Photo: Kyodo
June 13 2017, 8:36 a.m.
OVER THE PAST DECADE, the
United States has claimed broad authority to carry out drone strikes across the
world, even in places far from the battlefield. Under President Barack
Obama, the U.S. acknowledged killing between 2,867 and 3,138 people in strikes
that took place in countries like Somalia, Yemen, and Pakistan.
Although in
the waning days of his presidency, Obama took some steps
to improve transparency about drone strikes, including providing the
total estimated death toll, a new report by the Columbia Law School Human
Rights Clinic and the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies says that the
U.S. is still lagging in providing a full accounting of its drone program.
Among other failures, the report, titled “Out
of the Shadows: Recommendations to Advance Transparency in the Use of Lethal
Force,” says that the U.S. has only acknowledged approximately 20
precent of its reported drone strikes — failing to claim
responsibility or provide details in the vast majority of cases.
Meanwhile, the
drone program is intensifying. Since President Donald Trump took office
earlier this year, the rate of drone strikes per month has increased by almost
four times Obama’s average. Yemen in particular has been a target of
many of these operations, with between nine and 11 strikes hitting
the country this year, along with 81 other covert attacks by U.S. forces,
according to statistics compiled by the Bureau of
Investigative Journalism.
The authors of
the new report say that the government’s failure to provide
information or legal rationales for its strikes is making it impossible to
understand the full scope of the government’s targeted killing
program, as well as its impact on civilians.
“For years, the
only way we knew anything about individual strikes was from media
reports or individual statements about strikes from government officials,”
said Alex Moorehead, of the Columbia Law School’s Human Rights
Institute, highlighting the failure of the government to provide details
about cases in which drones have been used for targeted killings.
“When we talk about official acknowledgment, we are talking about specific
information about individual strikes, which is what matters to people who have
had loved ones killed.”
The
estimated number of civilians killed in U.S. drone strikes varies widely,
with some independent estimates recording hundreds
of civilian deaths, while the U.S. government often claims that figures run only into the
dozens. The U.S. military has also been criticized for policies like
“signature strikes,” in which individuals have been killed based on their
status as “military-age males” in areas where U.S. drones are operating.
These policies are alleged to be responsible for cases in which weddings,
funerals, and other communal gatherings have been bombed in Yemen,
Pakistan, and Somalia.
“There is a
difference in how Western civilians are treated versus non-Western
civilians,” Moorehead said. “Of all the civilians who have been killed in these
strikes, only the two Westerners who were killed in a 2016 strike have ever received any formal
acknowledgement, apology, and compensation from the government.”
Locals in Yemen
have alleged that, in recent months, drone strikes carried out by the
Trump administration killed civilians on numerous occasions. One strike
reported last month in Yemen’s Shabwah Province allegedly targeted a car full of men with no
existing links to terrorist groups, as well as several innocent bystanders.
Despite such incidents, Trump has promised measures that would further loosen targeting standards for
drone operators, likely putting civilians in even greater danger. Many
Yemenis say that the anger and grief inflicted by these strikes is outweighing
any perceived counterterrorism benefit — and even driving some local people
into the arms of Al Qaeda.
“The drone
program in Yemen has inflicted a lot of civilian deaths that have not been
investigated, acknowledged, or even taken into consideration by the U.S.
government,” said Waleed Alhariri, director of the Sana’a Center’s U.S.
office and one of the co-authors of the report. “In some cases weddings have
been targeted, which has resulted in a lot of public anger from ordinary
people towards the United States and has helped recruitment for al Qaeda.”
The secrecy of
the drone program has made it difficult for civil liberties organizations in
the U.S. to provide a full accounting of its impact. More
importantly, this secrecy has also made it harder for civilians
directly impacted by drones to even understand why they have been
targeted. Lacking any ability to find out the details about cases in which they
or their loved ones were harmed, Yemeni civilians are generally unable to even
obtain recognition, let alone compensation, for the life-changing consequences
of these attacks. That those targeted often come from poor and remote regions
of the country only makes it harder for them to obtain justice.
“The U.S. public
is not aware what is happening in this program. They need more transparency and
they need to know the truth,” said Alhariri. “But Yemenis who have
been impacted also need to know why they’ve been targeted.
People have died, lost the ability to work and lost family members they
relied on. They’ve been ignored and they feel helpless in the face of U.S.
military policy in Yemen.”
Top photo: Unmanned aerial vehicle MQ-9
Reaper at the Holloman U.S. Air Force Base in New Mexico on June 25, 2013.
© 2017 The Intercept / First Look Media
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
No comments:
Post a Comment