the country’s longest coastline, with a lucrative deep-sea port at Gwadar in the south, and a shared border with Afghanistan and Iran. Balochistan also has extensive tapped and untapped resources, including copper, gold, oil, lead, and zinc. The province has always been seen as a strategic asset, first by the British colonial power who saw it as a buffer zone holding off Afghan and Russian forces. Today, it is a key source of gas and minerals for Pakistanis across the country, and seen as a strategic transport route.

As Barack Obama renews his lease on the White House for another four years, his administration is debating how best to respond to a growing internal and public controversy over his first term’s non-battlefield counter-terrorist weapon of choice: armed drones.

For months, senior administration officials have reportedly been haggling over the terms of a so-called “playbook” for the use of drones against suspected terrorists that will provide detailed rules for who will be included on so-called “kill lists”, under what circumstances drones can be used to kill them, and what agency can do the killing. The debate has also included whether or not – and to what extent – the government should make those rules, and the legal justifications that purportedly underlie them, public. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which operates the drone programme in Pakistan and shares responsibility for drone operations with Pentagon forces in Yemen, has reportedly argued for greater leeway in carrying out strikes. Since 9/11 September 2001, U.S. forces have conducted some 425 targeted killings – all but a few through drone strikes — in at least three countries – Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Altogether, they are believed to have killed more than 3,000 people – more than the 9/11 death toll itself. [The date 9/11 is irrelevant. People in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia had nothing to do with 9/11. The towers were demolished. It was an inside job.]

DronesWatch: List of children killed by drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen

Rare video of speech by Aafia Siddiqui in Houston 1991. Topic : "Women in Islam". Hakim Olajuan (famous basketball player) and Jamal Badawi in audience. Video by Zia Farooqi.

Supporters Demand Justice for Aafia Siddiqui
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Aafia Siddiqui Sentenced: A Grievous Miscarriage of Justice

US President Barack Obama’s rule book for institutionalizing assassination drones in different countries is reportedly nearing completion but it still "authorizes" the CIA to freely continue attacks in Pakistan. The classified manual, called a counter terrorism “playbook,” sets out stringent rules with regard to US targeted killings, but it incorporates a carve-out that would allow the CIA to continue bombing suspected militants in Pakistan for “less than two years but more than one,” the Washington Post reported on Saturday.

PressTV: US assassination drones kill 8 people in central Yemen
PressTV: US assassination drone kills 5 in northeastern Afghanistan
Woods/Lamb/BIJ: Obama terror drones: CIA tactics in Pakistan include targeting rescuers and funerals

Major bombings tore through the Balochistan Provincial capital city of Quetta and the Swat Valley city of Mingora today, destroying a Quetta pool hall and a marketplace and killing at least 125 people, wounding well over 200 others. - The bombings at the pool hall caused the bulk of the casualties, with a pair of bombs timed to go off in succession, with the second coming 10 minutes after the first and killing large numbers of rescuers. 92 were killed in these bombings. The attacks were claimed by the "United Baloch Army" [CIA outfit], a secessionist group in Pakistani Balochistan. The target in Mingora was in a Shi’ite dominated neighborhood, and it is assumed the attackers were one of the sectarian factions active in the area. Secessionist groups have become increasingly active in recent months in Balochistan, with anger soaring over military operations in the region which have caused massive civilian casualties.

Farrukh Saleem: CIA carving out new role
Ahmed Rayyan: CIA using Afghan refugees to destabilize Balochistan
The News: CIA, RAW complicit in Balochistan unrest, says Noorani
Michel Chossudovsky: The Destabilization of Pakistan (30 December 2007)

A U.S. assassination drone killed eight people in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, three intelligence sources said, the latest in a series of drone attacks that come as a retired U.S. general warns their overuse may threaten American foreign policy goals. - A foreign tactical trainer for al-Qaeda was reportedly [allegedly] among those killed in the latest strike, although "reports" differed on his nationality. Some intelligence officials said he was from Somalia but others said he was from the United Arab Emirates. Three others were also injured in the attack on Haiderkhel village, about 30 kms (19 miles) east of the provincial capital of Miranshah in North Waziristan, a region along the Afghan border that is a key stronghold of the Taliban.

