"[31] Pakistan's former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, had repeatedly demanded an end to the strikes, stating: "The use of drones is not only a continual violation of our territorial integrity but also detrimental to our resolve and efforts at eliminating terrorism from our country".

[42] In general, the CIA and other American agencies have claimed a high rate of militant killings, relying in part on a disputed estimation method that "counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants ... unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent".

[47][48][49] Barbara Elias-Sanborn has also claimed that, "as much of the literature on drones suggests, such killings usually harden militants' determination to fight, stalling any potential negotiations and settlement.

The report stated that the number of arbitrary civilian deaths, the tactics used (such as follow-up attacks targeting individuals helping the wounded) and the violation of Pakistani sovereignty meant that some of the strikes could be considered as unlawful executions and war crimes.

The lull in attacks coincided with a new Obama administration policy requiring a "near certainty" that civilians would not be harmed, requests from lawmakers that the drone program be brought under operational control of the Department of Defense[57] (for better congressional oversight), a reduced US military and CIA presence in Afghanistan, a reduced al-Qaida presence in Pakistan, and an increased military role (at the expense of the CIA) in the execution of drone strikes.

[74] Georgetown University professor Gary D. Solis asserts that since the drone operators at the CIA are civilians directly engaged in armed conflict, this makes them "unlawful combatants" and possibly subject to prosecution.

[95] In May, the US began stepping up drone attacks after talks at the NATO summit in Chicago did not lead to the progress it desired regarding Pakistan's continued closure of its Afghan borders to the alliance's supply convoys.

Military support for the drones remains strong for a host of reasons: expansion of battlespace, extension of an individual soldiers capabilities, and a reduction of American casualties.

[104] Support has also been noted across the political spectrum as focus in the Middle East shifted from stabilization in Afghanistan to antiterrorist strikes aimed at al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan.

[107] Pakistan has repeatedly protested these attacks as an infringement of its sovereignty and because civilian deaths have also resulted, including women and children, which has further angered the Pakistani government and people.

"[127] The daily Indian newspaper The Hindu reported that Pakistan reached a secret agreement with United States to readmit the attacks of guided airplanes on its soil.

According to The Hindu, Lieutenant General Pasha also agreed to enlarge the CIA presence in Shahbaz air base, near the city of Abbottabad, where Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was killed in May 2011.

[128] According to unnamed US government officials, beginning in early 2011 the US would fax notifications to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) detailing the dates and general areas of future drone attack operations.

After the May 2011 raid that killed bin Laden, the ISI ceased acknowledging the US faxes, but Pakistani authorities have appeared to continue clearing the airspace in the areas where US drones are operating.

[132] The Pakistani Taliban's threat to "teach a lesson" to the US and Pakistan, after the aggressive American rejection of peace talks, resulted in the shooting of 10 foreign mountain climbers,[133] as well as a mis-targeted bomb killing fourteen civilians, including four children, instead of security forces in Peshawar at the end of June 2013.

[136] Not long after, a US strike killed another nine people, an act that prompted Sharif to summon the US chargé d'affaires in protest and to demand, again, an "immediate halt" to the Anglo-American drone program.

[137] In July 2013, it was reported that the US had drastically scaled back drone attacks in order to appease the Pakistani military, which was under growing pressure to move to end American "airspace violations".

[145][146] In June and July 2011, law enforcement authorities found messages on al Qaeda-linked websites calling for attacks against executives of drone aircraft manufacturer AeroVironment.

Said Alston, "Otherwise you have the really problematic bottom line, which is that the Central Intelligence Agency is running a program that is killing significant numbers of people and there is absolutely no accountability in terms of the relevant international laws.

[153] In a report issued on 18 June 2012, Christof Heyns, U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, called on the Obama administration to justify its use of targeted assassinations rather than attempting to capture al Qaeda or Taliban suspects.

[159] Irfan Husain, writing in Dawn, agreed called for more drone attacks: "We need to wake up to the reality that the enemy has grown very strong in the years we temporized and tried to do deals with them.

In addition to the actual damage dealt, drone strikes changed "the insurgents' perception of the risk", and caused them "to avoid targeting, severely compromising their movement and communication abilities.

Rather, the data reveals the importance of factors such as political and economic grievances, the Pakistani state's selective counterterrorism policies, its indiscriminate repression of the local population, and forced recruitment of youth by militant groups."

A student from the town of Mir Ali explained local sentiment: "When the government left us at the mercy of the cruel Taliban, we used to feel utterly helpless and cower in fear.

He also advised his men, as well as their affiliates in Somalia, to avoid cars, as American drones had been targeting them, and to "benefit from the art of gathering and dispersion experience, as well as movement, night and day transportation, camouflage, and other techniques related to war tricks.

"[173] Paranoia over being targeted by drone strikes has led to wide-scale executions of suspected spies by Taliban agents in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas region, including the creation of a special task force Lashkar al Khorasan for this purpose in North Waziristan.

These "micro-UAVs" (unmanned aerial vehicles) can be roughly the size of a pizza platter and meant to monitor potential targets at close range, for hours or days at a time.

"[49] The CIA has claimed that the strikes conducted between May 2010 and August 2011 killed over 600 militants and did not result in any civilian fatalities; this assessment has been criticized by Bill Roggio from the Long War Journal and other commentators as being unrealistic.

[42] An independent research site Pakistan Body Count run by Dr. Zeeshan-ul-hassan, a Fulbright scholar keeping track of all the drone attacks, claims that 2179 civilians were among the dead, and 12.4% children and women.

A U.S. drone strike killed nine people in northwest Pakistan, security officials said, prompting newly sworn-in Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to summon America's envoy on Saturday to protest against such attacks.