|
"A vitally important and thoroughly documented new report on the impact of Obama´s drone campaign has just been released by researchers at NYU School of Law and Stanford University Law School. Entitled "Living Under Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians From US Drone Practices in Pakistan", the report details the terrorizing effects of Obama´s drone assaults as well as the numerous, highly misleading public statements from administration officials about that campaign. The study´s purpose was to conduct an "independent investigations into whether, and to what extent, drone strikes in Pakistan conformed to international law and caused harm and/or injury to civilians".
The report is "based on over 130 detailed interviews with victims and witnesses of drone activity, their family members, current and former Pakistani government officials, representatives from five major Pakistani political parties, subject matter experts, lawyers, medical professionals, development and humanitarian workers, members of civil society, academics, and journalists." Witnesses "provided first-hand accounts of drone strikes, and provided testimony about a range of issues, including the missile strikes themselves, the strike sites, the victims´ bodies, or a family member or members killed or injured in the strike"."
"It is a campaign of terror - highly effective terror - regardless of what noble progressive sentiments one wishes to believe reside in the heart of the leader ordering it. And that´s precisely why the report, to its great credit, uses that term to describe the Obama policy: the drone campaign "terrorizes men, women, and children".
Along the same lines, note that the report confirms what had already been previously documented: the Obama campaign´s despicable (and likely criminal) targeting of rescuers who arrive to provide aid to the victims of the original strike. Noting that even funerals of drone victims have been targeted under Obama, the report documents that the US has "made family members afraid to attend funerals"."
"In the hierarchy of war crimes, deliberately targeting rescuers and funerals - so that aid workers are petrified to treat the wounded and family members are intimidated out of mourning their loved ones - ranks rather high, to put that mildly. Indeed, the US itself has long maintained that such "secondary strikes" are a prime hallmark of some of the world´s most despised terrorist groups."
"A one-day attack on US soil eleven years ago unleashed a never-ending campaign of violence around the world from the target and its allies. Is it really a challenge to understand that continuous bombings and civilian-killing assaults over many years, in many Muslim countries, will generate the same desire for aggression and vengeance against the US?"
"There are more than 80 names at the end of a human rights report published online this week. Each one is said to belong to a civilian killed or maimed as a result of U.S. missile strikes in Yemen since 2009. They were mothers, fathers, children and grandparents – and they stand in contrast to claims that the United States does not launch missiles into Yemen unless there is a "near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured," as President Obama told the nation in May.
The names are preceded by 25 pages of detailed descriptions of U.S. airstrikes in Yemen and their consequences, offering a rare level of information on specific attacks and their physical, psychological and financial impacts on individual Yemeni civilians.
"For me, its power is in the totality," says Gregory D. Johnsen, a former Fulbright Fellow in Yemen and author of the book The Last Refuge: Yemen, Al Qaeda, and America´s War in Arabia. "We tend to hear about these strikes in drips and drabs over the course of months and years, but the report is the most comprehensive one I´ve seen on U.S. strikes in Yemen."
The report has been turned over to Ben Emmerson, the United Nations´ special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, who is in the midst of an investigation into the civilian impacts of U.S. targeted killings and drone strikes abroad. The interviews contained within – collected by Alkarama, a Swiss-based human rights organization, and HOOD, an organization of lawyers and activists in Yemen – paint a violent picture of life on the receiving end of U.S. counterterrorism policy in the Arabian Peninsula.
Take the story of Salem Ben Ahmed ben Salem Ali Jaber, who died along with four others following a drone strike on the village of Khashamir in August 2012. A father of seven, Jaber was a popular imam and teacher, who had explicitly condemned al Qaeda and urged others to dismiss the organization. According to the report, "he was to meet with suspected members of Al-Qaeda who had criticized him for his stance" on the day he died.
Eyewitness Abu ´Issa Rajab Khamis Ba Rif´at described the scene as missiles ripped the imam´s body to shreds. "Women and children immediately started screaming," he said. "Animals died, and the bodies of all those who died were disintegrated and scattered over a large area."
The report also describes airstrikes in Azzan, a city with 6,000 inhabitants, where militants have battled the Yemeni government for control. According to the report, the U.S. has backed the government´s offensive with "air raids and drone strikes, killing dozens of members of armed groups designated as ´officers,´ as well as many civilians creating an exodus of thousands of inhabitants."
Investigators looked into a March 2012 strike in the city that killed two identified al Qaeda members and an unknown man, injuring six children in the process. "I was sitting with my friends there, and we were going to play football, when suddenly we were shaken by the sound of a violent explosion," said 13-year-old Amin Ali Hassan Al-Wisabi. "I looked in front of me and saw a car burning. A missile had struck it. Shrapnel hit me in my foot, but I didn´t feel any pain, and I ran towards the house with blood flowing from my injury. I saw the car burning beside me and one of my friends lost consciousness."
