“I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now prefer gray skies. The drones do not fly when the skies are gray.” That’s what a young Pakistani boy named Zubair told members of Congress at a hearing on drones in October 2013. That hearing was during the Obama years at a time when the government had barely even acknowledged that an American drone warfare program existed. Two years earlier, however…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
This week, Israel has launched several attacks on Palestinians with weapons used in the conflict for the first time in nearly 20 years, including deploying U.S.-made Apache helicopter gunships inside the West Bank and firing a targeted assassination aerial strike. Jewish settlers have also raided Palestinian villages in the West Bank, attacking residents and setting fire to homes and vehicles.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
military officials knew that an August 2021 drone strike in Kabul likely killed Afghan civilians including children but lied about it, a report published Friday revealed. New York Times investigative reporter Azmat Khan analyzed a 66-page redacted U.S. Central Command report on the August 29, 2021 drone strike that killed 10 members of the Ahmadi family, including seven children…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
A new report reveals United States military officials knew that an August 2021 drone strike in Kabul likely killed Afghan civilians including children, but lied about it, writes Brett Wilkins.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
U.S. military officials knew that an August 2021 drone strike in Kabul likely killed Afghan civilians including children but lied about it, a report published Friday revealed.
New York Times investigative reporter Azmat Khan analyzed a 66-page redacted U.S. Central Command report on the August 29, 2021 drone strike that killed 10 members of the Ahmadi family, including seven children, outside their home in the Afghan capital. The strike took place during the chaotic final days of the U.S. ground war in Afghanistan, just three days after a bombing that killed at least 182 people, including 13 American troops, at Kabul’s international airport.
“When confirmation bias was so deadly in this case, you have to ask how many other people targeted by the military over the years were also unjustly killed.”
Zamarai Ahmadi, a 43-year-old aid worker for California-based nonprofit Nutrition and Education International, was carrying water containers that were mistaken for explosives when his Toyota Corolla was bombed by a Lockheed-Martin Hellfire missile fired from a General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper drone.
As reports of civilian casualties began circulating hours after the strike, U.S. military officials claimed there were “no indications” that noncombatants were harmed in the attack, while stating that they would investigate whether a secondary explosion may have killed or wounded people nearby.
\u201cNEW: A U.S. Central Command investigation into the botched August 2021 drone strike in Kabul reveals how biases and assumptions led to the deadly blunder, and that military analysts saw possible civilian casualties within minutes of the strike:\nhttps://t.co/iGcmulbyw9 #FOIA\u201d— Azmat Khan (@Azmat Khan) 1673007692
However, as the Times details:
Portions of a U.S. Central Command investigation obtained by The New York Times show that military analysts reported within minutes of the strike that civilians may have been killed, and within three hours had assessed that at least three children were killed.
The documents also provide detailed examples of how assumptions and biases led to the deadly blunder.
Military analysts wrongly concluded, for example, that a package loaded into the car contained explosives because of its “careful handling and size,” and that the driver’s “erratic route” was evidence that he was trying to evade surveillance.
Furthermore:
The investigation refers to an additional surveillance drone not under military control that was also tracking the vehicle but does not specify what it observed. The Times confirmed that the drone was operated by the CIA and observed children, possibly in the car, moments before impact, as CNN had reported.
U.S. military officials initially claimed the “righteous strike” had prevented an imminent new attack on the airport. However they later admitted that the botched bombing was a “horrible mistake.”
The military’s investigation was completed less than two weeks after the strike. However, it was never released to the public. The Pentagon said it would not punish anyone for killing the Ahmadi family.
Hina Shamsi, an ACLU attorney representing families victims of the strike, told the Times that the investigation “makes clear that military personnel saw what they wanted to see and not reality, which was an Afghan aid worker going about his daily life.”
“When confirmation bias was so deadly in this case, you have to ask how many other people targeted by the military over the years were also unjustly killed,” Shamsi added.
Daphne Eviatar, who heads Amnesty International’s Security With Human Rights program, called the new report “more evidence that we need a huge change in how the U.S. uses lethal force and assesses and reveals its consequences.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
President Joe Biden’s assassination of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan was illegal under both U.S. and international law. After the CIA drone strike killed Zawahiri on August 2, Biden declared, “People around the world no longer need to fear the vicious and determined killer.” What we should fear instead is the dangerous precedent set by Biden’s unlawful extrajudicial execution.
In addition to being illegal, the killing of Zawahiri also occurred in a moment when the United Nations had already determined that people in the U.S. had little to fear from him. As a United Nations report released in July concluded, “Al Qaeda is not viewed as posing an immediate international threat from its safe haven in Afghanistan because it lacks an external operational capability and does not currently wish to cause the Taliban international difficulty or embarrassment.”