Jason Ditz: US Drones Pound Pakistan: 25 Killed in Two Days
John Glaser: Two Former US Officials Criticize Obama’s Counter-Productive Drone War

A suspected U.S. drone strike killed 17 people and wounded three Sunday in Pakistan's volatile tribal region, Pakistani intelligence officials said. The strike occurred in Babar Ziarat, which borders the Pakistani provinces of North and South Waziristan, near the Afghan border, the officials said. Those killed and injured in the strike were believed to be "militants", the "officials" said [?]. The attack follows two suspected U.S. drone strikes in the same area last week that killed 15 people, including a Taliban commander with ties to the Pakistani military. Taliban commander Mullah Nazir, also known as Maulvi Nazir Wazir, was killed in a strike in South Waziristan, "officials" said.

Jason Ditz: US Drones Attack South Waziristan: 17 Killed

In 2012,the US also chose to loosen the bonds of secrecy on its 10-year-old drone targeted killing programme. A number of senior officials went on the record about aspects of the covert war. But details of those killed – still a highly contentious issue – remain classified. The year also saw a number of significant legal challenges to the campaign, most of them ultimately unsuccessful. UN experts also announced a study into possible war crimes, partly in response to a Bureau/Sunday Times investigation.

Living Under Drones
Drones: Instruments of State Terror
America’s Scandalous Drone War Goes Unmentioned in the Campaign

Marking the first US drone attacks of 2013, the Obama administration ordered two separate missile bombardments in Pakistan and Yemen on Wednesday and Thursday.

The latest attacks demonstrate that the drawdown of US-led occupying forces in Afghanistan will be accompanied by an expansion of illegal drone operations across the Middle East. At least 16 people were reported killed, all alleged Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, though details of each incident are still emerging and Washington routinely covers up the killing of civilians in drone strikes. ■ Yesterday, another two drone missiles struck North Waziristan, killing four more alleged Taliban militants, reportedly including two Uzbek nationals, as they were travelling in a car. Multiple sources report that a second round of drone missiles was fired when people nearby attempted to recover the bodies, though it is not known if more people were killed or injured as a result. ■ On the same day as the atrocity in North Waziristan, three alleged members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were killed while travelling in a car in Redaa, in the southern Yemeni province of Al Bayda. Redaa is where a US drone strike killed 11 civilians, including three children, on September 2. ■ President Barack Obama in fact bears responsibility for the continued bloodletting in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. While Washington is currently in a de facto alliance with Al Qaeda-connected militia groups fighting against the Syrian government, the so-called “war on terror” remains the pretext for its military operations across the Middle East.

PressTV: Saudi warplanes attacked Yemen for US
Al-Manar: Yemen Arrests Israeli for Mossad Links

The United States government has argued in court that current and former officials of Pakistan’s intelligence service should be immune from prosecution in connection with the 2008 Mumbai attacks. At least 166 people, including 6 Americans, were killed and scores more were injured when members of Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba stormed downtown Mumbai, India, taking the city hostage between November 26 and 29, 2008. The Indian government has openly accused Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) of complicity in the attack, which has been described as the most sophisticated international terrorist strike anywhere in the world during the last decade.

Wayne Madsen: Xe cells conducting false flag terrorist attacks in Pakistan

At least four people have been killed in a US assassination drone attack in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region, reports say. - The incident occurred on Friday afternoon when missiles from a US unmanned aerial vehicle leveled a house in Hesokhel village of Mir Ali district in North Waziristan. Many others were also injured in the latest US attack on Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt which lies along the Afghan border. In neighboring South Waziristan region, a US drone crashed in Wana district on Thursday night while it was reportedly on a targeted killing mission.

A recent US assassination drone in Pakistan has again killed a number of civilians as the surging frequency of such strikes raises growing concerns at the United Nations, Press TV reports. - Confirming the civilian fatalities, unnamed US officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity also claimed this week that two missile strikes fired from the American terror drones killed a couple of al-Qaeda leaders. Targeting and killing of civilians in military operations is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Additionally, the aerial operation of the assassination aircraft over the sovereign nation of Pakistan by the US also violates the international treaty. In response to a question by Press TV’s New York correspondent regarding the most recent US drone strike in Pakistan, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman Martin Nesirky noted his growing concerns regarding the civilian casualties caused by American assassination drone strikes.

