Interviews were arranged through local contacts in Pakistan, including journalists, lawyers, tribal leaders, experts, and civil society members. The majority of the experiential victims interviewed were arranged with the assistance of the Foundation for Fundamental Rights, a legal nonprofit based in Islamabad that has become the most prominent legal advocate for drone victims in Pakistan. Those interviewees, who undertook an extremely unsafe, time-consuming, and difficult trip in order to be interviewed, were all male, as poor security conditions, together with cultural norms of purda (separation of men and women), restricted women’s ability to travel. One of the experiential victims interviewed is a female Waziri now residing outside Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Nine of the 69 experiential victims are clients of the Foundation for Fundamental Rights. None of the interviewees were provided compensation for participating in investigations for this report.13 The interviews were conducted by teams that included at least one Stanford or NYU researcher, as well as a translator. Some interviews also included a researcher from either Reprieve or the Foundation for Fundamental Rights. The interviews with individual Waziris were semi-structured, and lasted from approximately thirty minutes to two hours. Security, confidentiality, and privacy for those interviewed were key concerns. Our research team applied informed consent guidelines to all interviews, and interviewees chose if or how they wished to be identified in this report. We do not include the names and other identifying information of interviewed individuals in this report when so requested by the person concerned, or when the research team determined that doing so might place the individual at risk. Thus, many of the experiential victims have been given pseudonyms in this report. All of the medical and humanitarian professionals, and most of the journalists with whom we met, also expressed concerns for their safety, and requested anonymity. In addition to our interviews with medical professionals in Pakistan, medical experts at Stanford reviewed this report’s sections concerning the psychological and physiological impacts of drones. These experts also met with our research team to discuss our findings and assist in our analysis of the classification of symptoms.
The Foundation for Fundamental Rights and Reprieve organized and financed the transportation to Islamabad and Peshawar for the majority of experiential victims. The Stanford Clinic paid for the translation services and rental of the space used for interviewing in both Peshawar and Islamabad.
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