US Forces in Somalia

Library image of an armed Reaper drone, December 2019 (US Air Force/ Senior Sergeant Haley Stevens)

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Published

August 3, 2015

Written by

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

African Union peacekeepers liberated towns from al Shabaab control last month, with US air support (AU UN IST PHOTO/Tobin Jones taken in 2014)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

i. Key points:

    As many strikes hit Afghanistan in July (17) as in January to June combined No strikes hit Pakistan for the second calendar month this year, now 56 days without incident Number of confirmed drone strikes in Yemen in 2015 reaches 15 Unprecedented intense action as at least six strikes hit Somalia while US provides African Union peacekeepers close air support

ii. The Bureau’s numbers:

Recorded US drone strikes to date

Pakistan(June 2004 to date)

Yemen

(Nov 2002 to date)*

Somalia

(Jan 2007 to date)*

Afghanistan

(Jan 2015 to date)*

US drone strikes 419 102-122 15-19 29-61
Total reported killed 2,467-3,976 471-700 25-108 308-677
Civilians reported killed 423-965 65-97 0-5 14-39
Children reported killed 172-207 8-9 0 0-20
Reported injured 1,152-1,731 92-221 2-7 18-31

 

Recorded US air and cruise missile strikes to date

Pakistan(June 2004 to date)**

Yemen(Nov 2002 to date)*

Somalia(Jan 2007 to date)*

Afghanistan(Jan 2015 to date)

US air & cruise missile strikes N/A 15-72 8-11 5
Total reported killed N/A 156-365 40-141 36-46
Civilians reported killed N/A 68-99 7-47 0
Children reported killed N/A 26-28 0-2 0
People reported injured N/A 15-102 11-21 5-6

 

* The Bureau’s estimates are based predominantly on open sources information like media reports. Sometimes it is not possible to reconcile details in different reports. This is why use ranges for our record of casualties and, in the case of Yemen and Somalia, our strike tallies.

** The US has only carried out drone strikes in Pakistan.

iii. Bureau analysis for July 2015:

As many US air strikes were reported in Afghanistan in July as in the preceding six months combined. This high intensity bombardment came as the CIA goes 56 days without carrying out a strike across the border in Pakistan.

The US continued its campaign in Yemen despite the ongoing civil war tearing the country apart. And there appears to have been a change of tactics in Somalia with six strikes targeting al Shabaab fighters about to attack African Union peacekeepers.

MONTHLY REPORT BY COUNTRY

1. Pakistan

Pakistan: CIA drone strikes
All strikes, July 2015 All strikes, 2015 to date All strikes, 2004 to date
CIA drone strikes 0 11 419
Total reported killed 0 51-72 2,467-3,976
Civilians reported killed 0 2-5 423-965
Children reported killed 0 0 172-207
Total reported injured 0 19-25 1,152-1,731

 

There were no CIA strikes reported in Pakistan in July – the second calendar month of 2015 without a recorded attack after February.

With the last strike on June 6, the pause in attacks has stretched to 56 days, in stark contrast to the intensity of air attacks just across the border in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province, which abuts Pakistan’s tribal areas.

While US drone attacks may be on hiatus in Pakistan, the Pakistan military has continued its offensive in the tribal areas. These operations have reportedly pushed Taliban fighters into Afghanistan, possibly leaving the drones with a paucity of targets in Pakistan and a glut in Nangarhar.

So far in 2015, the Shawal area of North Waziristan has been the focus of US air attacks. Nine of the 11 strikes reported this year have hit this mountainous, thickly wooded territory that straddles the North and South Waziristan border, and the Pakistan-Afghanistan boundary.

This terrain makes it a difficult place for the Pakistan army to operate. The military had held off going into Shawal until the first week of July. The advancing troops may have pushed Taliban fighters and their families across the border into Afghanistan, emptying a formerly target rich environment for the CIA’s drones.

2. Afghanistan

Afghanistan: confirmed US drone and air strikes
All strikes, July 2015 All strikes, 2015 to date
All US strikes 17 34
Total reported killed 216-326 344-506
Civilians reported killed 0 14-39
Children reported killed 0 0-18
Total reported injured 7-12 23-28

 

Fourteen confirmed US strikes hit the eastern province of Nangarhar last month with three more strike reported elsewhere in Afghanistan.

At least 216 people were reportedly killed in July – more than in any month since January 1.

The Bureau has managed to record casualty data on a fraction of the strikes reported in monthly aggregates by the US military. The air force has flown 153 “sorties with at least one weapon release” between January 1 and the end of June, at an average of 26 per month. However the intensity increased in June – rising to 49 sorties from 21 in May.

The increased tempo of US operations could reflect a growing concern the Afghan military is struggling to keep the resurgent Taliban at bay. Nangarhar in particular has seen considerable levels of violence, potentially a consequence of Taliban fighters fleeing Pakistan’s nearby tribal agencies, before the advancing Pakistan army.

The US military is only supposed to be carrying out counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan, leaving the counter-insurgency work to the Afghan army and police.

When the US does comment on air attacks in Afghanistan, it generally says the strike was carried out against “individuals threatening the force”. It is not clear whether this is a reference to US troops carrying out ground operations who are in need of air support – possibly the US trying to mop up fighters from the various armed terrorist groups that have fled across the border from Pakistan. Or the US could now be providing air support to beleagured Afghan security forces which are struggling to maintain stability.

Afghan forces have been calling on the US for air support. And the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan intelligence agency, said it provided the US with intelligence for a July 7 strike on a group of alleged Islamic State fighters.

A US strike on a Afghan National Army outpost on July 20 provoked outrage in the Afghan senate. Two helicopter gunships killed at least seven Afghan soldiers in Logar province. “The incident happened at a time when there were no clashes in the area and foreign troops had not been asked for help,” according to General Abdul Razziq Sapai, commander of the army brigade in the province.

3. Yemen

Yemen: all confirmed US drone strikes
All strikes, July 2015 All strikes, 2015 to date All strikes, 2002 to date*
All US strikes 3 15-16 102-122
Total reported killed 11-19 50-74 471-700
Civilians reported killed 0 1-3 65-97
Children reported killed 0 1-2 8-9
Total reported injured 0 6 92-221

 

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

Three US drone strikes hit Yemen in July, killing at least 11 people. Two strikes hit Mukalla in the eastern Hadramout province and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP’s) base of operations. The third strike hit in Abyan, Hadramout’s neighbouring province, killing four or five people in a car reportedly driving from Mukalla.

AQAP has been operating out of Mukalla since April when central government forces withdrew from the eastern province.

The US has continued drone operations in Yemen while chaos has engulfed the country. The three attacks in July took the total number of people reported killed in 2015 to 50. There have now been 15 strikes this year, two less than were recorded in all 2014.

Yemen’s civil war ground on throughout July despite attempted ceasefires as fears of a humanitarian crisis grew. The Saudi-led campaign against the Houthi militia which took over the capital last year appeared to gain momentum, with the key southern city of Aden falling to Riyadh-allied forces in the second half of the month. The Washington Post attributed the turnaround – coming after months of airstrikes failed to break the stalemate – to the arrival of Saudi-trained Yemeni fighters on the frontline.

4. Somalia

Somalia: all US drone strikes
All strikes, July 2015 All strikes, 2015 to date All strikes, 2007 to date
All US strikes 6 8-9 15-19
Total reported killed 2-3 7-75 25-108
Civilians reported killed 0 0-4 0-5
Children reported killed 0 0 0
Total reported injured 0 0 2-7

 

At least six US strikes hit Somalia in the space of two or three days after July 15 – an unprecedented frequency of attacks in the Bureau’s records.

One killed two or three people, according to local residents and Somali officials. The death toll from the other five strikes remains unreported. A US spokesman told the Bureau: “We are still assessing the results of the operation and will provide additional information if and when appropriate.”

The strikes appeared to signal a change in tactics from the US. Strikes reported in Somalia have historically been attempts at decapitating al Shabaab, targeting senior members of the group. However the six or more strikes in July were close air support for African Union peacekeepers, as the US spokesman explained: “Over the past week, US forces conducted a series of strikes against al Shabaab, an al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group in Somalia, in defense of Amisom [African Union Mission to Somalia] forces under imminent threat of attack.”

The Amisom troops were advancing on the town of Baardheere which they took after the glut of drone attacks, in later July. Kenyan military reportedly killed 50 in an artillery barrage shortly after the first reported US strike on July 15. There were reports that US forces were involved in the operation.

The US has reportedly moved more drones out to East Africa, according to a senior US official speaking to the LA Times. This is reflected in the greater capacity built into the US drone base in Djibouti, at Chabelley air field, in 2015.

Follow our drones team Jack Serle and Abigail Fielding-Smith on Twitter.

Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project, subscribe to our podcast Drone News, and follow Drone Reads on Twitter to see what our team is reading.

Published

July 1, 2015

Written by

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

President Barack Obama publicly acknowledged a specific drone strike in Pakistan, an unprecedented step. He apologized for killing American Warren Weinstein and Italian Giovanni Lo Porto, two al Qaeda hostages, in a signature strike in Pakistan (Photo: White House)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

i. Key points:

    Signature strikes return to Pakistan and Yemen. First confirmed civilian casualties since 2012 in Pakistan. Drone strikes persist in Yemen despite catastrophic civil war. More than 100 people killed in US air strikes in Afghanistan. Al Shabaab attacks continue in Somalia despite losing leaders in drone strikes.

ii. The Bureau’s numbers:

Recorded US drone strikes to date

Pakistan(June 2004 to date)

Yemen

(Nov 2002 to date)*

Somalia

(Jan 2007 to date)*

Afghanistan

(Jan 2015 to date)

US drone strikes 419 99-119 9-13 13-38
Total reported killed 2,467-3,976 460-681 23-105 99-342
Civilians reported killed 423-965 65-97 0-5 14-42
Children reported killed 172-207 8-9 0 0-20
Reported injured 1,152-1,731 92-221 2-7 18-27

 

Recorded US air and cruise missile strikes to date

Pakistan(June 2004 to date)**

Yemen(Nov 2002 to date)*

Somalia(Jan 2007 to date)*

Afghanistan(Jan 2015 to date)

US air & cruise missile strikes N/A 15-72 8-11 4
Total reported killed N/A 156-365 40-141 29-36
Civilians reported killed N/A 68-99 7-47 0
Children reported killed N/A 26-28 0-2 0
People reported injured N/A 15-102 11-21 0

 

* The Bureau’s estimates are based predominantly on information from open sources like media reports. Sometimes it is not possible to reconcile details in different reports. This is why we use ranges for our record of casualties and, in the case of Yemen and Somalia, our strike tallies.

** In Pakistan the US has only carried out drone strikes.

iii. Bureau analysis for the first half of 2015:

US drone and air strikes killed at least 207 people in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen so far in 2015, according to data collected by the Bureau.

The strikes left 52 dead in June alone. Last month there were two confirmed US strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, and four in Afghanistan.

CIA drones have been striking in Pakistan at a rate of around two per month for the past two years. After an intense start to the year, with five attacks reported in January, the strikes have become more occasional with none reported in February, one in March and April, and two in May and June.

This year Yemen has sunk into a civil war. Despite this, on January 25 President Barack Obama said the crisis would not affect the US’ counter-terrorism tactics. The US punctuated this statement with drone strikes on January 26, January 31 and February 2. There was then a pause for more than two months in Yemen.

The attacks abated as the Shia Houthi militia forced the government into exile and began taking control of major cities in the west of the country. Saudi Arabia began bombing Yemen in an as-yet fruitless effort to halt the Houthi advance.

The drone strikes returned in April in response to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) exploiting the crisis and taking control of the city of Mukalla in the east of the country.

Pakistan(Jan 1 2015 to date)

Yemen

(Jan 1 2015 to date)

Afghanistan

(Jan 1 2015 to date)

Somalia

(Jan 1 2015 to date)

Confirmed US strikes 11 12-13 17 2-3
Total reported killed 51-72 39-55 128-180 5-12
Civilians reported killed 2-5 1-3 14-39 0-4
Children reported killed 0 1-2 0-18 0
Reported injured 19-25 6 18 0-4

 

Two strikes in the past six months are of particular note. Both were signature strikes – targeted at men who had been judged as al Qaeda based on their observed patterns of behaviour rather than their actual identities.

In January, the US killed two al Qaeda hostages, an American and an Italian, in Pakistan. The attack was aimed at a building housing four unnamed targets – correctly determined to be al Qaeda fighters by their observed patterns of behaviour.

Unbeknownst to the CIA, the two hostages were being held in the same building. It took the Agency several weeks to determine it had killed the two civilians in the attack.

US government

Another CIA drone strike, this time in Yemen, also appeared to be a signature strike. It killed AQAP’s commander, Nasser al Wuhayshi (right).

