The Secret Drone War Panorama

It's the weapon that kills its target by remote control thousands

of miles away. It's a very humane type of warfare given the ugliness

and the killing that warfare entails. America says its drones

are destroying al-Qaeda, protecting western lives. This thing is kept

on a very tight leash. But the drones are killing civilians, women

and children, as well. As children lose their lives, then the battle

for the hearts and minds is immediately lost. Tonight, the

secret war that's angered a whole nation. No more drones. No more

drones! Is it making us any safer? This is completely

counterproductive. It actually helps the militants to recruit

The tribal area of Pakistan, a no- man's-land which westerners rarely

get to. Britain's 7/7 bombers trained here. It's home to al-Qaeda

and a dangerous brew of militants. Pakistan's army fought a bitter war

here in south Waziristan. Below are ruined compounds once the militants

stronghold. But the authorities fragile hold is

threatened by another secret war, carried out by America's CIA with

drones and deadly missiles. The strikes have angered people here in

Pakistan and they've caused controversy around the world over

their legality and the human cost. The Pakistan army now control most

of south Waziristan. 300,000 people fled the fighting and Brigadier

Hassan's priority is to encourage them to come home. The destruction

in this area was horrifying. Such a collateral damage, it takes a lot

of time to fix things up. In this hill-top village only a few people

have trick amed -- trickled back. Many of their compounds were

occupied first by the militants and But Waziristan's also suffered from

the American drone strikes. Everyone here says they're against

them. You can make out from their sound and you can also see them at

times you see two or three drones together. What do you think with

the the -- about the American drone strikes in Waziristan? There is no

public acceptance and no military acceptance on the drones so it's

very difficult to say that they are doing the right thing. The

sentiments go against drones. army is distributing aid to

returning refugees. The Government says they're now committed to

developing this remote and backward area to combat militancy here.

But the US drone strikes are creating a backlash against the

army's campaign of hearts and minds. TRANSLATION:

We have heard the drone noise but there hasn't been a strike around

here. But you can never tell with a drone. Sometimes Little Children

also get hit. For eight years, American drones

have targeted militants in Pakistan's tribal area, mainly in

north and south Waziristan. There have been more than 300 drone

strikes. Some monitoring organisations say

over 3,000 people have been killed. America won't give a figure. No one

knows how many civilians have died and been injured.

On October 24th, one drone struck in a village near Miran Shah in

north Waziristan. Eight-year-old Nabila ur-Rehman was outside the

family compound that day. Her grandmother, Bibi Mammana was

picking vegetables. TRANSLATION: I was looking after my cow and my

grandmother was nearby. The missile hit the ground behind us. We ran

towards the house. Granny was in front and was hit by another

missile. Kalim ran out of the house to try and help his grandmother.

TRANSLATION: Five to seven minutes later, the

drone returned and struck again. I was injured, and knocked

unconscious. When Rafik, the children's father

heard about the strike, he rushed home to find his mother's grave

being dug. TRANSLATION: I threw myself over the coffin but

the box was closed. The family told me not to open it as she had been

hit bay missile and -- hit by a missile and her body was in pieces.

He showed me his mother's passport, pictures of her grave and the spot

the drone had struck. The family had collected up missile parts,

evidence, they say. It's impossible to independently verify what

happens in the tribal areas. One local press report at the time

claimed an Arab and Pakistani militant were killed, as well. The

Americans say they only do these drone strikes when they're sure

that there are militants, al-Qaeda, inside the house. TRANSLATION:

There were no militants in my house. In our family, there are Government

people, school teachers, not militants.

The family have come to the capital to get medical help. Kalim's leg

was badly broken in the strike. The doctor has seen many people

injuries caused by drones. The most important thing in open

fractures caused by these blast injuries and drone attacks, they

cause infection and infection can be very severe. It may become limb-

threatening and life-threatening. What are these white marks,

shrapnel? Slab Nell, met -- slab Nell, metal piece impacted.

shrapnel wounds are heeling but her brother will need an operation.

They strike our children, create orphans, what crime have we

committed against America? What bad deed have we done that they hit us

like this? America is increasingly using

drones as counterterrorism weapons in the Middle East, Africa and

Central Asia. The drones fly at up to 50,000 feet

and can hover for almost 24 hours over targets using surveillance

cameras. They're armed hellfire missiles and other bombs.

