U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan, Mainly Hit Homes and Schools

The month of June 2014 marks the 10-year anniversary of when the United States began its mission of using drone strikes on the nation of Pakistan. This operation has continued for the last ten years with little media coverage and yet continues today in a nation where the United States is technically not a war.

While the U.S. government has attempted to lead the American people to believe that these drone strikes are “taking care of” lethal, threatening terrorists, reports show otherwise.

Last week, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism released a report that shows that the majority of drone strikes the United States has ordered have been executed on schools and homes.
The Bureau explained that, “Over three-fifths (61%) of all drone strikes in Pakistan targeted domestic buildings, with at least 132 houses destroyed, in more than 380 strikes. At least 222 civilians are estimated to be among the 1,500 or more people killed in attacks on such buildings.”

They went on to say, “The CIA has consistently attacked houses throughout the 10-year campaign in Pakistan. The time of an attack affects how many people – and how many civilians – are likely to die. Houses are twice as likely to be attacked at night compared with in the afternoon. Strikes that took place in the evening, when families [are] likely to be at home and gathered together, were particularly deadly.”

Although the Obama administration is still responsible for over 200 civilian causalities in Pakistan (according to some data), an unnamed government official has tried to maintain, “The U.S. government only targets terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people.”

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism really hammered the nail in the coffin when they reported that the deaths of women and children in schools and homes in Pakistan, are far more numerous than acknowledged, due to the fact that their “relative seclusion within private space makes them particularly vulnerable to becoming an unknown casualty when a strike occurs.”

Of course, Pakistan isn’t alone as the United States is conducting drone strikes in multiple countries aside from Pakistan,, including Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia and Mali where only 2% of the time do those strikes actually hit the “high profile target”. A staggering number that continues to go unreported by national media, just as the failures in the Pakistan drone policy will likely not be covered by the mainstream either.



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