Unnamed “US officials familiar with the situation” told Bloomberg the CIA had tracked al Wuhayshi and targeted him in the attack. Other unnamed US officials, however, told the Washington Post they did not know al Wuhayshi was in the car when the drones struck.

The CIA has not commented on the strike, however the timeline of events leading to the White House declaring al Wuhayshi dead suggests this was indeed a signature strike. CNN first reported his death, citing two unnamed Yemeni officials. A US official told the broadcaster America was reviewing its intelligence to see if they had killed him. It was only after AQAP itself declared Wuhayshi dead that the US came out with its own statement.

Country Reports

1. Pakistan

Pakistan: CIA drone strikes
All strikes, June 2015 All strikes, 2015 to date All strikes, 2004 to date
CIA drone strikes 2 11 419
Total reported killed 11-14 51-72 2,467-3,976
Civilians reported killed 0-3 2-5 423-965
Children reported killed 0 0 172-207
Total reported injured 4 19-25 1.152-1,731

 

The CIA’s drone campaign continued in Pakistan with two strikes killing 11-14 people in the first week of June.

Four or five people were killed in a strike on the Shawal area of North Waziristan on June 1. Five days later drones reportedly hit the Shawal again, killing 7-9 people. Tribal and security sources told The News three women were among the dead. Another unnamed official told the paper fighters had their families with them “and it is possible the drone killed women as well.” None of the people killed last month have been identified.

June also saw the one year anniversary of the beginning of the Pakistani offensive in North Waziristan. The Pakistani military began air strikes in June 2014, gradually putting ground troops into the tribal agency as the second half of the year progressed. Thousands of militants have been killed since, according to the Pakistani military information service ISPR. However it is impossible to verify these claims as the army is not allowing journalists into the area and telecoms have reportedly been disrupted in some areas. This is also affecting the flow of information relating to drone strikes.

Six month analysis

All the CIA drone strikes so far this year have damaged or destroyed domestic buildings. And 10 of the 11 strikes have reportedly hit in the Shawal area of North Waziristan.

The Shawal is a forested area of steep valleys. This inhospitable region straddles the North-South Waziristan border, and the Afghan-Pakistan border. It has long been a stronghold for smugglers and armed groups. It is one of the last Taliban bastions to be taken by Pakistani ground forces in the military’s ongoing offensive.

The rate of strikes in Pakistan could be reaching a stable point after falling from the peak of the campaign in the second half of 2010. The first and second halves of 2013, and the second half of last year saw strike hit at a rate of around two per month.

The exception is the first half of 2014 when attacks stopped entirely for more than five months while the Pakistan government tried and ultimately failed to negotiate a peace deal with the Pakistan Taliban. Three drone strikes hit in June, after the Pakistan military had begun its now year-long military operation in North Waziristan.

Two al Qaeda hostages, American Warren Weinstein and Italian Giovanni Lo Porto, were accidentally killed in a signature in January. They were the first confirmed civilians to die since the second half of 2012. However in the intervening 25 months, the Bureau has collected reports of up to 14 civilians dying in six drone strikes.

US aid worker Warren Weinstein ,73 (Photo: from Al Qaeda propaganda video)

2. Afghanistan

Afghanistan: confirmed US drone and air strikes
All strikes, June 2015 All strikes, 2015
All US strikes 8 17
Total reported killed 50-89 128-180
Civilians reported killed 14-39 14-39
Children reported killed 0-18 0-18
Total reported injured 17 18

 

The Bureau has been collecting data on US air and drone strikes in Afghanistan since the start of January this year. In this period, June has been the deadliest month yet recorded.

There have been eight confirmed US attacks that have killed 50-89 people, including at least 14 civilians.

The first two confirmed US attacks, on June 5 and June 8, reportedly killed civilians. The first hit a convoy of vehicles leaving a funeral in Khost province. The attack either killed 34 insurgents who had just buried a senior Taliban commander. Or it killed 14-29 civilian members of the Kuchi tribe who had buried a tribal elder.

The US said it had attacked armed militants in Khost and that reports of civilian casualties were being investigated.

The second attack hit three days later and killed seven people. One was identified as Spargahy, a local Taliban commander. Up to six of the dead were said to be high school students who had been taken for military training. It was not clear what age they were or whether they were taken by force.

The third and fourth strikes killed 13-15 people, including up to seven named alleged Taliban insurgents. There were three US air strikes reported at the end of the month, hitting Nuristan and Paktika province. The Taliban had reportedly fought fierce battles with the Afghan army in the days before the US attacks. The Taliban briefly took control of the province’s Want Waygal district on June 26. The insurgents were pushed out of the area the same day and US air attack killed five in that district on June 27.

The final strike of the month hit on June 30 in Nangarhar province, killing between four and 14 people – all reportedly insurgents. The attack hit after Reuters revealed fighters who claimed loyalty to the Islamic State had pushed the Taliban out of six of the 21 districts in Nangarhar.

Taliban violence continued last month with an attack on the parliament in Kabul. A suicide car bomb breached the wall of the complex and shook the parliament chamber itself. Gunmen stormed the building but were killed by security forces, before they could kill or take hostage any MPs.

The first six months of the year have been particularly bloody for Afghan civilians. As of April 30, 978 civilians had been killed in the ongoing conflict, according to Mark Bowden, the UN Secretary-General’s deputy special representative in the country.

This translates as 245 people killed per month. In 2014, 308 civilians died per month. However, with violence becoming more intense in Afghanistan through May and June, it seems likely 2015 will be at least as lethal for Afghan civilians.

“[Doctors] told me that they are seeing a 50 per cent increase in the number of civilians injured this year compared to the same period last year,” Bowden added.

Fighting continues in the north of the country around the city of Kunduz. The Taliban has advanced on the city and been beaten back by the Afghan army on several occasions this year.

During the latest round of fighting, the Afghan forces reportedly called on the US for air support though none was forthcoming, according to the Washington Post.

3. Yemen

Yemen: all confirmed US drone strikes
All strikes, June 2015 All strikes, 2015 to date All strikes, 2002 to date*
All US strikes 2 12-13 99-119
Total reported killed 7-8 39-55 460-681
Civilians reported killed 0 1-3 65-97
Children reported killed 0 1-2 8-9
Total reported injured 2 6 92-221

 

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

Two confirmed drone strikes killed 7-8 people in June, almost replicating the picture in May when two attacks killed 6-8 people.

The first strike in June killed Nasser al Wuhayshi, the leader of AQAP and second in command of al Qaeda overall.

Wuhayshi had been a leading figure in al Qaeda since the 1990s when in Afghanistan he became Osama bin Laden’s personal secretary. He rose to prominence in the Yemen branch of the terrorist group in 2007 and in January 2009 publicly declared himself the leader of AQAP – an amalgamation of Al Qaeda in Yemen and Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia.

Wuhayshi had led AQAP since it was formed in 2009 out of the remnants of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia and al Qaeda in Yemen, which he led since 2007. He had been deputy leader of al Qaeda and Ayman al Zawahiri’s deputy since 2013.

The second strike killed four or five people on June 24. A vehicle was reportedly targeted on the outskirts of Mukalla, in a former army base that AQAP had taken over when they took control of the city in April.

June was the third month of an ongoing Saudi Arabian bombing campaign in Yemen. The strikes are trying to halt the advancing Houthis, a Shia militia, who drove President Abdu-Rabbo Mansour Hadi into exile in Riyadh in March.

Hadi was ensconced as president in 2011 by the US and its Gulf allies in 2012 after a popular uprising ousted his predecessor, dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh. Forces loyal to Hadi and his Gulf supporters are fighting the Houthis who have allied themselves with Saleh’s militias. Militias associated with southern secessionists have taken up arms against the Houthis though are adamant this does not mean they are aligned with Hadi.

Thousands of people have been killed by the civil war and Saudi air campaign. Atrocities have been reported on all sides. Saudi Arabia and its allies are stopping aid supplies from entering the country by sea and air. Houthi forces have besieged the second city of Aden. Vital infrastructure has been destroyed, food is scare, disease rife. The UN says the country is one step from famine and 31 million people require humanitarian aid.

There have been 12 drone strikes so far in 2015, more than in any six month period since the second half of 2012 when 14 drone strikes hit the country. This frequency of attacks is surprising considering Yemen has been riven by civil conflict for most of the past six months.

The increase in the rate of attacks is in part because in April AQAP took advantage of Yemen’s crisis. Its forces swept into Mukalla, the capital of Hadramout province, establishing themselves as the new authority. Four strikes hit in April and since April 12 five of the nine drone strikes have hit Mukalla.

The US drones have not been this focused on a single town or city before now, according to the Bureau’s data. The US did focus its efforts on the Abyan governorate in the second half of 2011 and into 2012. This was in response to AQAP exploiting another period of instability in Yemen to take control of most of the area in and around the governorate, declaring it an Islamic Emirate.

While the number of strikes has been going up, the casualty rate has fallen with fewer people dying per strike in the first half of 2015 than any six month period since the first half of 2013.

The attacks in the past six months have killed a number of named, senior figures in the group. Besides Nasser al Wuhayshi, killed in a signature strike in June, the drones have killed one of AQAP’s key ideologues, Nasser al Ansi, and its chief spokesman, Mohanned Ghallab.

The attacks also killed Ibrahim al Rubaish, a senior AQAP figure, and Sheikh Harith al Nadhari, a leading ideologue who released a statement praising the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris.

4. Somalia

Somalia: all US drone strikes
All strikes, June 2015 All strikes, 2015 to date All strikes, 2007 to date
All US strikes 0 2 9-13
Total reported killed 0 5-12 23-105
Civilians reported killed 0 0-4 0-5
Children reported killed 0 0 0
Total reported injured 0 0 2-7

 

June passed without a reported US attack on al Shabaab. However this month the group released pictures of a US surveillance drone it said crashed in May.

Crowds gather in #AlShabab HQs in Dinsor town to view possible US surveillance drone the group said crashed on May 17 pic.twitter.com/14fYHkRHy4

— Harun Maruf (@HarunMaruf) June 5, 2015

There were two confirmed drone strikes in Somalia in the past six months. In a country where such attacks are rare, this represents a high intensity of operations

The strikes continued the trend seen in both the first and second halves of 2014, targeting senior figures in al Shabaab. In March a US special forces drones killed Adnan Garaar, a senior member of al Shabaab’s Amniyatt intelligence service. He reportedly replaced Ysusuf Dheeq as head of the group’s external operations. Dheeq was killed in a drone strike in February this year.

There were two confirmed drone strikes in the second half of last year – both killed senior al Shabaab figures. The first, on September 1, killed the group’s supreme leader, Ahmed Abdi Godane.

Taking out these senior figures appears not to have blunted al Shabaab’s capacity for extreme violence. It has attacked supposedly secure buildings in the fortified government district of Mogadishu. It has assassinated MPs and senior officials.

This year the group committed its worst atrocity to date. Its gunmen murdered 148 students as they slept in their dormitories at Garissa university in northeastern Kenya.

In May, Somalia expert Matt Bryden published a report that explained how al Shabaab was still a potent, transnational terrorist threat, despite having lost leaders to the drones and territory in Somalia to African Union peacekeepers.

Follow our drones team Jack Serle and Abigail Fielding-Smith on Twitter.

Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project, subscribe to our podcast Drone News, and follow Drone Reads on Twitter to see what our team is reading.

Published

June 19, 2015

Written by

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

Rammstein in Germany is a key hub for US drone operations, including those that killed German citizens (Flickr/US Army Corps of Engineers)

US drones have killed at least 38 Westerners since 2002 – most from some of America’s closest allies, raising serious questions for those governments about how much they knew and how much they helped with the assassination of their citizens, the Bureau’s latest podcast debates.

Of the 38 dead Westerners, 10 were US citizens, eight were Britons, seven were Germans and four were Australians. They were identified during an analysis of the Bureau’s data. It was part of a broader investigation done in collaboration with investigative journalist Chris Woods, author of Sudden Justice: America’s Secret Drone War.

At least 34 of the Westerners killed were high profile terror suspects like Spaniard Amer Aziz who was connected to the 2004 Madrid bombing or Briton Abdul Jabbar who was linked to various plots in the UK. One, Buenyamin Erdogan, was under surveillance by German intelligence in the period immediately before his death, raising question about complicity in his death.

Woods told Owen Bennett-Jones in the Bureau’s latest Done News podcast: “There are major question marks over whether German intelligence was sharing potentially lethal intelligence with the CIA for example, which of course under German law, according to German MPs, is unlawful.

Related story: Could German court halt White House’s ‘illegal’ drone war?

