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Is the secret war in Yemen and Somalia secret no longer?

Published

June 16, 2012

Written by

Chris Woods

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Out of the shadows? President Obama in the Oval Office (Official White House/ Pete Souza)

In what is being viewed by some as a significant move towards greater transparency, President Obama has officially acknowledged for the first time previously secret US military combat operations in Yemen and Somalia.

The US military has been mounting aggressive combat operations in both countries for some years. Attacks began in Somalia in January 2007, and in Yemen in December 2009. The Bureau monitors operations in both nations, and its data suggests that as many as 180 combat strikes may have taken place in both countries. Until now the US would not even admit that such attacks occurred.

News of the surprise acknowledgment came in a letter from President Obama to Congress on the evening of June 15 – a six monthly obligation under the War Powers Resolution passed in 1973, in which he is required to inform politicians about US military actions abroad. Obama openly described ‘direct action’ – military operations – in both Yemen and Somalia.

The U.S. military has also been working closely with the Yemeni government to operationally dismantle and ultimately eliminate the terrorist threat posed by al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the most active and dangerous affiliate of al-Qa’ida today. Our joint efforts have resulted in direct action against a limited number of AQAP operatives and senior leaders in that country who posed a terrorist threat to the United States and our interests.

There were similar references to operations in Somalia, with the President noting that in ‘a limited number of cases, the US military has taken direct action in Somalia against members of al-Qa’ida, including those who are also members of al-Shabaab, who are engaged in efforts to carry out terrorist attacks against the United States and our interests.’

Previously any such details were reported only in a confidential annex to the reports, with US officials refusing to confirm or deny even the existence of military strikes – an increasingly bizarre stance given the widespread reporting of such operations.

The Wall Street Journal noted that much of the impetus for the partial disclosure came from General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

His spokesman told the paper: ‘When U.S. military forces are involved in combat anywhere in the world, and information about those operations does not compromise national or operational security, Gen. Dempsey believes the American public should be kept appropriately informed.’

However the Pentagon soon made clear that the announcement would make little practical difference. Spokesman Lt Colonel James Gregory told the Bureau: ‘While we acknowledge that we continue to assist and advise the Yemeni military as they confront the AQ [Al Qaeda] threat, we will still not speak to the particulars of CT ops.’

Continued confusion

The Bureau is one of the few bodies to monitor secret US combat activity in the two countries. In Somalia, between 10 and 21 US strike operations have killed up to 169 people. And in Yemen, the Bureau has recorded 44 confirmed US attacks – with as many as 106 additional strikes. Total Yemen casualties are between 317 and 879 people killed. That range is necessarily broad because the Pentagon will presently not clarify whether attacks are the work of US or Yemeni forces.

Until now US officials refused to confirm or deny even the existence of military strikes in Somalia and Yemen

The US military has variously used airstrikes, naval bombardments and cruise missile strikes in the two troubled nations. US military drone attacks only began in 2011. The CIA also operates its own drone fleet in Yemen – and those operations remain classified.

The unexpected move by Obama is the latest in a series of transparency moves by the administration. It came three days after 26 members of the US Congress wrote to the president raising serious concerns about the covert drone strike programme. The politicians – including two Republicans – wrote:

The implications of the use of drones for our national security are profound. They are faceless ambassadors that cause civilian deaths, and are frequently the only direct contact with Americans that the targeted communities have. They can generate powerful and enduring anti-American sentiment.

The American Civil Liberties Union, while welcoming Obama’s partial declassification of military strikes in Yemen and Somalia, called for further disclosure: ‘The public is entitled to more information about the legal standards that apply, the process by which they add names to the kill list, and the facts they rely on in order to justify targeted killings.’

Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists told the New York Times: ‘While any voluntary disclosure is welcome, this is not much of a breakthrough. The age of secret wars is over. They were never a secret to those on the receiving end.’

Follow @chrisjwoods on Twitter

Death from above: the New Statesman’s drones issue

Published

June 14, 2012

Written by

Alice Ross

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

As reports of ‘kill lists’ have emerged and murmurs of increasing use of surveillance drones over US soil – not to mention the London Olympics – have grown louder in recent months, drones have leapt onto the news agenda and into public debate. In a special report this week’s New Statesman special looks in detail at the expansion of drones both in warfare and in civilian airspace.

The Bureau’s drone team leader Chris Woods writes the cover story, which details how a collapse in accountability in Washington has enabled President Obama to carry out drone strikes on an industrial scale with no legislative scrutiny and, for the most part, little public debate. Examining the eight-year campaign of strikes on Pakistan – which is carried out by the CIA and was only publicly acknowledged for the first time by Obama earlier this year – Woods explains how the CIA has been able to avoid legal challenges by claiming the campaign is a ‘state secret’.

This lack of accountability extends to the CIA simply refusing to account for how many people it has killed with drones, and who they might be. Despite US claims that ‘only’ 50 or 60 civilians have been killed in a campaign that has killed at least 2,000 people, the Bureau has identified by name over 310 civilians killed.

See the Bureau’s full drones research here.

Chillingly, it was recently reported that according to the US definitions, ‘all military-age males in a strike zone’ are regarded as militants, and will only be counted as civilians where ‘explicit evidence proves them innocent’ – a lethal inversion of the fundamental legal principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’.

For many years, these attacks were carried out with the complicity of the Pakistani authorities, who protested the strikes in public while secretly condoning them. In a startlingly frank interview, former president Pervez Musharraf tells Jemima Khan the strikes are ‘a breach of sovereignty’ but says the Pakistani government is ‘double-crossing the people of Pakistan’ with its contradictory public and private attitudes.

Musharraf is, Khan says, ‘plotting his return to Pakistani politics’, and like fellow political hopeful Imran Khan he talks a hard line on drones – although he falls short of Imran Khan’s pledge to shoot them from the sky, instead saying he would prefer to request that the US gives Pakistan the drones so they can launch the attacks.

This level of co-operation with the US is nothing new to Musharraf: one of the most lethal strikes took place on his watch and killed up to 81 people including 69 children in October 2006. The Pakistani army claimed responsibility for the attack – covering for the CIA. Musharraf says the reported counts of the dead – and particularly the number of children – are ‘absolutely wrong’, adding: ‘There may have been some collateral damage of some children but they were not children at all, they were all militants doing training.’

In ‘Trial by fury’, rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC analyses the legality of Obama’s covert war, examining the legal landscape of a war that is fought against a loose international network of ideologues, rather than an opposing army. ‘War law’, Robertson says, does not apply in this case – yet for over a decade the US has behaved as though it does.

Human rights are ‘less relevant’ under war law, and there is no ability for relatives to challenge the grounds on which ‘kill’ decisions were made. There is no publicly available guidance for what merits inclusion on the ‘kill list’: ‘is it enough to be sympathetic to terrorism, married to a terrorist, or anti-American?’ asks Robertson. ‘To provide shelter or give funds to terrorist groups? What is the required degree of proof?’

International legal systems have completely failed to rise to the challenges of asymmetric warfare, Robertson says: the challenge is ‘to find a way back, to reasonable force and proportionality’ – as well as a return to ‘the right to life, the presumption of innocence, and a fair trial’.

And just to bring things home, the special report includes a guide to the incredible variety of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) coming soon to a sky near you, from the $300 toy you can control with your iPhone to surveillance flights during the London Olympics. While in the US it is envisaged drones will be used for ‘crowd control’, science writer Michael Brooks says, in London ‘they will be used for surveillance only’. In the UK in general, ‘very few’ police forces have bought drones, and those that have have barely used them – so far.

If the special report illustrates one thing, it’s that this is a new force that is in its infancy – and which has a long way to grow.

The New Statesman is out today.

May Update – US clandestine actions in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen

Published

June 1, 2012

Written by

Chris Woods and Jack Serle

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

A summary of US actions in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia in the secret war on terror.

The Bureau’s Covert War project tracks drone strikes and other US military and paramilitary actions in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. Here we summarise our key work and findings for May.

Yemen

May 2012 actions

Confirmed US drone strikes: 5

Further reported/ possible US strike events: 18

Alleged militants reported killed in US operations: 23 – 171

Civilians reported killed in US strikes: 1 – 31

All Actions 2002 – 2012*

Total confirmed US operations: 44 – 54

Total confirmed US drone strikes: 31 – 41

Possible additional US operations: 86 – 95

Of which possible additional US drone strikes: 48 – 54

Total reported killed: 317 – 814

Total civilians killed: 58 – 138

Children killed: 24Click here for the full Yemen data

As in April, intense fighting meant that Yemen again dominated the Bureau’s reporting. Five US drone strikes were confirmed by US or Yemeni officials.

However, an additional 18 possible US strikes were also reported, allegedly involving not only drones but US naval vessels and aircraft. Among these were up to four attacks by warships on militant positions. It was also confirmed that American F-15 Strike Eagles are now based at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, adding weight to claims of US air sorties over Yemen.

With few confirmed operations it was difficult to pin down precise casualty figures. The Bureau’s data shows that between 23 and 171 people died in US operations in May, including a number of named senior militants such as Fahd al-Quso. However, among the dead were up to 31 civilians. Between 8 and 26 civilians died in just one incident in Jaar on May 15, though this may have been the work of the Yemen Air Force.

US troops were also reported to be just 40 miles from the front lines, helping to direct a Yemeni military offensive aimed at driving Islamist insurgents from cities in the south. Saying that its actions were in retaliation, Ansar al Sharia killed more than 100 soldiers in a suicide bomb attack on Sanaa.

* All but one of these actions have taken place during the Obama presidency. Reports of incidents in Yemen often conflate individual strikes. The range in the total strikes and total drone strikes we have recorded reflects this.

Pakistan

May 2012 actions

Total CIA strikes in May: 6

Total killed in US strikes in May: 32 – 45, of whom 3 – 18 were reportedly civilians

All Actions 2004 – 2012

Total Obama strikes: 275

Total US strikes since 2004: 327

Total reported killed: 2,464 – 3,148

Civilians reported killed: 482 – 830

Children reported killed: 175

Total reported injured: 1,181 – 1,294For the Bureau’s full Pakistan databases click here

Six CIA strikes hit North Waziristan in May, up from just one the previous month, even as Pakistan bluntly and publicly protested the attacks. Washington and Islamabad also continued to seek a resolution to their ongoing dispute over NATO supply routes, the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers last November, and the drone strikes themselves.

On May 5 the CIA killed up to ten people, including possibly civilians, in a strike the Pakistan government called ‘illegal’ and ‘totally counter-productive.’

CIA drone strikes in Pakistan

After a further 18-day pause there was a barrage of five strikes in six days. Between 24 and 32 people died – three to eight reportedly civilians. Nine others were reported injured. Among the locations hit by the CIA were a mosque and a bakery. On one occasion, drones returned after a pause of some 20 minutes to strike again, a tactic last seen in summer 2011.

Details also emerged that Barack Obama had not only been aware of civilian deaths in Pakistan drone strikes since the start of his presidency, but that he had also authorised the widening of the definition of ‘combatant’ to incorporate all adult military-aged males killed.

Somalia

May 2012 actions

Total US operations: 0

Total EU operations: 1

Total casualties from US operations: 0

All Actions 2007 – 2012

Total US operations: 10 – 21

Total US drone strikes: 3 – 9

Total reported killed: 58 – 169

Civilians reported killed: 11 – 57

Children reported killed: 1 – 3Click here for the Bureau’s full data on Somalia

There were no reported US military actions in May.

Separately, on May 22 the European Union launched its first known strike against a land-based pirate operation, destroying nine speedboats, an arms dump and fuel supplies.

Previously restricted to intercepting pirates at sea, on March 23 the EU had expanded Navfor’s mandate to allow for strikes on pirate supplies and infrastructure. The EU agreement stipulated that individuals cannot be targeted and soldiers cannot land on Somali soil.