The drones are controlled thousands of miles away in America, more

drone pilots are now being trained by the US Air Force and

conventional fighter pilots. The Americans say this isn't a video

game. There are checks and balances at many levels. Drones are here to

stay for many reasons. We should view drones as part of this

revolution in military affairs, essentially, you can be more risk

acceptant because at the end of the day if the drone goes down, the

pilot still goes home for dinner. This man was former US Director of

National Intelligence. Dennis Blair was in charge of America's entire

effort to find, track and take out terrorists by any means, including

drones. Nothing in the American use of drones is any less rigid in

terms of permissions to use deadly force than previous weapons. In

fact, in many ways it's more precise and more careful and

controls can be greater than they are for the more traditional forms

of warfare. Britain too flies drones in

Afghanistan. The joint programme with America has the consent of the

Afghan Government. The majority of flights are for surveillance. UK

strikes have resulted in four civilian casualties. We provide

combat intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to support our

troops on the ground but we bound everything we do to rules of

engagement and to legitimate and legal targets.

The Americans also use drones in Somalia and Yemen against al-Qaeda

with the permission of those governments. But in Pakistan, it's

different. The authorities there say they're against the strikes. So

the drones aren't run openly by the US military, but in secret by the

CIA. I don't like that my country is in

the business of extra judicial killing. I'm not comfortable with

the legislative framework that we are still using to kill people 12

years later after 9/11 who are at best tenuously involved with al-

Qaeda, and may not have been al- Qaeda activists when this war began.

In Pakistan, it is not the Government which is making a huge

huge stink about drones. It's this man, Imran Khan, the cricketer

turned politician. The idea that someone is sitting thousands of

miles away watching a computer screen and then pressing a button,

it is just so awful the idea that you just eliminate these people.

Imran Khan's standing for election next year and in October his party

organised a protest rally to get thousands of people out on to the

streets. Polls show that 97% of Pakistanis aware of drones oppose

them. Khan's plan was to take a convoy 300 miles from Islamabad to

south Waziristan. We are hoping that this is going to become huge.

We don't know as yet what to expect once we reach the tribal areas but

it could be the beginning of a change here, another strategy, a

peace rather than relying on military and drones and operations.

Clive from here, you have to come in the back... Clive Stafford Smith,

one of the rally's organisers, has campaigned for a decade against

America's war on terror. When people ask about the legality of

the drone war in Pakistan, Waziristan, there's a simple word

for it and it's illegal. There's no declared war. So it's all an

international crime really. The US says the strikes here are legal.

The laws of war allow them to target al-Qaeda which threatens

American lives. They think they can do it because it's the CIA denying

they do it and at the same time it's all secrecy and no American

people actually there. What that does is increase the instability of

the world in a dramatic way because the US can have a war effectively

wherever it likes without declaring it or even admitting it.

American peace activists have joined the rally, many of them are

women. There are Americans like us who are solidarity with you and

Imran Khan's from the tribal areas. He finds an audience receptive to

his message that the drone war is fuelling militancy. This is

completely counterproductive, actually America is getting unsafe

because of these drone attacks. The anger and anti-Americanism because

of the drone attacks directly feeds into militants, militancy. It

actually helps the militants to recruit people. As darkness falls,

they're only 50 miles short of Waziristan, but it's dangerous to

go on. So thousands of cars and buses stop for the night and Imran

and the foreign guests retire to a local compound. This is a gamble.

This is a risk. This is certainly out of even my comfort zone. This

attempt here is to lift the veil of secrecy, to open it up, to force

the Obama administration to come clean and to be transparent and

accountable. Under President Obama there have

been six times as many drone strikes in Pakistan as under his

predecessor George Bush. But it wasn't until this year the

President and his officials even admitted using drones here. I think

that there is this perception somehow that we are just sending in

a bunch of strikes willy-nilly. It is important for everybody to

understand that this thing is kept on a tight leash. America says the

drone wars have been successful in killing significant targets, al-

Qaeda and other militants. As many as 300, according to insiders.

removed al-Qaeda's ability to conduct large-scale carefully

rehearsed multiteam attacks against western countries of the type we

saw at 9/11. They couldn't meet, they couldn't train. They couldn't

send money. They couldn't provide any kind of command and controls.

