In memory of

At least 10 tribesmen

at 8 A.M. on Saturday, May 16, 2009

in the village of Khaisore located about 5 kms south of Mir Ali, North Waziristan in Pakistan. A CIA-operated drone fired two Hellfire missiles into a residential compound, killing 29 tribes people according to residents (or 25 “militants” according to “security” officials and the Americans). Residents said the drone’s missiles hit the home of Hikmat Roshan, reducing the home to rubble and damaging a nearby religious seminary. They reported it was the third drone strike on the Khaisore village, populated by the Khushali Torikhel clan of the Wazir tribe. The utter futility (besides the illegality of violating Pakistani sovereignty) was even underscored by the alleged U.S. counter-insurgency guru, David Kilcullen in the New York Times,

Imagine, for example, that burglars move into a neighborhood. If the police were to start blowing up people’s houses from the air, would this convince homeowners to rise up against the burglars? Wouldn’t it be more likely to turn the whole population against the police? And if their neighbors wanted to turn the burglars in, how would they do that, exactly? Yet this is the same basic logic underlying the drone war. The drone campaign is in fact part of a larger strategic error — our insistence on personalizing this conflict with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Devoting time and resources toward killing or capturing “high-value” targets — not to mention the bounties placed on their heads — distracts us from larger problems, while turning figures like Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban umbrella group, into Robin Hoods…”

Killed in a CIA drone attack