(Previous Incident Code: B1 )

Two children were killed according to multiple sources, with a single source claiming 3, the rest of the casualties range from three to eight, but some ambiguity over the status of the  three of the victims is reflected in the sources. This the first known US drone strike inside Pakistan. The strike took place in in Wana, South Waziristan, close to Dhok or Doog village or Kari Kot.

The target, local Taliban commander Nek Mohammad died days after Pakistan lifted a short-lived amnesty with him. Also killed were four to seven alleged Taliban, including (possibly) two unknown Uzbeks, whose combat status remains unclear. A local source on the ground told the Daily Times that “a [guided] missile hit the place at 9:45pm where Nek, two Uzbeks and three local Taliban were dining.”

According to The News, others killed were named either as Fakhar Zaman and Azmat Khan; or as Marez Khan, Shahrukh Khan and Leetak. House owner Sher Zaman Ashrafkhel, alleged by some to be a militant, was also killed along with his sons Irfan Wazir(aka Khan Zaman), 14 or 16 years old, and Zaman Wazir (aka Mohammed Zaman), eight or 10 years old. One report claimed that two of those who died were Nek Mohammad’s brothers. However in October 2012 brother Wali Mohammad told the BBC he was only injured in the strike, saying that ‘I’m not afraid of the drones – but I also don’t want to die in a drone attack.’ An anonymous source posted on IndyMedia UK, places the death toll at seven, however, it states that amongst the slain were the two sons of Sher Zaman and one of his grandsons. Other sources simply refer to those killed as tribesmen, associates or  supporters.

The strike was carried out with prior ISI approval, according to ‘a senior CIA official who served in the region’. The official told the New Yorker: ‘I would show them the Predator footage and I would say, “This is what is happening – massive training camps.” However, wary of revealing the CIA’s involvement, Pakistan’s Army initially claimed the attack as its own work. A military spokesman Gen. Shaukat Sultan said at the time:

“Nek Mohammad was suspected to be present in a hideout with his associates and our security forces acted swiftly on the information and that is how he was killed.”

In April 2013, the New York Times reported that Mohammad was killed as part of a deal which granted the CIA access to Pakistan’s airspace for drone strikes: “In a secret deal, the CIA had agreed to kill him in exchange for access to airspace it had long sought so it could use drones to hunt down its own enemies… The deal, a month after a blistering internal report about abuses in the CIA’s network of secret prisons, paved the way for the CIA to change its focus from capturing terrorists to killing them, and helped transform an agency that began as a cold war espionage service into a paramilitary organization.”

For the first time journalist Mark Mazetti described in some detail the secret arrangement reached between Washington and Islamabad:

“In secret negotiations, the terms of the bargain were set. Pakistani intelligence officials insisted that they be allowed to approve each drone strike, giving them tight control over the list of targets. And they insisted that drones fly only in narrow parts of the tribal areas — ensuring that they would not venture where Islamabad did not want the Americans going: Pakistan’s nuclear facilities, and the mountain camps where Kashmiri militants were trained for attacks in India. The ISI and the CIA agreed that all drone flights in Pakistan would operate under the CIA’s covert action authority — meaning that the United States would never acknowledge the missile strikes and that Pakistan would either take credit for the individual killings or remain silent. Mr. Musharraf did not think that it would be difficult to keep up the ruse. As he told one CIA officer: “In Pakistan, things fall out of the sky all the time.””

In November 2014 Steve Coll elaborated on this deal in an extensive article for the New Yorker. He wrote:

“In 2004 the [Pakistan] Army intensified its operations [in South Waziristan], and, as violence spread, Musharraf allowed the CIA to fly drones to support Pakistani military action. In exchange, Musharraf told me, the Bush Administration “supplied us helicopters with precision weapons and night-operating capability.” He added: “The problem was intelligence collection and targeting… The Americans brought the drones to bear.””