by Syed Moazzam Hashmi, Shahzad Wazir
WANA, Pakistan, Sept. 27 (Xinhua) -- Sudden ear ripping explosions, splitter bodies in rubbles amid clouds of spreading dust as soon as U.S. drones start hovering like vultures in the sky, it is what generally constitute nightmares that frequently wakes Naseemullah Wazir up in the middle of night with the rapidly increasing pace of U.S. surgical strikes in Pakistan.
Over 130 suspected militants and civilians have so far been killed in 19 unmanned drone attacks till Sunday night with a fresh wave of intensified controversial spy plane strikes from Sept. 3, according to local media and official reports.
"I am not scared but haunted by the uncertainty that anything can happen anytime to my home and the loved ones," commented Naseemullah, a native of Wana, the main administrative town in South Waziristan tribal area who goes to a college in Dera Ismail Khan in the northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.
"Usage of tranquilizers has been increased," local physician Dr. Faizur Rehman Burki told Xinhua in an interview, as the increasing sudden drone strikes have not only panicked people but also catalyzed uncertainty.
During the past week, over 40 people were killed in seven drone strikes by Sunday overnight, all concentrating on the sub-district Dattakhel area near Afghan border in the rugged North Waziristan, as the U.S.-led NATO forces tightening noose around insurgent Sirajuddin Haqqani and Hafiz Gul Bahadur's network area, where the United States believes Al-Qaeda is currently concentrated.
Some 1,753 people have so far been killed in 167 drone strikes since the first unmanned missile killed five people in 2004, according to official reports. However, over 1,100 people were killed mostly civilians in more than 130 drone strikes on Pakistani territory since August 2008.
The United States holds it to be the most successful strategy in war against terror so far that certainly has helped smash certain high value targets, but at a questionably high controversial cost of a greater number of innocent civilian lives.