Significant elements of the operation remain unclear. Navfor said its strike was carried out using helicopters ‘organic’ to the flotilla’s ships, though would not identify which nations had carried out the strike.

Following the Bureau report that the French amphibious assault ship Dixmude and its contingent of Tigre attack helicopters had not taken part in the attack, an anonymous intelligence officer told Defence Report that the destruction of the pirates’ boats could only have been achieved with the aid of a ground assault. If so, it was unclear which nation’s troops would have carried out such an attack.

A boy was reportedly left in a critical condition on May 29 after two Kenyan warships shelled Kismayo, an al Shabaab controlled port in the south of Somalia. The Kenyan navy claimed al Shabaab fired on the vessels first. The residents of the town and the militant group contradicted this, saying the shelling was unprovoked.

Yemen: US ground forces help direct an escalating clandestine war against al Qaeda and its allies, despite official denials. Read more here.

Pakistan: Ignoring Islamabad’s repeated high-level protests CIA strikes rise to six in May. Civilians are reportedly among 32-45 killed. Read more here.

Somalia: Although no US activity is recorded the EU attacks pirates onshore for the first time in a possible ground-based military action. Read more here.

To sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project click here.

Analysis: Obama embraced redefinition of ‘civilian’ in drone wars

Published

May 29, 2012

Written by

Chris Woods

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

President Obama with his Defense Secretary and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Two US reports published today provide significant insights into President Obama’s personal and controversial role in the escalating covert US drone war in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

In a major extract from Daniel Klaidman’s forthcoming book Kill Or Capture, the author reveals extensive details of how secret US drone strikes have evolved under Obama – and how the president knew of civilian casualties from his earliest days in office.

The New York Times has also published a key investigation exploring how the Obama Administration runs its secret ‘Kill List’ – the names of those chosen for execution by CIA and Pentagon drones outside the conventional battlefield.

The Times’ report also reveals that President Obama personally endorsed a redefining of the term ‘civilian’, which has helped to limit any public controversy over ‘non-combatant’ deaths.

Civilian Deaths from Day ThreeAs the Bureau’s own data on Pakistan makes clear, the very first covert drone strikes of the Obama presidency, just three days after he took office, resulted in civilian deaths in Pakistan. As many as 19 civilians – including four children – died in two error-filled attacks.

The Bureau’s Chris Woods talks with NPR’s On the Media about civilian casualties

Until now it had been thought that Obama was initially unaware of the civilian deaths. Bob Woodward has reported that the president was only told by CIA chief Michael Hayden that the strikes had missed their High Value Target but had killed ‘five al Qaeda militants.’

Now Newsweek correspondent Daniel Klaidman reveals that Obama knew about the civilian deaths within hours. He reports an anonymous participant at a subsequent meeting with the President: ‘You could tell from his body language that he was not a happy man.’ Obama is described aggressively questioning the tactics used.

Until now it had been thought that President Obama was initially unaware of the civilian deaths.

Yet despite the errors, the president ultimately chose to keep in place the CIA’s controversial policy of using ‘signature strikes’ against unknown militants.That tactic has just been extended to Yemen.

On another notorious occasion, the article reveals that US officials were aware at the earliest stage that civilians – including ‘dozens of women and children’ – had died in Obama’s first ordered strike in Yemen in December 2009. The Bureau recently named all 44 civilians killed in that attack by cruise missiles.

No US officials have ever spoken publicly about the strike, although secret diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks proved that the US was responsible. Now Klaidman reveals that Jeh Johnson, one of the State Department’s senior lawyers, watched the strike take place with others on a video screen:

Johnson returned to his Georgetown home around midnight that evening, drained and exhausted. Later there were reports from human-rights groups that dozens of women and children had been killed in the attacks, reports that a military source involved in the operation termed “persuasive.” Johnson would confide to others, “If I were Catholic, I’d have to go to confession.”

Aggressive tactics

Klaidman describes a world in which the CIA and Pentagon constantly push for significant attacks on the US’s enemies. In March 2009, for example. then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen reportedly called for the bombing of an entire training camp in southern Somalia in order to kill one militant leader.

One dissenter at the meeting is said to have described the tactic as ‘carpet-bombing a country.’ The attack did not go ahead.

Obama is generally described as attempting to rein back both the CIA and the Pentagon. But in the case of Anwar al-Awlaki – ‘Obama’s Threat Number One’ – different rules applied.

If I were Catholic, I’d have to go to confession.’

State Department lawyer Jeh Johnson on reported civilian deaths in Yemen

According to Klaidman Obama let it be known that he would consider allowing civilian deaths if it meant killing the US-Yemeni cleric. ‘Bring it to me and let me decide in the reality of the moment rather than in the abstract,’ an aide recalls him saying. No civilians died that day, as it turned out.

Redefining ‘civilian’

In its own major investigation, the New York Times examines the secret US ‘Kill List’ – the names of those chosen for death at the hands of US drones. The report is based on interviews with more than 36 key individuals with knowledge of the scheme.

The newspaper also accuses Obama of ‘presidential acquiescence in a formula for counting civilian deaths that some officials think is skewed to produce low numbers,’ and of having a ‘Whack-A-Mole approach to counter-terrorism,’ according to one former senior official.

It is often been reported that President Obama has urged officials to avoid wherever possible the deaths of civilians in covert US actions in Pakistan and elsewhere. But reporters Jo Becker and Scott Shane reveal that Obama ’embraced’ a formula understood to have been devised by the Bush administration.

Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

So concerned have some officials been by this ‘false accounting’ that they have taken their concerns direct to the White House, according to the New York Times.

So concerned have some officials been by this ‘false accounting’ that they have taken their concerns direct to the White House, says the New York Times.

The revelation helps explain the wide variation between credible reports of civilian deaths in Pakistan by the Bureau and others, and the CIA’s claims that it had killed no ‘non-combatants’ between May 2010 and September 2011 – and possibly later.

The investigation also reveals that more than 100 US officials take part in a weekly ‘death list’ video conference run by the Pentagon, at which it is decided who will be added to the US military’s kill/ capture lists. ‘A parallel, more cloistered selection process at the CIA focuses largely on Pakistan, where that agency conducts strikes,’ the paper reports.

But according to at least one former senior administration official, Obama’s obsession with targeted killings is ‘dangerously seductive.’ Retired admiral Dennis Blair, the former US Director of National Intelligence, told the paper that the campaign was:

The politically advantageous thing to do — low cost, no US casualties, gives the appearance of toughness. It plays well domestically, and it is unpopular only in other countries. Any damage it does to the national interest only shows up over the long term.

An earlier version of this report attributed the redefining of ‘civilian’ to the Obama administration. The Bureau now understands that it instead embraced a pre-existing policy introduced under George W Bush. We apologise for the error.

The uphill fight against Obama’s drones: Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin

Published

May 24, 2012

Written by

Chris Woods

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Medea Benjamin: ‘US peace movement is a fragment of what it was under Bush’

Walk into any US bookstore and the stacks are crowded with hundreds of books on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet more than a decade in, its hard to find anything on the escalating use of armed drones by the United States.

Now Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the US women-led peace movement Code Pink, is seeking to balance the shelves. Her new book Drone Warfare has just been published. Benjamin, along with Reprieve and the Center for Constitutional Rights, also recently organised the first major international conference on drones in Washington DC.

The gathering coincided with the first anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s killing by US Special Forces. And just a day later, President Obama’s chief counter terrorism official John Brennan gave the most detailed insight yet into the ‘secret’ US drones programme. Benjamin was the sole protestor to disrupt the speech, as the press corps looked on.

In a candid interview with the Bureau following the conference, Medea Benjamin speaks about why the US peace movement has collapsed under Obama; of the challenges of taking on the drone war in a US election year, and of the message that US campaigners plan to take to Pakistan in a forthcoming trip.

Medea Benjamin disrupts Brennan’s big speech on drones

Q: You’ve been involved in peace activism for a long time, and were heavily involved in the Bush years. In some respects the wars go on but the peace movement doesn’t. How difficult is it to engage on drones with a Democratic administration in the White House, and how is this going to play out in an election year?

Medea Benjamin (MB): It’s terrible. The vast majority of people who were part of the peace movement under Bush have disappeared. Whether they’ve left because they want to leave it to Obama, and that they’re happy that he for the most part withdrew the troops from Iraq and they’re hoping he will do that shortly in Afghanistan, and think that the drones are an alternative to a broader war. Or it’s people who are excited about the Occupy movement and want to put their efforts into the first chance that they feel they’ve had in a long time to make some changes on the domestic front. Or they have been so financially devastated by the economic crisis that they really don’t have time to commit to these issues.

For all sorts of reasons our movement is a tiny portion of what it was under the Bush years. And that makes it very hard. And the fact that during this election campaign you don’t have a voice from the Left, you don’t have a Dennis Kucinich, you don’t have a Ralph Nader, and you don’t even have a Ron Paul, a libertarian Republican who is speaking out against the wars and the empire and the drone strikes.

So there’s going to be little debate on foreign policy during this election, and if anything, it’s going to be Mitt Romney saying ‘Don’t put a date for pulling the troops out of Afghanistan’. And I don’t think he’s going to criticise Obama at all on these drone strikes, if anything he’s totally gung-ho for it. So it’s going to be pretty miserable in terms of trying to insert this message into the elections.

There’s going to be little debate on foreign policy during this election.‘

We will try as much as we can, going out to events and being there with our model drones, and getting on the inside when we can, saying ‘Stop the killer drones!’ And we’ll be going to the conventions, will have contingents who’ll be marching against drones, against the killing of civilians, against the continued war in Afghanistan. But to be realistic, we are not a very strong force at the moment.

And I think we recognise that and we realise that we are starting from almost nothing at this point. When you see a devastating poll that says that 8 out of 10 Americans think it’s OK to kill terrorist suspects, and that it’s even OK to kill Americans with drones, we’ve got a lot of educating to do. So I think it’s going to take us a couple of years even to turn those polls around and then get onto the job of stopping the use of drones. So it’s not going to be easy.

Q: It seems a particularly testosterone-driven period at the moment, with the recent anniversary of bin Laden’s killing. US TV screens are full of a certain sort of swaggering male perspective. Code Pink is very much a women-driven organisation. How difficult is it to engage with that attitude?

MB: It’s very difficult to engage with that swagger, especially when that’s now coupled with a technology that people seem to just drool over. They love these drones, they love the hi-tech, there’s a fascination with it. It’s boys’ toys that get exhibited everywhere.

As we were meeting in our drone summit, there was a science fair going on in the Convention Center across the street from us, where they were simulating drones overhead in Washington DC for the kids. And the kids just loved it. So yes it’s swagger, it’s testosterone coupled with boys’ toys. Which makes it even more difficult.

So we women are up for the challenge [laughs] and we recognise that this is a moment when, just like after 9-11, women’s voices were needed more than ever. There’s the joking about drone strikes and the lies and the sense of statesmanship given to people who say that we don’t kill civilians with drones, who just out-and-out lie about it.

We’ve got to use the Code Pink tactics of interrupting these people, of direct action, of civil disobedience, of being out there with our pink handcuffs to try and arrest them and hold them accountable for war crimes. But let me just reiterate: in an election period, when our natural allies would be independents and Democrats, we’ll lose all the Democrats. People on the left, the progressives, will be very reluctant to criticise Obama.

Summit-goers outside the US Supreme Court express their views on drones

Q: How do you think the recent Washington drones summit went? And why has it taken 11 years of bombing to get a conference like this in Washington?

MB: It’s a good question, and I would say a criticism of the entire anti-war movement here in the United States. I looked around and I thought, ‘It’s pathetic, why have we taken so long to get together on this?’ Sure we’ve had a lot of meetings and outside conferences and endless protests about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But we’ve kind of ignored the fact that our government is way ahead of us and while we’re focusing on the covert wars and the boots on the ground, our soldiers dying, they’re transforming the way they’re waging war and taking it out of the public view, spilling over into Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia, and building up drone bases in Kuwait and Qatar and Ethiopia and Seychelles and Australia and Turkey, and on and on. So they’re not just one step ahead of us, they’re 1,000 steps ahead of us. And we should have had this conference a long time ago.