Britain’s House of Lords member Lord Gilbert on Friday advised his government to drop a neutron bomb in the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, in order to eliminate the safe heavens of militant outfits.

During a debate over eliminating nukes across the world, the member of the upper house of the UK’s parliament said that the borders could be made safe after dropping ERRB warheads commonly known as neutron bombs in the respective areas.

“Your Lordships may say that this is impractical, but nobody lives up in the mountains on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan except for a few goats and a handful of people herding them. If you told them that some ERRB warheads were going to be dropped there and that it would be a very unpleasant place to go, they would not go there. You would greatly reduce your problem of protecting those borders from infiltration from one side or another.”

US immigration authorities have taken Pakistan’s former cricket superstar-turned-politician Imran Khan off a flight to New York and interrogated. Khan is known for his anti-drone campaigning. - Khan, who is now a popular political figure in Pakistan and ahead of the Pakistan Movement for Justice party (PTI), was removed from an American Airlines flight heading from Canada to New York and interrogated. Immigration officials asked him whether he was planning to protest in the US, as well as demanding to know his views on drone strikes and jihad. Earlier this month, the former cricket star led thousands of Pakistani protesters, together with some US anti-war advocates, on a march from Islamabad to the tribal region of South Waziristan in opposition to US drone strikes. About 15,000 of his supporters joined him in the high-profile march, which focused attention on the strikes that have killed large numbers of civilians. Islamabad recently said that 80 percent of drone-related deaths were civilians. Khan also expressed confusion over why he was granted a visa to visit the US given if his stance on drones was a problem.

A US drone fired two missiles at near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing at least one person and possibly three, although officials said “It was not clear whether the three dead were men or women or whether they had any link to militancy,” according to the Associated Press. The attack occurred in the North Waziristan tribal area. Pakistani intelligence officials provided the AP with conflicting accounts of how many were killed, though, and could not confirm that those killed had any connection to militancy at all.

The absolute majority of the people killed by American UAVs in Pakistan are innocent civilians, claims Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik. If given the drone technology, Pakistan would do a better job, he argued earlier.

Malik revealed that according to Islamabad's calculations, the number of drone attacks in recent years totaled 336, of 96 of which were launched from Afghanistan. There are no exact statistics on the number of people killed in drone strikes in Pakistan. Estimates vary from about 2,500 to over 3,000 victims. As many as 174 of them were reportedly children. The latest US study claimed that only 2 per cent of drone strike casualties in Pakistan are top militants. The researchers at Stanford and New York University also claimed that the American drone strike policy in Pakistan has not helped Washington achieve its goal of curbing terrorism in the region. The civilian deaths that mark practically every drone strike on terror suspects in Pakistan’s tribal regions have achieved the opposite goal: locals hate the US because of the unceasing fear that death may come from above at any moment.

Living Under Drones [website]
Stephen Lendman: Drones: Instruments of State Terror
AWIP: America’s Scandalous Drone War Goes Unmentioned in the Campaign
Chris Floyd: Pay in Blood: The Bipartisan Terror Machine Stripped Bare
Washington Post: CIA seeks to expand drone fleet, officials say
Daily Mail: CIA chiefs face arrest over horrific evidence of bloody 'video-game' sorties by drone pilots

At least 18 people were killed and another six wounded today in a US drone strike against the Orakzai Agency, with the drones firing several missiles at a compound [allegedly] belonging to Maulana Shakirullah, a commander loyal to the Bahadur Group. - The Bahadur Group, a loose-knit militant faction run by Hafiz Gul Bahadur was initially part of the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and still uses the name despite a falling out between Bahadur and the Mehsud leadership of the TTP at large. Bahadur’s group has deals in place with the Pakistani military promising mutual non-aggression during Pakistan’s operations against the Mehsud factions of the TTP. The identities of the victims are unclear, but local officials say that several Afghan nationals are believed to have died in the attack. This is not a tremendous shock, as the area attacked is not far from the border and large numbers of Afghan Pashtuns continue to live in the Pakistani tribal areas since the 2001 US invasion.

