![]() ![]() It may never be known how many of them the US has killed in drone strikes. It’s about every civilian who has been killed in Waziristan.” Yes, Qureshi wants acknowledgement, apology and compensation from the US. He strokes his beard as he recalls the moment that defines his life.Ī ceiling damaged in the drone attack in 2009. He is now a displaced person, having stayed in Ziraki until the Pakistani army invaded North Waziristan 18 months ago. Over a Skype connection, he appears slender, with his hair falling down on to his forehead and wire-rimmed glasses framing a false eye. Qureshi is now approximately 21 years old – his official ID card says he’s younger, but where he’s from, birthdates are often listed inaccurately. The interview was facilitated by the human rights group Reprieve. “Are we not the same human beings as these two westerners who were killed?” Qureshi asked in his first interview with an American journalist, conducted through translation. “Although we will not comment on specific cases, were non-combatants killed or injured in a US strike, condolence or other ex gratia payments, such as solatia, may be available for those injured and the families of those killed,” Price told the Guardian. In those rare instances in which it appears non-combatants may have been killed or injured, after-action reviews have been conducted to determine why, and to ensure that we are taking the most effective steps to minimize such risk to non-combatants in the future. “The US government takes seriously all credible reports of non-combatant deaths and injuries. Although Obama expressed “ profound regret” for a 2015 drone strike on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border that killed two western hostages, the White House would not comment on “specific cases”, said a National Security Council spokesman, Ned Price. The CIA declined comment for this article, deferring to the White House. Seven years to the day after the strike, Qureshi has never received so much as an admission from the US that it happened. If there is a list of tyrants in the world, to me, Obama will be put on that list by his drone program.” Photograph: Īll Qureshi knows about Obama, he told the Guardian from Islamabad, “is what he has done to me and the people in Waziristan, and that is an act of tyranny. In his own telling, as in his final state of the union address earlier this month, he is the man who denuclearized Iran peacefully, who opened Cuba and ended the last vestige of the cold war, who replaced the “dumb wars” he campaigned against with the prudent, precise counter-terrorism of drone strikes.Īn unrepaired wall still showing the effects of the drone strike that injured Faheem Qureshi. Obama, now in the twilight of his presidency, wants to be remembered as a peacemaker. The family never had the money to repair the guest lounge. Once a promising student who wanted a career in chemistry, his priority would become scrounging a living. Fourteen of Qureshi’s cousins were left fatherless.īarely a teenager, Qureshi was suddenly an elder male within his family, tasked with providing for his mother, brothers and sisters. So was his 21-year-old cousin Aizazur Rehman Qureshi, who was preparing to leave the family’s North Waziristan home for work, also in the UAE. Two of Qureshi’s uncles, Mohammed Khalil and Mansoor Rehman, were dead. His family kept the worst from him while he recuperated. Doctors operated on the entire left side of his body, which had sustained burns, and used laser surgery to repair his right eye. Lacerations covered much of his upper body. It took nearly 40 days for Qureshi to emerge from a series of hospitals, all of which he spent in darkness. Instead, they changed Qureshi’s life irrevocably. Reportedly, the strikes did not hit the Taliban target Obama and the Central Intelligence Agency sought. This was the hidden civilian damage from the first drone strike Barack Obama ever ordered, on 23 January 2009, the inauguration of a counter-terrorism tactic likely to define Obama’s presidency in much of the Muslim world. He ran outside, wanting to throw water on his face, but his priority was escape. ![]() Qureshi remembers feeling like his body was on fire. Then he heard a sound like a plane taking off.Ībout two seconds later, the missile punched a hole through the lounge. It had been a long day – Friday prayers, a food shopping errand at his mother’s behest, hosting – but also a happy occasion, as people stopped by to welcome an uncle home to North Waziristan, in tribal Pakistan, from a work excursion to the United Arab Emirates. ![]()
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