The only thing that we’re a bit ahead of the curve on is on the proliferation of drones here at home. That since the regulations haven’t yet been written by the Federal Aviation Administration, we have a chance to influence those. So that’s the one thing I feel somewhat good about.

But it’s terrible that it’s taken us so long to organise this. On the other hand people think of drones as just a piece of technology, so why would you organise around a piece of technology? You want to organise around the wars themselves.

Q: And what’s your answer to that? Isn’t it just another piece of technology? What’s different about drones?

MB: The difference with drones is that drones make these wars possible. From being able to wage them without even having to go to Congress, because according to the Administration’s definition of war, war is when you put your own soldiers’ lives at risk. And since we’re not doing that with drones, it’s not war, it doesn’t have to be agreed in Congress. It doesn’t even have to be open to the American people. It can be carried out in total secrecy.

And as some people said in the conference, drones are the only way to wage some of these battles because of the issue of national sovereignty. You could never get away with the boots on the ground. And because, for example with the terrain in Yemen, you wouldn’t be able to do it any other way than with drones.

So I think that drones are a special piece of technology that make extending these – I wouldn’t call them wars, they’re violent interventions – make them possible to do. So we do have to focus on the technology, but within the context of war.

According to the Administration, war is when you put your own soldiers’ lives at risk. And since we’re not doing that with drones, it’s not war, it doesn’t have to be agreed in Congress. It doesn’t even have to be open to the American people.’

Q: You’re now planning for a group trip to Pakistan. A critic at the recent conference said that people in the room were ‘naïve’, that their understanding of Pakistan was over-simplified and that there were far bigger issues there that were more important.

MB: I think there’s a certain truth to the fact that most of the people in the room were very unaware of the complexity of the situation in Pakistan. And so their own agenda is a pretty simple one. ‘I don’t want my government killing people without due process, whether Americans or people in other parts of the world. And I don’t think that makes me safer at home. I don’t think it makes the world a safer place.’

Pakistanis have their own complex internal situation, but they’re going to have to deal with it and our interference is not helping. So as Americans, to go in there with a simple message and say, ‘We don’t want our government violating your sovereignty, it is up to you to decide how to deal with your issues of Taliban and al Qaeda and terrorism and fundamentalism, and it’s up to us to make our government obey international law.’

So I think we stick to a pretty simple message. And say we don’t want to get involved in your internal affairs, they’re far too complex for us to even think that we can comprehend them… We just want to step aside and let you figure it out.

This is an edited version of a longer interview.

Follow @chrisjwoods and @medeabenjamin on Twitter

Analysis: Why we must name all drone attack victims

Published

May 10, 2012

Written by

Chris Woods

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Drone victim funeral December 29 2010 – two named civilians are known to have died that day. (AP)

Sunday’s death of Fahd al-Quso in a CIA drone strike was a significant US success. The admitted al Qaeda bomber had long been sought for his role in the deadly attack on the US navy ship the USS Cole back in 2000.

At the Bureau we logged al-Quso’s name – along with his nephew Fahed Salem al-Akdam – in our Yemen database. Another two names added to the many hundreds we’ve now recorded for the US covert war in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

The Bureau has so far identified by name 317 civilians killed in US attacks in Pakistan. Between 170 and 500 further civilians have yet to be identified.

A day earlier, a CIA strike in Pakistan also killed around ten people. Here the information was less clear, with reports vague about who had died. While most claimed that a militant training camp had been struck, a single source claimed those killed were ‘local tribesmen.’ This clearly needs further investigation.

Although we’re not alone in recording US covert drone strikes, the Bureau also tries to identify by name all of those killed – both civilian and militants. And those names – which the Bureau recently presented at a Washington DC drone summit – reveal some startling truths about the US drone campaign.

To date in Pakistan, we have been able to identify 170 named militants killed by the CIA in more than 300 drone strikes. Among them are many senior figures, including Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistan Taliban; Ilyas Kashmiri, an al-Qaeda linked strategist; and Nek Mohammed, once a militant thorn in Pakistan’s side.

Certainly these drone strikes have severely affected the ability of militants to operate openly in Pakistan’s tribal areas. The recently-declassified ‘bin Laden papers’ talk of the impact of the CIA’s attacks, with the Taliban ‘frankly exhausted from the enemy’s air bombardments.’

Yet there’s a darker side to this coin. The Bureau has also been able to name 317 civilians killed in US attacks in Pakistan. Between 170 and 500 further civilians have yet to be identified.

On October 30 2011, for example, we know that the CIA killed four chromite miners in Waziristan – foreman Saeedur Rahman, and miners Khastar Gul, Mamrud Khan and Noorzal Khan. And on July 12 last year, field researchers working for the Bureau found that drones returned to attack rescuers, killing four Taliban and four civilians we named as Shabbir, Kalam, Waqas and Bashir.

US Lists

We’re not alone in keeping lists of the covert war dead. Just a few days ago, the Washington Post reported that ‘U.S. officials have said that more than 2,000 militants and civilians have been killed in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere since Obama took office in 2009.’

The Bureau’s data indicates that between 2,300 and 3,290 people have died in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia strikes under Obama.

Given that the Bureau’s base estimate for the total killed in Pakistan drone strikes is close to the CIA’s own, what clearly irks the US intelligence community is the light we continue to shine on civilians reported killed.

Since we began publishing our reports on civilian deaths from drone strikes, the US intelligence community has aggressively sought to attack our findings. Our media partners have been leaned on. The CIA claimed that we were getting our information from a ‘Pakistani spy’ (a barrister representing drone strike victims). And when we definitively showed, with the Sunday Times, that the CIA had been bombing rescuers and funeral-goers, it was suggested that we were ‘helping al Qaeda.’

What clearly irks the US intelligence community is the light we continue to shine on civilians reported killed.

Redefining ‘civilian’At stake may be the very definition of a ‘civilian’ in the modern battlefield. ABC’s George Stephanopoulos recently pressed US chief counter terrorism adviser John Brennan on his remarkable claim in June 2011 that the CIA had not killed ‘a single non-combatant in almost a year.’

In reply, Brennan said that ‘over a period of time before my public remarks [that] we had no information about a single civilian, a noncombatant being killed.’

Even a cursory examination of credible media reports between June 1st 2010 and June 29 2011 (when Brennan made his original claim) shows that dozens of civilians were reported killed in that period. Among those who died were more than 40 tribal elders and villagers in a single disastrous CIA strike in March 2011. That attack led to public protests from Pakistan’s president, prime minister and army chief.

Perhaps the CIA’s own human intelligence-gathering abilities are so poor in Pakistan that it can no longer identify civilians killed on the ground. Perhaps the Agency has been misleading Congress and the President about the true extent of civilian deaths. Alternatively, the very definition of civilian may have been radically changed. If the latter is true – and it seems the most likely scenario – then this has worrying implications.

New phase

The covert drone war appears to be entering a new phase. Until recently, strikes were carried out with the tacit co-operation of host governments. But now Islamabad is saying no. Recent CIA strikes in Pakistan have been publicly condemned by the government as being ‘in total contravention of international law.’ The strikes are carrying on regardless.

Yemen’s new president appears more pliant. Yet in a little-reported comment, the nation’s prime minister Muhammad Salem Basindwa recently told a local newspaper: ‘The government has never asked the US to carry out drone attacks on the Yemeni soil because there should not be external meddling in Yemen’s own affairs.’

Part of the justification for the US carrying out drone strikes without consent is their reported success. And naming those militants killed is key to that process. Al Qaeda bomber Fahd al-Quso’s death was widely celebrated.

Yet how many newspapers also registered the death of Mohamed Saleh Al-Suna, a civilian caught up and killed in a US strike in Yemen on March 30?

By showing only one side of the coin, we risk presenting a distorted picture of this new form of warfare. There is an obligation to identify all of those killed – not just the bad guys.

Follow @chrisjwoods on Twitter

Somalia: a bullet-riddled history

Published

February 22, 2012

Written by

Emma Slater

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

BackgroundSomalia has been without a functional government since 1991. This was when socialist president Siad Barre was overthrown by a coalition of armed opposition groups and rebels, led by warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid and his group, the United Somali Congress (USC).

The north-west region of Somalia split off, declaring itself the independent Republic of Somaliland. Somaliland has enjoyed relative stability, but Somalia has plunged into a raging civil war involving rival warlords and Islamist militants. The more than two decades of violence that have ensued have devastated the country and caused the deaths of up to a million people.

The UN entered Somalia in July 1992 to provide humanitarian relief amid escalating violence. By December 1993, with the situation deteriorating, the UN asked member states for assistance. The US obliged, sending troops into Mogadishu.

But during a disastrous 15-hour battle with militiamen in August 1993, two US Black Hawk helicopters were brought down. Eighteen American soldiers died in related operations. In the book Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War it is estimated that more than 700 Somali militiamen and civilians died in the battle.

Famine

This ‘failed state’ recently experienced the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa’s history, with those needing UN assistance increasing from an estimated two million at the start of 2011 to four million by September 2011. The Somalia Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit declared a state of famine in six areas in southern Somalia in 2011.

Somalia’s acting government, the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), was created to try and impose some sort of stability and coherence. Set up by peace talks held in Kenya between 2002 and 2004, the TFG was, and continues to be, recognised by the UN and the international community.

See the Bureau’s full data on Somalia’s hidden war

But in its early days the TFG had little success. It was ousted in early 2006, when a conflict between clan-based militias came to an ‘uneasy truce… with the rise to power of the militia-backed Islamic Courts Union’, explained Human Rights Watch.

The ICU mirrored aspects of the Taliban. As Bill Roggio of the Long War Journal reported, ‘Over the course of the summer and fall of 2006, The Islamic Courts consolidated its power in central and southern Somalia. It began to impose a strict version of sharia, or Islamic law, and shut down movie theaters, viewing centers for soccer matches and co-ed events such as sports. Cigarettes, alcohol and khat, the popular leafy narcotic chewed by Somalis, were banned.’

As the ICU marched into Mogadishu, thousands of civilians fled the capital. By mid-2006, the ICU had taken over Mogadishu, as well as much of south and central Somalia.

Abandoned tank in Somalia Sept 2007 (Carl Montgomery/Flickr)

Ethiopia invades

But the ICU’s rule did not last. In December 2006, the TFG, supported by the Ethiopian army, began a lengthy battle which would eventually defeat the ICU. At the time Human Rights Watch reported, ‘outside powers such as Ethiopia, the United States, and the European Union feared that the ICU and its radical armed youth wing, al-Shabaab, would create an Islamist bastion in Somalia’.

‘The Islamic Courts began to impose a strict version of sharia and shut down movie theaters, viewing centers for soccer matches and co-ed events such as sports. Cigarettes, alcohol and khat, the popular leafy narcotic chewed by Somalis, were banned‘ – Long War Journal

For two years, Ethiopia fought ICU militias and the emerging al Shabaab. It was joined in January 2007 by a UN-created peace force comprising African Union troops – AMISOM (see below).

As mentioned in the Bureau’s Somalia timeline, several sources report that Ethiopia received extensive backing from the US during its invasion, with the Nation’s Jeremy Scahill calling the invasion ‘a classic [US] proxy war’.

And as 10,000 troops crossed the border, they received airborne reconnaissance support and ‘other intelligence’ from the US, the Washington Post reported.

But diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks reveal a different story, with US officials seemingly urging caution. A December 6 2007 cable recorded US Ambassador to Ethiopia Donald Yamamoto warning Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi the invasion could ‘prove more difficult for Ethiopia than many now imagine’.

When the ICU was defeated and Ethiopia withdrew in 2009, some Somalis turned against the foreign invaders. Despite its harsh rule, the ICU had brought an element of stability to Somalia, having defeated the warlords and imposed Islamic religious laws.

