Death from the Skies: An Overview of the CIA’s Drone Campaign in Pakistan - Part One

In the spring of 2004 the CIA began its most extensive targeted assassination campaign since the Vietnam War by launching dozens of unmanned aerial drones into the inaccessible tribal regions of Pakistan to hunt and kill Taliban and al-Qaeda militants.

Since then, more than six hundred people have died in these unpredictable aerial strikes that have killed both high value terrorist targets and innocent civilians.

Al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban leadership have been reeling from the deaths of their operatives even as the Pakistani public has commenced an outcry against this violation of their sovereignty and the deaths of civilian bystanders.

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