The Year of the Drone: An Analysis of U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan, 2004-2011 (excerpt)

(Source: New America foundation; issued July 14, 2007)

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, the Express Tribune, and the News—as well as those from Geo TV, the largest independent Pakistani television network.

Our study shows that the 263 reported drone strikes in northwest Pakistan, including 50 in 2011, from 2004 to the present have killed approximately between 1,620 and 2,551 ndividuals, of whom around 1,327 to 2,080 were described as militants in reliable press accounts. Thus, the true non-militant fatality rate since 2004 according to our analysis is approximately 20 percent. In 2010, it was more like five 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. 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. (end of excerpt)

Click  here  for the rest of the study, on the NAF website.