‘It’s not just that people miss those days,’ a Somali humanitarian worker told the Chicago Tribune. ‘They resent the Ethiopians and Americans tearing it all up, using Somalia as their battlefield against global terrorism. It’s like the Cold War all over again. Somalis aren’t in control.’

The emergence of al ShabaabThe TFG had regained an element of control. But to the south of the capital, another Islamic faction was growing: al Shabaab, also known as the Harakat Al-Shabaab al-Mujahidin. Originally the ICU’s militant wing, al-Shabaab forged its own identity. Its aim is to dismantle the TFG, to ‘mount sustained attacks against the transitional federal institutions and their security forces, as well as AMISOM, and to threaten the political process’, commented the 2011 UN Monitoring Group on Somalia’s report. In 2007, al Shabaab’s leaders claimed affiliation with al-Qaeda (the group formally announced this union on February 9 2012).

‘Al-Shabaab admits to the recruitment of children, who are represented among many recent deaths and defections in their forces’ – Human Rights Watch

In February 2008 the US designated al Shabaab a terrorist organisation. Al Shabaab has committed widespread human rights abuses, reported Human Rights Watch, ‘including punishments such as beheadings, amputations, stoning and beatings, restrictions on dress and freedom of movement, enforced contributions, and forcible recruitment into the militia.’ In addition, HRW says,’Al-Shabaab admits to the recruitment of children, who are represented among many recent deaths and defections in their forces’.

A representative of GarGar Foundation for Development, a charity for Somali women, told the Bureau that under Shabaab, ‘there is a lack of education, lack of health services, and there are often reports of women getting raped’.

Kenya follows Ethiopia’s leadOn October 16 2011, Kenya invaded Somalia. The invasion, codenamed Operation Linda Nchi, was ostensibly a response to three separate kidnappings of westerners by al Shabaab militants in the preceding weeks, all on Kenyan soil.

But Alfred Mutua, the Kenyan government’s chief spokesman, told the New York Times the kidnappings were more a ‘good launchpad’ than the sole reason for invasion. ‘An operation of this magnitude is not planned in a week,’ Mutua said. ‘It’s been in the pipeline for a while.’

Speaking to the Financial Times, Matua said while the Kenyan forces wanted to locate the kidnappers, their mission went far deeper: to ‘track down and dismantle the al-Shabaab’.

While cooperation with US forces was mooted by the media at the start of Kenya’s invasion, several US officials have ‘explicitly denied coordination with the Kenyan military or any contribution of direct military support,’ said Dr Micah Zenko, fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, writing in the Atlantic. On October 25, the US stated that it was emphatically not participating in the invasion.

The invasion has not only appeared in the news, it has also been prominent in social media, with the Kenyan army and al Shabaab taking the battle onto Twitter.

As of February 22 2012, the Kenyan incursion is ongoing. The TFG’s mandate is set to expire in August 2012.

A malnourished child awaits AMISOM medical help in the 2011 drought (UN/Flickr)

Who are the non-Somali military players?

JSOCJoint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, is the elite Special Forces division that runs most US operations in Somalia.

Formed in 1980 in the wake of a disastrous attempt to free US hostages in Iran, JSOC’s role is to co-ordinate elite Special Forces personnel in the US Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. Its goals sound innocuous enough:

To study special operations requirements and techniques, ensure interoperability and equipment standardization, plan and conduct special operations exercises and training, and develop joint special operations tactics.

Yet since the September 11 attacks, JSOC has become a critical element of the US’s global ‘war on terror’. Its forces hunted down and killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and captured Saddam Hussein in Iraq. In May last year Navy Seal Team 6, part of JSOC, killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. JSOC also worked with the CIA in Yemen in September 2011 to kill Anwar al-Awlaki.

It has also been involved in more controversial actions, for example in a number of ground incursions into Pakistan which resulted in civilian deaths.

As the Bureau’s database shows, US Special Forces were active in Somalia just weeks after the September 11 attacks. Operations initially focused on surveillance and renditions. However from 2007 onwards JSOC has carried out a number of airstrikes, drone strikes and cruise missile attacks resulting in the deaths of a number of militants. Civilians have also been reportedly killed in the attacks.

Amisom

The African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) is a peacekeeping force operating with the approval of the United Nations to try to stabilise the country and oust al Shabaab. It was created in February 2007 with a six-month mandate. Five years later, Amisom forces remain in Somalia. In March the European Union pledged $92m (£58m) in new funding, while the US is set to provide military equipment worth $45m to Amisom troops.

The Amisom mission has three components: police, military and civilian. The military section is by far the largest, with around 9,500 troops mainly from Uganda and Burundi. The UN has demanded that this number ‘urgently increase’ to 12,000 by October 2012. From 2009, Amisom was tasked with ensuring security in areas from which Ethiopian troops had withdrawn.

While Amisom insists its forces adhere to strict international standards, in August 2011 Human Rights Watch reported that ‘All forces involved in the recent fighting in Mogadishu… including the African Union peacekeeping mission, AMISOM—have been responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law (the laws of war). These abuses include indiscriminate attacks, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and detention, and unlawful forced recruitment.’

CJTF-Horn of AfricaThe Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) was created to help accomplish the objectives of Operation Enduring Freedom – Horn of Africa, a US-led initiative aimed at combating terrorism and piracy in the Horn of Africa following 9/11.

Based at Camp Lemmonier in Djibouti, CJTF-HOA consists of around 2,000 personnel from US and coalition armed forces, alongside around 1,200 private contractors. It conducts civil and military operations in East Africa under the command of United States Africa Command (Africom).

The Horn of Africa was widely thought to be an ideal safe haven due to ongoing border tensions, insurgencies, corruption, poverty, lawlessness, and large ungoverned spaces. The task force’s initial aim was to detect and destroy potential terrorist hideouts, to target individuals, to break logistical lines, and to directly attack groups connected to al Qaeda: essentially a ‘capture and kill’ mission.

Camp Lemmonier is not only a forward operating base for CJTF troops, it also provides a launchpad for missiles, and for unarmed and armed drones operated by the CIA and the elite Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).

By 2008, US Army Lieutenant Colonel Ted R. Bates, commented: ‘as the CJTF-HOA mission progressed it soon became clear that the Afghanistan invasion did not produce the high volume of fleeing terrorists to the Horn of Africa region that CENTCOM [Central Command] had anticipated. In fact, the Horn of Africa region contained less terrorist activity than originally feared.’

As a result, the taskforce increasingly expanded to undertake civil affairs missions, in addition to training counter-terrorism forces. However, by early 2011 the US military re-engaged heavily in Somalia. The Arab Spring uprising in Yemen also led to a significant number of US military personnel being reassigned to Djibouti.

Combined Task Force 150Created to counter terrorism, prevent smuggling, and develop security on the seas, Combined Task Force 150 has been boarding vessels off the coast of Somalia since 2007 in search of terrorist suspects.

One of three naval task forces operated by Combined Maritime Forces (CMF), participating nations have included the UK, France, Canada, Germany, Pakistan, Australia, Denmark and the US. CTF-150 operates in a two million square mile stretch covering the Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman, the Arabian Sea, Red Sea, and the northern Indian Ocean.

‘Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure’ (VBSS) missions are performed on fishing boats (dhows) and oil tankers passing near the Somali coast. The aim is to ‘deter individuals with links to al Qaeda and other terrorist organisations the use of the sea as a potential escape route’, according to the US Department of Defense.

Study shows up to 6 British extremists killed in Somalia

Published

February 22, 2012

Written by

Chris Woods

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

UK military board a suspect boat off the coast of Somalia (Ministry of Defence/Flickr)

A new Bureau study of western military operations in Somalia reveals that up to six UK citizens have died in attacks carried out by the US and its allies.

The findings appear to support rising UK concerns about the security situation in the east African nation.

With indications that the UK may be seeking to move beyond its current anti-piracy operations in Somalia, any deeper engagement risks drawing Britain into a complex web of shifting enemies, proxy wars and secretive Special Forces operations.

The present UK role contrasts sharply with the United States, which the Bureau reveals has launched up to 20 strikes aganst terrorist suspects over the past five years. Between 46 and 162 people – mostly alleged militants – are reported killed in those attacks.

Political willAs world leaders gather in London on Thursday to hear Britain’s vision of a new deal for war-torn Somalia, the emphasis is on rebuilding a shattered nation.

Yet at a preparatory conference in early February, Foreign Secretary William Hague also hinted at increased British military involvement

, stating: ‘We must make it harder for terrorists to operate in and out of Somalia.’

The Guardian has also revealed that the UK has drawn up contingency plans for possible airstrikes on pirates and terrorists.

One source told the paper: ‘There was no political will on this to begin with, but that has been changing. We know where the camps are, where they set up and where they launch from.’

Related story: Get the data – Somalia’s hidden war

Direct threatSo is there a risk that Britain will be drawn deeper into Somalia’s decades-long conflict? And how involved are we already?

So far, the Bureau’s study shows, Britain’s role has mainly focused on countering Somali pirates. The UK’s naval assets – part of Coalition Task Force 150 – are widely used in board and search operations.

‘We must make it harder for terrorists to operate in and out of Somalia. The Conference should agree the areas we need to develop to disrupt terrorism across the region, including stopping the movement of terrorists to and from Somalia, disrupting the flow of their finances, and delivering effective intelligence gathering, investigation, criminal prosecution and detention against them‘

William Hague, February 2012

On January 13 this year for example, Royal Marine commandos captured 13 Somali pirates.

British military trainers have also helped instruct other African armies for a role in Amisom, the African peace-keeping force in Somalia.

Yet since 2011 UK’s forces are increasingly being engaged on the ground in Somalia. This may reflect a growing fear that Somali militants represent a direct threat to UK interests.

In June 2011 the Special Boat Squadron reportedly finished an eight-week programme mapping the ports used by Somali pirates.

And on July 9 2011, a Royal Navy ship the RFA Cardigan Bay docked in the Somali port of Berbera. Royal Marines reportedly disembarked in armoured vehicles, pushing some miles inland to rendezvous with a tribal leader and bring him to a meeting with UK officials.

Related story: Somalia – a bullet-riddled history

British militantsAlthough British efforts have predominantly focused on tackling piracy, the UK’s National Security Council recently classified Somalia as ‘a priority country.’

The UK has been ‘war gaming’ possible airstrikes against militant al-Shabaab bases in Somalia, according to the Guardian.

And dozens of British volunteers have already been drawn to militant groups in the war-torn nation, recent reports have suggested.

The Bureau has found as many as six British citizens have been killed in attacks by the US and its allies.

In March 2007, a single source claims that British SAS troops, working with members of US Delta Force, entered Somalia and took DNA samples relating to four Britons killed in an American strike that took place in January of that year.

On June 1 2007, at least one British militant was reported killed in a US naval bombardment.

And on January 21 2012 British-Lebanese militant Bilal al-Barjawi was killed in a US drone strike near Mogadishu.

A movement by the UK towards attacks on al Shabaab in Somalia might indicate that US and UK counter-terrorism interests may be coinciding, according to Dr Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations:

‘The US emphasis is now on disrupting active plots in Somalia against the US homeland. And where you see such plots, you often see attacks planned against the UK and other US allies,’ he told the Bureau this week.

Key British Anti-Piracy Operations

June 2011

Britain’s Special Boat Squadron, in conjunction with French special forces, reportedly finished an eight-week programme mapping ports used by Somali pirates. According to a UK defence source, ‘There are countless ports where hijacked ships are docked. SBS troops built up a security picture.’

Type of action: Naval and ground operationsLocation: Southern SomaliaReference: The Sun

July 9 2011British Royal Marines reportedly landed at Berbera in northern Somalia to liaise with and transport a Somali tribal elder to talks. The troops, from 539 Assault Squadron attached to Exercise Somalialand Cougar, reportedly landed with Viking armoured vehicles and met with the elder some miles inland. He was then ferried to ‘a very important meeting‘ with MI6 and Foreign Office representatives.

