An American Group Is Heading To The Troubled Pakistan Tribal Areas To Protest Drone Strikes

Business Insider
Michael Kelley

A group of about 40 Americans are traveling to Pakistan next week to protest drone strikes and promote peaceful relations between U.S. and Pakistan. 

The delegation, organized by the activist group CODEPINK, will meet with the families of drone victims, lawyers, academics, Pakistani politicians and U.S. officials.

On October 7 they will join thousands of Pakistanis—including politician and U.S. critic Imran Khan — in a march to South Waziristan in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) to protest U.S. drone strikes that have killed more than 2,500 people, including hundreds of civilians.

"President Obama's counter-terrorism chief John Brennan insists that U.S. drones strikes aren't harming innocent Pakistanis, but we know that’s not true, especially since the Obama administration calls all military-age males in the area ‘militants’," said CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin, who wrote the book Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control.

The protest comes in the wake of a scathing report by NYU and Stanford lawyers that details how drone warfare affects citizens and humanitarian workers in Pakistan.

Here's a video of Benjamin calling out Brennan as he spoke about U.S. counter-terrorism policy in Washington.

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