A number of homes were destroyed in the strike on Azzan, and residents complained that the Yemeni government has done nothing in response to their substantial losses. In the meantime, they live in fear of being hit again. "Several inhabitants have expressed terror at the thought of another strike, expecting that they could be hit at any moment," the report states. "They do not understand why the bombings were carried out in cities when they could just as easily have targeted cars outside of residential areas, or why the suspects were killed rather than arrested."
The report reveals details regarding a May 2012 strike in the town of Ja´ar, where anti-government fighters had taken control at the time. According to investigators, the attack began with a missile strike against a home, killing the 33-year-old man inside. When residents gathered at the scene, they say an aircraft returned, fired several rockets, and killed 13 more men and one woman while injuring dozens of others and destroying a number of homes. The report notes, "Some witnesses are certain that it was an American plane because it was ´gray and eagle shaped,´ while the Yemeni military would not have any such aircraft."
A witness named Abdallah Saleh Hussein told investigators what he saw that day: "After the first strike, I rushed to the scene with my son Muhammed, just like dozens of other people. We were trying to assist the victims when suddenly a second attack took place. I saw many bodies shredded. My son was hit by bomb fragments in the stomach and neck. He died quickly."
"To this day, I do not understand why they would be targeted," Fadhl Al-Dhali´i, a researcher and official at the Ministry of Education of Abyan, says in the report. "The consequences for the residents´ peace of mind, especially the children, have been devastating for those who have experienced trauma. The victims have still not been compensated and our message to the international community and the Yemeni government is to come to the aid of the families of the victims."
While the report focuses heavily on U.S. drone strikes, it opens with an examination of devastation wrought by missiles fired from an American warship nearly four years ago. The now-infamous al-Maajala attack, launched early on the morning of December 17th, 2009, left over 50 people dead. At least 21 of them were children; 14 victims were women, half of whom were pregnant."
"Largely thanks to a complicit corporate-state news media, the story of a U.S. teenager executed without trial by the government has largely gone under the radar."
Said the teen´s grandfather: "I really feel disappointed that this crime is going to be forgotten. I think the American people ought to know what really happened and how the power of their government is being abused by this Administration. Americans should start asking why a boy was targeted for killing. In addition to my grandson´s killing, the missile killed my brother´s grandson, who was a 17-year-old kid, who was not an American citizen but is a human being, killed in cold blood. I cannot comprehend how my teenage grandson was killed by a Hellfire missile, how nothing was left of him except small pieces of flesh. Why? Is America safer now that a boy was killed? ... I urge the American people to bring the killers to justice. I urge them to expose the hypocrisy of the 2009 Nobel Prize laureate. To some, he may be that. To me and my family, he is nothing more than a child killer."
"Last month, military stats revealed that the U.S. had launched some 333 drone strikes in Afghanistan thus far in 2012. That made Afghanistan the epicenter of U.S. drone attacks — not Pakistan, not Yemen, not Somalia. But it turns out those stats were off, according to revised ones released by the Air Force on Thursday morning. There have actually been 447 drone strikes in Afghanistan this year. That means drone strikes represent 11.5 percent of the entire air war — up from about 5 percent last year.
Never before in Afghanistan have there been so many drone strikes. For the past three years, the strikes have never topped 300 annually, even during the height of the surge. Never mind 2014, when U.S. troops are supposed to take a diminished role in the war and focus largely on counterterrorism. Afghanistan’s past year, heavy on insurgent-hunting robots, shows that the war’s future has already been on display."
"President Obama announced Friday that about 100 U.S. troops have been deployed to the West African country of Niger, where defense officials said they are setting up a drone base to spy on al-Qaeda fighters in the Sahara."
"The skies over Libya were clogged with U.S. Predator drones during last year’s war. But just because the war officially ended in October didn’t mean the drones went home.
A Defense Department official tells Danger Room that the U.S. has kept drone flights flying over Libya, despite the conflict that initially brought them to Libyan airspace ending nearly a year ago."
"In December 2011, Iran captured a stealth aircraft fitted with reconnaissance equipment flying over their country which was later shown on Iranian television and identified as a drone missing from America´s arsenal."
"Stepping up its involvement in Mexico’s drug war, the Obama administration has begun sending drones deep into Mexican territory to gather intelligence that helps locate major traffickers and follow their networks, according to American and Mexican officials."
"More secret bases. More and better unmanned warplanes. More frequent and deadly robotic attacks. Some five years after a U.S. Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle flew the type’s first mission over lawless Somalia, the shadowy American-led drone campaign in the Horn of Africa is targeting Islamic militants more ruthlessly than ever."
"The US could deploy unmanned drones to launch air strikes against al-Qaeda´s increasingly powerful offshoot in Mali under plans being considered by the White House."
"Early last month, Tausug villagers on the Southern Philippine island of Jolo heard a buzzing sound not heard before. It is a sound familiar to the people of Waziristan who live along Pakistan´s border with Afghanistan, where the United States fights the Taliban. It was the dreaded drone, which arrives from distant and unknown destinations to cause death and destruction. Within minutes, 15 people lay dead and a community plunged into despair, fear and mourning."
