Introduction

Summary

On 16 March 2011, an unmanned drone killed around forty people in Datta Khel, a town in Pakistan’s rural region of North Waziristan. While initial reports claimed that the strike had been directed against a gathering of militants, it has since come to light that the meeting was in fact a tribal jirga, a traditional community gathering convened, in this case, to settle a dispute regarding ownership of a local chromite mine. Even assuming that members of the Taliban were present, as some accounts do seem to confirm, the bulk of those killed in the attack were tribal elders, many of whom had previously provided a bulwark against radicalization among their communities. Unlike most earlier drone attacks, the Datta Khel strike immediately attracted the strong criticism of Pakistan’s foreign ministry, who called it ‘a flagrant violation of all humanitarian rules and norms’. An unnamed US official dismissed the criticism, telling the Wall Street Journal, ‘These guys were terrorists, not the local men’s glee club.’