SOL:
I just watched the movie "EYE IN THE SKY". KNOWING WHAT I KNOW! I have
to say it was made as a propaganda film to make Americans believe that
every possible effort is made to reduce civilian casualties. Its a
really good movie, however the whole movie is based on a critically
needing drone strike on this house where suicide bombers are preparing
to leave to bomb a mall or large gathering of people that could mean the
loss of many lives. Most of the movie was spent getting permission
from higher officials to authorize the drone strike because they didn't
want to kill a little girl selling homemade bread just outside the
house. Its a very tense situation but if the U.S. can "accidentally"
bomb a well known Doctors Without Borders' hospital they wouldn't truly
find it that difficult to have this one little girl as a collateral
casualty. RA, RA, RA... USA! USA! USA!
Drone Warfare
Obama drone casualty numbers a fraction of those recorded by the Bureau
comments
SOL: THATS BECAUSE THEY CAN'T TELL THE AMERICAN PEOPLE THE TRUTH!
Funeral of Akram Shah and at least four other civilians in June 2011 (THIS KHAN/AFP/Getty Images)
The
US government today claimed it has killed between 64 and 116
“non-combatants” in 473 counter-terrorism strikes in Pakistan, Yemen,
Somalia and Libya between January 2009 and the end of 2015.
This
is a fraction of the 380 to 801 civilian casualty range recorded by the
Bureau of Investigative Journalism from reports by local and
international journalists, NGO investigators, leaked government
documents, court papers and the result of field investigations.
While
the number of civilian casualties recorded by the Bureau is six times
higher than the US Government’s figure, the assessments of the minimum
total number of people killed were strikingly similar. The White House
put this figure at 2,436, whilst the Bureau has recorded 2,753.
Since becoming
president in 2009, Barack Obama has significantly extended the use of
drones in the War on Terror. Operating outside declared battlefields,
such as Afghanistan and Iraq, this air war has been largely fought in
Pakistan and Yemen.
The
White House’s announcement today is long-awaited. It comes three years
after the White House first said it planned to publish casualty figures,
and four months after President Obama’s chief counter-terrorism
adviser, Lisa Monaco, said the data would be released.
The
figures released do not include civilians killed in drones strikes that
happened under George W Bush, who instigated the use of
counter-terrorism strikes outside declared war zones and in 58 strikes
killed 174 reported civilians.
Graphic by Dean Vipond
Today’s
announcement is intended to shed light on the US’s controversial
targeted killing programme, in which it has used drones to run an
arms-length war against al Qaeda and Islamic State.
The
US Government also committed to continued transparency saying it will
provide an annual summary of information about the number of strikes
against terrorist targets outside areas of active hostilities as well as
the range of combatants and non-combatants killed.
But
the US has not released a year-by-year breakdown of strikes nor
provided any detail on particularly controversial strikes which
immediately sparked criticism from civil liberty groups.
Jamel
Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties
Union said: “While any disclosure of information about the government’s
targeted-killing policies is welcome, the government should be releasing
information about every strike—the date of the strike, the location,
the numbers of casualties, and the civilian or combatant status of those
casualties. Perhaps this kind of information should be released after a
short delay, rather than immediately, but it should be released. The
public has a right to know who the government is killing—and if the
government doesn’t know who it’s killing, the public should know that.”
The gap between US figures and other estimates, including the Bureau’s data, also raised concerns.
I saw the first two missiles coming through the air. They were following each other with fire at the back.
– Nabeela, 8
Jennifer
Gibson, staff attorney at Reprieve said: “For three years now,
President Obama has been promising to shed light on the CIA’s covert
drone programme. Today, he had a golden opportunity to do just that.
Instead, he chose to do the opposite. He published numbers that are
hundreds lower than even the lowest estimates by independent
organisations. The only thing those numbers tell us is that this
Administration simply doesn’t know who it has killed. Back in 2011, it
claimed to have killed “only 60” civilians. Does it really expect us to
believe that it has killed only 4 more civilians since then, despite
taking hundreds more strikes?
“The
most glaring absence from this announcement are the names and faces of
those civilians that have been killed. Today’s announcement tells us
nothing about 14 year old Faheem Qureshi, who was severely injured in
Obama’s first drone strike. Reports suggest Obama knew he had killed
civilians that day.”
The
US government said in a statement: “First, although there are inherent
limitations on determining the precise number of combatant and
non-combatant deaths, particularly when operating in non-permissive
environments, the US Government uses post-strike methodologies that have
been refined and honed over years and that use information that is
generally unavailable to non-government organsations.”
Related story: Official
estimates show civilians more likely to be killed by CIA drones than by
US Air Force actions. The reality is likely far worse
Bibi Mamana
Bibi
Mamana was a grandmother and midwife living in the the tribal region of
North Waziristan on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.
