Rania Khalek Dispatches from the Underclass

Tag / Yemen

Faisal bin ali Jaber, a Yemeni man whose relatives were killed in a US drone strike, is traveling to the United States this week to tell his story to members of Congress and human rights activists at this weekend’s Drone Summit (which I’m covering for Truthout, FYI). Jaber’s brother-in-law, 49-year-old Sheik Salem Ahmed bin Ali Jaber, was […]

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Rafiq ur Rehman and his two children, 9-year-old Nebila and 13-year-old Zubiar, are from the tribal regions of north Waziristan, an area of Pakistan that has been devastated by US drone strikes. Last year, Rafiq’s children were injured by a drone strike that also killed his 67-year-old mother (the children’s grandmother), Mamana. Rafiq’s story is featured […]

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(Updated on Sunday, August 11) Nonstop fear mongering by lawmakers and White House officials about the allegedly growing threat of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has pushed Yemen into the national spotlight as a country synonymous with terrorism. Yemen is home to the scary bearded terrorists that want to kill our innocent American children, […]

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A 10-year-old Yemeni boy named Abdulaziz was killed on June 10, reports McClatchy. And it was the U.S. government that killed him. Perhaps he should have known better than to be the younger brother of  al Qaeda chief Saleh Hassan Huraydan, the target of the drone strike. At least that’s what President Obama’s former press secretary turned MSNBC […]

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As the debate over drone strikes and targeted killings finally breaks into the mainstream, there remains a key aspect of the kill program that has been virtually ignored even by its most ardent detractors.

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The Washington Post published an excellent article yesterday highlighting the creeping expansion of the CIA’s paramilitary force, better known as Global Response Staff (GRS).  The Post describes the GRS as “an innocuously named organization that has recruited hundreds of former U.S. Special Forces operatives to serve as armed guards for the agency’s spies.” It’s “designed […]

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Back in the day, Christmas brought with it an unofficial truce during times of war, allowing troops to celebrate the holiday, maybe even with their families back home. Thanks to technological advancements in warfare, this is no longer necessary. Armed drones enable soldiers to extrajudicially assassinate their targets from the safety of military bases thousands […]

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