Type of action: Ground operation

Location: SomalialandReferences: Daily Mail, Somaliland Times, BBC

October 11 2011US and British naval and marine units freed the hijacked crew of the Italian ship Montecristo and captured 11 Somali pirates. British defence secretary Liam Fox said of the operation:

Such was the show of strength displayed by RFA [Royal Fleet Auxilliary] Fort Victoria, alongside a US navy frigate, that the operation was conducted without a shot being fired.

Type of action: Naval operation

Location: Indian Ocean off SomaliaReferences: The Guardian, Associated Press, British Ministry of Defence

January 13 2012

British naval forces captured 13 Somali pirates. The operation involved Royal Marine snipers in Lynx helicopters, and Royal Naval and Royal Marine commandos in speedboats. Speaking about the operation, defence secretary Philip Hammond said:

This operation off the coast of Somalia is a clear demonstration of Britain’s ability to tackle piracy that threatens our interests. The Royal Navy and Royal Marines are playing a crucial role in securing and protecting international sea lanes that are vital to global trade.

Type of action: Naval operation

Location: Indian Ocean off SomaliaReference: British Ministry of Defence

Additional reporting by Emma Slater, Alice Ross and David Pegg

Follow Chris Woods on Twitter @chrisjwoods

Militants and civilians killed in multiple US Somalia strikes

Published

February 22, 2012

Written by

Chris Woods

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

US Navy Seals in training (US Navy/Specialist 2nd Class John Scorza/Flickr)

As many as 21 US military strikes in Somalia since 2007 have killed up to 169 people, new research by the Bureau indicates. Of those killed, between 11 and 59 people are reported to be civilians.

US military intervention in war-torn Somalia is shown to be on a far lower scale than in Yemen or Pakistan. However, US attacks escalated sharply against al Shabaab targets in 2011.

The Bureau has carried out a detailed examination of reports of western military activity in Somalia spanning over more than a decade. These are drawn from credible media, from academic research, from US and UK military and diplomatic records and from other reputable sources.

The research team has sought to untangle often conflicting original reports, and to confirm where possible all incidents. Although over 70 US strikes have been reported since 2007, for example, the Bureau believes that fewer than a third of such claims appear credible.

The findings reveal a complex web of shifting enemies, of invasions and proxy wars, and secretive and deadly US Special Forces attacks.

Strikes

The Bureau’s database, released today, chronicles more than 50 documented events dating from 2001. These range from surveillance and counter-piracy operations in Somalia, to heavy airstrikes and drone attacks on alleged Islamic militants.

Somalia is one of the most challenging areas of the world… And it is an area that al Qaeda has tried regularly to exploit’– John Brennan

The research reveals that between nine and 21 US counter-terrorism attacks have taken place in Somalia between 2007 and 2012. Between 51 and 169 people are reported killed in these events, mostly alleged militants.

However between 11 and 59 of those killed were reported to have been civilians.

The total number of casualties may be higher. Some reports simply state ‘many killed’, and other attacks may be unrecorded.

The Bureau’s findings in briefAlthough US Special Forces have been active in Somalia since the September 11 attacks, the Bureau’s investigation indicates that US attacks only began in January 2007. Although more than 70 claims of US military strikes have been reported since then, only a smaller number can be fully substantiated.

Nine attacks have been directly confirmed by US spokespeople or unnamed US officials. Between 51 and 67 people are reported killed in these attacks, of whom between 11 and 13 are reported as civilians. A further four strikes are reported by multiple credible media sources, though they have not been verified by the US military. These reportedly killed a further 13-45 people of whom between 4 and 31 were reportedly civilians. Eight strikes are single-source only, via generally credible media. These account for a further 22-57 deaths, of whom 15 were reported to be civilians.

The US Department of Defense declined to provide corrections and clarification on strikes where original reporting is confused.

During its investigation, the Bureau also examined 56 ‘US drone strikes’ reported by Iranian broadcaster Press TV, which it claimed had killed more than 1,370 people. No corroborative evidence could be found to support these claims, which are reported separately here.

Covert surveillance

The Bureau’s study shows distinct phases in western military intervention. Just weeks after the terrorist atrocities of September 11 2001, US Special Forces became active in Somalia. There were fears the failed nation might become another Afghanistan, supporting al Qaeda and other transnational terrorist organisations.

Between 2001 and December 2006, that US engagement consisted mainly of a number of covert surveillance operations. In March 2003, for example, US commandos planted a dozen concealed cameras on the Somali coast to monitor militant activity.

The US also carried out extraordinary renditions of an estimated eight terror suspects during this period. The Bureau has so far identified two of the men as Suleiman Abdallah, taken in March 2003; and Mohammed Ali Isse, seized in June 2004.

Related story: Somalia – a bullet-riddled history

Airstrikes

December 2006 triggered a new phase of US involvement. The Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) took advantage of Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia to launch a series of air, naval and ground attacks against alleged al Qaeda militants.

In this second phase, according to Dr Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations, such strikes ‘weren’t about shaping Somalia but about going after particular individuals tied to specific terrorist plots, who happened to be there.’

In January 2007, US Special Forces AC-130 gunships struck militant camps up to four times. Between 26 and 61 people died in the attacks – including between 6 and 35 civilians. And in June 2007 the USS Chafee carried out a rare naval bombardment on Islamic militants in northern Somalia, killing a dozen.

US AC-130 gunships have been primary platform for attack in Somalia (Lockheed Martin/ Flickr)

In the third and present phase, which began in late spring 2011, the US began targeting al Shabaab directly, with the militant organisation now perceived as a key threat to US homeland security. As President Obama’s chief counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan spelled out last October:

Al-Qaida traditionally has taken advantage of areas that are wracked by conflict, turmoil and lack of government, it is a safe haven they see to launch attacks… Somalia is one of the most challenging areas of the world because it has this internal conflict, it has such a devastating famine, and it is an area that al-Qaida has tried regularly to exploit.

Drone strikes: 2011 to presentThe Bureau’s research shows that, after a reporting gap of 18 months, the US definitively returned to the offensive in Somalia with its first drone strike on June 23 2011. The strike was aimed at senior al Shabaab leaders, though it remains unclear how many – if any – died.

The Special Forces drones – independent from the CIA’s fleet – operate from bases in Djibouti, Ethiopia and possibly the Seychelles. By February 2012 between four and 12 drone strikes had reportedly taken place.

Though the Bureau has striven to untangle confused reporting of western military activity in Somalia, much remains opaque – something the US seems keen to see continue.

‘We cannot provide specific operational details,’ senior Pentagon spokesman Lt Col James Gregory recently told the Bureau. ‘Regarding Somalia, we are supportive of the African Union Mission there and the Transitional Federal Government efforts as they continue to fight terrorism.’

The Somalia data compares with some 316 CIA drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004 which have killed between 2,400 and 3,000 people, according to the Bureau’s data.

Additional reporting by Emma Slater, Alice Ross and David Pegg

Follow Chris Woods on Twitter @chrisjwoods

This article was last amended February 25 2012 after US officials confirmed a drone strike on February 24

Ofcom revokes Press TV’s UK licence

Published

January 20, 2012

Written by

Chris Woods and Emma Slater

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Press TV, the news channel backed by the Iranian government, is to be taken off the air in Britain, regulator Ofcom ruled today.

The station was fined £100,000 by Ofcom in December 2011, after the station hid the fact that a 2009 ‘interviewee’ was being forcibly detained in Iran. However, the station did not meet its January deadline to pay the fine.

Ofcom also requested that Press TV name on its licence the person, or body who controls its UK-based operations.

But Ofcom says Press TV failed to accede to either request. As a result, the channel will be taken off its UK platform – Sky television – today.

Rhys Hurd, press spokesman at Ofcom, told the Bureau:

‘We are revoking Press TV’s licence because editorial control does not sit with the UK licencee. We have given the broadcaster a number of opportunities to bring themselves into line, indeed we have bent over backwards to accommodate them, but they have failed to do so.’

Hurd added: ‘We have very simple ground rules. Ofcom licences around 1000 stations and the vast majority stay within those rules.’

Press TV called the decision ‘scandalous’, with CEO Mohammad Sarafraz claiming that the decision is ‘an act of aggression by the British monarchy’ which ‘will prevent the British from learning the truth’.

In an October 2011 an opinion poll on the station’s website, Press TV reported that 52% of respondents viewed Ofcom’s decision as ‘an instance of intellectual terrorism.’

In December 2011, an investigation by the Bureau, published in the Guardian, highlighted how Press TV appeared to have faked dozens of accounts of US drone strikes in Somalia which it claimed had killed hundreds of civilians.

The Bureau found no evidence of the alleged 1,370 fatalities, stemming from 56 claimed drone strikes.

Following the Bureau’s revelations, Press TV’s reporting of alleged strikes ceased for over a month, until January 6 2012.

Press TV Somalia drone strike reports cease after Bureau investigation

Published

December 14, 2011

Written by

Emma Slater

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Press TV alleged that 749 Somalis were killed in US drone attacks in November alone.

Earlier this month the Bureau published an investigation into how alleged US drone strikes in Somalia were being reported by Iranian broadcaster Press TV.

In 56 reports between July and December this year, the station claimed that at least 1,370 people had been killed by US drone strikes. The state-backed station alleged that, in November alone, 749 Somalis were killed in 28 alleged US drone attacks, and at least 643 people were injured.

Now, the Bureau can reveal that since our report was published on the evening of December 2, 2011, Press TV appears to have ceased reporting drone strikes in Somalia altogether.

Research by the Bureau, published in the Guardian, found no independent evidence to verify the reports, with a senior UN official commenting:

‘Press TV is not a reliable source. It exaggerates and openly fabricates reports.’

Since the investigation was published 12 days ago, Press TV have not released a single report alleging a US drone strike in Somalia – contrasting hugely with the ‘coverage’ before Bureau publication.

In addition, the station seems to have retreated from its earlier claims of ‘hundreds’ of civilian fatalities. A Press TV article on December 5 stated that only ‘several’ civilians had been killed by US drone strikes in Somalia.

The article has now been revised to read: ‘Washington claims the airstrikes target militants, though civilians constitute the majority of the victims of such attacks.’

However, Mr Barvasad, a senior Producer at Press TV’s Iranian headquarters who heads the Somalia newsroom, denied that the discontinuation of the channel’s questionable reporting has any connection with the Bureau’s investigation.

‘It wasn’t because of your article,’ he told the Bureau. ‘There was nothing reported to us [about drone strikes]. So we didn’t cover them. If there’s anything reported to us we will cover them again.

‘I think it’s a coincidence that there are no reports over the past 12 days. The reporters haven’t been sending us any reports about attacks,’ he maintained.

The graph below shows Press TV’s reporting of US drone ‘fatalities’, and alleged numbers of people injured, in Somalia over the last 28 days.

The data shows a clear drop-off on the date of publication – this could be coincidental, as Press TV insists, or the two could be linked.

Press TV reporting of claimed Somali fatalities/injuries by alleged US drone strikes

Analysis: An Iranian news station damages all war reporting

Published

December 5, 2011

Written by

Chris Woods

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

A WFP food distribution centre for displace people near Mogadishu

Revelations by the Bureau at the weekend that Iranian broadcaster Press TV is most likely fabricating multiple reports of alleged US ‘drone strikes’ in Somalia will do little to bolster the channel’s already tattered reputation. And its actions could impede those trying to hold the US genuinely to account for its covert war on terror.

According to Press TV’s own publicity its ‘global Tehran-based headquarters is staffed with outstanding Iranian and foreign media professionals.’ But some accuse the station of being little more than a propaganda outlet for elements of the Iranian regime.

