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At the Beaconsfield Gallery in London last Friday, I sat in a darkened room and watched as dozens of images of death and destruction lit up the wall in front of me. Gruesome photos of mangled bodies and destroyed buildings, each accompanied by the name of a village and a date. The war they depict does not officially exist.
The photographs were taken by Noor Behram, a journalist from the North Waziristan region of Pakistan, and they document what he says are the civilian victims of unmanned aircraft 'drone' attacks carried out by U.S. forces.
Noor Behram via AP
In this Aug. 23, 2010 photo provided by Noor Behram, a man holds debris from a missile strike in North Waziristan, Pakistan. The Beaconsfield gallery in London is staging an exhibit of photographs taken by Behram allegedly showing innocent civilians killed by U.S. drone missile strikes in Pakistan's tribal region.
Over a three year period Behram was able to travel to around 60 attack sites in Waziristan, a region that is usually off-limits to the international media. His images, fuzzy, washed-out and often poorly composed, are an incongruous sight in an art gallery, but these are photographs taken as a form of documentation, rather than for their aesthetic value.
In this, Behram follows a path set out by the renowned French photographer Gilles Peress, who declared in a 1997 interview that "I don't care so much anymore about 'good photography'; I am gathering evidence for history." Peress' project A Village Destroyed, which documented a 1999 massacre in Kosovo, illustrated the important role that photography can play in human rights investigations.
Noor Behram via AP
The body of an eight-year-old boy killed by a missile strike in Makeen, South Waziristan, Pakistan, in a photo taken on Feb. 14, 2009.
Behram explained his own motivation in taking the pictures: "I have tried covering the important but uncovered and unreported truth about drone strikes in Pakistan: that far more civilians are being injured and killed than the Americans and Pakistanis admit," he told the AP's Sebastian Abbot last month.
As Abbot reported, U.S. officials do not publicly acknowledge the existence of the drone program, but they have said privately that the strikes harm very few innocents and are key to weakening al-Qaida and other militants.
Noor Behram via AP
A man stands next to a destroyed vehicle after a missile strike on a funeral in South Waziristan, Pakistan, on July 8, 2009.
Alongside Behram's pictures, the exhibition features The Ethical Governor, below, a satirical animation by the artist John Butler that draws on the parallels between drone technology and video games.
'The Ethical Governor', a fictional animation by the artist John Butler that satirizes Western imperialism and the use of drone technology.
The Beaconsfield exhibition, Gaming in Waziristan, is a collaboration with the NGO Reprieve, which has provided legal representation to prisoners on death row and Guantanamo Bay inmates. Reprieve has launched an initiative named "Bugsplat" - the term used by the CIA to describe a successful drone hit - which calls for an inquiry into the use of drones and says that some of the attacks may have constituted war crimes.
"We currently have a monopoly, or effective monopoly, on armed drones," John Nagl, president of the Center for a New American Security think tank, told Reuters last month. "This technology will spread, and it will be used against us in years to come."
Related content:
- Slideshow - Pakistan: A nation in turmoil
- Open Channel - US prepares for worst-case scenario with Pakistan nukes
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The mission was to get in, get OBL, and get out...and then the oil men in the White House realized that terrorism was not just a threat, but a tool. And off we went to Iraq...not so much abandoning the mission in Afghanistan but instead neglecting it to ensure that anybody who said "Mission Accomplished!" couldn't be asked "Then how come we're not bringing our military home?".
Umm, I have to say those Butler Bros. are real anti-American a-holes. Thank God for UAVs. Many Islamic savage has met his end thanks to these weapons. Remember, the only good radical Islamist is a dead one!!!! There are 3000 US citizens who are no longer with us who would agree with me. Remember 9/11 boys and girls??? This war is FAR from over.
Kill them all ,Let God sort them out
As I have mentioned in a previous thread, you have to remember Saddams ridiculas sadistic dictatorship rule over Iraq, I mean he was clearly willing to murder his own people with WMD's having used nerve gas on the northern Kurdish killing well over 150k people those that made it out returned to a burned, looted, bull dozed city lined with dead bodies......I mean for crying out load the Fedayeen would torture the national soccor team for loosing....Does anyone remember what Saddam did his first day in office? so with the countless years of torture and murder without even getting into his two sons sadistic crimes on humanity and Uday with young woman especially, but lets also NOT forget that Saddam had been refusing access to UN WMD's inspectors for months maybe even years which gives what? PROBABLE CAUSE right? and with the new "holy war" on westerners and Saddams obvious hate would you really think it was worth taking a chance? I say absolutely NOT and even if we are using it for oil now....that would also compensate for all the billions we spent restoring and updating the country correct? regardless of what it is today Saddam needed to go and anyone who says differently my friend is just simply uneducated and I would ask to take some time and look over the brutal history of Saddams rule starting with day one of his leadership leading to the murder and execution of MANY of the regimes leaders and their entire families.....
Lastly look at it this way....if you and I are at a picnic and you have a bag of chips and I have a bag of chips and you open yours and say I can have some so I eat your chips then later I open my bag and keep them to myself? who is going to be in control? With that said did you know they recently found more natural gas veins and oil in our country than ANY where else in the world? SOOO we use up all of their oil and saves ours for last? now we are no longer and will no longer ever be dependent on any Muslim fanatical country.......Its a strategic play....think of it as chest you dont play in the moment or you loose you have to always be thinking 5 or 10 steps ahead.....As crummy as DC and our govt can be sometimes they do know what they are doing.....errrr sometimes
Seems to me if your gonna catch mice you need a better mousetrap, and the DRONE certainly fits the bill!