Gender |
Male |
|---|---|
Tribe |
Watizai |
Age |
22-23 |
Nationality |
Pakistani |
Place of origin |
Uchat, Lower Kurram Agency |
Reported status |
Unknown |
Ahmed Saeed was in his early 20s from Lower Kurram in Pakistan’s tribal region. He was either a student at Peshawar University or a low-level militant when he died.
There are scanty details of Saeed’s early years and the Bureau has gathered conflicting accounts of his life when CIA drones killed him in Pakistan’s Kurram tribal agency.
The Bureau published a leaked document compiled by a local politician, listing those killed in the strike on March 12 2009. It names 20 people killed in this attack, and six injured. The local politician added that two other men killed in the strike were not listed because they were not local. According to the document, Saeed was a resident of Uchat in Lower Kurram and from the Watizai caste – a sub-tribe of the Zaimukht tribe, according to research by the US Naval Postgraduate School.
All those on the list were militants, the unnamed local politician told the Bureau. The strike targeted a ‘training camp’, he said. Ahmed was the nephew of alleged militant commander Faisal Saeed, who ran the camp. Faisal survived because ‘he and five or six others were sleeping 160 yards away from the compound as a security measure’.
The politician suggested Ahmed Saeed was a teacher at the camp, saying: ‘One teacher was the nephew of militant commander Faisal Saeed.’
However eyewitnesses to the strike told the Bureau Saeed was a student. One claimed to have studied with him. ‘Mohammed’ and ‘Ahmed’ were contemporaries of one another and from the same area but the Bureau spoke to them separately. Their names have been changed to protect their identities.
They both described how the strike targeted a house killing around 12 people. Ahmed said a ‘small shelter outside the house’ was hit in the attack, killing livestock. And Mohammed said ‘three girls and three boys’ were among the dead.
According to Ahmed, Saeed was 22-23 years old and studied at Peshawar University. Mohammed also said Saeed was a student and had been his ‘class mate’, adding: ‘His father was a teacher in the government primary school, Uchat Primary school. His father survived.’
The witnesses and government sources match at three points: the name of Saeed’s father, the fact Saeed’s father was a teacher, and that Saeed was from Uchat in Lower Kurram. But there is ambiguity over whether he was a militant, as the local politician recorded, or a student, as described by his acquaintances – highlighting how blurred the lines between the Taliban and the communities they live alongside can be.
Independent Bureau research (Bureau), eyewitnesses (Bureau)