Missing
Pieces: The Human Impact of Drone Strikes
A boy walks past a
mural depicting a U.S. drone and reading "Why did you kill my
family?" on December 13, 2013, in Sanaa, Yemen. MOHAMMED HUWAIS / AFP /
GETTY IMAGES
February
20, 2019
Afghanistan’s Khaama Press recently reported on
coalition drone strikes against alleged ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K) fighters, a
branch of ISIS (also known as Daesh) operating in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The
fighters were reportedly killed in two districts of Nangarhar Province in
eastern Afghanistan. The U.S.- and British-trained Afghan military claimed that
eight ISIS-K members were killed in the operation, with no civilian casualties.
With no other reporters on the ground, the apparent lack of civilian deaths
cannot be verified. The report serves as a reminder that drone strikes are
continuing across the Middle East and Central Asia and are continuing to take
lives.
The corporate media have covered the lack of
congressional oversight concerning President Trump’s expansion of both the
military and civilian drone program. For example, in 2017, NBC reported that Trump
was relaxing the rules on drone strikes, which would mean “tolerating more
civilian casualties.” A year later, The Atlantic reported on Trump’s
progress in this respect. But both articles, as is typical of mainstream
reporting, omitted what explosive devices fired from drones actually do to
human beings. This makes empathizing with victims more difficult.
A report by the
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom notes that many drone
strikes occur in remote regions. It says that “media reports from these
locations are extremely rare. This creates in the minds of many the idea that
drone strikes are clean, safe and victimless.” The report also notes that, for
many, life under the drones is one of constant stress and the fear of being
annihilated at any second.
As I document in my new book, Manufacturing Terrorism (2018,
Clairview Books), it is typical of mainstream media to simply omit the graphic
and heartrending details of what happens to innocent civilians — so-called
collateral damage — when a missile fired from a drone hits them. There is a
danger of sensationalizing the horror of drone attacks and turning gore into
exploitation. But not reporting the facts also dissociates U.S. and European
readers from the reality of what their governments are doing to civilians
abroad. If people knew the details of what happens to bodies when they are hit
by missiles, more people might protest war and advocate for peace.
U.S. and
British Drones
With program names like “Widowmaker,” U.S.
and British ground-based drone operators launch Hellfire and other missiles
from machines with names like “Predator.” The U.K. has a single drone operation
program run by the Ministry of Defence. It includes killing alleged terrorist
suspects in Iraq and Syria. The Ministry is reportedly working through a “kill list,” which
includes British citizens like Reyaad Khan, who was killed by a British drone
operator when Khan was allegedly fighting in Raqqa, Syria. Then-UN Special
Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Execution Philip Alston
settled the issue of drone legality in 2010, writing, “A State killing
is legal only if it is required to protect life (making lethal force proportionate)
and there is no other means, such as capture or nonlethal incapacitation, of
preventing that threat to life (making lethal force necessary).”
Since late 2001, according to data from the
Bureau of Investigative Journalism, U.S. drone strikes have killed at
least 3,982 people in Afghanistan; 2,515 in Pakistan; 928 in Somalia;
and 1,020 in Yemen (166
civilians, 44 children). These figures are minimum civilian casualties or
confirmed (i.e., with physical evidence) deaths, though the actual toll is
likely double. By 2014, the U.S. had targeted 41 alleged
terror suspects, but in doing so, wiped out 1,147 people by mistake: a
“success” rate of 3.57 percent.
What Happens
When Bombs Explode
These statistics are important, but in order to
better empathize with victims, it is worth considering what happens when an
explosion occurs. First, there is a blast wave — the primary cause of injury. A
blast wave occurs when air molecules are rapidly compressed and changed into a
gas. The molecules are pushed out before oscillating (as supersonic waves). As
they travel, peak overpressure is reached faster than the inverse-square of the
distance relationship (as a suction wave).
One variety
of thermobaric missile, the AGM-144N, was field-tested on human beings in
Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004; a city resisting the U.S.-British occupation.
Depending on the explosive yield, type of bomb
and environmental conditions, the blast waves of the tens of thousands of bombs
dropped by the U.S. and U.K. on Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia,
Libya and Syria have the following effects on millions of men, women and
children:
High-order explosives are more susceptible to
over-pressurization, so victims can experience trauma to one or more of their
organs, including the lungs (“blast lung,” or pulmonary
barotrauma, being the most common fatal injury), stomach perforation and
bleeding, and eye and ear trauma. Humans can withstand overpressures
of 15-pound force per square inch (psi) before half of the eardrums of people
in the vicinity will burst. When standing within 50 feet of a landmine,
500-pound aerial bomb or three-inch mortar shell, ear drum rupture occurred in
more than half of documented cases.
Secondary injuries come from debris, such as
shrapnel. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cites blast-induced structural collapse
as the most common killer in explosions. In addition, the CDC says that around
10 percent of all bomb-blast victims have some form of eye injury. Injuries are
usually perforations caused by the high-velocity projectiles that result from
the blast wave. “Symptoms include eye pain or irritation, foreign body
sensation, altered vision, periorbital swelling or contusions,” notes the CDC. Other
symptoms, temporary or permanent, can include sight loss, hyphema (red
eyes), globe perforation,
subconjunctival bleeding and eyelid laceration.
The perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing
in April 2013 reportedly used pressure cooker bombs, murdering three and
injuring more than 260. Thirty-two of the 43 Boston Marathon bombing victims
analyzed by Singh A.K., et al. had a total of 189 shrapnel
fragments, including ball bearings, nails, metal, screws, gravel and glass,
some buried deep in their flesh and bones. Aged between 19 and 65, the victims
sustained injuries to the legs, pelvis and thighs.
Tertiary injuries result from falling or being
pushed by the blast wave. Quaternary injuries are caused by, for example,
resulting fires.
By 2014, the
U.S. had targeted 41 alleged terror suspects, but in doing so, wiped out 1,147
people by mistake: a “success” rate of 3.57 percent.
Starting in the 1970s, various U.S. weapons
companies began to build helicopter-launched Heliborne, Laser, Fire and Forget
(Hellfire) missiles. Weighing 100 pounds, the bombs were intended as anti-tank
munitions, but are now launched from drones to destroy human beings.
Thermobaric weapons use surrounding oxygen to create high-temperature
explosions whose blast wave is longer in duration than non-thermobarics. One
variety of thermobaric missile, the AGM-144N, was field-tested on human beings
in Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004; a city resisting the U.S.-British occupation. The
reason that so many Fallujan children have severe deformities and the rate of
cancer in Fallujah is so high is due to the use of radioactive uranium in the
Hellfire thermobarics. Samira Alaani, et al., write:
Thermobaric weapons use high
temperature/high pressure explosives as anti-personnel incendiary weapons. They
char or vaporise victims in the immediate target location, or suffocate and
collapse internal organs with their extended blast/vacuum effects. These
weapons use a new generation of reactive metal explosives, some of which are
suspected of using Uranium for the high temperature and increased kinetic blast
effects.
Tragic
Stories
Missing from most print media and all broadcast
media is the detail of what happens to human bodies when drone and other
missiles hit. Consider these few examples, some found in print media and others
in human rights reports. On September 4, 2009, a North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) strike ignited fuel tanks in the village of Eissa Khail,
Kunduz, Afghanistan. At least 70 people were killed.
The head of the village, Omar Khan, told The Guardian, “We didn’t recognise any of the dead
when we arrived…. The villagers were fighting over the corpses. People were
saying this is my brother, this is my cousin, and no one could identify
anyone…. The smell was so bad. For three days I smelled of burned meat and
fuel.”
One elderly man, Jan Mohammad also told The
Guardian, “I couldn’t find my son, so I took a piece of flesh with me home
and I called it my son. I told my wife we had him, but I didn’t let his
children or anyone see. We buried the flesh as it if was my son.”
On October 24, 2012, 68-year-old Mamana Bibi was
gathering vegetables in Ghundi Kala village in northwest Pakistan, when,
according to Amnesty International, which interviewed one of her grandchildren,
Bibi “was blasted into pieces before her eyes.” Her granddaughter Nabeela (age
8 at the time) told Amnesty, “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 as many different
parts from the field and wrapped them in a cloth.”
Mohammed Tuaiman of al-Zur village, Yemen, was
13 years old when a CIA drone operator killed him on January 26, 2015, in
Hareeb, near al-Zur. “A lot of the kids in this area wake up from sleeping
because of nightmares from them [the drones] and some now have mental
problems,” he said in an
interview shortly before his death. Tuaiman lost his brother and father in an
earlier strike. His surviving brother Maqded told The Guardian, “I
saw all the bodies completely burned, like charcoal…. We couldn’t move the
bodies so we just buried them there, near the car.”
On March 17, 2017, 200 Iraqis were killed in an
airstrike on Aghawat Jadidah, Mosul. The strike included the deaths of nine of
Munatha Jasim’s relatives, including her 7-year-old son Firas and 4-year-old
daughter Taiba. Of Firas, Jasim told the Los Angeles Times, “We recovered
half his body…. The other half is still there…. [B]ecause one Islamic State
[fighter] was on our house, the aircraft bombed us.”
In addition to the human consequences of using
hi-tech death weapons, the longer-term political consequences are also severe.
The recent warning from Daniel Coats, director of National Intelligence,
suggests that terrorism aimed at U.S. and European civilians will continue and
possibly increase this year, as the U.S. and its allies continue to bomb the
Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa. “While ISIS is nearing territorial
defeat in Iraq and Syria,” says Coats, “the
group has returned to its guerilla-warfare roots while continuing to plot
attacks, and direct its supporters worldwide.” It would seem that letting people
in foreign countries live and protecting those at home from political
“blowback” is a low priority for the U.S. compared to dominating other nations.
This article is based on reporting the author
has done for his book, Manufacturing Terrorism, and
has been lightly revised for Truthout with permission from the
author.
Copyright ©
Truthout.
Dr. T.J. Coles is an associate researcher at the
Organisation for Propaganda Studies and the author of several books,
including Manufacturing Terrorism (2018, Clairview Books).
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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."
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