Drones out of Africa and the Middle East! Victory to Pakistan! Victory to African people!
Uhuru Solidarity Movement statement on U.S. drone attacks.
24 hours a day, seven days a week in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan, the menacing hum of predator drones flying overheard serves as a terrifying reminder to the Pakistani people that at any moment their homes and families could be reduced to flames and rubble. Such is the daily life experienced by colonized people struggling to survive under the constant threat of death at the hands of the US military.
In a documentary entitled "Living Under Drones" a Pakistan man recounts a typical drone attack:
"It was Ramadan, we were about to break out fast with the children. We took a bite, we said our prayers. The children had just started eating when the missile struck."
Images of his small home engulfed in fire are shown as he continues: "My two sons and I were outside, but everyone inside was killed. Three people were killed, my brother, my brother's son, and my brother-in-law."
Since 2004, over 900 Pakistanis, including at least 176 children, have been killed by the U.S. government's predator drones.
Under the guise of a so-called "war on terror," the U.S. and Europe are deploying drones as their latest weapon to carry out a vicious campaign of terrorism and occupation against the people of the Middle East and Africa.
The US has also begun to use drones to monitor and terrorize the colonized African and Mexican communities inside the U.S.
Drones are unmanned aerial vehicles controlled by pilots from the ground in remote locations such as Las Vegas, Nevada and Tampa, Florida.
The use of drone strikes was initiated under U.S. president George Walker Bush but has been intensified by neocolonial president Barrack Hussein Obama.
The U.S. has two separate "squadrons of armed drones," one run by the U.S. Air Force and one run by the CIA.
Using drones, the U.S. Air Force has increased its number of combat air patrols by 600 percent over the past six years. At any given time, there are at least 36 U.S. drones over Afghanistan and Iraq.
The U.S. and Europe also use drones on the continent of Africa.
According to Global Research, "The first known U.S. attack in Africa involving a drone took place on Jan 7, 2007 when a U.S. predator drone tracked a convoy near the southen Somali town of Ras Kamboni and guided in an attack by a U.S. gunship."
"Since that first attack, U.S. drones have operated more or less continuously over African soil."
"The most well-known base from where drones operate in Africa is in Djibouti, but there are also bases in Ethiopia and the Seychelles." (Source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/american-drones-over-africa-new-us-military-bases-in-west-africa/5321454)
The U.S. and European governments often target the same location twice in a short period of time in a procedure called "double tap," in which a drone strikes once and strikes again not long after, killing off the medical professionals who are sent to help those injured by the first attack.
The U.S. has even targeted the funerals of people who were killed by drones.
Drones are only the latest form of terror used by the U.S. government to enforce its colonial domination of the oppressed people of the world.
We oppose the drone strikes because we are opposed to imperialism.
Even if the U.S. got rid of every single drone in its possession, they would still be occupying the people of Afghanistan and Iraq by other means.
We also feel it is important to clarify that our opposition to the drones has nothing to do with whether or not the victims of the drone strikes are "civilians" or "militants."
Liberals criticize the U.S. for saying that the drones have "precise, surgical precision" in targeting "terrorists," when in actuality, the majority of the victims are "civilians."
The reality is that even if the drone is right "on target," it is an act of terror by the U.S. government against the occupied people of Pakistan.
The real terrorists are not the Pakistani freedom fighters who take up arms to defend their homeland against the U.S. invaders.
The real terrorist is Barack Hussein Obama, leader of the largest terrorist organization on the planet: the US government.
The use of drones are meant to terrorize and demoralize oppressed people and those of us who stand in solidarity with the anti-colonial struggles of oppressed people. We are supposed to shudder in the face of the empire's supposed technological might.
In reality, the use of drones is not an indication of the strength of imperialism, but a sign of its ever escalating crisis and decline.
Indeed, it is the rising heroic resistance of Africans, Arabs and other colonized peoples that is causing serious crisis for the imperialist system of parasitic capitalism.
Part of this crisis is the increasing unreliability of Arab and African colonial subjects to be used as tools of colonial oppression.
In the U.S., we recently saw the stance taken by Christopher Dorner, the black LA ex-cop who turned his guns against the LAPD.
In Afghanistan, there has been a spike in the killings of U.S. soldiers by their Afghan counterparts in the neocolonial Afghan military.
As Chairman Omali Yeshitela explains, "This is why drones, computers and other automated modes of warfare are becoming increasingly necessary for world domination. Drones and computers don't have consciousness and are less likely to turn on their handlers. They don't have to believe in their missions and are not subject to suicide or rebellion and they cannot be demeaned by name-calling."
The drone strikes represent the desperate thrashings of a dying beast driven to lunacy by the scent of its own blood.
As Africans and oppressed peoples rise up and demand their right to sovereignty and national liberation, as evidenced by the stance of the peoples and governments of Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Bolivia, Ecuador and North Korea, the U.S. is resorting to ever increasingly desperate measures of colonial control to maintain its death grip on the world's resources.
We believe it is not enough to say "Peace."
