Drone Attacks

Drone Attacks are the attacks carried out by a drone -an unmanned military aircraft

The US Govt has made hundreds of attacks on targets in Northwest Pakistan since 2004 using drones  controlled by the American CIA's Special Activities Division

Most of these attacks are on targets in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas  
along the Afghan Border in Northwest Pakistan.

These strikes were begun by President George W Bush and have increased substantially under President Barack Obama

George W Bush vastly accelerated the drone strikes during the final year of his presidency. A list of the high-ranking victims of the drones was provided to Pakistan in 2009.

Barack Obama has broadened these attacks to include targets seeking to destabilize Pakistani civilian government and the attacks of 14 and 16 February 2009 were against training camps run by Baitullah Mehsud

 On 25 February 2009Leon Panetta , the director of the CIA, indicated the strikes will continue

US officials stated in March 2009 that the Predator strikes had killed nine of al Qaeda's 20 top commanders. The officials added that many top Taliban and al Qaeda leaders, as a result of the strikes, had fled to Quetta or even further to Karachi



Barack Obama was reported in March 2009 as considering expanding these strikes to include Balochistan

On 28 April 2011, President Barack Obama  appointed General David Petraeus as director of the CIA overseeing the drone attacks.

US President Obama admitted on 30 January 2012 that the US was conducting drone strikes in Pakistan. He stressed that civilian casualties in the strikes were low.

In 2013, the sustained and growing criticism of his drone policy forced Obama to announce stricter conditions on executing drone strikes abroad, including an unspoken plan to partly shift the program from the CIA to the ostensibly more accountable Pentagon

US Drone Strike Statistics  

Year	Number of Attacks	Casualties
		Militants	Civilians	Unknown	Total
2004	1	3	2	2	7
2005	3	5	6	4	15
2006	2	1	93	0	94
2007	4	51	0	12	63
2008	36	223	28	47	298
2009	54	387	70	92	549
2010	122	788	16	45	849
2011	73	420	62	35	517
2012	48	268	5	33	306
2013	21	128	4	0	132
Total	364	2,274	286	270	2,830