Saadullah was injured in a drone attack
and says he lost three relatives
When tribal elders from
the remote Pakistani region of North Waziristan travelled to Islamabad
last week to protest against CIA drone strikes, a teenager called Tariq
Khan was among them.
A BBC team caught him on camera, sitting near the front of a tribal assembly, or jirga, listening carefully. Four days later he was dead - killed by one of the drones he was protesting against.
His family told us two missiles hit the 16-year-old on Monday
near Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan. His 12-year-old
cousin Wahid was killed alongside him.
The boys were on their way to see a relative, according to Tariq's uncle, Noor Kalam, who we reached by phone. He denied that Tariq had any link to militant groups. "We
condemn this very strongly," he said. "He was just a normal boy who
loved football."
The CIA's drone campaign is a covert war, conducted in remote terrain, where the facts are often in dispute. The tribal belt is off limits to foreign journalists.
Militants often seal off the locations where drone strikes take place.
The truth can be buried with the dead.
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