“I don’t believe for a moment by the way that Australia [or] the United Kingdom were not consulted before the killing of their citizens, even if it was just to tell them that these killings were going to take place. The risk of a diplomatic incident between the US and the UK – why would the Brits not be informed given the closeness of intelligence sharing?”

Woods was interviewed for the podcast on May 21. On June 13, The Times of London reported the UK’s surveillance agency GCHQ “used its powers to gather bulk data from the internet” to locate Rashid Rauf after “other intelligence sources had gone cold”. Rauf was one of six UK citizens killed by US drones in Pakistan. Two more were killed in Somalia.

Related story: Counting the cost of US drones: Local wars killing local people

The attack that killed Buenyamin Erdogan, on October 4 2010, also raises serious questions about “the drones being judge, jury and executioner”. The attack killed two German citizens, Buenyamin and Shahab Dashti. A third German survived, Emrah Erdogan, Buenyamin’s brother.

He managed to make his way back to Germany where he is serving a seven year prison sentence for terrorist related offensives.

Related story: Hostage deaths mean 38 Westerners killed by US drone strikes

The successful prosecution of Emrah shows criminal proceedings can work. “To suggest the only option we have is to target and kill – I don’t think that’s actually right,” Woods said. Not least because “there is this assumption of guilt but actually sometimes when these folk get put on trial they’re not guilty,” Woods continued, pointing to the example of the very first drone strike outside Afghanistan.

In November 2002 US drones killed six men in a car in Yemen. But there was a survivor. “One man crawled away from the wreckage of that vehicle,” Woods said. “He was put on trial in a Yemen military court, which owed him no favours. He was actually found not guilty.”

The most recent Westerners killed by drones were three Americans and an Italian. They died in January 2015. Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto, one of the Americans and the Italian, were aid workers who had been taken hostage by al Qaeda and were killed by accident.

Follow our drones team Owen Bennett-Jones, Abigail Fielding-Smith and Jack Serle on Twitter.

Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project, subscribe to our podcast Drone News, and follow Drone Reads on Twitter to see what our team is reading.

Published

June 5, 2015

Written by

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

John Brennan, the Director of the CIA since March 2013

Transferring control of the US drone programme away from the CIA could paradoxically result in less accountability, author and investigative journalist Chris Woods told this week’s Drone News.

Since President Barack Obama announced in April that a CIA drone strike on an al Qaeda compound in Pakistan had accidentally killed two Western hostages, calls for the drone programme to be transferred to the Pentagon have been amplified.

Woods said however that former senior US intelligence officials he interviewed for his new book, ‘Sudden Justice’, told him that the CIA was bound by more stringent congressional reporting requirements than the Department of Defense’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which has its own drone programme.  “That was a surprise to me,” said Woods, formerly a reporter at the Bureau.

“What my sources told me was ‘if you think you’ve got it bad now, if this goes to JSOC we may never know anything.’”

The CIA is legally obliged to declare its actions to the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, Woods said, whereas there is no such obligation to the Armed Services Committee, which oversees the military.

During research for his book, he was also surprised how high a proportion of drone strikes have been conducted on conventional battlefields, such as in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He said: “If 80% of drone strikes are happening on the regular battlefield under full military control and the laws of war, which they are, then that really maybe changes the way we think about drones….in terms of the threat they represent towards civilians.”

“One of the conclusions I reached for the book was that drones can – if used properly – significantly reduce the risk to civilians on the battlefield. But there’s got to be the political will there, and time after time where we’ve found problems with civilian deaths in places like Pakistan or Yemen it’s because there hasn’t been the political will to control those deaths.”

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When asked by Jack Serle why it was so hard to obtain information about the US’s use of drones in conventional battlegrounds, Woods said it was likely due to different drone programmes being “bundled tightly together”.

He said: “You have special forces drones, CIA drones and regular drones all flown by the regular Air Force and in fact owned by Air Combat Command. What happened over time was that they realised that if they started to allow information about one aspect of the war to come out, the whole thing risked unbundling, so what they’ve actually done is classify all drone operations including on the regular battlefield.”

Follow our drones team Owen Bennett-Jones, Abigail Fielding-Smith and Jack Serle on Twitter.

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Published

June 2, 2015

Written by

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

A US helicopter ferrying military advisers over Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, where US aircraft killed at least 34 this month (USAF)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

i. Key points:

    A Pew Research Center poll finds strong support in the US for drone strikes Three US strikes kill at least 34 in Afghanistan The US continues to bomb Yemen in the midst of a brutal civil war British drones flew 301 missions over Iraq from September to the end of March

ii. The Bureau’s numbers:

Recorded US drone strikes to date

Pakistan(June 2004 to date)

Yemen

(Nov 2002 to date)*

Somalia

(Jan 2007 to date)*

Afghanistan

(Jan 2015 to date)

US drone strikes 417 97-117 9-13 5
Total reported killed 2,456-3,962 453-673 23-105 49-55
Civilians reported killed 423-962 65-97 0-5 0
Children reported killed 172-207 8-9 0 0
Reported injured 1,148-1,727 88-217 2-7 1

 

Recorded US air and cruise missile strikes to date

Pakistan(June 2004 to date)**

Yemen(Nov 2002 to date)*

Somalia(Jan 2007 to date)*

Afghanistan(Jan 2015 to date)

US air & cruise missile strikes N/A 15-72 8-11 4
Total reported killed N/A 156-365 40-141 29-36
Civilians reported killed N/A 68-99 7-47 0
Children reported killed N/A 26-28 0-2 0
People reported injured N/A 15-102 11-21 0

 

* The Bureau’s estimates are based predominantly on open sources information such as media reports. Sometimes it is not possible to reconcile details in different reports. This is why use ranges for our record of casualties and, in the case of Yemen and Somalia, our strike tallies.

** The US has only carried out drone strikes in Pakistan.

iii. Bureau analysis for May 2015:

A new poll this month shows the American drone campaign continues to enjoy popular support in the US as seven strikes reportedly kill 48-56 people in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.

According to the Pew Research Center poll, 58% of respondents approve of “US drone strikes to target extremists” with 35% who disapprove. Nearly half, 48%, are very concerned US drone attacks endanger the lives of innocent civilians.

The research was carried out over seven days from May 12, 19 days after President Obama told the nation drones had killed Warren Weinstein, a US civilian, and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian civilian.

It is not clear how intense media coverage of the deaths of Weinstein and Lo Porto, and the drone war in general, affected what respondents said. However support for drones appears to have grown slightly since Pew last polled on the matter, up from 56% in February 2013.

In fact concern about civilian casualties seems to have fallen – 53% of the 2013 poll respondents said they were very concerned drones “endanger civilian lives”. It is not a direct comparison: Pew polled fewer people in February 2013 than in May 2015, and did not poll Alaska or Hawaii.

Also in May, the British government released data on anti-Islamic State air operations showing the Royal Air Force flew 301 Reaper drone missions over Iraq between the start of UK operations against Isis last September and the end of March.

The numbers were obtained by the Drone Wars UK organisation, which showed the British Reaper drones fired 102 Hellfire missiles on 87 separate occasions.

MONTHLY REPORT BY COUNTRY

1. Pakistan

The Bureau’s complete Pakistan data set is available to download as a spreadsheet.

Pakistan: CIA drone strikes
All strikes, May 2015 All strikes, 2015 to date All strikes, 2004 to date
CIA drone strikes 2 9 417
Total reported killed 7-13 40-58 2,456-3,962
Civilians reported killed 0 2 423-962
Children reported killed 0 0 172-207
Total reported injured 0 15-21 1,148-1,727

 

CIA drone strikes continued in Pakistan. The first of two strikes killed 4-7 people on May 16, ending a 34 day pause. The attack hit a domestic compound reportedly being used by the Pakistan Taliban. There were no named dead though both Pakistanis and foreigners were killed, according to anonymous Pakistani officials.

The second strike hit on May 18, hours after the Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the first attack. It released a statement repeating its “call for a cessation of such strikes,” describing them as counter-productive. The second attack reportedly killed 3-6 people, none of them identified, when it hit a domestic compound and possibly a vehicle.

The two strikes in May represent a slight increase from the solitary strikes that reportedly hit Pakistan in March and April. It is below the intense period in January when five attacks killed 26-38 people, the highest number of people killed per strike since August 2014.

Both attacks hit in the Shawal area – a forested region of steep valleys that straddles the North and South Waziristan as well as the Pakistan and Afghanistan border. Several armed groups reportedly have long established strongholds there because of its location and inhospitable terrain. Seven of the nine strikes so far this year have reportedly hit within the Shawal.

The Pakistan military was this month reportedly preparing to send troops into the Shawal, 11 months after it began its ongoing military operation in North Waziristan. The scale and progress of this push into the Shawal were unclear, Reuters reported. The area was said to be off limits to journalists with roads blocked and telephone cables cut.

2. Afghanistan

The Bureau has yet to publish its Afghanistan data in a downloadable form. The full timeline of strikes is available here.

Afghanistan: confirmed US drone and air strikes
All strikes, May 2015 All strikes, 2015 to date
All US strikes 3 9
Total reported killed 34 78-91
Civilians reported killed 0 0
Children reported killed 0 0
Total reported injured 1 1

 

Three confirmed US strikes killed 34 people in May – almost half the total number of people reported killed since January and the most in a single month this year, according to available reporting.

This increase in casualties came as Taliban attacks battered the Afghan army and police across the country. The insurgents continued to battle with Afghan forces around the capital of the northern Kunduz province, in Helmand in the south, and even in Kabul.

The confirmed US attacks all hit Nangarhar province and all reportedly killed named, alleged Taliban commanders.

The first killed 17 people on May 4. This was the highest reported death toll from a single strike since 18 were killed on January 3. The provincial police spokesman said: “A Taliban commander named Mullah Daoud is among the dead.”

A local resident told Afghan news service Pajhwok two strikes hit in quick succession. “Soon after the first attack, rebels came to collect bodies of their colleagues when [the rescuers] came under another attack,” he said. If true, this could demonstrate the continuation of a controversial tactic used by the CIA in Pakistan of deliberately targeting rescuers, first exposed by the Bureau in 2012.

The second confirmed US attack on May 9 killed 13 including Gul Agha, reportedly the Taliban’s shadow governor in the province. He had been put on a US government sanctions list in 2010, described as “the head of the Taliban’s financial commission and is part of a recently-created Taliban council that coordinates the collection of zakat [tithe] from Baluchistan Province, Pakistan.”

The third US attack killed four people on May 14 including Taliban commander Muslahuddin. A US military spokesman told the Bureau the US carried out the three Nangarhar strikes but said he was “not going to discuss the details of those strikes”.

Ten other air strikes that killed 37-75 people were reported in Afghanistan this month. All were described as US attacks but the Bureau has not yet been able to confirm that. The Bureau’s data provides only a part of the whole picture. The US military publishes summary data each month but will not release information on individual strikes.

The high number of confirmed and possible US attacks, and casualties, came as Taliban insurgents were reportedly fighting with Afghan forces in 10 provinces. “This is the worst fighting season in a decade,” according to analyst Attiqullah Amerkhil. “There is now fighting in every part of the country.”

3. Yemen

The Bureau’s complete Yemen data set is available to download as a spreadsheet.

Yemen: all confirmed US drone strikes
All strikes, April 2015 All strikes, 2015 to date All strikes, 2002 to date*
All US strikes 3 9-10 96-116
Total reported killed 10-12 29-44 450-670
Civilians reported killed 0 1-3 65-97
Children reported killed 0 1-2 8-9
Total reported injured 2 2 88-217

 

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

There were five reported US strikes in Yemen this month. However the Bureau has only been able to confirm three were US operations.

The first confirmed US attack killed four men on May 11 in Mukalla, the capital of the eastern province of Hadramout. The strike killed four al Qaeda members, identified as: Maamoun Hatem, Abu Anwar al Kutheiri, Mohammed Saleh al Gharabi and Mabkhout Waqash al Sayeri. Hatem (below) was reportedly among the more prominent supporters in Yemen of the Islamic State group.

تم التأكد من خبر #استشهاد_الشيخ_مأمون_حاتم ان لله وإن اليه راجعون تقبلك الله في الفردوس pic.twitter.com/FGM1DEm3pr

— حساب معطل (@tunisfallouja) May 11, 2015

The US has continued targeting al Qaeda in Yemen as a brutal civil war rages. The fighting between a complex mix of competing militias and factions halted for a five-day humanitarian ceasefire at 11pm on May 12. The second US strike killed three people in Shabwa province. It hit on May 16, the day before the ceasefire ended.

The third US attack killed 3-5 in the southern province of Shabwa on May 22. Local officials, tribal sources and security officials said US drones destroyed a vehicle in the province, killing several al Qaeda members. The two further possible US strikes all reportedly hit in Shabwa province as well.

