Friday, July 24, 2015
Will We Ever Stop the
Drones?
Anti-drone
demonstrators march in 2013. (Photo: Debra Sweet/flickr/cc)
Almost a year after
the 2012 election, Florida congressman Alan Grayson decided to hold a hearing.
The number of drone attacks were going up not down; sparse news reports from
mostly military sources weren’t making much of an impact on the American
public.
In October 2013,
Grayson decided to invite a Pakistani family who'd experienced an attack
themselves to Capitol Hill to address congress directly. On October 29, they
came to Washington, including thirteen year old Zubair who was gravely hurt in
a U.S. drone attack on his home community.
Zubair had been
reluctant to make the journey to the States, for fear he wouldn't be welcomed
here, but the strike that maimed Zubair also killed his beloved grandmother, so
welcomed or not, he decided it was important to tell the story. "My
grandmother and I used to share a love of bright blue skies," he began.
The sky in their village of Ghundi was particularly blue on Oct. 24, 2012, the
day before Eid, the biggest festival of the year, he explained. He and his
grandmother were finishing their work in the fields before celebrating. They
could see and hear a drone hovering over their heads but they didn't worry,
said Zubair. "Why would I worry? Neither my grandmother nor I were
militants."
When the drone fired
the first time the whole ground shook and black smoke rose up. "We ran but
several minutes later, the drone fired again," testified Zubair. He spent
Eid as it turned in agony in the hospital. It would take his family months to
save for the specialist care that was able to remove the shrapnel from his leg.
The drone killed his grandmother in front of him.
As Zubair told the
legislators: "I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now prefer gray
skies. The drones do not fly when the skies are gray, and for a short period of
time, the mental tension and fear eases… I know that Americans think that drones
are the answer," continued Zubair. "I wish they could understand how
I and other children in my community see drones. We used to play outside all
the time....now people are afraid to even leave their houses....children have
stopped going to the few schools that exist....education isn’t possible as long
as the drones circle overhead."... "I hope by telling you about my
village and my grandmother, I can convince you that drones are not the answer,
concluded Zubair.... And then he added, " I hope I can return home with a
message... that Americans listened, that America’s not just drones that
terrorize us from above but a country that listens and maybe – just maybe –
America may soon stop the drones."
Was Zubair's trip
worth it? Is any body listening? It's been almost two years. What message do
you think is getting to his village?
We'll post a link to
the full transcript of the Rehmans' remarks at our website. You can watch my
interview with Andrew Cockburn, author of Kill Chain, this week on The Laura
Flanders Show on KCET/LINKtv and TeleSUR and find all my interviews and reports
at GRITtv.org. To tell me what you think, write to: Laura@GRITtv.org.
See all of this week's
episode of GRITtv in the video below:
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"The
master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought
the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while
the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially
their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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