{"id":326375,"date":"2021-09-26T15:44:50","date_gmt":"2021-09-26T15:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/radiofree.asia\/?guid=96827a30262017fce081e45f2ae4daa2"},"modified":"2021-09-26T15:44:50","modified_gmt":"2021-09-26T15:44:50","slug":"war-in-afghanistan-isnt-over-its-taking-the-form-of-illegal-drone-strikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/09\/26\/war-in-afghanistan-isnt-over-its-taking-the-form-of-illegal-drone-strikes\/","title":{"rendered":"War in Afghanistan Isn\u2019t Over \u2014 It\u2019s Taking the Form of Illegal Drone Strikes"},"content":{"rendered":"\"A<\/a>

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<\/a>, \u201cI stand here today, for the first time in 20 years, with the United States not at war.\u201d The day before, his administration had launched a drone strike<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately Biden\u2019s withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan is substantially less meaningful when analyzed in light of his administration\u2019s pledge to mount \u201cover-the-horizon<\/a>\u201d attacks in that country from afar even though we won\u2019t have troops on the ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur troops are not coming home. We need to be honest about that,\u201d Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-New Jersey) said<\/a> during congressional testimony by Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier this month. \u201cThey are merely moving to other bases in the same region to conduct the same counterterrorism missions, including in Afghanistan.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u201crighteous strike<\/a>\u201d to protect U.S. troops as they withdrew.<\/p>\n

Nearly three weeks later, however, an extensive investigation<\/a> conducted by The<\/em> New York Times<\/em> revealed that Zemari Ahmadi was a U.S. aid worker, not an ISIS operative, and the \u201cexplosives\u201d 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 \u201ca tragic mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The Kabul drone strike \u201ccalls into question the reliability of the intelligence that will be used to conduct the [over-the-horizon] operations,\u201d the Times<\/em> noted<\/a>. Indeed, this is nothing new. The \u201cintelligence\u201d used to conduct drone strikes is notoriously unreliable<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For example, the Drone Papers<\/a> 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<\/a>, who revealed the documents that comprise the Drone Papers, is serving 45 months in prison for exposing evidence of U.S. war crimes.<\/p>\n

Drone Strikes Conducted by Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden Killed Countless Civilians<\/h2>\n

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<\/a> that the use of drones in Afghanistan caused 10 times more civilian deaths than piloted fighter aircraft.<\/p>\n