On May 27 Saudi air strikes across the border in northern Yemen and in Sanaa killed at least 80 people, the deadliest day of bombing since the strikes began in March, according to Reuters. Forty people were reportedly killed in strikes in the Hajjah province, most of them civilians according to local sources. Forty more were reportedly killed in strikes in Sanaa a few hours later.

The months of bombing, shelling and street battles mean Yemen’s key infrastructure has been smashed. Food is in short supply, airport runways have been bombed, and a fuel shortage has stopped many water pumps from working.

“The infrastructure, health, all the other vital services people need, they’re in a state of collapse,” according to the director of operations at the UN’s Organisation for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. “The ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] has been describing the situation as catastrophic and I think that is about the best word to describe the plight of the Yemeni people right now.”

The UN estimates nearly 2,000 people have died since the conflict began. There are 1,037 civilians reportedly among the dead, including 234 children and 134 women.

Also this month, three Yemeni men brought an unprecedented case against the German government in a court in Cologne. The men, relatives of two men killed in an August 2012 drone strike, “called upon the German government to accept legal and political responsibility for the US drone war in Yemen and to prohibit the use of Ramstein,” according to their lawyers.

Ramstein is a US air base in Germany which is a key hub in the network controlling US drones over Asia and the Middle East. It acts as a relay station, sending information it receives in real time via undersea cables from the US, directly to satellites and on to the drones. Their first attempt was defeated, however the men were given leave to appeal the decision.

4. Somalia

The Bureau’s complete Somalia data set is available to download as a spreadsheet.

Somalia: all US drone strikes
All strikes, May 2015 All strikes, 2015 to date All strikes, 2007 to date
All US strikes 0 2-3 9-13
Total reported killed 0 5-72 23-105
Civilians reported killed 0 0-4 0-5
Children reported killed 0 0 0
Total reported injured 0 0 2-7

 

There were no reported US strikes in Somalia for the second month running. However an al Shabaab commander died of natural causes this month having at least twice survived US attacks.

Ethiopian Hasan al Turki, 73, died after a long illness, al Shabaab reported. He met Osama Bin Laden in the mountains of Afghanistan and in Sudan, al Shabaab’s spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rageh said.

Al Turki (below) was added to the US Treasury Department al Qaeda sanctions list in 2001 and the UN Security Council’s al Qaeda list in 2004.

Sheikh Hassan Al-Turki was ex-military colonel in the army, ex-Al-Itihad and co-founder of Raskamboni & Hisbul Islam. pic.twitter.com/fuTN22lThR — Harun Maruf (@HarunMaruf) May 28, 2015

On January 23 2007 the US killed eight people, possibly including civilians, in an AC-130 gunship attack. It was meant to kill al Turki, then a deputy leader of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), as well as Ahmed Madobe a fellow ICU leader. The US reportedly missed al Turki again on March 3 2008 with a cruise missile fired from a US warship. Al Turki was then leader of the Ras Kamboni Brigades, an Islamist insurgent group in southern Somalia that merged with al Shabaab in 2010.

Also this month, al Shabaab continued to demonstrate it is a dangerous enemy for both the Somali and Kenyan governments.

John Kerry was the first US secretary of state to visit Somalia on May 5. He spent three hours in the highly fortified diplomatic enclave near Mogadishu’s airport before flying back into Kenya. The next day Abdifatah Barre, the deputy district commissioner of Mogadishu’s Wadajir district, was murdered by al Shabaab on the streets of the capital.

On May 23 fighting between al Shabaab and government forces reportedly left at least 24 people dead in southern Somalia. Four people were also shot dead in Mogadishu by al Shabaab, including a parliamentarian.

In Kenya, al Shabaab took control of a village on May 21 for several hours. The group forced the villagers to the mosque where they preached at them for two hours before leaving. It attacked a second village the next day, also in Garissa Count. Al Shabaab said it took control of Yumbis village for eight hours though the Kenyan interior ministry claimed its forces had successfully repelled the attack. A local resident told al Jazeera masked al Shabaab fighters had planted their black flag throughout the village.

The following week al Shabaab gunmen attacked two police patrols in Garissa, triggering a gun battle that the armed group claimed left 25 Kenyans dead. The police said one of its men had been killed. The instability in Garissa forced Medecin Sans Frontier (MSF) to evacuate a third of its staff from Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp. It sits near the Somali border and is home to thousands of ethnic Somalis. MSF said it was forced to close two of its four health posts there and suspend its ante-natal work entirely.

Follow our drones team Jack Serle and Abigail Fielding-Smith on Twitter.

Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project, subscribe to our podcast Drone News, and follow Drone Reads on Twitter to see what our team is reading.

Published

May 7, 2015

Written by

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

The funeral of Akram Shah, a government employee, killed with at least four other locals, all civilians, in June 2011 (THIS KHAN/AFP/Getty Images)

As the Bureau revealed recently, the accidental killing of American Warren Weinstein and Italian Giorgio Lo Porto by the CIA in January now means at least 38 Westerners have been killed by covert US drones in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

Yet, as a major analysis of the nationalities killed by such strikes shows, this figure is just 1.6% of the total dead who the Bureau has established their country or region of origin.

There have now been 515 US drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia since 2002, killing at least 2,887 people. Of those, the Bureau has been able to determine where 2,353 came from. They include Moroccans, Kenyans and Syrians – drawn from 34 countries in all.

The majority however came from the country they died in. More than 60% of those killed in Pakistan were reportedly from Pakistan. More than 80% of those killed in Yemen were reportedly Yemenis. For Somalia, information about the dead is more limited, but where the Bureau has been able to find details, 45% of those killed were Somali.

This data is not in itself surprising – experts have told the Bureau the majority of armed groups in these countries are made up of local people.

But how much the local populations have been in the drones’ firing line had hitherto not been quantified. The Bureau compiled this data in conjunction with Chris Woods for his new book Sudden Justice: America’s Secret Drone War.

This demonstrates the extent to which in Pakistan the US has been hitting the insurgents who have used the country’s tribal areas as a safe-haven from which to launch attacks on US and allied troops in Afghanistan. In Yemen, the US has been fighting with the government on one side of a complicated civil war.

The civilian toll from all CIA strikes in Pakistan also falls on the local population. Of the minimum 423 civilians reported killed, three have been clearly identified as coming from outside the Central Asian region. Lo Porto and Weinstein were Westerners, and Umm al Shaymah was the Egyptian wife of al Qaeda terrorist Mustafa Abu Yazid. Al Shaymah’s three daughters were also killed in the attack though it is not clear if they were born in Egypt or Pakistan.

Details on many of the dead are difficult to come by. For example, the Bureau’s Naming the Dead project has over two years painstakingly pieced together information on the dead in Pakistan – but it has only named 721 of at least 2,449 people killed.

The gaps in the CIA’s data could stem from its use of tactics like signature strikes.

The CIA itself also has an incomplete understanding of who has been killed in its strikes. Leaked Agency records of its attacks in Pakistan show nearly one in four strikes killed “other militants” whom the CIA could not identify either by name or group affiliation. The data also shows the CIA records estimates of casualties in ranges, reflecting uncertainty in the total number of people killed, not just the identity.

The gaps in the CIA’s data could stem from its use of tactics like signature strikes.

Signature strikes kill people not based on their identity but on a pattern of life analysis – an intelligence assessment built up over prolonged surveillance. There is considerable scope for error in these kinds of attacks. The January 15 attack that killed Lo Porto and Weinstein was a signature strike. After days of surveillance of the house they were held in, the CIA determined four unidentified al Qaeda members were inside. The CIA knew it had made a mistake when six bodies were removed from the structure.

Related story: Hostage deaths mean 38 Westerners killed by US drone strikes

Controversial Tactics

The high proportion of Pakistanis among the drone dead could be a consequence of other controversial CIA tactics.

The CIA’s targeting policies have taken their toll on the Pakistani population of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), even when the drones were not aiming at a local target. On October 30 2006 drones destroyed a madrassa in Bajaur agency. The target was reportedly Ayman al Zawahiri, Osama Bin Laden’s Egyptian deputy. The strike missed him but killed at least 79 Pakistani civilians, most of them children.

The high number of Pakistanis and people from Afghanistan and Uzbekistan reportedly killed by drones could also demonstrate how the US has expanded its range of drone targets in the country. The early strikes were intended for two groups: al Qaeda terrorists the CIA was gunning for, and Pakistani terrorists who Islamabad wanted dead.

According to the New York Times, Pakistan and the CIA came to an agreement before the drone campaign began. The US could take out its al Qaeda targets if it also killed Pakistan’s enemies.

Since 2004, the strikes appear to have taken their toll on the traditionally Arab membership of al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Bureau has recorded at least 107 people killed by drones in Pakistan who reportedly came from Middle Eastern, or north and east African countries such as Egypt, Libya and Sudan. A further 116 people were simply described as “Arabs”.

The first drone strike in June 2004 killed Nek Mohammed, a Pakistani militant who defied the Pakistani military and forced the army into a humiliating ceasefire two months before his death. The second strike, in May 2005, took out Haitham al Yemeni – an al Qaeda explosives expert from Yemen.

Documents reviewed by McClatchy news agency confirmed a secret deal between US and Pakistani officials ensured the CIA and its Pakistani counterpart the ISI worked together to kill both countries’ enemies.

The rate of strikes increased during the Obama administration as did the number of casualties and the number of Arabs among them. With the number of veteran al Qaeda fighters dwindling, a “deep bench” of terrorists from Pakistani and Central Asian terrorist groups stepped up to replace them, an unnamed US intelligence official told the Long War Journal in 2012.

Total killed, and their country or region of origin, from US drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia
Pakistan 1,370 US 10 China 4 Morocco 2
Yemen 175 Libya 8 Jordan 4 Tunisia 1
Uzbekistan 138 UK 8 Syria 4 Sudan 1
“Pashtun” 136 Germany 7 “Africa” 3 Belgium or Swiss 1
“Arab” 119 Turkey 6 Tajikistan 3 Palestine 1
Afghanistan 90 Kuwait 6 Algeria 3 Lebanon 1
“Foreign” 86 Iraq 6 Australia 3 Russia (Chechen) 1
“Central Asia” 73 Somalia 6 Spain 2 Bahrain 1
Egypt 29 Kenya 5 Iran 2 Italy 1
Saudi Arabia 28 “Western” 4 Canada 2

The number of Arab fighters fell “dramatically” after around 2009 when US drone strikes and Pakistani military offensives took their toll on al Qaeda’s ranks, Rahimullah Yusufzai, a Pakistani journalist and expert on armed groups in the Fata, told the Bureau

There was a significant population of Arabs in the Fata, Yusufzai continued. “But numbers have gone down drastically… I don’t think that there would be more than 200.”

Fewer young Arab men are following the traditional path to Pakistan to fight in Afghanistan, he said. “It is not easy [to] come here and stay here. There is better security, better controls at the airport [and] on the borders.”

This leaves the veterans “who are living here for years, who can’t go back, who are most wanted. So they are here moving back and forth across the border between [Afghanistan and Pakistan].”

According to US administration officials from President Obama down, Washington uses its drones to hunt “al Qaeda and associated forces”.

This vague phrasing is believed to include the various factions. These include those Pakistan as a haven while fighting with the insurgency in Afghanistan, such as the Haqqani Network and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and groups set against the Pakistani state, including the Pakistan Taliban and Lashkar e Jangvi.

The CIA’s own data demonstrates it has targeted a wider array of armed groups than just al Qaeda.

Pakistanis make up nearly two-thirds of those people killed by drones in Pakistan, according to Bureau research.

In 2013, the McClatchy news agency published a leaked section of the CIA’s internal drone strike record of attacks and casualties in a 12-month period leading up to September 2011. It shows that nearly half the strikes in that period “hit groups other than al Qaeda, including the Haqqani network, several Pakistani Taliban factions.” It also shows “the CIA killed people who only were suspected, associated with, or who probably belonged to militant groups.”

These organisations comprise Pakistanis, Afghans and Uzbeks. They are the largest groupings of fighters by nationality, according to Yousufzai, and it is unsurprising there are so many of them listed in the Bureau’s data.

Pakistanis make up nearly two-thirds of those people killed by drones in Pakistan, according to Bureau research. This figure rises to 72% when people from the wider region – those described as Uzbeks, Central Asian or Pashtun – are included.

The lower frequency of strikes in the early years of the drone war demonstrates some constraint on the campaign. However in 2008 President Bush gave the CIA greater freedom in its strikes in Pakistan – including giving them permission to specifically target westerners, as revealed by Woods.

A surge in CIA strikes

This leeway from the White House precipitated a surge in CIA strikes in the second half of 2008. This continued in 2009 before the CIA stepped up the intensity again in 2010.

