Pakistan Video Feature: Who is Being Killed in the US Drone Attacks? (Al Jazeera English)

---

Last week an investigation by McClatchy Newspapers revealed that many low-level operatives and people only thought to be "associated with armed groups have been killed in the US drone attacks in Pakistan.

In the first independent analysis of the Obama Administration's internal accounting of the strikes, McClathcy found that of about 482 people killed between September 2010 and September 2011, at least 265 were not senior Al Qa'eda leaders. More than 40 of the 95 drone strikes in the same period hit groups other than Al Qa'eda.

The reports also estimated that there was one civilian casualty during that time.

Jonathan Landay of McClatchy joins Al Jazeera English's Inside Story Americas to discuss the report.

Before that item, the programme considers the disapperance of tousands of legal documents, concerning detainees at Guantanamo Bay, from secure Department of Defense servers.

The incident has delayed military tribunals for the detainees, some of whom have been held since 2002.

Pakistan Feature: How and Why the US Started "Targeted Killing" With Drones (Mazzetti)

Pakistani insurgent Nek Muhammad, the first victim of a CIA drone strike in 2004 (Photo: Kamran Wazir/Reuters)

---

Mr. Muhammad and his followers had been killed by the C.I.A., the first time it had deployed a Predator drone in Pakistan to carry out a “targeted killing.” The target was not a top operative of Al Qaeda, but a Pakistani ally of the Taliban who led a tribal rebellion and was marked by Pakistan as an enemy of the state. In a secret deal, the C.I.A. had agreed to kill him in exchange for access to airspace it had long sought so it could use drones to hunt down its own enemies.

Click to read more ...

Pakistan Feature: At Least 84 Killed in Bomb in Quetta (Al Jazeera English)

---

A bomb in southwestern Pakistan has killed at least 84 people and left more than 200 others injured, rights activists and officials say.

The death toll rose on Sunday, after more bodies were pulled overnight from the rubble left in the wake of the explosion, officials said.

Local community leaders told Al Jazeera that rescue workers and victims' families were still identifying bodies, and that the death toll was likely to rise further.

Click to read more ...

Pakistan Feature: A Tribute to Activist Irfan Ali, Killed by Thursday's Bombs (Mackey)

Irfan Ali, in glasses, taking part in a demonstration in Islamabad in September

See also Pakistan News: 114 Killed in Thursday Bombings

---

On Thursday bomb attacks by insurgent and separatist Baluch groups in the Pakistani cities of Quetta and Mingora killed at least 115 people. Among the dead in Quetta was Irfan Ali, a prominent human rights activist.

Shortly after the first bomb struck a local snooker hall, Ali tweeted that he had narrowly escaped harm. When the second bomb exploded, timed to hit rescue workers who had arrived on the scene, Ali was killed as he helped those injured by the first blast.

Ali’s death sparked an outpouring of grief and anger, as well as tributes to a life supporting human rights causes, across Twitter and the Internet.

"I am born to fight for human rights & peace. My religion is respect and love all the religions." -@khudiali, RIP twitter.com/ShirazHassan/s…

— Shiraz Hassan (@ShirazHassan) January 10, 2013

Click to read more ...

Pakistan News: 114 Killed in Thursday Bombings (Houreld)

(Photo: Dawn)

---

The death toll from a series of bombings in two Pakistani cities on Thursday, one of the bloodiest days in the country's history, has reached 114, police said Friday.

The majority of deaths were caused by a sectarian double bombing in the western provincial capital of Quetta.

Police officer Mir Zubair Mehmood said 82 people were killed and 121 injured in Quetta when a suicide bomber targeted a snooker club and a car bomb blew up nearby 10 minutes later. Nine police and 20 rescue workers were among those killed in the second blast.

Click to read more ...

Pakistan Analysis: Will Islamabad & Washington Split Over Drone Killing of Mullah Nazir?

See also Pakistan Opinion: The Dangerous Illusion of the Pro-Pakistani Taliban

---

Maulvi NazirIt is likely that Pakistan and the US have finally reached some kind of resolution on how to deal with the complex relations between Afghan Taliban, the TTP, and Al Qa'eda on the one hand and between Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the US on the other. For Islamabad, this may have involved agreement on joint operations and continued intelligence sharing vis-s-vis Al Qa'eda and TTP operatives. That has brought US economic and security assistance with the release of $600 million from the Coalition Support Fund and another $200 million for the Bhasha Dam.

Click to read more ...

Pakistan Opinion: The Dangerous Illusion of the Pro-Pakistani Taliban

Mullah NazirThe death of Mullah Nazir in a US drone strike in Pakistan yesterday fuels an argument that has been pursued to the point of death, metaphorically and literally. This argument says that there are two kinds of Taliban --- those who murder people in Afghanistan and Pakistan and are "enemies" of Islamabad, and those who murderpeople in Afghanistan and Pakistan but are Islamabad's "friends". 

Mullah Nazir, some have told us, is the latter. He might be roaming on Pakistani territory with his armed gangs, terrorising local populations, stopping aid workers from immunising Pakistani children from diseases like polio, and adding to the insecurity in the nation, but still.... He does most of his dirty work in Afghanistan, and since Afghanistan and Pakistan are "enemies", he should not have been harmed. Indeed, he should have been protected.

Click to read more ...

Pakistan Feature: "Taliban Leader" Nazir Killed in US Drone Strike (Sherazi)

Mullah Nazir (Photo: AFP)Ten people were killed including Taliban warlord Mullah Nazir and several others injured in multiple US drone strikes carried out in the South and North Waziristan tribal regions on Thursday.

In the attack in South Waziristan, an unmanned drone fired two missiles at a vehicle killing six people in the Sar Kanda area of Birmil in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal district of South Waziristan.

While talking to Dawn.com, local Taliban and intelligence sources confirmed the killing of pro-government and anti-US Taliban commander Mullah Nazir along with five of his companions near Wana.

Click to read more ...

US Feature: A Map of President Obama's 284 Drone Strikes in Pakistan

See also US Feature: Obama's Man Writing the "Playbook" for the "War on Terror"

---

Slate presents a map, based on information to June from the New American Foundation and updated with media reports since then, of US drone strikes in Pakistan in the Bush and Obama Administrations.

While striking, the map may be conservative in its presentation. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism found earlier this month that "the Long War Journal and the New America Foundation have been under-recording credible reports of drone civilian casualties in Pakistan by a huge margin".

Pakistan Feature: The Murder of Farida Afridi, Activist for Women's Rights (Crowstaff)

Farida AfridiLast week Farida "Kokikhel" Afridi, director of the Society for Appraisal and Women Empowerment in Rural Areas (SAWERA), a Pakistani non-governmental organisation dedicated to women's and children's rights, was murdered in the Khyber tribal region area as she travelled to her office. Witnesses saying they saw two motorcyclists following Afridi before they opened fire and sped away --- she was shot once in the head and twice in the neck, dying in hospital of her wounds.

The 25-year-old activist co-founded SAWERA with her sister Noorzia in 2004. Despite threats, she criticised the government, the Taliban, and the patriarchal nature of Pakistani society, which she saw as one of the main obstacles to women's empowerment.

The Express Tribune wrote in an editorial of tribute and regret:

Farida Afridi was shot dead in cold blood for the crime of being a decent, caring human being. As the executive director of the human rights NGO, Sawera, Afridi was working in Fata performing the most thankless of jobs: trying to improve the plight of women in an area where many people have never even considered the concept of women’s rights.

Chris Crowstaff of Safe World for Women, a partner of SAWERA, offers further recollections.

Click to read more ...