James Jeffrey served as an officer in the British Army in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2009, he helped guide drones flying over Helmand Province, where he had to make life and death decisions about whether to engage the enemy. Speaking to Orla Guerin, the BBC's correspondent in Pakistan, he describes how he almost ordered a drone attack on a suspected militant thought to be planting an improvised explosive device. At the last minute the strike was cancelled when he realised the potential enemy he could see on the monitor was in fact a child playing. Mr Jeffrey also talked about witnessing - via a video link from a fighter jet - a missile strike on Taliban targets in built up areas that left several civilians dead. Having now left the military and living in the US, Mr Jeffrey warns that while drones are a precise and effective weapon they have also made it "too easy to kill".

Wikileaks: IRAQ: Collateral Murder - Video

Scores of American peace activists and foreign journalists are set to join a mass rally in Pakistan to protest against US assassination drone attacks. - The protestors are planning to march from the Pakistani capital city, Islamabad, to South Waziristan - the tribal region hit hard by the American drones. The peace activists have described the US assassination drone attacks as clear violation of international law and human rights. The rally is expected to attract tens of thousands of Pakistanis. Pakistani tribal regions are the target of US terror drones, with Washington claiming that its unmanned aircraft are targeting militants. However, casualty figures clearly indicate that Pakistani civilians are the main victims of the assaults. [+ DronesWatch]

CodePink: News about the Pakistan Delegation
CodePink: Tell US Ambassador to Pakistan: End Drone Strikes! [Petition]
CodePink: 40 Americans are in Pakistan to learn more about the effects of drone strikes

At least three people have been killed in a US assassination drone strike in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region near the Afghan border, security officials say. - The attack took place in the Khaider Khel area of Mir Ali district, 30 kilometres (18 miles) east of Miranshah, the capital of North Waziristan tribal region, on Monday when the US terror drone fired four missiles on a vehicle. According to the security officials, several drones were flying in the area at the time of the strike. Pakistani tribal regions are the target of US terror drones, with Washington claiming that its unmanned aircraft are targeting militants. However, casualty figures clearly indicate that Pakistani civilians are the main victims of the assaults.

Living Under Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians From US Drone Practices in Pakistan

■ Study found war against violent Islamists has become increasingly deadly
■ Researchers blame common tactic now being used – the 'double-tap' strike
■ Drone strikes condemned for their ineffectiveness in targeting militants

Just one in 50 victims of America’s deadly drone strikes in Pakistan are terrorists – while the rest are innocent civilians, a new report claimed today. The authoritative joint study, by Stanford and New York Universities, concludes that men, women and children are being terrorised by the operations ’24 hours-a-day’. And the authors lay much of the blame on the use of the ‘double-tap’ strike where a drone fires one missile – and then a second as rescuers try to drag victims from the rubble. One aid agency said they had a six-hour delay before going to the scene. The tactic has cast such a shadow of fear over strike zones that people often wait for hours before daring to visit the scene of an attack. Investigators also discovered that communities living in fear of the drones were suffering severe stress and related illnesses. Many parents had taken their children out of school because they were so afraid of a missile-strike.

Ernst Wolff: The terror of US drone warfare
Stephen Lendman: Drones: Instruments of State Terror
Medea Benjamin: Obama and Drone Warfare: Will Americans Speak Out?
AWIP: Drone strike kills ten in South Waziristan

The drone war has given rise to "anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities".

A new report by researchers at the Stanford and NYU schools of law has found that the drone program is “terrorizing” the people of Pakistan and that it is having “counterproductive” effects. The report’s conclusions are based on nine months of intensive research – including two on-site investigations in Pakistan, more than 130 interviews with victims and their relatives, eye-witness and expert accounts, and a deep review of media reporting. The US drone war in Pakistan not only kills and injures civilians, the report finds, but it traumatizes the population and has led people to keep their children home from school and to avoid any large grouping of people, however innocent. It also says the drone war has helped recruitment efforts of extremist groups like al-Qaeda. The report also finds that there is strong evidence that drone strikes have targeted rescuers running towards bombed sites in follow-up attacks, something Christof Heyns, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, has said would constitute war crimes.

