By AMANDA VENDER and MICHAEL NEWTON
When U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited Pakistan in late October, she met Pakistanis who were not happy with what the United States is doing in their country. The United States Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) and the Pakistani military have been carrying out attacks in Pakistan on people they say are Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders. While the United States claims to have killed people it says are terrorists by using unmanned drone airplanes, it has also killed hundreds of innocent people, including children.
“What is actually terrorism in U.S. eyes?” the L.A. Times reported a Pakistani student asked Clinton during her trip. “Is it the killing of innocent people in, let’s say, drone attacks? Or is it the killing of innocent people in different parts of Pakistan, like the bomb blast in Peshawar two days ago?”
Since the drone attacks are carried out not by the U.S. military, but by the C.I.A., the public doesn’t know much about them because the C.I.A. keeps its activities secret. “There’s no accountability for it. There’s no indication of the rules that they use,” Philip Alston, a United Nations special rapporteur told the Democracy Now!, news program. He wants the U.S. government to make clear what it is doing in Pakistan so as to be sure that it is not violating U.S. and international laws.