Just as former president Barack Obama stated that “Justice has been done” after he assassinated Osama bin Laden, Biden said, “Now justice has been delivered” when he announced the assassination of Zawahiri.
Retaliation, however, does not constitute justice.
Targeted, or political, assassinations are extrajudicial executions. They are deliberate and unlawful killings meted out by order of, or with acquiescence of, a government. Extrajudicial executions are implemented outside a judicial framework.
The fact that Zawahiri did not pose an imminent threat is precisely why his assassination was illegal.
Extrajudicial executions are prohibited by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which the United States has ratified, making it part of U.S. law under the Constitution’s supremacy clause. Article 6 of the ICCPR states, “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.” In its interpretation of Article 6, The UN Human Rights Committee opined that all human beings are entitled to the protection of the right to life “without distinction of any kind, including for persons suspected or convicted of even the most serious crimes.”
“Outside the context of active hostilities, the use of drones or other means for targeted killing is almost never likely to be legal,” tweeted Agnès Callamard, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. “Intentionally lethal or potentially lethal force can only be used where strictly necessary to protect against an imminent threat to life.” In order to be lawful, the United States would need to demonstrate that the target “constituted an imminent threat to others,” Callamard said.
Moreover, willful killing is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, punishable as a war crime under the U.S. War Crimes Act. A targeted killing is lawful only when deemed necessary to protect life, and no other means (including apprehension or nonlethal incapacitation) is available to protect life.
The drone strike that killed Zawahiri also violated the War Powers Resolution, which lists three situations in which the president can introduce U.S. Armed Forces into hostilities:
First, pursuant to a congressional declaration of war, which has not occurred since World War II. Second, in “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” (Zawahiri’s presence in Afghanistan more than 20 years after the September 11, 2001, attacks did not constitute a “national emergency.”) Third, when there is “specific statutory authorization,” such as an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF).
In 2001, Congress adopted an AUMF that authorized the president to use military force against individuals, groups and countries that had contributed to the 9/11 attacks “in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”
Zawahiri was one of a small circle of people widely believed to have planned the 2001 hijacking of four airplanes, three of which were flown into the Pentagon and World Trade Center buildings. But since he did not pose “an immediate international threat” before the U.S. targeted him for assassination, he should have been arrested and brought to justice in accordance with the law.
The attack against Zawahiri violated Obama’s targeting rules, which required that the target pose a “continuing imminent threat.” Although Donald Trump relaxed Obama’s rules, Biden is conducting a secret review to establish his own standards for targeting killing.
In spite of the Biden administration’s claim that no civilians were killed during the strike on Zawahiri, there has been no independent evidence to support that assertion.
The assassination of Zawahiri came nearly a year after Biden launched an illegal strike as he withdrew U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Ten civilians were killed in that attack. The U.S. Central Command admitted the strike was “a tragic mistake” after an extensive New York Times investigation put a lie to the prior U.S. declaration that it was a “righteous strike.”
Biden declared that although he was withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan, he would mount “over-the-horizon” attacks from outside the country even without troops on the ground. We can expect the Biden administration to conduct future illegal drone strikes that kill civilians.
The 2001 AUMF has been used to justify U.S. military actions in 85 countries. Congress must repeal it and replace it with a new AUMF specifically requiring that any use of force comply with U.S. obligations under international law.
In addition, Congress should revisit the War Powers Resolution and explicitly limit the president’s authority to use force to that which is necessary to repel a sudden or imminent attack.
Finally, the United States must end its “global war on terror” once and for all. Drone strikes terrorize and kill countless civilians and make us more vulnerable to terrorism.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The deaths of thousands of civilians killed in US drone strikes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria were covered up by the Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden administrations, reports Barry Sheppard.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
Three weeks after his administration launched a drone attack that killed 10 civilians in Kabul, Afghanistan, President Joe Biden addressed the United Nations General Assembly. He proudly declared, “I stand here today, for the first time in 20 years, with the United States not at war.” The day before, his administration had launched a drone strike in Syria, and three weeks earlier, the U.S. had conducted an air strike in Somalia. The commander-in-chief also apparently forgot that U.S. forces are still fighting in at least six different countries, including Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Niger. And he promised to continue bombing Afghanistan from afar.
Unfortunately Biden’s withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan is substantially less meaningful when analyzed in light of his administration’s pledge to mount “over-the-horizon” attacks in that country from afar even though we won’t have troops on the ground.