AWIP Google Search: pakistan drone
Medea Benjamin: Obama and Drone Warfare: Will Americans Speak Out?
Bill Van Auken: Obama’s role in the selection of drone missile targets

Terence Bunch: Afghanistan - the United States, and the Drone War in Pakistan - To date [21st December 2011] there have been over 300 separate remote attacks against the sovereign state of Pakistan by the United States with little or no evidence that the United States is actually pursuing a security agenda. In its 'drone war' against Pakistan, the United States continues to struggle with major and chronic intelligence failures that originate from the core failed ideology of the so-called War on Terror. Here, the United States is at war with an entity it can neither identify, control, manage nor influence. And it exploits these difficulties ruthlessly. In this image, a small child is recovered from the wreckage of a drone strike. To date, 175 children have been killed by the United States war-nexus in Pakistan and on each occasion, United States diplomatic staff have elected simply to lie about their identities, confirming an ultra-nationalist agenda deep in the heart of US foreign policy.

Last Friday, Pakistani police and paramilitary forces violently broke up protests by hundreds of thousands of people called by the Pakistani government against the anti-Islamic Innocence of Muslims video. Police left 23 dead and injured more than 200. The protests in Pakistan came as outrage erupted throughout the Muslim world over this video. The mass response to the protests reflected the seething anger among the Pakistani people against American imperialism. Washington is occupying Afghanistan and since 2009 has expanded the war into neighbouring Pakistan, with the collaboration of the Pakistani government in Islamabad. [...] In the past several months, Islamabad has been busy mending fences with the US after the diplomatic spat the followed the US killing of Pakistani soldiers last November. On Monday, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari met US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. A senior spokesman told the media that the situation was “moving upwards, in a positive direction.” Similarly, last week Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar made an official four-day visit to Washington to discuss improving US-Pakistani relations with Clinton.

Report claims just one in fifty victims of 'surgical' US strikes in Pakistan are known militants. Jerome Taylor reports on a deadly new strategy. - As the drone circled it let off the first of its Hellfire missiles, slamming into a small house and reducing it to rubble. When residents rushed to the scene of the attack to see if they could help they were struck again. More and more, while the overall frequency of strikes has fallen since a Nato attack in 2011 killed 24 Pakistani soldiers and strained US-Pakistan relations, initial strikes are now followed up by further missiles in a tactic which lawyers and campaigners say is killing an even greater number of civilians. The tactic has cast such a shadow of fear over strike zones that rescuers often wait for hours before daring to visit the scene of an attack.

Glenn Greenwald: New Stanford/NYU study documents the civilian terror from Obama's drones

Al-Qaeda, backed by Turkey, the US and its regional Arab allies, has set up a new camp in Northern Waziristan in Pakistan to train Salafi and Jihadi terrorists and dispatches them to Syria via Turkish borders, sources said. - "A new Al-Qaeda has been created in the region through the financial and logistical backup of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and a number of western states, specially the US," the source told FNA. Ali Mahdian told FNA that the US and the British governments have been playing with the al-Qaeda through their Arab proxy regimes in the region in a bid to materialize their goals, specially in Syria. He said the Saudi and Qatari regimes serve as interlocutors to facilitate the CIA and MI6 plans in Syria through instigating terrorist operations by Salafi and Arab Jihadi groups, adding that the terrorists do not know that they actually exercise the US plans.

UN special rapporteur on human rights to urge establishing a mechanism to investigate such killings. - The US must open itself to an independent investigation into its use of drone strikes or the United Nations will be forced to step in, Ben Emmerson QC said yesterday. His comments came as Pakistani officials said that a US drone strike had killed at least four militants after targeting their vehicles in North Waziristan on Sunday. Attacks by American unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are deeply unpopular in the country, which claims they violate its sovereignty and fan anti-US sentiment. Only last week cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan vowed to defy Taliban threats to attend a rally in Pakistan's tribal areas aimed at highlighting the human cost of US drone strikes.