On
October 24 2012, she was preparing for the Muslim festival of Eid. She
used to say that the joy of Eid was the excitement it brought to
children. Her eight-year-old granddaughter Nabeela was reported to be in
a field with her as she gathered vegetables when a drone killed Mamana.
“I
saw the first two missiles coming through the air,” Nabeela later told
The Times. “They were following each other with fire at the back. When
they hit the ground, there was a loud noise. After that I don’t remember
anything.” Nabeela was injured by flying shrapnel.
At
the sound of the explosion, Mamana’s 18-year-old grandson Kaleem ran
from the house to help. But a few minutes later the drones struck again,
he told the BBC. He was knocked unconscious. His leg was badly broken
and damaged by shrapnel, and needed surgery.
Atiq,
one of Mamana’s sons, was in the mosque as Manama gathered vegetables.
On hearing the blast and seeing the plume of smoke he rushed to the
scene. When he arrived he could not see any sign of his mother.
“I
started calling out for her but there was no reply,” Atiq told the
Times. “Then I saw her shoes. We found her mutilated body a short time
afterwards. It had been thrown quite a long distance away by the blast
and it was in pieces. We collected many different parts from the field
and put a turban over her body.”
Atiq’s brother Rafiq told Al Jazeera English he
received a letter after the strike from a Pakistani official that said
the attack was a US drone strike and that Mamana was innocent. But
nothing more came of it, he said. The following year Rafiq, a teacher,
travelled to the US to speak to Congress about the strike.
“My
job is to educate,” he said in an emotional testimony. “But how do I
teach something like this? How do I explain what I myself do not
understand?”
Picture credit: BBC
Evaluating the numbers
The
administration has called its drone programme a precise, effective form
of warfare that targets terrorists and rarely hits civilians.
With
the release of the figures today President Obama said, “All armed
conflict invites tragedy. But by narrowly targeting our action against
those who want to kill us and not the people they hide among, we are
choosing the course of action least likely to result in the loss of
innocent life.”
In
June 2011 Obama’s then counter terrorism chief, now CIA director, John
Brennan made a similar statement. He also declared drone strikes were
“exceptionally precise and surgical” and had not killed a single
civilian since August 2010. A Bureau investigation in July 2011 demonstrated this claim was untrue.
Most
of the Bureau’s data sources are media reports by local and
international news outlets, including Reuters, Associated Press and The
New York Times.
The
US Government says it has a much clearer view of post-strike situations
than such reporting, suggesting this is the reason why there is such a
gap between the numbers that have been recorded by the Bureau, and
similar organisations, and those released today.
But the Bureau has also gathered essential information from its own field investigations.
The
tribal areas have long been considered a difficult if not impossible
area for journalists to access. However, occasionally reporters have
been able to gain access to the site of the strikes to interview
survivors, witnesses and relatives of people killed in drone strikes.
The Bureau’s Naming the Dead project has named 213 civilians killed in Pakistan by drones in Obama’s presidency
The Bureau conducted a field investigation through the end of 2011 into 2012, in
partnership with The Sunday Times. Through extensive interviews with
local villagers, the Bureau found 12 strikes killed 57 civilians.
The Associated Press also sent reporters into the Fata, reporting its findings in February 2012. It found 56 civilians and 138 militants were killed in 10 strikes.
Access
to affected areas is a challenge in Yemen too. But in December 2009 a
deputation of Yemeni parliamentarians sent to the scene of a strike
discovered the burnt remnants of a camp, which had been set up by
several families from one of Yemen’s poorest tribes.
A subsequent investigation by journalist Jeremy Scahill revealed a
deception that hid US responsibility for the deaths of 41 civilians at
the camp – half of them children, five of them pregnant women.
The
reality on the ground flew in the face of the US governments
understanding of events. A leaked US diplomatic record of a meeting
in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, between General David Petraeus and the
Yemeni president revealed the US government was ignorant of the civilian
death toll.
Salem Ahmed bin Ali Jaber
Salem
Ahmed bin Ali Jaber, a 40-year-old father of seven, was exactly the
kind of man the US needed in Yemen. A widely respected cleric in rural
Yemen, he delivered sermons in his village mosque denouncing al-Qaida.
He
gave just such a speech in August 2012 and earned the attention of the
terrorist group. Three anonymous fighters arrived in his village two
days later, after dark, calling for Jaber to come out and talk.
He
went to meet them, taking his policeman cousin, Walid Abdullah bin Ali
Jaber, with him for protection. The five men stood arguing in the night
air when Hellfire missiles tore into them.
A
“huge explosion” rocked the village, a witness said. Jaber’s father,
Ahmad bin Salim Salih bin Ali Jaber, 77, arrived on the scene to find
people “wrapping up body parts of people from the ground, from here and
there, putting them in grave clothes like lamb.”
All
the dead were al Qaeda fighters, unnamed Yemeni officials claimed.