Fined by Ofcom

Last week the British media regulator Ofcom fined the station £100,000 after Press TV hid from UK viewers the fact that an ‘interview’ it carried was with a journalist being held against his will in Tehran, who was forced to read from a prepared statement.

Now Press TV’s reporting in Somalia is under scrutiny. The station claims there have been at least 56 strikes by ‘US assassination drones’ since September, which have killed more than 1,370 people – hundreds of them civilians. Yet a major study led by the Bureau’s Emma Slater has found no supportive evidence.

We’ve spoken with the UN, with the transitional Somali government, with aid agencies on the ground, with journalists, with US diplomats and with the Pentagon. Not a single source can independently confirm any single attack. As far as we can tell, Press TV’s reports of drone strikes are false. In the words of one senior United Nations official: ‘Press TV is not a reliable source. It exaggerates and openly fabricates reports.’

By November, the TV station had become so complacent that it began cutting and pasting village names and casualty numbers into pre-prepared copy. At least four reports state identically, apart from casualty numbers and location, that:

‘Somali tribal elders, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Press TV that the remote-controlled aerial vehicles fired several missiles at X village…’

Certainly many people are dying in Somalia as a result of ongoing chaos. It may be that some or even most of the reported casualties in Press TV’s reports have died violent deaths. But US drones do not appear to have been the cause.

Why does this matter?Well, the US does carry out drone strikes in Somalia. And there is credible evidence of US Special Forces operating inside Somalia for the past eight years. Multiple US attacks (for example using airstrikes, cruise missiles or ground operations) have killed alleged militants. And from June 2011, the US added armed drones to its regional arsenal – with a small number of lethal strikes so far identified.

‘Press TV is not a reliable source. It exaggerates and openly fabricates reports.’

Senior United Nations official

The US target is militant organisation al-Shabab, which controls much of the centre and south of the country. According to the Pentagon, the group is increasingly collaborating with Al Qaeda in nearby Yemen. Both countries have seen a marked rise in US covert attacks in recent months.

President Obama is moving away from the recent US model of tens of thousands of occupying troops on the ground. Instead elite Special Forces and the CIA – backed by an ever-growing fleet of lethal drones – will project US force.

Yet these covert operations are still officially denied. There is no public accountability – and precious little evidence of private accountability either. When NATO forces bombed two Pakistani military posts recently an inquiry was ordered. We will learn at least something of the truth.

But when a CIA or Special Forces drone strike kills civilians, as does happen, we hear nothing. No compensation has ever been paid to victims. No inquiry has ever been held that we are aware of.

Credible journalism is crucial if we are to hold those fighting the covert war to account. Every time Press TV issues another untenable claim of ‘dozens killed by a US assassination drone’, it reduces accountability by further obscuring the evidence.

Iranian TV station ‘faked’ Somali deaths by US drones

Published

December 2, 2011

Written by

Chris Woods and Emma Slater

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Press TV claims at least 383 Somali civilians have been killed by US drone attacks.

An Iranian TV station appears to have faked dozens of accounts of US drone strikes in Somalia which it says have killed hundreds of civilians.

Press TV, which was fined £100,000 by Ofcom on Thursday after the station hid the fact that a 2009 ‘interviewee’ was being forcibly detained in Iran, has reported the deaths of more than 1,370 people in drone strikes in Somalia since September this year, of which 383 are categorised as civilians.

But research by the Bureau, published in the Guardian, has found no evidence of the alleged 1,370 fatalities, stemming from 56 claimed drone strikes.

Highly suspectThe first known lethal US drone strike in Somalia occurred on June 23 2011. A small number of similar attacks appear to have taken place since then, possibly in conjunction with operations by the French and Kenyan militaries.

The Pentagon does not comment on drone strikes, so there are no official figures for the numbers of civilian deaths. For years, the US has been carrying out other covert missions in Somalia, but started using armed drones in Somalia in June.

However the number of strikes reported by Press TV are questionable.

On September 15 2011, Press TV reported that US drone attacks on the outskirts of Kismayo town, Somalia, had killed nine women and children.

‘Press TV does have a penchant for exaggeration: in the past they have published conflict reports which, in reality, never occurred.’Tony Burns, Somali charity SAACID

It was the first of many claims of drone strike civilian deaths in Somalia. No photographic or video evidence has ever been shown in support. At least four reports are identical in all but place name and casualty numbers, and sources are only named in four of the 56 ‘drone strike’ reports.

The Bureau has been unable to identify sources Hassan Ali and Colonel Aden Dheere, described as “Somali military officials” or Mohamud Abdirahman, an “eyewitness”, despite lodging a request with the Somali Government and with Press TV’s Iranian HQ.

‘No place to hide’: Speaking up for armed drones

Published

November 21, 2011

Written by

Chris Woods

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

As US under-secretary of defense in the early 1990s, Major General Kenneth Israel was one of the first to see the potential of combat drones. Now a vice-president of arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin, he was in London recently to chair a conference on UAVs, where he spoke to the Bureau.

How did armed drones come about?

This is the tenth year anniversary of putting weapons on unmanned systems. That was not a serendipitous decision, it was there because we have tried to change the paradigm in terms of separating operations and intelligence and make them seamless. So now we don’t talk about ops and intelligence, we talk about the ops, intel symphony, of having them working together. And it’s hard to tell where intelligence begins and ends and then where operations begin and end. I’ll give you an example [of how it used to be] – Zarqawi, killed in 2006. We had 600 hours of ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] looking exactly at what all the indicators were in terms of his patterns of life, where he visited, basically what his behaviour profile was. But the actual killing was not done by a UAV, it was done by two F16s dropping a JDAM [‘Bunker Buster’ bomb].

HVTs [high value targets] were beginning to understand that there was a gap, a lapse, they had about 5 to 10 minutes when they could do something and move out of the area because there was no weapon system. But now we’ve changed that, by coupling a weapons system with an ISR asset, so that now every sensor should be a shooter, and every shooter should be a sensor. So what we have now done is change the dynamic in our favour. And when I say in our favour, in the Coalition’s favour, in terms of basically being able to respond immediately to a lethal intention with a lethal response, if and when it is required.

You’re described as one of the fathers of the modern drone – does it surprise you how ubiquitous they’ve become?

Our country, our ally countries, will never go back to a pre-911 condition in terms of how we respond to extremis threats. Evil is real – your ability to respond to real evil is part of every individual nation’s response. To me, if your tactic is to wait until the vulnerability period of time and then at the moment of weakness to execute your decision to kill, to strike, to do some damage, we’ve taken that away, there’s no place to hide. And the fact that we now have persistence, which UAVs provide, that we can keep airborne assets up 24 hours a day and the fact that they are now armed with Hellfire, JBU-12 and -38 bombs, we can even drop them by GPS capability or with lasers. We now can very precisely aspire to any kind of spur of the moment attack at all times of the day or night. There is no place to hide and there is no time for anybody to take a cheap shot. We have to be on guard 100% of the time. The adversaries only have to get it right once. So what we’re trying to do is say, ‘The cost of getting it right once is so high now, that it would discourage anybody trying to do so.’

Will there come a point when everyone has armed UAVs – including our traditional and non-traditional enemies?

At some point in time we will have UAV-on-UAV warfare. It is not something I fear….

The bottom line is networked forces will always outfight non-networked forces, and so if we see a renegade or a low tech adversary get their hands on a UAV, what are they going to do with it? I mean there are things you can do to neutralise that and I can tell you we are continuing to advance the state of the art. Yes it’s something I think most modern countries are preparing to deal with. So that is not an area of concern – we’re prepared for it and we’re going to stay ahead of any potential adversary fielding that kind of capability.

And I will trade a printed circuit board for the life of a British soldier, an American soldier, Italian soldier, [and in] any other NATO country using UAVs with weapons today, for an extremist like Awlaki, Zarqawi

It’s argued that there is no risk in the platform, no risk to the pilots versus those on the battlefield – even that drones are cowardly.

I would not say it’s a strong argument, I would say it’s an old argument that has resurfaced. Tell me the morality that was involved in Dresden. The Germans had zero air defence capability. And we went ahead and bombed Dresden. Take a look at the bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, we still did that…. So when we say that everything has to be reduced to a knife fight before there can be an element of morality, that’s not the issue at all. The issue is, let’s try to reduce all the countries with drones to a lowest common denominator, because what is the morality in an IED? Is there any difference in indiscriminately using an IED in terms of giving someone who’s about to be blown up by an IED indications and warning? A fair fight? Is the implementation of an IED a morality issue? I have not heard one, there has not been one article written about the morality of IEDs. And the reason there hasn’t been one article is because nobody wants to raise it as an issue. I raise it as an issue to say that the unmanned system with a weapon is as moral as an IED being implemented in an area where you know civilians are going to be innocently, asked to give their lives.

What of the concern that technology is running ahead of our ability to manage it? That drones are defining modern war, for example with the recent killing of Awlaki, or of labelling civilians as combatants? Are you pushing too far ahead?

When you talk about the element of surprise in warfare, typically you want to prevent the element of surprise in warfare because whoever has that, typically gets the upper hand.… Does technology mean… there’s an unfair advantage in warfare? Yeah, there is! If we had not dropped the atomic bomb would it have been worth, there are various estimates but the loss of 500,000 US lives to go in and take over the homeland of Japan? It was a very courageous decision made by President Truman and the National Security Adviser. The fact that there was, the Germans used V1 and V2 weapons starting June 6 1944 lasted a year, 10,000 innocently killed Brits, no defences. And that isn’t brought up either in terms of a moral outrage.

So to me, this is kind of like, here’s an opportunity to say what we can’t win on the battlefield, let’s see if we can’t win it in the court of public opinion and in the legal argument, what we cannot do…

So I don’t see how a few should be allowed to use any argument they can to try to shift what the element of surprise is and what they’re focused on right now because it seems to have a certain, I didn’t want to say sympathy but awareness that if we just focus on this technology, maybe it will force America, which uses UAVs with weapons more than any other country, to rethink or to not be allowed to continue to use it.

But I would say this, I am very much in favour of the continuation of using unmanned systems with precision weapons to fight the asymmetrical threat that we’re fighting today because it’s the perfect weapon. We have people that are unreasonable, we have people that do not follow the laws of armed conflict, and since you are in that kind of a conflict you might as well have a weapon system that if you lose it, you do not lose a life, you are losing a printed circuit board. And I will trade a printed circuit board for the life of a British soldier, an American soldier, Italian soldier, [and in] any other NATO country using UAVs with weapons today, for an extremist like Awlaki, Zarqawi, Gadaffi, because in his 25-vehicle convoy the very first vehicle that was taken out, was taken out by a UAV, so it stopped the convoy. And how about Osama bin Laden? They were there and part of it.

Go back to the Nuremberg Trials. It wasn’t a country that was the problem, it was the leadership, and so what we’re attacking is the leadership of some extremists and trying to neutralise them and they have an option to stop what they’re doing and reform and get back to the norms of a civilised world and society.

This is an edited interview

‘We have to do better’: Protester speaks out

Published

November 21, 2011

Written by

Chris Woods and Emma Slater

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Chris Cole is an activist and campaigner, pushing for accountability on armed drones. He writes the respected blog Drone Wars UK, which earlier this year uncovered details of the first civilian deaths caused by UK drones. Along with others he demonstrated outside the Unmanned Aircraft Systems conference held in London last week.

The conference appears to be mostly benign. Inside right now, NASA is talking about scientific applications for drones, there’s very little military kit on show. Why the demonstration?

We’re here because we want to challenge the growing use of armed drones around the world. There’s almost a drone strike, not every week but every day. And it’s happening outside the public arena, there’s very little public awareness of it, and very little public accountability for it. And it’s almost as though it’s acceptable and normal, and we want to come here today to say no, the public are against drones. One of the sessions here is to ‘overcome the public hysteria surrounding drones’. And the MoD has said they need to challenge the ‘perception issue’ of drones, because there’s an instinctive reaction among the public against drones, I think…. We don’t accept this idea of remote risk-free warfare as the drone industry likes to call it. It isn’t risk free. There are hundreds if not thousands of civilian casualties of drones. The worry is drones will make war more likely in the future. We’ve seen the US this year use drones in six countries, six different conflicts simultaneously, and many military experts say that simply wouldn’t have been possible without the use of drones. But the fear is, if there is no risk, if there is no cost through using unmanned systems, then their use will only increase and we’ll see a lot more warfare in the future.