At least 15 people have been killed in US assassination drone strikes carried out in Pakistan’s North Waziristan. - The attacks targeted three residential compounds in the village of Tundar in North Waziristan on Friday. A Pakistani security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the terror drones “fired six missiles, two each” on the compounds. The strikes also destroyed many houses inside the compounds. Local residents rushed to the site for rescue following the attacks. About 35 people have been killed in such attacks in the region since August 18. On August 21, two drones targeted a vehicle in Datakhel Tehsi in North Waziristan, leaving seven people dead. More than 200 people have lost their lives in similar strikes so far this year.

Jason Ditz: US Drones Pound North Waziristan, Killing 18

It was a fight involving two men and a parking space in Highlands Ranch, and now there are claims the CIA wants to end the case before it gets to the courtroom. - Raymond Davis is scheduled to go on trial on assault charges in Douglas County next month. He is the CIA contractor who was held in a Pakistan jail for nearly two months last year. He killed two Pakistani men in what he said was self defense. The attorney for the victim in the case involving the parking space claims the CIA is now getting involved. The district attorney’s office adamantly denies it, but the lawyer based in Los Angeles for the alleged victim in the case, Jeff Maes, says the district attorney wants to downgrade the charges against Davis, or perhaps reach a plea deal and believes it’s at the request of the CIA. After nearly two months in a jail in Pakistan, Davis was freed when some $2 million in so called blood money to the victim’s families was paid for his release. Davis was then acquitted of the murder charges. “They want to keep out of the public realm exactly who Raymond Davis is,” Maes’ attorney Larry Klayman said.

CIA agent Davis linked to Taliban
Raymond Davis 'was acting head of CIA in Pakistan'

US adopts Al-Qaeda's tactic of secondary attacks for drone strikes. The US has been carrying out follow-up attacks after its drone strikes in Pakistan, specifically targeting people coming to the aid of the wounded. The tactic has been widely condemned, including by the UN – which considers it a war crime.

A Guardian report by Glenn Greenwald shows the US government's hypocrisy regarding such tactics. While the FBI has warned that “terrorists may use secondary explosive devices to kill and injure emergency personnel responding to an initial attack,” the US regularly applies the same methods. A 2004 FBI alert warned Americans against secondary attacks meant to “incite more terror,” advising that such incidents can usually be expected within an hour of the initial attack. “These devices may be hidden in everyday objects such as vehicles, briefcases, flower pots or garbage cans, or can be sequential suicide attacks in the same locations, and are generally detonated less than one hour after the initial attack, targeting first responders as well as the general population,” the alert read.

Glenn Greenwald: US drone strikes target rescuers in Pakistan – and the west stays silent - Attacking rescuers – a tactic long deemed by the US a hallmark of terrorism – is now routinely used by the Obama administration. The US government has long maintained, reasonably enough, that a defining tactic of terrorism is to launch a follow-up attack aimed at those who go to the scene of the original attack to rescue the wounded and remove the dead. Morally, such methods have also been widely condemned by the west as a hallmark of savagery. Yet, as was demonstrated yet again this weekend in Pakistan, this has become one of the favorite tactics of the very same US government.

Islamabad's high commissioner believes the US should hand over control of the attacks to his government. - One of Islamabad's most senior diplomats is warning that CIA drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas are weakening democracy and risk pushing people towards extremist groups. Wajid Shamsul Hasan, the high commissioner to London and one of Pakistan's top ambassadors, also accuses the US of "talking in miles" when it comes to democracy but "moving in inches".

In an interview with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Hasan, four years into his second stint in the post, argues that US drone strikes risk significantly weakening Pakistan's democratic institutions. "What has been the whole outcome of these drone attacks is that you have directly or indirectly contributed to destabilising or undermining the democratic government. Because people really make fun of the democratic government – when you pass a resolution against drone attacks in the parliament and nothing happens. The Americans don't listen to you, and they continue to violate your territory," he said.

Bureau of Investigative Journalism: Obama 2012 Pakistan strikes
The Guardian: US drone strikes listed and detailed in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen