“The death of Mr Weinstein and Mr Lo Porto in a drone strike demonstrates the risk and unintended consequences of the use of this technology that Pakistan has been highlighting for a long time,” said the Foreign Office in Islamabad on Friday.

Those less constrained by convention have been more direct in pointing out just how long it has taken the United States to see a simple fact.

Aid workers Warren Weinstein of the United States and Italian national Giovanni Lo Potro were killed accidentally in January while they were being held captive by militants.

Read: Obama apologises for hostage deaths in Pak-Afghan border strike

This led to an admission by President Barack Obama on Thursday that discretion had not been exercised by those who oversaw the drone attack. Quite unavoidably, the revelation was followed by protesting voices seeking to remind the US of the innocent victims of its drone-driven war strategy, and blaming the Americans for maintaining double standards: in a nutshell, the US may have come clean on the deaths of the two aid workers, but it has maintained a deafening silence on the euphemistically put ‘collateral damage’ that has included people belonging to ‘lesser’ countries.

Also read: Hostages’ death in drone attack shocking: FO

Pakistan’s own offensive against the drone strikes could have been more persistent and stronger. Apart from the state, on the popular level, thanks to the dearth of information regarding casualties from the tribal areas where drone strikes were carried out, many in Pakistan did appear to look upon drones as an efficient deterrent against militancy.

If this was an extension of the American silence over the issue, Pakistan is now offering a contrasting response to the American regret over the accidental killing of the two Westerners. It is not at all an inappropriate or inadequate response.

As it expressed solidarity with the families of Weinstein and Lo Potro, Islamabad acted like someone who knew how it felt to lose precious citizens because of a ‘technical fault’ and because of a world power’s disregard for life and for the general rules of combat. It is a terrible feeling.

Published in Dawn, April 26th, 2015

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