A predator drone. (photo: Veronique de Viguerie/Getty)
US
Drones: Afghanistan's Angels of Death
By Emran Feroz, TeleSUR
02 April 16
Afghanistan is the country most bombed by drones in the world.
Nevertheless, it seems that the world is silent on its devastation.
The
vehicles were completely destroyed. So, too, was the body of one of the
passengers, four-year-old Amir. In April 2013, a U.S. drone strike killed the
child in Kunar, one of Afghanistan's eastern provinces, together with 13 other
people.
25-year-old
Abdul Wahid, Amir's uncle, was also among the victims. "I couldn't bear
the news. I lost all sense in this moment. Suddenly, all the pictures of my son
and my brother came to my mind while my tears couldn't stop", says
Naqibullah, Amir's father.
In
fact, Naqibullah took his son to the city of Asadabad for medical treatment. He
told Abdul Wahid, his brother, to take his son back to their village while he
stayed in the city. This was the last time he saw both of them alive.
When
he telephoned home to find out if they had returned safely, he was told they
had not. Locals told him that both of them have been killed by a drone strike.
Later, government officials insisted that Amir and Abdul Wahid were Taliban
fighters. According to Naqibullah, they also said the onus was on him to prove
otherwise.
"It's
so grotesque and detestable that they claim that my brother and my son, a four-year-old
child, were armed militants", Naqibullah says outraged.
Until
today, nobody knows why Amir, Abdul Wahid and the 12 other people, also
civilians, were targeted. Nevertheless, since 2001, drone strikes have become
part of the daily life in Afghanistan.
Unknown
victims
According
to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a London-based organization,
Afghanistan is "the most drone bombed country in the world". Between
2001 and 2013, at least 1,670 drone strikes took place in the country.
Most
times, it is not known who the victims of such strikes are. Accurate data about
the impacts of the strikes, particularly casualty figures, do not exist. There
are different reasons for this.
On one
side, the media seems to largely ignore drone warfare and its victims – not
just in Afghanistan, but also in Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia. Apart from that,
it often seems that there is no political will for transparency. In
Afghanistan, this is especially the case since the so-called National Unity
Government came to power in 2014.
Since
then, Afghan president Ashraf Ghani has not said a single word about drone
strikes and civilian casualties. Instead, it was reported that the president
regularly drinks tea with leading U.S. military officials. In the first days of
his presidency, Ghani hurried to sign a Bilateral Security Agreement with the
United States. Hamid Karzai, his predecessor, refused to sign the paper when it
became clear that the agreement assured impunity for U.S. soldiers and
foreshadowed ongoing American violence in the country, such as brutal night
raids and drone strikes.
"President
Karzai was strongly against the use of drones. Unlike with the current
government, there was no agreement with Karzai on the use of weaponed drones in
Afghanistan. Therefore, the former president has publicly condemned such
attacks", says Aimal Faizi, who was a spokesman of Afghanistan's former
president.
Although
Karzai was a strong opponent of the "angels of death", as people in
some areas of Afghanistan call the drones, the known data, regularly published
by the U.S. military, proves that most of the attacks took place during his
term in office.
Media
spreads official line
However,
during the last months, reports on drone strikes in Afghanistan are increasing.
Like in the case of Amir or Abdul Wahid, Afghan government officials or
representatives of the military repeatedly insist that the victims were Taliban
fighters or Islamic State group and Al Qaida militants. In most cases, media
outlets just quote these officials and spread a one-sided view of the events.
Rarely, do they scrutinize the victim’s real identities.
"In
my experience, police and army officials and provincial government officials
are generally the main journalistic sources for this kind of information. But
it is not often clear where they get their information", says TBIJ's Jack
Serle, who has been observing drone strikes in Afghanistan for years.
"There are so many different lines of communication and circles within
circles, it makes it really difficult to be sure exactly who has been killed in
Afghanistan. Often all you can be sure of is someone's perished. Sadly, as
ever, the challenge is figuring out who they were and what they did."
According
to a recent report of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan,
more than 11,000 civilians were killed or wounded in the country in 2015. While
armed groups and the Afghan military are thought to have been responsible for
98 percent of these incidences, 2 percent of civilians casualties were
attributed to international forces, mainly in the form of air strikes.
The
report also makes clear that the rate at which civilians are being killed by
U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan is at its highest point since 2008. Research by
TBIJ shows that on average a civilian was killed by every fourth drone or jet
strike in 2015. According to the U.N. report, civilian casualties caused by
international military forces and Afghan air force increased by 83 percent in
2015, causing 296 civilian casualties, of which 149 were deaths. Fifty-seven
percent of those were caused by international forces.
But
the U.N. report does not focus on drone strikes. Also the U.S. government data
itself does not differ between classical aerial strikes and drone strikes. For
that reason, it is not clear how many drone strikes really took place in
Afghanistan.
Besides,
UNAMA counts in a very conservative way and requires at least three different
sources for a single casualty. Thus, family members of drone victims, like
Naqibullah, say that their relatives have not even made it into the count.
Additionally, it must be considered that has become a common practice among the
majority of media outlets to describe all victims as suspected militants or
terrorists, and not as civilians.
Critics
of the U.N. report say that without journalists or human rights activists present
in the country's most war-torn areas, killings often go unreported, never
making it into formal records.
"Most
war-torn areas of Afghanistan, especially where drone strikes take place
regularly, are not visited by journalists and activists. They are considered as
too dangerous, as dead zones," says Waheed Mozhdah, a political analyst
based in Kabul.
Besides,
records of civilian casualties only begin from 2009, eight years after the
West's war in Afghanistan started. For that reason, the huge majority of the
victims will remain unknown.
C 2015 Reader Supported News
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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