Chris Cole of Drone Wars UK – photo by Chris Woods

Why has the armed drone become so widespread?

The rise of the drone – really it’s for a number of reasons. Technological, with their ability to condense and transmit huge amounts of data wirelessly, and the availability of military satellites. Economic reasons – drones are much cheaper than traditional manned or piloted aircraft. Drones cost about $10m or $11m – Reaper drones – a traditional fast jet would be about $60m. Political reasons – ever since the Vietnam war the public is even more reluctant to go to war when they see body bags and coffins come back. There’s been a real push to make undertaking war and launching attacks risk-free. These are the claims that these guys in [the conference] are using about drones – risk-free warfare. And we of course know that that’s simply not true. Risk free to those who are operating drones, but there are many many victims of drone strikes – hundreds, maybe thousands, of victims of drone strikes.

It’s important to realise that drones are used in three different ways. The first way is just the same way as manned aircraft. If you’re about to launch an attack or come under attack, you use drones or manned aircraft as cover.

It’s the second two ways, the other two ways that drones are being used, that are really causing civilian casualties and eroding human rights and civil rights. The first is through persistent presence, as they call it. The eyes in the sky where drones are loitering over an area or a compound or a town for days or even weeks, looking for what they call ‘targets of opportunity’. Looking at suspicious behaviour. And of course, what constitutes suspicious behaviour?

We’ve seen the US this year use drones in six countries, six different conflicts simultaneously, and many military experts say that simply wouldn’t have been possible without the use of drones. But the fear is, if there is no risk, if there is no cost through using unmanned systems, then their use will only increase and we’ll see a lot more warfare in the future.

Just this week it was great to see a protest – very brave people came out in the Yemeni capital Sana’a to protest against drone strikes and remember the young 16-year-old, Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki, who was killed in a drone strike two weeks ago, the son of Anwar Al-Awlaki, who was targeted for assassination.

There are constant protests in Pakistan, there are protests in the United States just this week, or two weeks ago, 38 people went on trial for undertaking civil disobedience at Hancock air force base…And here in the UK protests are growing. So the task is to resist this future of drone wars. By being here today we’re doing this, and we must continue to resist the rise of the drone.

But British soldiers are asking for more drones, our military feels safer, more secure with a drone overhead.

The best way to secure our troops is not to have them engaged in battle. When we’re bringing this technology in, if there’s more warfare it’s not going to make our soldiers more safe. Drones aren’t a solution. They’re billed as this new tool to bring security and safety, not only to our troops but to the public. And the reality is that drones aren’t what they claim to be. We’ve already seen a huge backlash in Pakistan to the drones. And we”ll see that elsewhere. Rather than bringing more security to the world, drones will bring more instability.

Some 50 countries now have drones, there are 800 models on the market – isn’t the genie out of the bottle?

Yes – the legality, the ethics of this are lagging far, far behind. Nobody in the UK seems to be willing to take responsibility for this, certainly nobody globally does except the UN special rapporteur. They put out pleas for discussion and debate on this, yet nothing is done about it. The UK MOD put out their own report looking at the moral and legal and ethical aspect, they too said there needs to be a proper debate and our parliamentarians really need to take this on board. But they just seem to be too frightened to get involved in this issue. They seem to see it as too complicated. And that’s a real worry, when the technology and the military strategy is outpacing the morality and the ethics.

The best way to secure our troops is not to have them engaged in battle. Drones aren’t a solution.

The conference chair General Israel says that it is the nature of warfare for events to run ahead of policy. And that the military will always seek military advantage. Doesn’t he have a point?

I think it’s our responsibility to say no, to say that we have to gain control of this, because we are already seeing, you can’t just blithely say that’s the way things are when hundreds, maybe thousands of civilians are being killed, as we’re risking more and more warfare. We can’t just accept that’s the nature of the beast. We have to really challenge this if we want to make the world a more secure place. And that’s what we’re trying to do here, to bring peace and security to the world. And if the military and industry are saying ‘That’s not possible, we’ve got to seek military advantage, that’s the way things will always be’, then no. We have to do better than that.

Deaths bring to six total Britons killed by CIA drones

Published

November 18, 2011

Written by

Chris Woods

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Two British nationals are believed to have been killed in a US drone attack in Pakistan, family and friends of the men have told the Press Association.

According to PA, Ibrahim Adam and Mohammed Azmir were killed in Waziristan three months or more ago. Their deaths were confirmed to PA by other sources.

According to the Bureau’s own data at least six British nationals have been killed since 2008 in CIA strikes. Among them is Azmir’s brother, Abdul Jabbar, killed in a US drone strike on October 4 2010.

Britons known to have died in CIA strikes in Pakistan

Nov 22 2008	Rashid Rauf,a British Al Qaeda-linked operative and a suspect in a 2006 plane-bombing plot, reported killed
Oct 4 2010	British ‘Taliban supporter’ Abdul Jabbar, brother of Mohammed Azmir, killed with nine others
Dec 10 2010	Two British Muslim converts, known only as Mr Stephen, aka Abu Bakr and Mr Dearsmith known as Mansoor Ahmed, killed in an attack on a car
Unknown – Sept 2011	Ibrahim Adam and Mohammed Azmir killed in an attack somewhere in Waziristan, according to families

Source: Bureau data

Ibrahim Adam’s father has reportedly confirmed that his 24-year old son was killed. He absconded from a control order in May 2007, and the family had not heard from him in a long time, according to reports.

Azmir, aged 37, was the subject of a UK Treasury order freezing his assets in February 2010. PA reported a close friend of Azmir’s family as saying: ‘They have taken it very badly – this is the second son who has been killed in a drone strike.’

Democracy Now! interviews Bureau reporter

Published

November 9, 2011

Written by

The Bureau

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

On Monday October 31, 16-year-old Tariq Aziz was killed in a US drone strike near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Three days earlier, Bureau reporter Pratap Chatterjee met the teenager at a conference in Islamabad, where local people came together to discuss the impact of U.S. drone strikes in their communities.

Related article: Bureau reporter meets 16-year-old three days before US drone kills him.

In this interview, Chatterjee speaks to independent non-profit US program Democracy Now about how he came to meet Aziz, and the Bureau’s major investigation into the CIA-led US covert drone war.

The interview transcript follows:

JUAN GONZALEZ: We turn now to look at the secret U.S. drone war in Pakistan. Late last month, a group of Pakistanis met in Islamabad to discuss the impact of U.S. drone strikes in their communities. One of the attendees was a boy named Tariq Aziz, who had volunteered to learn photography to begin documenting drone strikes near his home. Within 72 hours of the meeting, Tariq Aziz himself was killed in a U.S. drone strike. He was 16 years old. His 12-year-old cousin was also killed.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by Pratap Chatterjee, a reporter for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, director of CorpWatch. He was in Pakistan this month and went to the news conference, where Tariq Aziz was just days before he was killed. Pratap is back now in London.

Pratap, tell us what took place in Islamabad, how you came to meet Tariq Aziz, and then what happened.

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Amy, a group here in London called Reprieve, which is a legal charity, and a group in Islamabad by the name of the Foundation for Fundamental Rights worked with Waziristan elders to create a Waziristan Grand Jirga, in which they brought together elders and families of those that had been killed in the drone strikes over the last five years in northern Pakistan. So they met at the Margala Hotel, and this jirga was held on Friday the 28th.

And there were probably 35 people, who were families, relatives of people who were killed, including—among them was Tariq Aziz, whom I met briefly, who was 16. And he had lost his cousin 18 months ago. His cousin’s name is Aswar Ullah, who was killed when he was riding a motorbike near their home village of Norak.

So, at that meeting, the elders, as is typical in a jirga, met to discuss what had happened. They adopted a resolution condemning the strikes and then went to a rally organized by Imran Khan. And Tariq Aziz traveled with all of us to the rally. There were lawyers. There were reporters. It was an open meeting, an open rally in front of the parliament in Islamabad.

After that, Tariq Aziz and the other attendees returned to their homes. And 72 hours later, when Tariq was traveling with his 12-year-old cousin to go pick up his aunt on Monday morning, he was killed in a drone strike.

AMY GOODMAN: He had expressed concern, at the news conference, of going home?

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Well, Amy, he was not at the news conference, but at the jirga. I think every one of the people there were very aware of the situation that they were in, because in every village around Mir Ali, Miranshah, there are drones, often 24 hours a day. So people were aware of the threat to them. Yet they volunteered—Tariq, in particular, because he, at his age in that remote community, was familiar with computers, was excited about the idea of being able to document the civilian casualties. There’s a photographer who’s been doing that for three years—Noor Behram is his name—and he’s been doing a lot of documentation. Tariq was one of the young men who had volunteered to help him out and to be able to document, you know, the devastation that had happened in their own family.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Pratap, he is now one of about 175 children that have been killed in these drone strikes in recent years in Pakistan? And what about the rest of civilian casualties?

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Exactly, Juan. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, where I work, has created a database of everybody that has been killed since these drone strikes began a number of years ago under Bush. Eighty-five percent of them have taken place under Barack Obama. And we have used the most conservative counting methodology that we can. We only record a death if it is confirmed by multiple sources. So if it’s reported by AP and then re-reported by the New York Times, we don’t count it. It has to be reported by multiple sources. And using that methodology, we have counted over 2,300 people that have been killed, and as many as 3,000. And when we have found an individual below the age of 18—a child, in other words—we have identified them separately. And we have documented at least 175 children, together with the number of women that have been killed in these strikes, that have been casualties of this secret war in Afghanistan. So, Waheed Khan, age 12, and Tariq Aziz, age 16, were the 174th and 175th documented child casualties in this war.

One of the things that John Brennan and many people in the administration are fond of saying is, “These are all militants.” Well, I question how a 12-year-old could be a militant in this war. But more than that, the very fact that I personally was able to meet them in an open, public meeting in Islamabad, I question as to whether the CIA is really attempting to identify people before they kill them, because if this person was a militant, they could well have met them in Islamabad, as did hundreds of other people. And at the press conference, there were—I counted 23 cameras. At the jirga, there were a dozen cameras. There are thousands of people in the streets of Islamabad. It would have been so easy for the CIA, the ISI, to come question these kids, to have taken them aside, even put them in jail or interrogated them, send them to Guantánamo. But instead they chose to kill them. This, to my mind, suggests that these—their information is erroneous, that there is collateral damage. And these are children that they are killing.

AMY GOODMAN: Pratap, I’m looking at Clive Stafford Smith’s piece, who heads up Reprieve, that gathered that group together. He said, “I told the elders [that] the only way to convince the American people of their suffering was to accumulate physical proof that civilians had been killed… Tariq stepped forward. He volunteered to gather proof if it would help to protect his family from future harm. We told him to think about it some more before moving forward.” I ask about the importance of documenting evidence. That was Clive Stafford Smith talking about the 16-year-old Tariq Aziz, who then went home to do that documentation and was killed with his 12-year-old cousin.

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Amy, one of the problems here is that because Waziristan is inaccessible to Western reporters, and indeed even Pakistani reporters from the cities, when the CIA or the Pakistani government, Pakistani military, says they have killed militants, high-level targets, there is no way to prove otherwise. So the only way that’s possible is to gather physical evidence. At last week in Islamabad, in fact continuing as we speak, there is an exhibit of seven fragments of Hellfire missiles that I have seen and photographed myself, with serial numbers on them, that local villagers have picked up and can date to the dates of these attacks. So there’s physical evidence that those missiles, with those serial numbers, have hit communities in Waziristan.