The President's closely involved in who is targeted and can sometimes

make the final call. That now worries the man who watched the

De Mort the president is involved in the individual tactical details,

the less he is able to judge if it is working -- the more the

President. Like many new technologies, it tends to suck high

level leaders into a greater extent than they probably should.

It is the civilian casualties which have caused the biggest controversy.

Independent databases reckon between 140 and 880 civilians have

died. I want to make sure the people understand that drones have

not caused a huge amount of civilian deaths.

The Obama administration refuses to discuss how many civilians they

have killed and deny targeting rescuers with follow up strikes.

my experience, it is the collateral damage, the killing of people that

happen to be in the vicinity of targets, is held to a minimum with

these weapons because of their accuracy and the warheads and the

careful procedures that are used for them. So I think it is a very

humane type of warfare, given the ugliness and the killing that

warfare entails no matter how it is done.

The militants are defiant in the face of the American drones. These

are the Pakistan Taliban, filmed recently in south Waziristan, very

close to where we were with the TRANSLATION: A few of our Al-Qaeda

companions have been martyred. We acknowledge this but lots of other

Muslims have been killed too and will continue to die. It won't

affect our activities. Even now drones are flying around us but can

you see any sign of it on my face? No. Allah willing, we will respond

to the enemy's strategy in our own way. The militants know the strikes

which kill civilians too play into their hands, turning people against

Anger and protests in the tribal areas have swelled, as more

civilians have been killed by In south Waziristan, the army is

holding the militants at bay but it is not secure here. The drone

strikes affect the way the army is seen, increasingly as America's

lackey. When you actually come here to south Waziristan, you see how

poor, how scarred by war the people are. They want peace. They can't

understand why they are plagued by drones which kill not only

militants but many civilians as well. The army is building new

market places. When the militants controlled this area they killed

many tribal elders and destroyed these communities. Now, they are

gradually coming back to life. But people are still afraid to

congregate in public in some areas for fear of drones.

TRANSLATION: Drones don't hit a specific target. Innocent people

get murdered. In this area, there was a Jirga of 50-60 men my age,

and they fired on them and killed them. The drone strike happened at

a Jirga, a tribal gathering to settle a mining dispute. The attack

happened in March last year at Dhatta Khel in north Waziristan.

Daud Khan was one of 50 elders killed at the gathering. His son, a

government health worker, is Noor Khan.

TRANSLATION: My father was working for the benefit of the community.

He was a counsellor, elected by the political administration. That was

As they buried their dead in Dhatta Khel, the Americans claimed they

had struck a group of militants. The Pakistan army disputed that.

They said it was a gathering of peaceful citizens. Press reports

said a small number of militants may have been present but this has

never been confirmed. The strike has made everyone afraid.

TRANSLATION: We cannot conduct our daily

business. Or walk around freely. Our lives have become a prison.

These drones are constantly flying overhead. We can't offer our

prayers, we can't recite the Koran and we can't even have meetings for

fear of drone attacks. Mr Khan and other drone victims are

taking action in Pakistan's courts. They are being represented by a

lawyer trained in Britain. Shezad Akbar says the Americans regard

every adult male as a militant unless proven otherwise

posthumously. If CIA believes you are acting suspiciously, it is safe

to kill you in a tribal area, if you are a man aged between 16 are

to 70 years old. In Mr Akbar's office are parts of

missiles fired in drone strikes. The attack on the gathering is

thought to be what the Americans call a "signature strike", against

activity that looks suspicious like men having a meeting, armed as they

traditionally are in the tribal areas. This is what the strike was

about. There was no intended target. They did not have any specific name

to go after. There was no name disclosed before or after.

Relatives of those killed at the gathering are meeting Mr Akbar to

discuss taking the drones issue to the British courts.