“Our troops are not coming home. We need to be honest about that,” Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-New Jersey) said during congressional testimony by Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier this month. “They are merely moving to other bases in the same region to conduct the same counterterrorism missions, including in Afghanistan.”
As Biden pulled U.S. forces out of Afghanistan, his administration launched a hellfire missile from a U.S. drone in Kabul that killed 10 civilians, including seven children, and then lied about it. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley immediately said it was a “righteous strike” to protect U.S. troops as they withdrew.
Nearly three weeks later, however, an extensive investigation conducted by The New York Times revealed that Zemari Ahmadi was a U.S. aid worker, not an ISIS operative, and the “explosives” in the Toyota that the drone strike targeted were most likely water bottles. Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of the U.S. Central Command, then called the strike “a tragic mistake.”
This senseless killing of civilians was not a one-off event, although it received more publicity than most past drone strikes. Biden is following in the footsteps of his four predecessors, all of whom also conducted illegal drone strikes that killed myriad civilians.
The Kabul drone strike “calls into question the reliability of the intelligence that will be used to conduct the [over-the-horizon] operations,” the Times noted. Indeed, this is nothing new. The “intelligence” used to conduct drone strikes is notoriously unreliable.
For example, the Drone Papers disclosed that nearly 90 percent of those killed by drone strikes during one five-month period during January 2012 to February 2013 were not the intended targets. Daniel Hale, who revealed the documents that comprise the Drone Papers, is serving 45 months in prison for exposing evidence of U.S. war crimes.
Drones do not result in fewer civilian casualties than piloted bombers. A study based on classified military data, conducted by Larry Lewis from the Center for Naval Analyses and Sarah Holewinski of the Center for Civilians in Conflict, found that the use of drones in Afghanistan caused 10 times more civilian deaths than piloted fighter aircraft.
These numbers are probably low because the U.S. military considers all people killed in those operations presumptive “enemies killed in action.” George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Biden all presided over drone strikes that killed countless civilians.
Bush authorized approximately 50 drone strikes that killed 296 people alleged to be “terrorists” and 195 civilians in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.
The Obama administration conducted 10 times more drone strikes than his predecessor. During Obama’s two terms in office, he authorized 563 strikes — largely with drones — in Somalia, Pakistan and Yemen, killing between 384 and 807 civilians, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
Trump, who relaxed Obama’s targeting rules, bombed all the countries that Obama had, according to Micah Zenko, former senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. During Trump’s first two years in office, he launched 2,243 drone strikes, compared to 1,878 in Obama’s two terms in office. Since the Trump administration was less than forthcoming with accurate civilian casualty figures, it is impossible to know how many civilians were killed on his watch.
Drones hover above towns for hours, emitting a buzzing sound that terrorizes communities, especially children. They know a drone could drop a bomb on them at any moment. The CIA launches a “double tap,” deploying a drone to kill those trying to rescue the wounded. And in what should be called a “triple tap,” they often target people at funerals mourning their loved ones killed in drone attacks. Rather than making us less vulnerable to terrorism, these killings make people in other countries resent the United States even more.
Drone attacks mounted during the “war on terror” are illegal. Although Biden pledged in his General Assembly speech to “apply and strengthen … the U.N. Charter” and promised “adherence to international laws and treaties,” his drone strikes, and those of his predecessors, violate both the Charter and the Geneva Conventions.
The UN Charter forbids the use of military force against another country except when acting in self-defense under Article 51. On August 29, after the U.S. drone killed 10 civilians in Kabul, the U.S. Central Command called it “a self-defense unmanned over-the-horizon airstrike.” The Central Command claimed that the strike was necessary to prevent an imminent attack on the Kabul Airport by ISIS.
But the International Court of Justice has held that countries cannot invoke Article 51 against armed attacks by non-state actors that are not attributable to another country. ISIS is at odds with the Taliban. Attacks by ISIS cannot therefore be imputed to the Taliban, which once again controls Afghanistan.
Outside areas of active hostilities, “the use of drones or other means for targeted killing is almost never likely to be legal,” Agnès Callamard, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, tweeted. She wrote that “intentionally lethal or potentially lethal force can only be used where strictly necessary to protect against an imminent threat to life.”
Civilians can never legally be the target of military strikes. Targeted or political assassinations, also called extrajudicial executions, violate international law. Willful killing is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions which is punishable as a war crime under the U.S. War Crimes Act. A targeted killing is only lawful if it is deemed necessary to protect life, and no other means — including capture or nonlethal incapacitation — is available to protect life.