They have—Noor Behram has been very meticulous in taking photographs, as soon as a drone strike takes place, of individuals that have been killed. But these strikes take place over a very large area. And the only way to be able to prove that the CIA is killing innocent people is to muster as many people as possible, give them cameras, and try and arrange to prove that the CIA is wrong. And that is what Tariq Aziz was trying to do, that is what a number of people have been trying to do, because nobody believes people from Waziristan. All they believe, all the information they get, is from the CIA. And that information is clearly wrong, as I have experienced myself.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Pratap, what is the reaction, if any, of the Pakistani government to these continued killings of civilians in their country?

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Well, the Pakistani government speaks, like the U.S. government, with many voices. By and large, they are silent. They sometimes claim that the U.S. government is doing this without their own permission. But there are also military officials in Pakistan who have claimed that every person that has been killed has been a militant. And this is part of the problem, is that even though, you know, the government supposedly is not involved in this, there is a nod and wink going on, where they are working with the CIA, they are working with the White House, in order to be able to ensure that, you know, there is no culpability.

Here’s the thing. In Pakistan, if somebody is killed, just as in the U.S., we would—the state would intervene and investigate the murder. In Pakistan, the family can sue. A blood money can be paid. And in fact, the U.S. government, in many countries, has done this. It’s called solatia payments. In Afghanistan, in Iraq, the U.S. has compensated people that they have killed by accident. In Pakistan, that does not take place. The Pakistani government, the U.S. government, the local courts have not intervened.

And so, Shahzad Akbar, who’s a lawyer with the Foundation for Fundamental Rights in Pakistan, is trying to bring justice to these communities. He has worked with a journalist by the name of Kareem Khan—and Kareem, in fact, has lost his son and his brother in drone strikes—and he brought a lawsuit last December against the CIA. He named Jonathan Banks, the head of the CIA, who then fled the country. Today Shahzad is working to try and bring these kinds of lawsuits against the Pakistani government, against the CIA, to try and get compensation for these communities, because the Pakistani government is not stepping up to the plate. There is one politician today, Imran Khan, who is trying to change this. And he has said that he is going to, if he is elected, to try and bring justice and to deny the U.S. government permission to kill innocent people in Pakistan.

AMY GOODMAN: He is the famous cricketer who conceivably will run for president, is that right, of Pakistan? And people can go to our website at democracynow.org to see the different interviews that we’ve done with him as he has come to the United States. Pratap?

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Imran Khan is running for the 2013 elections. Until recently, he was actually considered kind of a marginal player. But interestingly, the day the rally that Tariq Aziz attended, perhaps 2,000 people went to that Imran Khan rally. Nawaz Sharif had 35,000 people. But the following day in Lahore, Imran Khan had over 100,000 people, some believe as many as 500,000 people, attending. This is very significant. People are fed up with the drone strikes. They’re fed up with the corruption in Pakistan. And the young people are rallying behind Imran Khan, because they see him as somebody who’s not part of the establishment. Whether or not he can change what the U.S. government does in Pakistan is a question we will only be able to answer if he is elected. But there is certainly widespread dissatisfaction among the young communities. There is a tremendous surge of support for Imran Khan in Waziristan, where, you know, people are fed up with the politicians that they have elected and have sent to Islamabad.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you very much, Pratap, for being with us. Pratap Chatterjee, a reporter for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and director of CorpWatch, an NGO that tracks corporate malfeasance. Pratap Chatterjee, speaking to us from London.

Bureau Recommends: US flies secret drones from Ethiopia base

Published

October 28, 2011

Written by

The Bureau

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Al-Shabaab fighters in Somalia

The Bureau Recommends an article in the Washington Post, which reveals that the US Air Force has been secretly flying armed Reaper drones from a remote airbase in Ethiopia.

According to the report, millions of dollars have been spent on upgrading the airfield in Arba Minch, which now houses a fleet of drones that can be equipped with deadly Hellfire missiles. The base is located 300 miles south of Addis Ababa and 600 miles east of the border with Somalia.

Details of this Ethiopian base follow revelations by the Washington Post last month that the US is building a ‘constellation of secret drone bases’ in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. It is understood that the Reapers began flying missions over Somalia earlier this year, targeting the al-Shabaab militant group who are linked to al-Qaeda.

Related article: Analysis: Has CIA changed its strategy in Pakistan drone war?

Confirming the operations from Arba Minch, Master Sgt. James Fisher of the 17th Air Force said on Thursday that the aim was ‘to provide operation and technical support for our security assistance programs’ and that drone flights ‘will continue as long as the government of Ethiopia welcomes our cooperation on the varied security programs’.

To read the article in full click here.

The Bureau is conducting an ongoing investigation into all CIA drone activity. Click here to read the Covert Drone War study. For regular updates on drones and all our other stories, sign up to our newsletter, here.

Analysis: The Covert Drone War

Published

August 10, 2011

Written by

Iain Overton

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In a recent edition of The Times a correspondent writes: ‘In a war in which information and perception play as important a role as tanks and jets, the images of wooden coffins on the shoulders of grieving men will make uncomfortable viewing in London and Paris.’

The journalist, Deborah Haynes, is reporting from a frontline town in Libya. But she could, if you ignore the comment about wooden coffins, be writing about any recent war the West has embroiled itself in. Bosnia, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan. All subject to fierce media scrutiny.

This scrutiny is a problem for any developed nation pursuing war. Keeping the public on the government’s side is as important, in many respects, as supplying the troops on the ground. To this end, governments maintain powerful PR operations during wartime and beyond.

Wars today are won and lost as much in the battle for information as they are in numbers killed. The drone war is largely secretive and our study shows that there are some serious questions to be asked. Numbers have to be collated in such an age.

Journalists are embedded and vetted. Press conferences carefully regulated. There are very few photos of US body bags coming home. War is presented, where possible, as one where the enemy is quickly routed and ‘our’ troops are kept alive, healthy and well-fed.

So ideal is this image that warfare itself is being molded to adhere to it. And drone warfare has rapidly become the poster child for this type of fighting.

Drone strikes are largely not televised, as they happen in areas no film crew given western ‘credibility’ operates. No US soldiers are killed. It is ‘clean, precise and targeted’. And, compared to having actual soldiers on the ground, it is comparatively cheap too. Ideal, really.

So ideal that the President of the US can even use drones in a joke about defending the honour of his daughter.

But it is too easy to accept this idealised image. The Bureau’s research, the result of many months of persistent analysis, lays bare the reality of the drone war.

Drone strikes are not discriminating. They kill children. They injure civilians. And they are on the increase.

White House correspondent’s dinner 2010/Flickr-US State Department

This warfare is not clean. It is not precise.

Naturally, the evidence we have gathered will attract criticism as well as coverage. The PR machine of government might dismiss it or ignore it completely. When detractors engage, they will likely say one of three things. That our facts are reported elsewhere; they aren’t ‘new’. That our methodology is flawed. And that we act as biased apologists for militants in Pakistan.

In one sense, this data is not new. It is taken from a wide range of credible and existing sources. What is new is that we have taken it from a much wider range than some of the existing organisations that seek to cover this area. And we have done it with considerable resources. We have followed up stories to see if figures rise or fall over time. We have recorded also civilians amongst the numbers. And we have listed the numbers of injured. The other two major organisations that look at drone attacks have failed to do these things.

No US soldiers are killed. It is ‘clean, precise and targeted’. And, compared to having actual soldiers on the ground, it is comparatively cheap too. Ideal, really.

Our transparent methodological approach, open to peer review, is based on the same used by the widely-quoted organization Iraq Body Count. To dismiss ours is to dismiss the approach of many others.

Finally, any criticism that we are somehow working ‘for the other side’ does not bear up to scrutiny. On occasion we have been more conservative on the number of civilian dead in single attacks, despite the international press reporting otherwise. We have also identified individuals previously reported as being civilians as actually having been militants. And we have offered an open invitation to the US security forces to engage with us if they see something significantly wrong in our study. If they satisfactorily prove their case, we will amend our data.

Pakistani villagers at funeral of drone victim – December 29 2010- AP

Most of all, though, we may well get the quotidian response – ‘Didn’t we know this already?’

This sort of reaction to our story is dangerous. Wars today are won and lost as much in the battle for information as they are in numbers killed. The drone war is largely secretive and our study shows unequivocally that there are some serious questions to be asked. Numbers have to be collated in such an age.

Clearly civilians and children are being killed. As such, one has to ask whether these drone attacks are radicalising those who have lost loved ones as much as they are ‘taking out’ militants.

We show that they are not discriminating. As such, those forces involved in their use may well be in breach of the Geneva Conventions.

And, importantly, we are providing an unbiased, independent and journalistic examination of a war. A war that has hitherto been manipulated by governments, spun by thinktanks and often ignored by a media that– without pictures – finds it hard to report on the horrors of what is really unfolding in Pakistan.

Addendum: Since publishing our data, an online survey found that 100% of those who responded said that the drone war in Pakistan by the CIA is not working.

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Somalia targeted in US ‘drone war’

Published

June 30, 2011

Written by

Chris Woods

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

US Special Forces can call on Navy assets in the region. Photo,US Department of Defense

A military drone operated by elite US Special Forces has targeted al Qaeda-linked militants in Somalia, killing several people. The attack marks the first confirmed hostile use of drones in the east African country.

Bureau research suggests unmanned surveillance craft have been used over Somalia for some time as part of a broader military campaign. In October 2009 a US drone was reportedly shot down over the south of the country. On previous occasions the US has allegedly flown combat missions against Somali targets from a base in eastern Ethiopia.

According to the Washington Post a drone has struck at two leaders of the al-Shabab militant group, declared a terrorist organisation by the US and others. The 23 June attack in Kismayo, southern Somalia – originally reported as a helicopter strike – also killed ‘many’ foreign fighters.

The unnamed leaders are said to have ‘direct ties’ to US-born militant cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Now based in Yemen, Awlaki has been linked to that country’s al Qaeda movement and to a number of terrorist plots against the US and its allies.

Recent US military actions in Somalia*

January 7 2007 – US gunship attacks militant convoy killing 10

January 22 2007 – Reported JSOC airstrike against militants

June 1 2007 – US cruise missile strike kills up to 10 alleged militants, including reportedly from Eritrea, Yemen, UK, Sweden and US

March 3 2008 – Cruise missile attack from US ships. Six die, though not apparent target.

May 2008 – US naval-launched cruise missiles kill Aden Hashi Ayro, head of Al Shabab

September 14 2009 – US Special Forces launch helicopter raid into Somalia, killing Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, wanted in connection with Mombassa attacks

October 19 2009 – US drone reported shot down over southern Somalia

April 6 2011 – Airstrike kills an al-Shabab commander

June 23 2011 – Drone strike kills “many”, wounds two al-Shabab leaders

* The Bureau’s analysis is based on credible reports. However, given the covert nature of US operations this should be viewed as a partial list.

JSOC campaign extends to Somalia

As in Yemen, US military operations against al-Shabab and other militant groups in Somalia are carried out by the Joint Special Operations Command. JSOC is made up of ultra-elite, so-called Tier One Special Forces units that were also responsible for the recent killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

JSOC has its own helicopter and drone fleets. It also has access to US Navy assets in the region. Analysis by the Bureau shows that in recent years JSOC has employed cruise missiles, AC-130 gunships and helicopter assaults in Somalia against al-Qaeda linked targets.

In September 2009, for example, a helicopter-borne JSOC raid reportedly killed a senior militant. After a lull of 18 months JSOC activity appears again to be on the rise. In April an airstrike reportedly killed a local al-Shabab commander.

Last week’s strike is further indicator of a significant escalation in US actions in the region. The Bureau recently reported on a major surge in JSOC drone strikes against militants in Yemen. Somalia becomes the sixth recorded nation to be at the receiving end of US drone strikes – after Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan and Libya.

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