In December 2009 the Pakistan Taliban and al Qaeda sent a suicide bomber to Camp Chapman, a CIA base in Khost province, Afghanistan. The attack left seven CIA personnel dead. After the bombing, the CIA’s “shackles were unleashed” according to an unnamed intelligence official. “The CIA went to war,” another official said, adding: “The White House stood back.”

Related story: Could German court halt White House’s ‘illegal’ drone war? An exclusive extract from Chris Woods’ new book Sudden Justice

The US carried out 128 drone strikes in Pakistan that year, 23 in September alone, the peak of the drone war. At least 755 people were killed, 89 of them reportedly civilians. At least 510 of the dead were said to be from Pakistan or elsewhere in Central Asia – at least 72 of them civilians.

In Yemen the US has hit proportionally more local people than in Pakistan. The Bureau however has only managed to determine place of origin for 179 of the minimum 436 people killed by drones there. This partial picture shows more than four fifths of them were Yemeni which fits with the established understanding of the make-up of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

It was formed in 2007 from an amalgamation of veterans from al Qaeda groups based in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. It has largely retained this composition, Yemen expert and Buzzfeed’s writer-at-large Gregory Johnsen told the Bureau. “They have an international aspect but certainly the vast majority of the organisation continues to be Yemeni and then Saudi.”

Who exactly is a member of AQAP has always been hard to determine in Yemen, not least because AQAP has formed alliances of convenience with various Yemeni tribes. In the past, the tribes would side with al Qaeda in their fight against the central government in Sanaa. Now, the tribes have united with fellow Sunnis in AQAP against the Shia Houthi rebels who have swept through Yemen in the past six months, ousting the president into exile.

“Membership in this group, and particularly now given the fluid situation on the ground in Yemen, is really really hard to determine,” says Johnsen.

“I am not convinced that we what we are doing in Yemen makes sense either politically or even that we’re striking the right people… You get more of a sense that we may be involved in a local conflict more than a global conflict.”

– Former DOD official

“It is hard to determine who are fighters who are local fighters in Yemen who are joining and affiliating with al Qaeda only as a way to, say, combat the Houthis, and who are members who are joining with the organisation in a way that accepts wholeheartedly their ideology both the national and what al Qaeda would call the transnational Jihad.”

Throughout all, the US has supported the government in Sanaa which has strongly supported Washington’s counter-terrorism efforts in Yemen. As one US official said in April 2012, this has led the US into a complicated conflict: “I think there is the potential that we would be perceived as taking sides in a civil war.”

This was echoed by a former senior US Department of Defence official who told Woods: “I am not convinced that what we are doing in Yemen makes sense either politically or even that we’re striking the right people… You get more of a sense that we may be involved in a local conflict more than a global conflict.”

The US took sides in a civil war in Somalia when it backed an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, ostensibly aimed at crushing al Shabaab. The group had become the dominant force in the country. Since 2007 the US has provided air strikes and intelligence support to various African countries that have sent troops to the Horn of Africa to support the government in Mogadishu.

The Bureau’s data on drone strikes in Somalia is limited because of the difficulties in obtaining information in a country racked by decades of conflict. The Bureau has the nationality of 12 of at least 23 people killed with drones in Somalia.

Eight are from Somalia or Kenya which is generally consistent with the structure of the group, according to Dr Stig Jarle Hansen, associate professor of international relations at the Norwegian University of Life Science.

It is now 13 years since the US started its covert drone wars and it is clear its targets have expanded beyond al Qaeda. It is also clear that the local men who make up these other targeted entities have been hit more than anyone. The US still fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and AQAP looks set to exploit the calamitous situation in Yemen. With CIA director John Brennan warning an audience in Washington the war on terror could continue indefinitely it is inevitable the death toll among local communities will rise.

Data for this investigation came in part from the Bureau’s Naming the Dead project which is supported by Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.

Visualisation by Krystina Shveda

Follow Jack Serle on Twitter. Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project, subscribe to our podcast Drone News, and follow Drone Reads on Twitter to see what our team is reading.

Published

May 1, 2015

Written by

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

Spanish citizen Raquel Burgos Garcia died in a CIA drone strike in Pakistan in 2005. (AP Photo/Nicolas Asfouri)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

i. Key points:

    Drones have killed 38 Westerners since 2002 including two al Qaeda hostages killed in January. US air strikes continue in Afghanistan but the vacuum of information remains. Most drone strikes in Yemen in a month since November 2014 despite ongoing crisis.

ii. The Bureau’s numbers:

Recorded US drone strikes to date

Pakistan(June 2004 to date)

Yemen

(Nov 2002 to date)*

Somalia

(Jan 2007 to date)*

Afghanistan

(Jan 2015 to date)

US drone strikes 415 94-114 9-13 2
Total reported killed 2,449-3,949 444-661 23-105 15-21
Civilians reported killed 423-962 65-96 0-5 0
Children reported killed 172-207 8 0 0
Reported injured 1,144-1,722 86-215 2-7 0

 

Recorded US air and cruise missile strikes to date

Pakistan(June 2004 to date)**

Yemen(Nov 2002 to date)*

Somalia(Jan 2007 to date)*

Afghanistan(Jan 2015 to date)

US air & cruise missile strikes N/A 15-72 8-11 4
Total reported killed N/A 145-365 40-141 29-36
Civilians reported killed N/A 68-99 7-47 0
Children reported killed N/A 26-28 0-2 0
People reported injured N/A 15-102 11-21 0

 

* The Bureau’s estimates are based predominantly on open sources of  information like media reports. Sometimes it is not possible to reconcile details in different reports. This is why use ranges for our record of casualties and, in the cases of Yemen and Somalia, our strike tallies.

** The US has only carried out drone strikes in Pakistan.

iii. Bureau analysis for April 2015:

Despite the world’s attention been focused on the CIA’s drone programme in Pakistan, after President Obama officially apologised for killing two al Qaeda hostages including an American and an Italian in a drone strike in January, there has been very little activity in the covert war in Pakistan this month. Just one strike hit the country in April, the first for 25 days.

Strikes continue in Afghanistan. However there remains a considerable deficit between the number of strikes taking place according to aggregated figures produced by the US and the number of attacks reported in the media. US air and ground forces have had to come to the aid of the Afghan army and police as the Taliban has ramped up its attacks in the summer fighting season.

In Yemen Saudi jets and ships continued to pound cities and towns, as the country collapsed into chaos. More than 1,200 people have been killed already, according to the UN. Among this carnage, the US has carried out four drone strikes – this is more than any month since November 2014.

Once again there were no US strikes reported in Somalia. However, a massacre committed by al Shabaab in eastern Kenya spurred the Kenyan air force to strike southern Somalia. Al Shabaab murdered 147 students in Garissa university – Nairobi swiftly struck back and claimed to have killed hundreds of al Shabaab fighters.

MONTHLY REPORT BY COUNTRY

1. Pakistan

The Bureau’s complete Pakistan data set is available to download as a spreadsheet.

Pakistan: CIA drone strikes
All strikes, April 2015 All strikes, 2015 to date All strikes, 2004 to date
CIA drone strikes 1 7 415
Total reported killed 4 33-45 2,449-3,949
Civilians reported killed 0 2 423-962
Children reported killed 0 0 172-207
Total reported injured 2 11-16 1,144-1,722

 

An Italian and three US citizens were killed in two drone strikes in January, it emerged this month.

As the Bureau revealed this month, the four deaths mean 38 Westerners have been reported killed in the US covert drone war since 2002 – 30 of them in Pakistan.

Giovanni Lo Porto and Warren Weinstein were both aid workers taken hostage by al Qaeda in 2012 and 2011 respectively. They were killed along with Ahmed Farouq, an American member of al Qaeda, in a January 15 strike according to Bureau analysis. Adam Gadahn, an American al Qaeda propagandist, was killed in a subsequent strike on January 19 or 28.

President Barack Obama acknowledged Lo Porto and Weinstein had been killed in a US drone strike. Apologising for the mistake, he promised an investigation into the attack that killed them.

The death of the hostages reignited two debates: whether the CIA should be carrying out the strikes and whether the current system of oversight was sufficient to ensure the campaign was prosecuted properly.

Eleven days before the announcement the CIA reportedly killed four people in the first drone strike in 25 days. There were limited details about who was killed though they reportedly belonged to a faction of the Pakistan Taliban.

The attack hit in the Shawl area, a region of steep valleys and thick woods that straddles the borders between Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as South and north Waziristan. It has long been a stronghold for various armed groups in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Five of the seven strikes in Pakistan this year have hit in the Shawal.

Also this month, the former Islamabad station chief has been appointed as a deputy chief of counter-intelligence at the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center – the entity that runs the CIA’s drone programme. Jonathan Bank, 47, had to flee Pakistan in 2010 after being named in a court case brought by the relatives of drone strike victims.

That same case has continued in Pakistan and this month the police in Islamabad transferred responsibility for the criminal investigation to the jurisdiction of the Fata Secretariat – the bureaucratic body that runs Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

2. Afghanistan

The Bureau has yet to publish its Afghanistan data in a downloadable form. The full timeline of strikes is available here.

Afghanistan: confirmed US drone and air strikes
All strikes, April 2015 All strikes, 2015 to date
All US strikes 0 6
Total reported killed 0 44-57
Civilians reported killed 0 0
Children reported killed 0 0
Total reported injured 0 0

 

Strikes continue in Afghanistan with three attacks reported separately by two named senior provincial police officers.

One of the three strikes, on April 17, was reported by a single media source that the Bureau has shown in the past to be unreliable. It is included in the timeline of strikes but awaits further investigation before being included in the casualty estimates or struck out altogether.

It continues to be a struggle to obtain information on individual strikes in Afghanistan. The three attacks recorded by the Bureau are a fraction of the air sorties believed to be hitting Taliban targets. The New York Times reported the US “is regularly conducting airstrikes against low-level insurgent forces and sending Special Operations troops directly into harms way”.

The winter snows have receded and Afghanistan’s so-called “fighting season” has started. Violence peaked last year in Afghanistan as the Nato coalition withdrew from the front line, leaving the Afghan army and police to tackle a resurgent Taliban.

The fighting in 2014 was particularly fierce in part because, without western air support, the insurgents were able to collect in greater numbers and carry out prolonged attacks on army and police positions. The ensuing firefights, involving allegedly indiscriminate use of explosive weapons like mortars, took their toll especially on the civilian population caught in the middle.

The Taliban has hit the northern province of Kunduz especially hard this year. Protracted attacks in and around the provincial capital have left the Afghan army scrambling. A counter-offensive reportedly involved considerable air support with jets from “the US-led coalition,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

3. Yemen

The Bureau’s complete Yemen data set is available to download as a spreadsheet.

Yemen: all confirmed US drone strikes
All strikes, April 2015 All strikes, 2015 to date All strikes, 2002 to date*
All US strikes 4-5 7-8 94-114
Total reported killed 13-22 23-35 444-661
Civilians reported killed 0 1-2 65-96
Children reported killed 0 1 8
Total reported injured 0 0 86-215

 

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

Four US drone strikes hit alleged al Qaeda targets in eastern Yemen in April while the Saudi air force hammered towns and cities in the western half of the country.

This is the most confirmed drone strikes in a month since November 2014. At least 13 people were killed – the highest death toll in a month since two drone strikes killed 20 people in December 2014.

At least three of the strikes appear to have been carried out by the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command, according to the Washington Post.

The attacks were focused in the eastern provinces of Hadramout and Shabwah. Two of the strikes hit in Mukalla, Hadramout’s capital. The first killed Ibrahim al Rubaish, a leading propagandist and preacher within al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

The other killed Muhannad Ghallab, AQAP’s 35 year old Egyptian spokesman. He was killed when drones targeted a group of men sat on the Corniche by the waterfront in Mukalla at about 1am on April 22. He had become a widely quoted, anonymous AQAP source in several Western media outlets – including the Bureau.

The other two strikes targeted vehicles in Shabwa, killing 5-8 people as they drove through the area at night.

The US has continued its strikes against al Qaeda while Yemen is caught in the midst of a humanitarian catastrophe. Various militias battle it out on the ground while Saudi air strikes and naval bombardments continue. The strikes have hammered the second city of Aden where Houthi snipers and tanks have reportedly targeted civilians as well as combatants.

Al-Qatee’, a 500 years old neighborhood. What once was a historical icon of the city of #Aden is now no more. @UNESCO pic.twitter.com/7JOI3GWvSF

— Aden Relief (@AdenRelief) April 29, 2015

The World Health Organisation estimates between March 19 and April 27 the violence had “claimed 1,244 lives and left 5,044 others injured, according to health facility-based reports”.

