The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has advised Pakistan to seek an official UN investigation into whether the US drone strikes inside its territory are legal. Navi Pillay told Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to invite the UN's special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions to visit the country to examine the legality of missile attacks by remote-controlled aircraft in areas near the Afghan border. ''Drone attacks do raise serious questions about compliance with the international law,'' Dr Pillay told a press conference in Islamabad. “Ensuring accountability for any failure to comply with international law is also difficult when drone attacks are conducted outside the military chain of command and beyond … transparent mechanisms of civilian or military control.”
The deliberate targeting of rescuers and mourners by CIA drones was first exposed by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in February 2012 in a major joint investigation with the Sunday Times. On more than a dozen occasions between 2009 and June 2011, the CIA attacked rescuers as they tried to retrieve the dead and the injured. Although Taliban members were killed on almost every occasion, so too were civilians – many of whom the Bureau’s field investigators were able to name. The investigation also reported that on at least three occasions the CIA had struck funeral-goers.
In his address to the UN, Obama did reflect his desire for peace in the world and American interest in humanity. Despite such realizations the US policy seems more of a mind boggler than carrot and stick or “do more” type now. The strange statements now coming from Panetta like the US losing patience with Pakistan over insurgent bases and talking of war in Pakistan during his visit to India has further widened the wedge between the two countries, which in no way will lead to peace in this part of the world. Pakistan has a key place to every solution be it the Afghan exit, or future economic route to central Asia.
Pakistan and America have to find a solution even if does not exist on the principles of accommodation. It is not possible to pressurize a country of huge population like Pakistan and take unilateral decisions through coercion as they would prove temporary. The concept of America fighting thousands of miles away from its borders and considering techniques for tactical victory to fulfill their domestic requirement is understandable but the main decisions have to come keeping America and its people in mind. The present volley of accusations and finger raising at Pakistan by the Obama administration is nothing but the panic when they have sunk deep in Afghanistan. Nations demand that their leadership must protect and safeguard their values and respect and honor not through bullet but through winning hearts and minds for a durable peace. After the death of Osama the people must demand the revival of their values which they inherited for their coming generations.