...which often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless...
lawyer Clive Stafford Smith was impressed by the 16-year-old boy who wanted to draw attention to civilian deaths caused by US drone strikes in Pakistain.
Tariq Aziz had volunteered to take pictures of people killed by the remotely piloted aircraft to help Stafford Smith highlight what he calls illegal killings.
Three days later, on Oct. 31, he and his 12-year-old cousin were themselves killed by a drone missile strike in the North
Wazoo region on the Afghan border, Stafford Smith said.For the veteran lawyer, the deaths highlighted major flaws in the CIA-run drone campaign, which US officials say is invaluable in the war on jihad boys.
"What they did to Tariq was absolutely disgusting," he told Rooters in a telephone interview.
Stafford Smith made his name defending death row inmates in the United States and prisoners at the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
A life dedicated to law-fare...
He considers the drones as "scandalous" as the secret US bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War.
Eighty Pak rustics, including Aziz, recently met Stafford Smith and other Western lawyers for the first time, in the Pak capital, Islamabad, to complain about the drones.
The United States has sharply stepped up the number of drone attacks in Pakistain's unruly ethnic Pashtun areas in the northwest, along the border with Afghanistan.
In 2009, when President Barack
This is a teachable momentObama took office, there were 53 strikes, compared with 42 over the previous four years. In 2010, that number jumped to 118, followed by 68 this year, according to the New America Foundation.
The think tank's statistics raise doubts about the success of the drones. It estimates as many as 471 non-combatants were killed by drone strikes in Pakistain between 2004-2011, a 20 percent non-militant fatality rate.
US officials point to the deaths of senior al Qaeda and Taliban figures as proof the drones are highly effective, and no American troops are needed on the ground.
Missile-armed drones are playing a greater role than ever in US counterterrorism operations, as Obama winds down land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Washington's focus expands to jihad boy havens in countries such as Pakistain.
Stafford Smith says the strategy will cause more civilian deaths and create additional enemies for the United States.
"When you have warfare with no political costs at all, it becomes much too easy to resort to violence," he said, adding his goal was to raise international awareness about the suffering caused by drone strikes.
"What we are seeing in Waziristan is a process that is alienating the population just as napalm in Vietnam did and it's achieving very little benefit."
Stafford Smith drew parallels between Guantanamo and the drone campaign in Pakistain, arguing both detentions and strikes were often based on dubious intelligence. He suspects the death of Aziz was a prime example of that.
"We as America offer large bounties to different informants and these informants would sell their own mothers," said Stafford Smith, 52, a dual US-British citizen who is the director of Reprieve, an organization that advocates for prisoners' rights.
"We don't have proof but this (Aziz's death) was the result of some Pak informants who want to show their paymasters they are doing their jobs. So they make up a story and a poor kid dies."
Drone "pilots" based in the United States move joy sticks around as they watch live video feeds of jihad boys, who are killed with the push of a button.
"We keep talking our way into a system of warfare that was in our science fiction nightmare 30 years ago and we really need to have an open debate on it," said Stafford Smith.
He faces an uphill battle. US policy makers are encouraged by drone operations like the one that killed US-born jihad boy holy man Anwar al-Awlaki
... Born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, zapped in Yemen, al-Awlaki was a dual citizen of the U.S. and Yemen. He was an Islamic holy man who was a trainer for al-Qaeda and its franchises. His sermons were attended by three of the 9/11 hijackers, by Fort Hood murderer Nidal Malik Hussein, and
UndieboomerUmar Farouk Abdulmutallab. He was the first U.S. citizen ever placed on a CIA target list...
in Yemen in September.
But Stafford Smith believes "justice" will prevail.
"In the early days of Guantanamo Bay people said 'no one will pay attention'. It was difficult," he said. "I have no doubt the American people and everyone else will recognise what's going on here and put an end to it."