The victims argue British intelligence is complicit in the

strikes because they share information with the Americans used

in targeting. Mr Khan has high hopes for British justice for his

father. TRANSLATION:

All the courts in the world, for example in Pakistan and the United

States, are under pressure and control from governments. But the

courts in Britain are independent and whatever judgement is delivered

is reached in a just manner. The drone strikes are piling the

pressure on the government in Islamabad. Pakistan has always

claimed the US is acting alone and illegally. But militants have

killed 50,000 Pakistanis too. And in the first five years of drone

strikes, Pakistan's intelligence service was involved with America

in the targeting. We found that there Pakistanis were playing games

with that, that they were in fact warning people they had agreed

could be targets. The US decided we were going to do it ourselves and

not tell the Pakistanis. Now they still had permission for us to use

the airspace. Pakistanis could close down the airspace any time

they want and we can't fly. So you are saying by allowing the airspace

to be open, they are tacitly acknowledging it and allowing it?

Right, right. We consider drone strikes to be

illegal, we consider them against international law and we consider

them also to be very counter- productive. Because of drone

strikes, there is collateral damage. As civilians, children lose their

lives then the battle for hearts and minds is immediately lost so

our claim is that if drones get you one target or the other, that might

mean winning one battle or two. But you are losing the losing the war

because of that. The government has strongly defend the strikes in

parliament,... But a US diplomatic cable from 2008

exposed on Wikileaks revealed what Pakistan's then prime minister said

What I can tell you without any doubt, 100% confidence, is that in

my term as foreign minister I have seen no functionary of the

government of Pakistan, be it the President, be it Prime Minister be

it any armed personnel, intelligence personnel or anyone

from the diplomatic office, ever But why doesn't Pakistan close its

airspace if it doesn't want drone strikes to happen? We are in

serious dialogue with the US to make sure they don't happen. And we

are quite sure that we should be able to reach common ground on this.

Would you close you airspace? are doing whatever we can to make

sure drone strikes do not happen in So from Pakistan's point of view,

they have the advantages of being able to kick America in the shins

for doing it and the advantages of having some of their own enemies

killed with it. The government had warned Imran

Khan not to hold his rally. On day two as the protestors approached

south Waziristan, the police and army were out in force. There were

reports the Taliban had sent squads of suicide bombers to attack the

convoy. But Imran Khan dismissed it as a political ploy. I don't think

the Taliban are going to bomb us because there is too much popular

support. My neck danger, if any, is from the government itself -- our

danger. Because the government is get and the government is to faced.

The rally was making headlines, raising questions. Why did Pakistan

allow its sovereignty to be violated? The police began to block

the road with containers. As the warnings of militant attacks grew

more alarming, the organisers decided to call a halt. In the end,

they didn't make it to Waziristan but they had made their point.

are here with you to make sure you get justice and to make sure there

are... No more drones! No more drones! No more drones! No more

drones! Imran Khan's convoy had focused the world's attention on US

drone strikes. Were they really the way to defeat militancy in

Pakistan? The only solution, the key to peace, lies in getting the

people of tribal area to our side, winning hearts and minds and we win

the war. There is no military solution. Even some Americans once

closely involved in the drone war in Pakistan believe its time to

reassess it. The -- it is time. think the Pakistanis should be

invited to put their hand on the trigger just the way we have it, so

both sides. And I think the drone programme ought to be a military

programme, not an intelligence programme. So both sides

acknowledge the programme, both sides say they making the decisions

on it together and that it is serving the interests of both

countries. The family who lost their

grandmother in a drone strike are leaving Islamabad and going back to

Waziristan. They can't understand why America spends billions on

drones instead of investing more in development in the tribal areas to

combat militancy. TRANSLATION: We are fed up with

America and the rest of the world. This is unjust. We are poor,

deprived people and instead of shedding blood, they should build

schools and educate our children. In the long term, the Obama

administration knows they have to address the biggest question - are

drone strikes in Pakistan really making the West any safer? If we

keep on doing what we're doing, we are going to have basically the

same result and we'll be in the same business in ten years. Killing

less experienced but nonetheless moving forward to fill the ranks

Al-Qaeda members and generating resentment. I think we have run the

course of what we can accomplish with what we are doing.

Attacks have dropped in recent months. But just after we left,

Obama's 300th drone strike reportedly killed an Al-Qaeda

militant and three others near where we had been in south