According to the UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), all but two Yemeni governorates are “conflict affected”, as of April 25. Violence has disrupted health services at two major hospitals. Food, drinking water,essential medical supplies and fuel are scarce. An ongoing air and sea blockade by the Saudi-led coalition, ostensibly an effort to prevent weapons and fighters entering the country, are being blamed for the shortages. The International Committee of the Red Cross says Yemen’s health system is struggling to cope and that “import restrictions have made the situation worse”.

The situation in Aden appears to be especially dire. Swathes of the city have been destroyed by fire and explosive ordinance. The European Council on Foreign Relations’ Adam Baron tweeted on April 28: “As fighting continues, whole neighborhoods in Aden… have effectively run out of food and water. Unfathomably horrific.”

4. Somalia

The Bureau’s complete Somalia data set is available to download as a spreadsheet.

Somalia: all US drone strikes
All strikes, April 2015 All strikes, 2015 to date All strikes, 2007 to date
All US strikes 0 2 9-13
Total reported killed 0 5-12 23-105
Civilians reported killed 0 0-4 0-5
Children reported killed 0 0 0
Total reported injured 0 0 2-7

 

There were no reported US drone strikes in Somalia this month. However al Shabaab brutally demonstrated it remains a potent threat to Somalia and its neighbour Kenya.

At 5.30am on April 2, al Shabaab gunmen stormed university dormitories in the eastern Kenyan city of Garissa. As many as 500 people were reportedly trapped in the building while the masked terrorists went room to room murdering the terrified students. In all 147 people died in the atrocity.

The attack raised questions of the Kenyan security services. Nairobi was accused of ignoring warnings from foreign governments of evidence of an impending attack and had told their citizens to avoid Garissa in the preceding week.

The Kenyan police and paramilitary forces appeared ill prepared to respond to the attack. Elite counter-terrorism units were first stuck in traffic on their way to an airport to fly to the scene. Then some of the team had to travel to Garissa by road as there was not enough space on the fixed-wing planes to carry the troops and their equipment. The siege eventually took 12 hours to resolve.

Nairobi responded to the university attack by swiftly bombing several al Shabaab camps in southern Somalia. The Kenyan Defence Forces claimed they destroyed each base, killing hundreds of fighters – an unlikely outcome, according to the Jamestown Foundation, considering only 10 jets were employed and conditions were cloudy.

Al Shabaab remains a threat within Somalia as well, assassinating “two city council officials, a former parliamentarian and a senior prison officer in Mogadishu” this month.

Follow our drones team Jack Serle and Abigail Fielding-Smith on Twitter.

Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project, subscribe to our podcast Drone News, and follow Drone Reads on Twitter to see what our team is reading.

Published

April 27, 2015

Written by

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

The US Air Base in Ramstein, Germany, has played a key role in the CIA drone strikes that killed seven Germany citizens (Flickr/US Army)

The debate over America’s use of drones to kill its own citizens has never been as intense. Last week in an unprecedented announcement, President Barack Obama admitted that CIA drones had killed three Americans in Pakistan in January, including al Qaeda hostage and aid worker Warren Weinstein.

It is not just Americans who have been killed. As new research by the Bureau shows, Weinstein is one of at least 38 Westerners to have been killed in the US’s covert drone war on terror. Citizens of some of America’s closest allies – the UK, Germany, Australia and Canada among them – are among the dead.

The deaths of these Westerners represent a mere fraction of the total death toll for drones. Yet their killing pose troubling questions for the White House over the legality of the programme. There is also growing concern within allied countries.

On May 27 a Cologne court will begin hearing complaints from three Yemeni survivors of a US drone strike, in a case brought by Reprieve and the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights.

Complaints centre on the use of Ramstein airbase by the US. The Intercept recently published leaked top secret documents showing that all drone satellite data from Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia transits through the German military base.

That means Ramstein will inevitably have helped facilitate the drone killing of seven or more German citizens by America, actions which may give further traction to the impending lawsuit. Kat Craig, from Reprieve, told the Bureau: “The time has come for Germany and the US’s other Western allies to face the facts: they are complicit in an illegal and immoral war – one which violates their own legal framework and should see them prosecuted.” 

Could the case succeed? The track record of Europe’s courts on earlier CIA progammes, including torture and rendition, is not encouraging. 

In this exclusive extract from Chris Woods’ new book Sudden Justice: America’s Secret Drone Wars, the former Bureau reporter shows how Germany’s role in the CIA’s covert drone wars has been highly controversial for years.

In early 2011, an urgent order was issued by Germany’s Interior Ministry: intelligence agencies could no longer pass information to the United States if there was any risk this might be used to kill German citizens. Berlin’s ban was triggered by a CIA drone strike on October 4, 2010, which according to early reports had killed as many as eight German nationals (two had in fact died).

In the days prior to that bombing, there were claims of impending terror attacks against Berlin and other European cities: “Terrorists plotting to carry out a Mumbai-style mas­sacre in Western Europe have a list of high-profile targets in their sights ranging from the Eiffel Tower to a hotel near Berlin’s famed Brandenburg Gate,” ran one of many such stories, with Fox News reporting that the source was “a German-Pakistani national interrogated at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.”

Meanwhile, an anonymous US official told Reuters: “It shouldn’t surprise anyone that links between plots and those who are orchestrating them lead to decisive American action. The terrorists who are involved are, as everyone should expect, going to be targets. That’s the whole point of all of this.”

Shahab Dashti – IMU propaganda

Binyamin Erdogan was talking in the courtyard of his rented home with fellow-German Shahab Dashti and three Pakistanis when a Hellfire missile detonated among them at around 7pm local time.

Erdogan’s widow, his pregnant sister-in-law, and infant nephew were just meters away, though survived unscathed. His brother Emrah was in a nearby room: “My eyes were full of earth because the houses were made of mud,” he later recalled. Staggering outside, he found Dashti mortally injured and his brother Binyamin dead.

Testimony from Emrah’s wife has described how her one-year-old son had been playing with his uncle in the courtyard only minutes before a US missile struck. She has recalled the scene imme­diately after: “The bodies of the three strangers had been cut into pieces by the attack and we could hardly find anything of them. The body of my brother-in-law lay in the soil. He was already dead and the back of his head had been blown apart… Although our friend´s [Dashti’s] hand was still trembling he was dead already as well… The whole courtyard had been turned to rubble by the attack.”

Related story: Hostage deaths mean 38 Westerners killed by US drone strikes, Bureau investigation reveals

Scared that he still risked being killed, and now on the run, the surviving brother contacted Hans-Christian Ströbele, the German Green Party MP:

Emrah contacted me via mail, apparently from Pakistan and at first anonymously. He told me what he’d experienced, that he was present during the drone strike and was indeed unbelievably lucky to survive. He also sent me photos of his dead brother and asked for my help.

Ströbele helped arrange for the return of Emrah Erdogan and his wife to Germany, where the former was ultimately imprisoned for seven years on terrorism-related charges.

Hans-Christian Strobele – German Green Party parliamentarian (Stephan Röhl)

It was widely assumed in media reports that those Germans bombed by the CIA in Waziristan had been involved in the “imminent terror plots” described just days beforehand.

Yet Germany’s interior minister Thomas de Maziere had insisted at the time that “there is no concrete imminent attack plan that we are aware of… We are looking at every­thing but there is no fever thermometer of danger”.

The strike on the Erdogan home again raised concerns about the extent to which Western intelligence agencies were colluding in lethal operations. Discomfort at the deaths of Germans—coupled with the later criminal trials of Emrah Erdogan and others–saw key aspects of the intelligence process exposed.

It emerged, for example, that Germany’s intelligence agencies had known of the Erdogans’ presence in Mir Ali, North Waziristan, for many weeks prior to the attack. Indeed, all phone calls made by the men were being recorded and analysed.

In a prophetic conversation in August 2010, for example, Emrah described his life in “dangerous Waziristan” to his fam­ily in Germany. Stern magazine, which obtained transcripts of the con­versations, described how Erdogan believed that “houses are marked so that airplanes can identify them and bomb them more accurately.” Only an American air raid would ever be able to reach them, he said. Other calls reportedly described a planned suicide mission in Afghanistan by Binyamin which was designed to kill “many dozens of people”.

With the Mir Ali house under direct surveillance by both US and German intelligence agencies, it is unclear why the United States had proceeded with a lethal strike when it did—particularly since women and children were in immediate proximity to the targets.

Modelling of the strike that killed Erdogan by Forensic Architecture.

Questioned by the Bundestag’s oversight committee, the German intel­ligence community admitted, according to Ströbele, that on occasion “they gave information to US [intelligence] services but explicitly not for killings or executions by Special Commando or drones, they would not do this. Then I asked, ‘Can you exclude the possibility?’ and they answered, ‘No.’” A government minister later insisted that while the intelligence ser­vices did share cellphone data with “other foreign secret services,” this was “not specific enough to pinpoint exact locations”.

“The only question for me was whether Germany’s intelligence services had the intention to kill Binyamin or oth­ers, or just gave the information and didn’t ask any questions.”

– Marc Lindemann

Critics complained that such data could still lead the CIA’s drones to the near vicinity of a German citizen, from where its own electronic eavesdropping technologies might easily locate them. Under pressure from MPs, in January 2011 prosecu­tors opened a criminal investigation into whether Germany’s intelligence agencies had been complicit in the killing of citizens.

Marc Lindemann, a former Military Intelligence officer who has made a study of the Erdogan case, believes it was “pretty likely” that Germany shared material with the Americans related to the strike: “The only question for me was whether Germany’s intelligence services had the intention to kill Binyamin or oth­ers, or just gave the information and didn’t ask any questions.”

Yet almost three years later, the inquiry concluded that there were no charges to answer, since Binyamin Erdogan had been a “civilian combatant” and was therefore “lawfully killed”. Questions relating to intelligence-sharing were sidestepped.

Even as federal investigators gathered their evidence, other Germans were still being killed by the CIA in Pakistan—regardless of any ban on intelligence sharing. On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Mohammad al-Faateh, a 27-year-old Berliner and suspected militant, was killed by the Americans in North Waziristan along with an alleged local Haqqani Network official and a Saudi Al Qaeda operative.

Seven months later, Samir Hatour also died. According to a martyrdom video obtained by SITE, a for-profit organisation that tracks the online activity of various extremist groups, “on the morning of March 9 2012, which was a Friday, Abu Laith [Hatour] went to his family, and on the way with three other mujahidin, the car he was in was fired upon by an American drone and the brothers died as martyrs.”

Ahmed B – the “King of Setterich” (from a eulogy video)

In October 2012 Ahmad B was also killed, a 24-year-old man of Moroccan origin who had been born in the town of Setterich in the German state of Aachen. Announcing his death, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (which took in many European radicals), pronounced in a 13-minute German-language video: “Dear brothers and sisters, the King of Setterich is now a martyr.”

As the longest-serving member of the Bundestag oversight commit­tee for Germany’s intelligence community, Ströbele was deeply con­cerned at the issues raised by the killing of Binyamin Erdogan and other nationals: “Our intelligence agencies always deny any involvement with surveillance and the use of drones, because they know that it is a very delicate issue here. First they would be liable to prosecution and sec­ond they would be violating the constitution.”

Sitting in a Berlin office stacked from floor to ceiling with box files of investigations he has con­ducted, Ströbele admitted to being disheartened at how little true over­sight politicians in Germany, Britain, and the United States now had over their respective intelligence services: “Too often we are dependent on good investigative journalists to get hold of certain facts, which then give us the chance to follow up with the intelligence services. Without the work of Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung and others, our work would be far less worthy or of no worth at all.”

It was a disturbing admission from a politician whose role was to help hold to democratic account the intelligence world.

Follow Chris Woods on Twitter. Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project, subscribe to our podcast Drone News, and follow Drone Reads on Twitter to see what our team is reading.

Published

April 23, 2015

Written by

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

Al Qaeda’s US hostage, Warren Weinstein, killed in a US drone strike in January 2015.

In an unprecedented announcement today President Barack Obama admitted that two al Qaeda hostages, an American and an Italian, were killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan in January.

He also said two other US citizens were killed in a subsequent strike later in the same month.

These were not the only Westerners killed by the US in its covert drone war in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

An in-depth analysis by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and author Chris Woods has found that seven other US citizens have been killed since the White House launched its covert drone war on suspected terrorists in 2002.

These findings are part of a major investigation into the nationalities of people killed by the US drone war.

At least 38 Westerners in total have now been killed by US drones in the three target countries. The research raises serious questions about US policy and the extent to which Western governments have been colluding with the US over unlawful intelligence sharing.

The 38 Western deaths include 10 Americans, eight Britons, seven Germans, three Australians, two Spaniards, two Canadians, one Belgian or Swiss national, and now one Italian. There have also been four ‘Westerners’ of unidentified nationality.

Before today’s announcement, the most prominent strike on a Westerner was the one which killed US citizen Anwar al Awlaki, a cleric who became a leading figure and propagandist in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) who died in Yemen in September 2011.