International humanitarian law requires that when military force is used, it must comply with both the conditions of distinction and proportionality. Distinction mandates that the attack must always distinguish between combatants and civilians. Proportionality means that the attack can’t be excessive in relation to the military advantage sought.
Moreover, Philip Alston, former UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, reported, “The precision, accuracy and legality of a drone strike depend on the human intelligence upon which the targeting decision is based.”
The Drone Papers included leaked documents revealing the “kill chain” the Obama administration used to determine whom to target. Innumerable civilians were killed using “signals intelligence” — foreign communications, radar and other electronic systems — in undeclared war zones. Targeting decisions were made by tracking cell phones that might or might not be carried by suspected terrorists. Half of the intelligence used to identify potential targets in Yemen and Somalia was based on signals intelligence.
Obama’s Presidential Policy Guidance (PPG), which contained targeting rules, outlined procedures for the use of lethal force outside “areas of active hostilities.” It required that a target pose a “continuing imminent threat.” But a secret Department of Justice white paper promulgated in 2011 and leaked in 2013 sanctioned the killing of U.S. citizens even without “clear evidence that a specific attack on US persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.” The bar was presumably lower for killing non-U.S. citizens.
The PPG said there must be “near certainty that an identified HVT [high-value terrorist] or other lawful terror target” is present before lethal force could be directed against him. But the Obama administration launched “signature strikes” that didn’t target individuals, but rather men of military age present in areas of suspicious activity. The Obama administration defined combatants (non-civilians) as all men of military age present in a strike zone, “unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.”
“Intelligence” upon which U.S. drone strikes are based is extremely untrustworthy. The United States has engaged in repeated violations of the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions. And the unlawful U.S. killing with drones violates the right to life enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, another treaty the U.S. has ratified. It says, “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.”
“That drone strike in Kabul was not the last act of our war,” Representative Malinowski said during Blinken’s congressional testimony. “It was unfortunately the first act of the next stage of our war.”
“There must be accountability,” Sen. Christopher S. Murphy (D-Connecticut), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, wrote in a Twitter post. “If there are no consequences for a strike this disastrous, it signals to the entire drone program chain of command that killing kids and civilians will be tolerated.”
In June, 113 organizations dedicated to human rights, civil rights and civil liberties, racial, social environmental justice and veterans rights wrote a letter to Biden “to demand an end to the unlawful program of lethal strikes outside any recognized battlefield, including through the use of drones.” Olivia Alperstein from the Institute for Policy Studies tweeted that the United States should “apologize for all the drone strikes, and put an end to drone warfare once and for all.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The US recently admitted that its drone attack in Kabul, perpetrated on 29 August, killed 10 civilians. Seven of them were children. The youngest victim, a toddler named Sumaya, was only two years old.
With this development has come a fresh wave of outrage against US military aggression. But the outrage means little without an outright rejection of the neoliberal system of which these strikes are a feature. It also means little if it comes from people who won’t acknowledge the Islamophobia inherent in the war on terror – and the dehumanisation of Muslim lives that it’s enabled and legitimised.
At the start of the 1987 Hollywood film Predator, American soldiers charge into an unidentified forest in Central America and indiscriminately gun down an entire encampment. Their aim was to save hostages, but their policy was to shoot first and ask questions later. More recently, The Suicide Squad similarly depicted US agents accidently gunning down a camp that later turned out to be ‘the good guys’.
The drone attack in question is a real-life example of this approach. The attack has turned on its head the notion that the US is, or ever has been, a benevolent protector of Afghan people. But moreover, this incident is symbolic of US foreign policy for at least half a century. Acts of military aggression instigated on claims of freedom, democracy, and justice are anything but. Whether the bogeyman is communism or terrorism, the objective remains the same: protecting US interests.
And in service of this aim, human life is reduced to collateral damage. Of secondary importance. Its loss is regrettable but necessary. The US attack on 29 August killed 10 people, none of whom were IS agents. Sorry about that, but oh well.
Moreover, a defining feature of drone strikes carried out over nearly two decades is that the targets have been Muslim countries. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya – all attacked in service of US interests. Although the justifications have been varied, they fall broadly under the ‘war on terror’ umbrella. And nothing exemplifies the concept of structural Islamophobia quite like the war on terror.
These strikes have killed as many as 16,901 people so far. And as many as 2,200 are recorded as being “civilians”. These are high estimates – but even if we were to take the lower estimates of these figures, what would that prove? The lives of 910 civilians are as valuable as the lives of 2,200 civilians. 8,858 extra-judicial killings is no better than 16,901.
