Drone strikes kill, maim and traumatize too many civilians, U.S. study says

[Peter Terpstra]

Drone strikes kill, maim and traumatize too many civilians, U.S. study says.

By the CNN Wire Staff
updated 11:09 AM EDT, Tue September 25, 2012

(CNN) -- U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan have killed far more people than
the United States has acknowledged, have traumatized innocent residents
and largely been ineffective, according to a new study released Tuesday.
The study by Stanford Law School and New York University's School of Law
calls for a re-evaluation of the practice, saying the number of
"high-level" targets killed as a percentage of total casualties is
extremely low -- about 2%.
The report accuses Washington of misrepresenting drone strikes as "a
surgically precise and effective tool that makes the U.S. safer," saying
that in reality, "there is significant evidence that U.S. drone strikes
have injured and killed civilians."
It also casts doubts on Washington's claims that drone strikes produce
zero to few civilian casualties and alleges that the United States makes
"efforts to shield the drone program from democratic accountability."
The drone strike program has long been controversial, with conflicting
reports on its impact from U.S. and Pakistani officials and independent
organizations.
President Barack Obama told CNN last month that a target must meet "very
tight and very strict standards," and John Brennan, the president's top
counter-terrorism adviser, said in April that in "exceedingly rare"
cases, civilians have been "accidentally injured, or worse, killed in
these strikes."
In contrast to more conservative U.S. statements, the Stanford/NYU
report -- titled "Living Under Drones" -- offers starker figures
published by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, an independent
organization based at City University in London.
"TBIJ reports that from June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available
data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562 - 3,325 people in
Pakistan, of whom 474 - 881 were civilians, including 176 children. TBIJ
reports that these strikes also injured an additional 1,228 - 1,362
individuals," according to the Stanford/NYU study.
Based on interviews with witnesses, victims and experts, the report
accuses the CIA of "double-striking" a target, moments after the initial
hit, thereby killing first responders.
It also highlights harm "beyond death and physical injury," publishing
accounts of psychological trauma experienced by people living in
Pakistan's tribal northwest region, who it says hear drones hover 24
hours a day.
"Before this we were all very happy," the report quotes an anonymous
resident as saying. "But after these drones attacks a lot of people are
victims and have lost members of their family. A lot of them, they have
mental illnesses."
People have to live with the fear that a strike could come down on them
at any moment of the day or night, leaving behind dead whose "bodies are
shattered to pieces," and survivors who must be desperately sped to a
hospital.
The report concedes that "real threats to U.S. security and to Pakistani
civilians exist in the Pakistani border areas now targeted by drones."
And it acknowledges that drone strikes have "killed alleged combatants
and disrupted armed actor networks."
But it concludes that drone strikes, which are conducted by the CIA in a
country not at war with the United States, are too harmful to civilians,
too sloppy, legally questionable and do more harm to U.S. interests than
good.
"A significant rethinking of current U.S. targeted killing and drone
strike policies is long overdue," it says. "U.S. policy-makers, and the
American public, cannot continue to ignore evidence of the civilian harm
and counter-productive impacts of U.S. targeted killings and drone
strikes in Pakistan."
The study recommends that Washington undertake measures to rectify
collateral damage -- including making public detailed legal
justification for strikes, implementing mechanisms transparently to
account for civilian casualties, ensuring independent investigations
into drone strike deaths, prosecuting cases of civilian casualties and
compensating civilians harmed by U.S. strikes in Pakistan.
Nine months of research went into the report, according to its authors,
which included "two investigations in Pakistan, more than 130 interviews
with victims, witnesses, and experts, and review of thousands of pages
of documentation and media reporting."
U.S. authorities have largely kept quiet on the subject of drone strikes
in Pakistan.
However, the use of armed drones to target and kill suspected terrorists
has increased dramatically during the Obama administration, according to
Peter Bergen, CNN's national security analyst and a director at the New
America Foundation, a Washington-based think tank that monitors drone
strikes.
Obama has already authorized 283 strikes in Pakistan, six times more
than the number during President George W. Bush's eight years in office,
Bergen wrote earlier this month. As a result, the number of estimated
deaths from the Obama administration's drone strikes is more than four
times what it was during the Bush administration -- somewhere between
1,494 and 2,618.
However, an analysis by the New America Foundation says that the
civilian casualty rate from drone strikes has been dropping sharply
since 2008 despite the rising death toll.
"The number of civilians plus those individuals whose precise status
could not be determined from media reports -- labeled 'unknowns' by NAF
-- reported killed by drones in Pakistan during Obama's tenure in office
were 11% of fatalities," said Bergen. "So far in 2012 it is close to 2%.
Under President Bush it was 33%."
The foundation's analysis relies on credible media outlets in Pakistan,
which in turn rely on Pakistani officials and local villagers' accounts,
Bergen said, rather than on U.S. figures.
The drone program is deeply unpopular in Pakistan, where the national
parliament voted in April to end any authorization for it. This,
however, was "a vote that the United States government has simply
ignored," according to Bergen.
Obama told CNN's Jessica Yellin this month that the use of armed drones
was "something that you have to struggle with."
"If you don't, then it's very easy to slip into a situation in which you
end up bending rules thinking that the ends always justify the means,"
he continued. "That's not been our tradition. That's not who we are as a
country."
Obama also addressed his criteria for lethal action in the interview,
although he repeatedly declined to acknowledge any direct involvement in
selecting targets.
"It has to be a target that is authorized by our laws. It has to be a
threat that is serious and not speculative. It has to be a situation in
which we can't capture the individual before they move forward on some
sort of operational plot against the United States," Obama said.
His security adviser, Brennan, gave the Obama administration's first
public justification for drone strikes in his April speech at the
Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington think-tank.
Such strikes are used when capture is not a feasible option and are
conducted "in full accordance with the law," Brennan said.
"We only authorize a strike if we have a high degree of confidence that
innocent civilians will not be injured or killed, except in the rarest
of circumstances," he said.
Despite the "extraordinary precautions" taken by the United States,
Brennan said, civilians "have been accidentally injured, or worse,
killed in these strikes. It is exceedingly rare, but it has happened.
When it does, it pains us, and we regret it deeply, as we do any time
innocents are killed in war."
Brennan also cited the "the seriousness, the extraordinary care" taken
by Obama and his national security team in deciding whether to use
lethal force.
The London-based rights organization Reprieve, which with the help of a
partner organization in Pakistan facilitated access to some of the
people interviewed for the Stanford/NYU study, backed its finding that
the drone program causes wider damage than is acknowledged by the U.S.
government.
"This shows that drone strikes go much further than simply killing
innocent civilians. An entire region is being terrorized by the constant
threat of death from the skies," said Reprieve's director, Clive
Stafford Smith.
"Their way of life is collapsing: kids are too terrified to go to
school, adults are afraid to attend weddings, funerals, business
meetings, or anything that involves gathering in groups. Yet there is no
end in sight, and nowhere the ordinary men, women and children of North
West Pakistan can go to feel safe."

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/25/world/asia/pakistan-us-drone-strikes/index.html

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