The Bureau has compiled these figures over the past four years through an extensive analysis of thousands of media reports and NGO filings, as well as from court papers and leaked government documents. In all there have been at least 514 US drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen since the first in November 2002.

Of the 38 Westerners killed, six are believed to have converted to Islam. At least 18, half the total, were European citizens. We now know two of the 38 were innocent hostages.

The White House today said the US accidentally killed the two hostages, saying they were unaware Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto were in a building when the strike hit. The US “had no reason to believe either hostage was present,” added White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

The two Americans killed in the second January strike in Pakistan were named as al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn and Ahmed Farouq, an al Qaeda leader.

Obama announced today he has launched a thorough investigation into this attack.

 

Total Westerners killed in US drone strikes

in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia

US 10
UK 8
Germany 7
“Western” 4
Australia 3
Spain 2
Canada 2
Italy 1
Switzerland or Belgium 1

 

Shared intelligence

Western casualties are a tiny percentage of the total killed by CIA and Pentagon drone operations in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. The Bureau has established a country or region of origin for 2,350 people killed by drones. Of that total, the 38 Westerners comprise just 1.6%.

But these findings could reignite debate about fundamental issues surrounding the US drone programme, including the role of Washington’s European allies. It has long been assumed allies such as the UK, Australia and New Zealand have shared intelligence with the US that has been used in drone strikes.

Just last week, The Intercept, US investigative reporting site, revealed leaked documents that confirmed the US’s major military base in Ramstein, Germany, is fundamental to the drone programme. It relays signals to and from pilots stationed on bases in the US and the Predator and Reaper drones flying over Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. That seven German citizens have been killed via this route may fuel concern in Berlin about the use of their territory.

Related story: Could German court halt White House’s ‘illegal’ drone war? An exclusive extract from Chris Woods’ new book Sudden Justice

“The US’ drone programme has dragged many Western allies into a dirty, secret war,” said Kat Craig, legal director of British charity Reprieve. “It is time to lift the veil on this programme, which has so far been shrouded in secrecy and been allowed to operate without any democratic transparency, and hold all complicit governments responsible for killing innocents and terrorising communities to account.”

The Bureau’s new research was carried out in conjunction with investigative author Chris Woods, a former Bureau journalist. In his new book, Sudden Justice, Woods reveals many of the Westerners were targeted as a result of a deliberate CIA policy that had been sanctioned by George W Bush.

In 2008 according to a former senior US intelligence official, the CIA adopted a policy of deliberately targeting and killing Westerners in Pakistan’s tribal areas. That decision was reportedly approved by both President George W Bush and his deputy Dick Cheney, amid fears of a new 9/11-style atrocity.

A number of radicalised Westerners had recently made their way to Pakistan’s tribal areas for terrorist training, the CIA learned. “These were folks who would not have called attention to themselves if they were standing next to you in the passport line or at McDonald’s,” a former high ranking US intelligence official told Woods.

The Agency now wanted to target and kill these Westerners. To do so, it needed approval at the highest level.

“At the heart of our discussion was that this now is the recreating of the threat to the homeland,” according to the former US intelligence official. “And that’s a pretty stark place for the intel guys to put a policy-maker in. But that’s kind of an accurate description of the box we built for the President and Vice President in the summer of 2008.”

In 2012, former CIA Director Michael Hayden told a Canadian newspaper that Westerners were indeed targeted. He describes once telling President Bush that Pakistan’s tribal areas were “a safe haven that’s being used to prepare people to come attack us. And therefore I recommend – and this is the best I can give you on this – stronger courses of action.”

The shift resulted in a dramatic increase in the frequency of drone attacks in Pakistan. From July 28 onwards that year, there were 33 strikes killing at least 199 people. There were just five strikes in the six months before, killing 53.

Britons killed

Briton Rashid Rauf was one of the 199 to die in the second half of 2008.

He was linked to the July 7 2005 terrorist attacks in London in which 52 people died. His role in this attack raised his profile in al Qaeda. This reportedly gained him a more central role in the planning of another operation – a plot to blow up airliners over the Atlantic, en route to the US from London.

The following year the second Briton died. Abdul Jabbar had travelled to Afghanistan and then Pakistan with his two brothers around the time of the September 11 attacks. Jabbar’s older brother, Mohammed Azmir Khan, was killed in a drone strike in Pakistan November 2011.

A third UK citizen died in the same strike as Khan – Londoner Ibrahim Adam. Many details about these three Britons emerged in court documents relating to the testimony of Mohammed Junaid Babar, an al Qaeda supergrass. Babar, a US citizen, appeared as a witness in the trial of several men accused of plotting to detonated a massive fertiliser bomb in London in 2004.

There is a complete lack of detail available for two UK citizens killed in Pakistan. “Mr Dearsmith” and “Mr Stephen” were killed in December 2010 – they were both believed to be converts to Islam and originally came from the Midlands.

Rashid Rauf leaving court in Rawalpindi in 2006 (Associated Press/Anjum Naveed)

While six Britons were killed in Pakistan, two died in Somalia. The US killed Mohammed Sakr and Bilal al Berjawi with drones in January and February 2012 – roughly 18 months after the British government stripped them of their UK citizenship.

They were part of a loose group of young Londoners who left the UK to join terrorist groups, along with Mohammed Emwazi, the notorious Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (Isis) fighter known as Jihadi John.

Almost as many Germans as Britons died in US drone strikes – all of them in CIA attacks in Pakistan. The first died in 2010, the year the CIA’s “shackles were unleashed“, according to an administration security official, and President Obama reportedly let the agency hike its drone strikes. Three Germans were killed in October 2010 alone.

Allegations of US allies providing the drone campaign with intelligence have surfaced in relation to a number of Western deaths. There were serious concerns the UK had given the US Berjawi’s location. He had reportedly called his wife in London shortly before the drones struck.

Debate about intelligence sharing for drone strikes, and consequently being complicit in a highly legally contentious policy, has intensified with the publication of documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

These have demonstrated just how close the US and UK intelligence communities are. In 2013 UN special rapporteur Ben Emmerson told British parliamentarians that it is “inevitable” that intelligence shared by UK spies with the US had been used in drone strikes. “It would be absurd if it were not the case,” he added.

The Snowden leaks have also underlined how close the US intelligence relationship is with Australia and New Zealand. The spotlight fell on this proximity when the US killed an Australian citizen and an Australian-New Zealand dual-national in Yemen in November 2013.

The Australian intelligence service knew Australian citizen Christopher Havard was in Yemen when he was killed. The Australian Federal Police had obtained a warrant for his arrest three weeks before.

And New Zealand’s spies knew Daryl Jones was in Yemen for “quite some time,” according to Prime Minister John Key who had signed a warrant allowing his intelligence services to spy on Jones.

In an echo of the Berjawi case, both men had their passports revoked the year before they were killed.

Jones and Havard were two of only six Westerners recorded as killed in Yemen. The other four were all Americans. The first of them, Kamal Darwish, was killed in November 2002. It was the first US drone strike outside Afghanistan.

He was wanted on suspicion of being the recruiter of a terror support cell that had been rounded up in Buffalo, New York state. He was killed in a strike on a car with five others, including one of the alleged masterminds of the US Cole attack.

In September 2011 the US killed Anwar al Awlaki and Samir Khan. Both were propagandists, responsible for the English language magazine Inspire. The following month the US killed Abdulrahman al Awlaki, Anwar’s 16 year old son. He died in a strike while barbecuing with friends.

On May 22 2013, the US attorney-general Eric Holder acknowledged in a letter to Congress that the US had killed four of its own citizens in drone strikes. The four were: Samir Khan, Anwar and Abdulrahman al Awlaki, as well as Jude Kenan Mohamed from Raleigh, North Carolina, killed in Pakistan in November 2011. The letter claimed only Anwar al Awlaki was deliberately targeted. It made no mention of the other three Americans killed with drones.

The Bureau contacted the CIA for comment on this story. However the Agency has yet to reply.

Western citizens reported killed in US covert drone strikes, 2002-2015
Name Nationality Date Location
Kemal Darwish American November 3 2002 Yemen
Amer Azizi Spanish December 1 2005 Pakistan
Raquel Burgos Garcia* Spanish December 1 2005 Pakistan
Unknown Canadian August 30 2008 Pakistan
Unknown Canadian August 30 2008 Pakistan
Unknown American November 7 2008 Pakistan
Unknown American November 7 2008 Pakistan
Unknown “Western” November 7 2008 Pakistan
Unknown “Western” November 7 2008 Pakistan
Rashid Rauf British November 22 2008 Pakistan
Buenyamin Erdogan German October 4 2010 Pakistan
Shahab Dashti German October 4 2010 Pakistan
Mohammed Abdul Jabbar British October 6 2010 Pakistan
Hayrettin Burhan German October 18 2010 Pakistan
Unknown “Western” October 27 2010 Pakistan
Unknown “Western” October 27 2010 Pakistan
“Mr Dearsmith”* British December 10 2010 Pakistan
“Mr Stephens”* British December 10 2010 Pakistan
Saifullah* Australian July 5 2011 Pakistan
Mohammad al Fateh German September 11 2011 Pakistan
Ibrahim Adam British Sept-Nov 2011 Pakistan
Mohammed Azmir British Sept-Nov 2011 Pakistan
Anwar al Awlaki American September 30 2011 Yemen
Samir Khan American September 30 2011 Yemen
Abdel-Rahman al Awlaki American October 14 2011 Yemen
Jude Kenan Mohammed American November 16 2011 Pakistan
Bilal al Berjawi British (ex) January 21 2012 Somalia
Patrick K German February 16 2013 Pakistan
Mohammed Sakr British (ex) February 23 2012 Somalia
Samir H German March 9 2012 Pakistan
Ahmad B German October 10 2012 Pakistan
Moezzedine Garsalloui Belgian or Swiss October 10 2012 Pakistan
Christopher Havard* Australian November 19 2013 Yemen
Daryl Jones* Australian/New Zealand November 19 2013 Yemen
Warren Weinstein American January 2015** Pakistan
Giovanni Lo Porto Italian January 2015** Pakistan
Ahmed Farouq American January 2015** Pakistan
Adam Gadahn American January 2015** Pakistan

* People believed to have converted to Islam.

** Weinstein, Lo Porto and Farouq were killed in one strike in January 2015, Gadahn in another in January 2015. The precise dates are not yet clear.

Data for this investigation came in part from the Bureau’s Naming the Dead project which is supported by Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.

Chris Woods is author of Sudden Justice: America’s Secret Drone Wars.

Follow Jack Serle on Twitter. Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project, subscribe to our podcast, Drone News from the Bureau, and follow Drone Reads on Twitter to see what the team is reading.

Published

April 15, 2015

Written by

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

The ACLU has been fighting the US government in courthouses in New York and Washington DC, above (Wikimedia Commons)

The US government’s tactic of releasing details about its targeted killing programme in only a piecemeal way is “very dangerous”, the American Civil Liberties Union warns in this week’s Drone News.

Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU’s deputy legal director, tells the Bureau’s Owen Bennett-Jones that for the sake of accountability it is vital to understand the reasons why targets are selected for execution – and this can only come through the fullest transparency.

Without full disclosure, he says, the government is able to pick the information it likes and spin the story in its own favour.

The ACLU is trying to compel the government, using freedom of information law, to release key information about its drone war and Jaffer has been working on the issue since 2010.

He explained: “The government is killing hundreds of people in some unknown number of countries. We believe that the public has a right to know who is being killed and why they are being killed. And we’re seeking basic information relating to those questions.”

Download the podcast here.

The ACLU has had some success – last year a New York appeals court ordered the government to release a memo outlining the legal basis for killing US citizen Anwar al Awlaki in Yemen in 2011. Jaffer is “cautiously optimistic” the same court will order the government to release more documents in June this year.

However, the information so far has been sporadic. As Jaffer acknowledges, it may be years before we know exactly how the White House goes about selecting who to kill.

“The government can decide what the public knows about the targeted killing programme and what it doesn’t,” he said. “That’s a very dangerous thing because the government has all sorts of incentives to release only the information that casts its decisions and its conduct in the most favourable light.”

Follow our drones team Owen Bennett-Jones, Abigail Fielding-Smith and Jack Serle on Twitter.

Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project, subscribe to our podcast Drone News, and follow Drone Reads on Twitter to see what our team is reading.

