Why I Support an International Treaty to Ban Weaponized Drones and Drone Surveillance

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 1 Mar 2021

Kathy Kelly | Covert Action Magazine – TRANSCEND Media Service

Organized by Veterans for Peace, large demonstration at General Atomics where attack drones are made. (Poway, California) [Source: worldbeyondwar.com]

28 Feb 2021 – At a time in my life when I barely knew drones existed, a young Lebanese mother mourning the death of her six-year-old daughter, Zainab, helped me understand how monitoring by drones terrified her and her neighbors.

It was the summer of 2006, during a war referred to as the Israeli-Hezbollah war.

On July 30^th, around 1:00 a.m., Israeli warplanes fired missiles at buildings in Qana, Lebanon, a small village in southern Lebanon. One missile, a bunker buster supplied by the U.S. corporation Raytheon, caused a three-story building to collapse, killing an extended family of 27 people. Fifteen of them were children.

Two weeks later, with a team of international observers, I visited Qana because of reports of a massacre there.

Driving toward the village, we saw men preparing cement structures for burials.

We entered the village on foot and saw men arranging white plastic chairs for guests who came to mourn with family members.

Four women sitting quietly in an outdoor patio invited Farah Mokhtarazadei and me to join them.

Each time a neighboring woman arrived, the women would stand and embrace one another. They had borne their pain for 18 days, since the bombs slammed into homes in their village. The mass funeral had been delayed until families could safely gather for burials.

One mother had suffered injuries. Under her veil, she wore a medical hood, and a thick brace encircled her neck.

She stiffly shifted her tall, slender body, unable to point across the street to what was once a building where frightened children huddled together for shelter during the bombing. One of those children was her six-year-old daughter, Zainab.

She winced as she tried to gesture upward. “Didn’t they know?” she asked. “Didn’t they see?”

Later, I realized she was referring to surveillance drones, overhead, which she was sure must have filmed children running back and forth between their homes and this building. Umm Zainab said we must be able to see how close the two homes were. Yes, we could see. We listened to the drone of an unmanned surveillance plane criss-crossing the skies above. Couldn’t they see?

Umm Zainab asked one of the children to bring her a stack of newspapers. One front-page photo showed Zainab held aloft, lifeless, by a strong, helmeted relief worker who seemed to be shouting in agony. Another photo showed Zainab lying next to two-year-old Zahr’a.

The force of the explosion apparently damaged the internal organs of the little girls, as they slept. Their bodies were not mutilated.

Then Umm Zainab placed in my hands a framed photo of Zainab, a curly headed little girl with huge dark eyes posing seriously for the camera. One could only imagine her smile. “Who are the ‘terrorists’?” Umm Zayneb whispered, slowly reaching over to point at Zainab’s photo. “Is she the ‘terrorist’?”

Umm Zainab and her neighbors endured the sheer terror of being monitored, constantly, by those evidently willing and certainly able to kill their children.

Khaisor, Pakistan

TO CONTINUE READING Go to Original – covertactionmagazine.com

_________________________________________

Kathy Kelly is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, an American peace activist, pacifist and author, one of the founding members of Voices in the Wilderness, and currently a co-coordinator Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Three times since 2000, she has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. As part of peace teamwork in several countries, she has traveled to Iraq twenty-six times, notably remaining in combat zones during the early days of both US-Iraq wars. Her recent travel has focused on Afghanistan and Gaza, along with domestic protests against U.S. drone policy. She has been arrested more than sixty times at home and abroad, and written of her experiences among targets of U.S. military bombardment and inmates of U.S. prisons. She lives in Chicago. Kathy@vcnv.org – info@vcnv.org

Share this article: email mastodon facebook 🔗 copy link

DISCLAIMER: The statements, views and opinions expressed in pieces republished here are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of TMS. In accordance with title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. TMS has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is TMS endorsed or sponsored by the originator. “GO TO ORIGINAL” links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the “GO TO ORIGINAL” links. This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Comments are closed.