An Analysis of U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan, 2004-2010
2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2004-2007
View U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan in a larger mapClick each pin to see the details of a reported strike. The red border represents the extent of Pakistan's tribal regions in the northwest of the country. Red pin=2004-2007; Pink pin=2008; Dark blue pin=2009; (Purple pin=Bush in 2009); Light blue pin=2010
This research was last updated on March 29, 2010. For a full analysis of the repercussions and results of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, please click here for "The Year of the Drone," by Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann, February 24, 2010.
The research on these pages, which we have created in a good faith effort to be as transparent as possible with our sources and analysis and will be updated regularly, draws only on accounts from reliable media organizations with deep reporting capabilities in Pakistan, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, accounts by major news services and networks"”the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, CNN, and the BBC"”and reports in the leading English-language newspapers in Pakistan"”the Daily Times, Dawn, and the News"”as well as those from Geo TV, the largest independent Pakistani television network. Our study shows that the 123 reported drone strikes in northwest Pakistan, including 27 in 2010, from 2004 to the present have killed approximately between 871 and 1,285 individuals, of whom around 582 to 915 were described as militants in reliable press accounts, about two-thirds of the total on average. Thus, the true civilian fatality rate since 2004 according to our analysis is approximately 32 percent.We have also constructed a map, based on the same reliable press accounts and publicly available maps, of the estimated location of each drone strike. Click each pin in the online version to see the details of a reported strike; the red border represents the extent of Pakistan's tribal regions in the northwest of the country. And while we are not professional cartographers, and Google Maps is at times incomplete or imperfect, this map gives our best approximations of the locations and details of each reported drone strike since 2004.This study carries a Creative Commons license, which permits re-use of New America content when proper attribution is provided. Please click here for conditions of use, and when citing please attribute to Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann's drones database at the New America Foundation.
*Through March 29, 2010
*Through March 29, 2010
2010
February 17, 2010: Sheikh Mansoor, Egyptian-Canadian al-Qaeda leader
February 15, 2010: Abdul Haq al-Turkistani, al-Qaeda linked leader of a group called the Turkistani Islamic Party
January 14 or 17, 2010: Hakimullah Mehsud, TTP chief
January 9, 2010: Jamal Saeed Abdul Rahim, wanted for his alleged role in the 1986 hijacking of Pan American World Airways flight during a stop in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi (BBC, AP, Asian Tribune) [Author note: BBC says he "died" on Jan. 9, AP says he was killed by a drone on Jan. 9, and Asian Tribune says he died in the strike on Ismail Khel, which happened on Jan. 10 as per AFP, AP, CNN, Dawn, Times of India, and Geo.]
*Count is more than the number of strikes in some cases because some targets fell into multiple categories.**Saad bin Laden, one of Osama bin Laden's sons, was reported killed by a drone in 2009 sometime before July 22, 2009, but it's unknown exactly when, so he is included in the targeting as al Qaeda but not in one of the individual entries in 2009. [Author note: Saad bin Laden was reported alive in December 2009 by his brother, Omar.]
In cases where a media report described a specific target such as Baitullah Mehsud or the Haqqani network, the target is counted as such. If a target was both al Qaeda and Taliban commanders, it is counted once under each category. Strikes against Baitullah Mehsud are not included in the overall Taliban count. We assume that strikes which kill a leader in a given group were targeted at that group. Only for cases when a specific target or group was not reported by the media and a specific location was given, we used the following geographical areas of influence to estimate which particular militant group was targeted.
2010
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