"The belief that weaponized drones won´t be used on US soil is patently irrational. Of course they will be. It´s not just likely but inevitable. Police departments are already speaking openly about how their drones "could be equipped to carry nonlethal weapons such as Tasers or a bean-bag gun." The drone industry has already developed and is now aggressively marketing precisely such weaponized drones for domestic law enforcement use. It likely won´t be in the form that has received the most media attention: the type of large Predator or Reaper drones that shoot Hellfire missiles which destroy homes and cars in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and multiple other countries aimed at Muslims (although US law enforcement agencies already possess Predator drones and have used them over US soil for surveillance).
Instead, as I detailed in a 2012 examination of the drone industry´s own promotional materials and reports to their shareholders, domestic weaponized drones will be much smaller and cheaper, as well as more agile - but just as lethal. The nation´s leading manufacturer of small "unmanned aircraft systems" (UAS), used both for surveillance and attack purposes, is AeroVironment, Inc. (AV). Its 2011 Annual Report filed with the SEC repeatedly emphasizes that its business strategy depends upon expanding its market from foreign wars to domestic usage including law enforcement."
"Like many drone manufacturers, AV is now focused on drone products - such as the "Qube" - that are so small that they can be "transported in the trunk of a police vehicle or carried in a backpack" and assembled and deployed within a matter of minutes. One news report AV touts is headlined "Drone technology could be coming to a Police Department near you", which focuses on the Qube.
But another article prominently touted on AV´s website describes the tiny UAS product dubbed the "Switchblade", which, says the article, is "the leading edge of what is likely to be the broader, even wholesale, weaponization of unmanned systems." The article creepily hails the Switchblade drone as "the ultimate assassin bug". That´s because, as I wrote back in 2011, "it is controlled by the operator at the scene, and it worms its way around buildings and into small areas, sending its surveillance imagery to an i-Pad held by the operator, who can then direct the Switchblade to lunge toward and kill the target (hence the name) by exploding in his face." AV´s website right now proudly touts a February, 2013 Defense News article describing how much the US Army loves the "Switchblade" and how it is preparing to purchase more. Time Magazine heralded this tiny drone weapon as "one of the best inventions of 2012", gushing: "the Switchblade drone can be carried into battle in a backpack. It´s a kamikaze: the person controlling it uses a real-time video feed from the drone to crash it into a precise target - say, a sniper. Its tiny warhead detonates on impact."
What possible reason could someone identify as to why these small, portable weaponized UAS products will not imminently be used by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in the US? They´re designed to protect their users in dangerous situations and to enable a target to be more easily killed. Police agencies and the increasingly powerful drone industry will tout their utility in capturing and killing dangerous criminals and their ability to keep officers safe, and media reports will do the same. The handful of genuinely positive uses from drones will be endlessly touted to distract attention away from the dangers they pose.
One has to be incredibly naïve to think that these "assassin bugs" and other lethal drone products will not be widely used on US soil by an already para-militarized domestic police force. As Radley Balko´s forthcoming book "Rise of the Warrior Cop" details, the primary trend in US law enforcement is what its title describes as "The Militarization of America´s Police Forces". The history of domestic law enforcement particularly after 9/11 has been the importation of military techniques and weapons into domestic policing. It would be shocking if these weapons were not imminently used by domestic law enforcement agencies.
In contrast to weaponized drones, even the most naïve among us do not doubt the imminent proliferation of domestic surveillance drones. With little debate, they have already arrived. As the ACLU put it in their recent report: "US law enforcement is greatly expanding its use of domestic drones for surveillance." An LA Times article from last month reported that "federal authorities have stepped up efforts to license surveillance drones for law enforcement and other uses in US airspace" and that "the Federal Aviation Administration said Friday it had issued 1,428 permits to domestic drone operators since 2007, far more than were previously known." Moreover, the agency "has estimated 10,000 drones could be aloft five years later" and "local and state law enforcement agencies are expected to be among the largest customers."
Concerns about the proliferation of domestic surveillance drones are typically dismissed with the claim that they do nothing more than police helicopters and satellites already do. Such claims are completely misinformed. As the ACLU´s 2011 comprehensive report on domestic drones explained: "Unmanned aircraft carrying cameras raise the prospect of a significant new avenue for the surveillance of American life."
Multiple attributes of surveillance drones make them uniquely threatening. Because they are so cheap and getting cheaper, huge numbers of them can be deployed to create ubiquitous surveillance in a way that helicopters or satellites never could. How this works can already be seen in Afghanistan, where the US military has dubbed its drone surveillance system "the Gorgon Stare", named after the "mythical Greek creature whose unblinking eyes turned to stone those who beheld them". That drone surveillance system is "able to scan an area the size of a small town" and "the most sophisticated robotics use artificial intelligence that [can] seek out and record certain kinds of suspicious activity". Boasted one US General: "Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we´re looking at, and we can see everything."
The NSA already maintains ubiquitous surveillance of electronic communications, but the Surveillance State faces serious limits on its ability to replicate that for physical surveillance. Drones easily overcome those barriers."
Edited (9/18/2013) by burakk
|