And even if we consider confirmed non-civilian killings to be ‘justified’ targets, the killing of innocent civilians in pursuit of those targets is never justifiable. These people were not collateral. They were not mere statistics. They were human beings with names, and families, and aspirations. Hundreds of them were children. And regardless of the extent to which the media and Western superpowers may have dehumanised them, their lives mattered.
It won’t be long before the news cycle moves on to discuss something else. Drone strikes in Muslim countries, meanwhile, will continue. Nation states will keep chasing their tails, trying to fight ‘Islamist’ groups and radicalisation while refusing to look to their own disastrous policies. Yet the 7/7 bombers had said in no uncertain terms that military aggression against Muslim nations played a role in motivating them. For decades, the wars that benefit our governments have only put the rest of us at risk.
The war on terror killed those 10 civilians in Kabul on 29 August, seven of whom were children. Outrage is no longer enough. Anyone who continues to give credence to the war on terror – and moreover the counter-terror ideology that spawned in its wake – is complicit. Anyone that continues to support politicians who have presided over these drone strikes is complicit. And anyone who supports a neoliberal status quo that tut-tuts at civilian deaths in one breath while celebrating war heroes in the next is complicit.
Reject the system that created the war on terror, and all the senseless wars that may yet be fought in its name. The system that continues to dehumanise Muslims and render their lives worthless. Otherwise, your sympathies are meaningless.
Featured image via YouTube – Sky News
This post was originally published on The Canary.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) is calling on President Joe Biden to pardon Daniel Hale, a former Air Force analyst who was sentenced to prison last month after pleading guilty to espionage.
In her letter, sent to the White House on Thursday, Omar argues that Hale’s actions didn’t cause any direct harm to individuals in the U.S. and that his sentencing is more of a reflection of a Trumpian will to silence whistleblowers than it is about his crime.
Hale began leaking information during the Obama administration, which declined to prosecute him, she pointed out. “It wasn’t until 2019, under President Trump, that he was indicted. We are all well aware of the severe consequences of the Trump Administration’s chilling crackdown on whistleblowers and other public servants who they deemed insufficiently loyal,” Omar wrote, noting that she takes leaks of classified information seriously. “I believe that the decision to prosecute Mr. Hale was motivated, at least in part, as a threat to other would-be whistleblowers.”
Omar continued, saying that the intelligence made public by Hale should have been declassified to begin with. “The information, while politically embarrassing to some, has shone a vital light on the legal and moral problems of the drone program and informed the public debate on an issue that has for too many years remained in the shadows.”
In 2015, Hale leaked the truth about the U.S.’s drone program in the Middle East to The Intercept. The public learned that the Air Force had been routinely killing civilians with drone strikes, which the U.S. had sold as necessary to keep American troops out of danger in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries in the region. Nearly 90 percent of people killed in drone strikes, according to the leaks, were of “unintended targets.”
The drone program existed before Barack Obama took office, but Obama had ramped up the practice, according to intelligence leaked by Hale. Before the leak, the drone program had been shrouded in secrecy from even the most savvy investigative journalists.
Before he left office, Obama put in new requirements for reporting civilian deaths in counterterrorism programs, but the Trump administration quickly revoked those requirements.
“I believe that it is wrong to kill, but it is especially wrong to kill the defenseless,” Hale said in court last month. The information he leaked “was necessary to dispel the lie that drone warfare keeps us safe, that our lives are worth more than theirs,” he said. Hale was sentenced to 45 months in prison, and was being kept in inhumane conditions as of late July, when he was transferred to a Virginia prison.
Omar pointed to a letter that Hale had written before his sentence in which he outlined what he felt was a moral obligation to make the information public and his struggle with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I could only look on as I sat by and watched through a computer monitor when a sudden, terrifying flurry of hellfire missiles came crashing down, splattering purple-colored crystal guts on the side of the morning mountain,” he wrote of the first drone strike he ever witnessed. “Not a day goes by that I don’t question the justification for my actions.”
Omar said that Hale’s reasoning for his actions shows why the leak was necessary, calling his letter “deeply moving” and his motivations “profoundly moral.” While the legality of his actions have been decided, Omar said, the moral judgment from the White House remains.
“As you frequently say, the United States should lead not just by the example of our power but by the power of our example. I implore you to read Mr. Hale’s letter to the judge in full, and I believe you will agree that he was motivated by the same thing,” Omar wrote. “Acknowledging where we’ve gone wrong, and telling the truth about our shortcomings, is not only the right thing to do, but also an act of profound patriotism.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.