However Jaber’s family refused to allow him to be smeared as a
terrorist.
For
three years they fought in courts in America and Germany for
recognition that he was an innocent civilian. In November 2013 they
visited Washington and even managed to arrange a meeting in the White
House to plead their case. In 2014 the family said it was offered a bag
containing $100,000 by a Yemen national security official. The official
said it was a US strike and it had been a mistake.
By
late 2015 the family offered to drop their lawsuits against the US
government if the administration would apologise. The Department of
Justice refused. In February 2016 the court dismissed the family’s suit
but they have not stopped fighting: in April they announced they would
appeal.
Picture credit: Private
Falling numbers of civilian casualties
The
White House stressed that it was concerned to protect civilians and
that best practices were in place to help reduce the likelihood of
civilian casualties.
The Bureau’s data does show a significant decline in the reports of civilian casualties in recent years.
I
would read these accounts, ’12 insurgents killed.’ ’15!’ You don’t know
that. You don’t know that. They could be insurgents, they could be
cooks.
– Richard Armitage, former deputy Secretary of State
In
Pakistan, where the largest number of strikes have occurred, there have
been only three reported civilian casualties since the end of 2012. Two
of these casualties – Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto – were
Western hostages held by al Qaeda. The US, unaware they were targeting
the American and Italian’s captors, flattened the house they were being
held in.
The
accidental killing of a US citizen spurred Obama to apologise for the
strike – the first and only time he had publicly discussed a specific
CIA drone strike in Pakistan. With the apology came an offer of a
“condolence payment to both the families,” National Security Council
spokesman Ned Price told the Bureau. However, they have yet to receive
any compensation from the US government for their loss.
Families
who have lost relatives in Pakistan have not reported been compensated
for their loss. In Yemen, money has been given to families for their
loss but it is not clear whether it actually comes from the US. The
money is disbursed by Yemeni government intermediaries, nominally from
the Yemeni government.
Tariq Khan
Tariq
Khan was a 16-year-old from North Waziristan who attended a
high-profile anti-drone rally in Islamabad in October 2011. Only days
later, he and his cousin were killed in a drone strike.
Tariq was
the youngest of seven children. He was described by relatives as a
quiet teenager who was good with computers. His uncle Noor Kalam said: “He was just a normal boy who loved football.”
On 27 October, Tariq made the eight-hour drive to
Islamabad for a meeting convened by Waziri elders to discuss how to end
civilian deaths in drone strikes. The Pakistani politician Imran Khan,
his former wife Jemima, members of the legal campaign group Reprieve and
several western journalists also attended the meeting.
Neil Williams from Reprieve said Tariq seemed very introverted at the meeting. He asked the boy if he had ever seen a drone. Tariq replied he saw 10 or 15 every day. He said they prevented him from sleeping. “He looked absolutely terrified,” Williams said.
After a four-hour debate, the audience joined around 2,000 people
at a protest rally outside the Pakistani parliament. After the rally,
the tribesmen made the long journey home. The day after he got back,
Tariq and his cousin Wahid
went to pick up his newly married aunt, according a Bureau reporter who
met Tariq at the Islamabad meeting. When they were 200 yards from the house two missiles slammed into their car. The blast killed Tariq and Wahid instantly.
Some reports suggested Wahid was 12 years old.
An anonymous US official acknowledged the CIA had launched the strike but denied they were children. The occupants of that car were militants, he said.
Picture credit: Neil Williams/Reprieve
Unnamed
Most of the dead from CIA strikes in Pakistan are unnamed Pakistanis and Afghans, according to Naming the Dead – a research project by the Bureau.
Over three years the Bureau has painstakingly gathered names of the
dead from US drone strikes in Pakistan. The project has recorded just
732 names of people killed since 2004. The project has named 213
civilians killed under Obama.
The fact that so many people are unnamed adds to the confusion about who has been killed.
A
controversial US tactic, signature strikes, demonstrates how identities
of the dead, and their status as a combatant or non-combatant, eludes
the US. These strikes target people based on so-called pattern of life
analysis, built from surveillance and intelligence but not the actual
identity of a person.
And
the CIA’s own records leaked to the news agency McClatchy show the US
is sometimes not only ignorant of the identities of people it has
killed, but also of the armed groups they belong to. They are merely
listed as “other militants” and “foreign fighters” in the leaked
records.
Former Deputy US Secretary of State, Richard Armitage outlined his unease with such internal reporting in an interview with Chris Woods for his book Sudden Justice.
“Mr Obama was popping up with these drones left, right and down the
middle, and I would read these accounts, ’12 insurgents killed.’ ’15!’
You don’t know that. You don’t know that. They could be insurgents, they
could be cooks.”
Follow Jack Serle and Abigail Fielding-Smith on Twitter and sign up for the monthly update from the Bureau’s Covert War project.
