Malik Jalal Wrote about the Drones Trying to Kill Him — His Words Should Awaken our Shame

© 2016 Peter Free

 

14 April 2016

 

 

The Obama Administration has enshrined cowardice as national policy

 

Assume what follows is true — and notice that it took a British paper to publish it:

 

 

I am in the strange position of knowing that I am on the ‘Kill List’. I know this because I have been told, and I know because I have been targeted for death over and over again.

 

I am from Waziristan, the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan. I am one of the leaders of the North Waziristan Peace Committee (NWPC), which is a body of local Maliks (or community leaders) that is devoted to trying to keep the peace in our region.

 

We are sanctioned by the Pakistan government, and our main mission is to try to prevent violence between the local Taliban and the authorities.

 

In January 2010, I lent my vehicle to my nephew, Salimullah, to drive to Deegan for an oil change and to have one of the tires checked.

 

As Salimullah conversed with the mechanic, a second vehicle pulled up next to mine. There were four men inside, just local chromite miners. A missile destroyed both vehicles, killed all four men, and seriously injured Salimullah, who spent the next 31 days in hospital.

 

The next attack came on 3 September 2010. That day, I was driving a red Toyota Hilux Surf SUV to a ‘Jirga’, a community meeting of elders. Another red vehicle, almost identical to mine, was some 40 meters behind. When we reached Khader Khel, a missile blew up the other vehicle, killing all four occupants.

 

The third drone strike came on 6 October 2010. My friend Salim Khan invited me to dinner. I used my phone to call Salim to announce my arrival, and just before I got there a missile struck, instantly killing three people, including my cousin . . . a married man with children, and a mentally handicapped man. Again, none of the casualties were involved in extremism.

 

Five months later, on 27 March 2011, an American missile targeted a Jirga, where local Maliks – all friends and associates of mine – were working to resolve a local dispute and bring peace. Some 40 civilians died that day, all innocent . . . .

 

© 2016 Malik Jalal, I'm on the Kill List. This is what it feels like to be hunted by drones, The Independent (12 April 2016) (extracts)

 

 

Are we proud now?

 

Targeting the wrong people, serially missing them, and killing bunches of innocents instead?

 

Is this what the Stars and Stripes has stooped to?

 

 

Assume now that Mr. Malik’s account is not true

 

Would it make a difference?

 

We should know that Mr. Malik’s account captures the actuality of a significant portion of American drone strikes.

 

As he correctly concludes, in spite of his probably inaccurate numbers:

 

 

Singling out people to assassinate, and killing nine of our innocent children for each person they target, is a crime of unspeakable proportions.

 

Their policy is as foolish as it is criminal, as it radicalises the very people we are trying to calm down.

 

© 2016 Malik Jalal, I'm on the Kill List. This is what it feels like to be hunted by drones, The Independent (12 April 2016) (paragraph split)

 

 

The moral? — Drone murder of suspected adversaries and collateral innocents is a faint-hearted nation’s way

 

 

This is not the America that I was born into. Not the one my father fought for during World War II.

 

This new and craven United States is the creation of a repulsively acquiescent Congress and a spinelessly quivering public.

 

Irrational fear of terrorism has swallowed our strength and spit it out. We mewl like hysterically frightened Pissants of Puke.

 

U.S. leaders continually create illusory existential threats from the most ridiculously weak sources. Then we exterminate or maim thousands upon thousands of people, some of them our own, so as to make a series of deadly, but strategically nonsensical points.

 

Where once we went nose to nose with the world’s arguably finest (red-coated) army — while out-numbered and out-gunned — we now send murdering machines thousands of miles away to kill some out-weaponed, out-manned, out-economied, and out-transported “peasant equivalent”. Terminally incapacitating in this drone process, as well — his family, friends, random associates, and whomever else might happen to be inside the blast zone.

 

Not content with this legally and ethically indefensible slaughter of human beings, we proudly pronounce that God’s work has been skillfully done — neglecting to distinguish which grounds render American terror legally and morally superior to its Allah-motivated equivalent.

 

True American patriots should protest.

 

Crawling dishonor does not become us.