Published

April 1, 2015

Written by

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

Saudi jets have began bombing Houthi targets across its southern border in Yemen

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

i. Key points:

    US drone strike frequency halves from Q4 2014 to Q1 2015 Strikes appear to target the Pakistan Taliban in Afghanistan A single CIA strike kills three in Pakistan as Islamabad forces hammer the tribal areas Yemen sinks into civil war, hamstringing US intelligence gathering essential for drone strikes Another drone strike kills a senior al Shabaab figure in Somalia

 

ii. The Bureau’s numbers:

Recorded US drone strikes to date

Pakistan(June 2004 to date)

Yemen

(Nov 2002 to date)*

Somalia

(Jan 2007 to date)*

Afghanistan

(Jan 2015 to date)

US drone strikes 414 90-109 9-13 2
Total reported killed 2,445-3,945 431-639 23-105 15-21
Civilians reported killed 421-960 65-96 0-5 0
Children reported killed 172-207 8 0 0
Reported injured 1,142-1,720 86-215 2-7 0

 

Recorded US air and cruise missile strikes to date

Pakistan(June 2004 to date)**

Yemen(Nov 2002 to date)*

Somalia(Jan 2007 to date)*

Afghanistan(Jan 2015 to date)

US air & cruise missile strikes N/A 15-72 8-11 4
Total reported killed N/A 155-365 40-74 29-36
Civilians reported killed N/A 68-99 7-16 0
Children reported killed N/A 26-28 0 0
People reported injured N/A 15-102 11-19 0

 

* The Bureau’s estimates are based predominantly on open sources information like media reports. Sometimes it is not possible to reconcile details in different reports. This is why use ranges for our record of casualties and, in the case of Yemen and Somalia, our strike tallies.

** The US has only carried out drone strikes in Pakistan.

 

iii. Bureau analysis for March 2015:

In March 2015, the Bureau recorded three confirmed US air and drone strikes across all of Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan. This was down from four the month before. Meanwhile, Yemen plummeted into a civil war, as a possible rapprochement between Kabul and the Afghan Taliban failed to materialise, and as Pakistan Air Force jets hammered the tribal areas.

Yemen’s rapid descent into chaos forced the US to pull some 100 special forces commandos from the country country. They were there to train Yemeni special forces and coordinate counter-terrorism intelligence.

This turn of events left Washington’s counter-terrorism mission in the country floundering, US commentators and analysts reported, though the CIA is reportedly still operating.

The loss of intelligence coordination in Yemen may have hamstrung the US drone programme there.

In contrast, counter-terrorism operations are set to continue in Afghanistan. The US will keep troops in the country longer than originally planned, allowing special forces and CIA drone bases to remain in the country for longer. This is important for CIA action in Pakistan as its drones operate from bases in Afghanistan.

The CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan was muted last month, despite maintaining the capacity to carry out strikes. The CIA carried out one strike. In contrast, the Pakistan Air Force was extremely active in March. It carried out several strikes, killing scores of people.

In Somalia, the US continued to target al Shabaab’s intelligence and external-action wing, Amniyatt. The second drone strike of 2015 killed the Amniyatt leader, Adan Garaar. He succeeded Yusef Dheeq, who was killed in a drone strike in January.

 

iv. Analysis by quarter: Drone strikes decline

Drone strikes and casualties dropped by about 50% in the first quarter of 2015, compared with the final three months of 2014. There were 23 confirmed US drone strikes reported in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia in Q4 2014 to the end of December, killing at least 87 people.

In Q1 2015, there were 12 strikes, killing at least 47 people.

Though there have been fewer strikes and deaths overall, the average number of people killed per strike, or casualty rate, has remained constant – just under four people were killed per strike in both Q4 2014 and Q1 2015.

 

MONTHLY REPORT BY COUNTRY

 

1. Pakistan

Pakistan: CIA drone strikes
All strikes, March 2015 All strikes, 2015 to date All strikes, 2004 to date
CIA drone strikes 1 6 414
Total reported killed 3 29-41 2,445-3,945
Civilians reported killed 0 0 421-960
Children reported killed 0 0 172-207
Total reported injured 0 9-14 1,142-1,720

 

One CIA drone strike killed three people in Pakistan last month. The attack hit in Kurram agency just across the border from North Waziristan – the location of the overwhelming majority of strikes this year and in 2014.

The attack hit in the Shabak area of the agency, which is close to the border with Afghanistan. Some reports had the strike hitting in Afghanistan however a Tehrik e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) statement placed the attack on the Pakistan side of the border.

Kurram Agency is a spur extending from Pakistan into eastern Afghanistan (Map by: Sarah Leo)

This TTP press release was a eulogy for the three men killed in the attack. It said Khawrey Mehsud was a senior commander in the group and had been its former leader Baitullah Mehsud‘s bodyguard. Baituallah was killed in a drone strike in Pakistan in 2009.

This was the first strike in Pakistan since January 28 when six or seven people were killed in North Waziristan. There has been an abrupt reduction in drone strikes in Pakistan. Five strikes killed at least 29 people in January at a casualty rate of nearly five dead per strike. This was a continuation from the final three months in 2014 when 16 strikes killed at least 57 people at a rate of more than 3.5 killed per strike.

While the CIA has apparently curtailed its strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas, the Pakistan Air Force has launched numerous air strikes, killing scores of people in Tirrah valley of Khyber province. Air force jets and ground forces reportedly killed more than 80 in an operation over the weekend of March 21-22.

Also this month, the Bureau reported that a trove of al Qaeda documents recovered during the raid of Osama Bin Laden’s home in 2011 has corroborated many of the details in the Bureau’s reports of drone strikes in Pakistan.

 

2. Afghanistan

Afghanistan: confirmed US drone and air strikes
All strikes, March 2015 All strikes, 2015 to date
All US strikes 1 6
Total reported killed 9-13 44-57
Civilians reported killed 0 0
Children reported killed 0 0
Total reported injured 0 0

 

The US appears to have been targeting fighters from the TTP in Afghanistan last month. The group reportedly carries out attacks in Pakistan from bases in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has been hammering the group in Pakistan’s tribal areas while a single US drone strike reportedly killed at least nine commanders from the TTP and allied entities. This strike hit in the Nazyan area of Nangrahar on March 23.

This coincided with several days of concerted Pakistan military operation just across the border in Pakistan’s Khyber agency, reportedly targeting the TTP and its allies.

There were two additional, possible US attacks. The first on March 15 killed 10 people, including Hafiz Waheed who succeeded his uncle Abdul Rauf Khadim (killed February 6) as the leader of a reportedly Islamic State-linked anti-government militia. Reporting around this strike was confusing: it was described as an Afghan military operation but also as an airstrike. This would suggest it was a US drone strike, though the Afghan air force does have some strike-capable helicopters.

The second possible attack reportedly killed 11 people on March 24. All the dead were reportedly TTP members though one source said four of the dead were part of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. The strike was widely reported but not by sufficient authoritative sources for the Bureau to consider it a confirmed US attack.

There were five more strikes reported in Afghanistan this month, killing at least 22 people. However these were all reported by single sources and are not as yet included in the Bureau’s casualty estimates.

Also this month, Washington decided to keep 9,800 US soldiers in Afghanistan until the end of 2015, rather than drawing down numbers during the year. Maintaining this level of troops and contractors will enable the CIA to continue its drone strikes from bases in the country.

 

3. Yemen

Yemen: all confirmed US drone strikes
All strikes, March 2015 All strikes, 2015 to date All strikes, 2002 to date*
All US strikes 0 3 90-109
Total reported killed 0 10-13 431-639
Civilians reported killed 0 1-2 65-96
Children reported killed 0 1 8
Total reported injured 0 0 86-215

 

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

March was the first month without a confirmed US strike since July 2014. There was however a possible US attack which left 3-4 dead. It was the third reported but not confirmed strike in Yemen to target a vehicle carrying alleged al Qaeda members. Al Qaeda’s spokesman denied the attack took place.

The frequency of attacks fell in the first quarter of 2015. There were two confirmed US strikes in January and one in February; all three killed at least 10 people. There were twice as many strikes in the final quarter of 2014, with four in December alone. At least 58 people died in US attacks between September and December 2014.

Demonstrations against Houthis in Yemen in January 2015 (Mohammed Hamoud/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

This decline in US drone strikes has coincided with a major escalation in Yemen’s long-simmering political crisis. The Houthi militia marched south, capturing an airbase used by the US, forcing the ousted president to flee the country and precipitating a Saudi-led military intervention.

The Aden residence of former president Abdu Rabbu al Mansour Hadi, who had been attempting to set up an alternative seat of government in the southern port city after escaping the Houthi-controlled capital in February, came under attack from an unidentified warplane. Yemeni forces reported to be loyal to Hadi’s Houthi-allied predecessor, Ali Abdullah Saleh, meanwhile fought for control of Aden’s airport. After speculation as to his whereabouts, Hadi eventually surfaced in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

On March 25 the Houthis captured al Anad airbase 35 miles outside Aden, which had been used by US counter-terrorism forces to coordinate actions – including drone strikes – against the Sunni militant group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). US personnel had evacuated the base a few days previously.

Later that day Saudi Arabia announced a coalition to intervene militarily against the Houthis in Yemen. Intense aerial bombardment of different parts of Yemen has been reported since then. On March 30, dozens were reported killed in a strike on a camp for displaced persons in northern Yemen, though the circumstances of the attack are still unclear.

As the fighting intensifies, there are growing fears that Yemen will become the battlefield for a proxy war between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran. Though the two sects have historically co-existed in Yemen, recent clashes between the advancing Houthis and Sunni tribes have raised the prospect of sectarian war. On March 20 more than 100 people were killed when suicide bombers struck Shiite mosques in the capital during Friday prayers.

The turmoil has left the US’s counter-terrorism policy in Yemen in disarray. US officials told the Associated Press that CIA drone strikes would continue but that there would be “fewer of them”, amid concerns about the lack of on-the-ground intelligence or coordinating partners.

 

4. Somalia

Somalia: all US drone strikes
All strikes, March 2015 All strikes, 2015 to date All strikes, 2015 to date
All US strikes 1 2 9-13
Total reported killed 3 5-12 23-105
Civilians reported killed 0 0-4 0-5
Children reported killed 0 0 0
Total reported injured 0 0 2-7

 

A US drone strike killed three people, including Adnan Garaar, a commander from the Amniyatt – al Shabaab’s intelligence wing.

The Pentagon confirmed the details a week after the attack hit, saying in a statement: “Garar was a key operative responsible for coordinating al Shabaab’s external operations, which target US persons and other Western interests in order to further al Qaeda’s goals and objectives.”

Garaar was “connected to the West Gate Mall attack in Nairobi, Kenya” in September 2013. Garaar’s death was the latest in a series of drone killings in Somalia that appear to have targeted senior al Shabaab figures focused on terrorist attacks beyond Somalia’s borders. Garaar had replaced Yusef Dheeq in the job, who was killed in a drone strike in January. And Dheeq’s predecessor Abdishakur was killed on December 29 2014.

The impact of his and other Amniyatt commanders’ deaths remains to be seen. Al Shabaab has continued to carry out attacks in Kenya, killing 12 across several days this month. The US embassy in Uganda put out a warning on March 26 cautioning western travellers they could be the target of an attack that “may take place soon”.

Neither do the US attacks seem to have dented the group’s capacity to carry out attacks in the heart of Mogadishu. The diplomatic and government quarter, clustered around the city’s airport, is meant to be the most secure place in the country. Yet al Shabaab managed to storm a hotel in this area on March 27, killing 20 people including Somalia’s permanent ambassador to the UN in Geneva.

Follow our drones team Jack Serle and Abigail Fielding-Smith on Twitter.

Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project, subscribe to our podcast Drone News, and follow Drone Reads on Twitter to see what our team is reading.

Published

February 6, 2015

Written by

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

US drone strikes are raising al Shabaab’s profile and inflating its importance, BBC World Service Africa editor Mary Harper told the Bureau’s Drone News podcast.

Focusing on al Shabaab with sophisticated drone technology “gives [al Shabaab] almost a legitimacy in terms of the kind of group that they are claiming to be,” said Harper. The US’s strategy makes the group like “a global force to be reckoned with, even though they are in fact just a group of people running around in the Somali bush”, she said.

Listen to the podcast here

The Bureau spoke with Harper, who has covered Africa for 20 years, and Mohammed Mohammed, an editor on the BBC World Service’s Somali service.

Mohammed said the US is now getting better intelligence about the locations of its targets in Somalia, improving its drone strikes. “I don’t know how the Americans have managed, but it seems now that drones have become a force to be reckoned with,” he said.

“Basically it’s money that is being used to elicit this information,” Harper added. “If they give information about a senior member of al Shabaab they are paid really significant amounts of money – $10,000 if not more,” she said.

This is having serious consequences for the Somali population, Mohammed explained. Al Shabaab releases propaganda videos of alleged spies, claiming they plant mobile phones on al Shabaab members or in their houses in order to guide in the drones. These supposed spies are then executed.

Main image of Al Shabaab soldiers advance through Somalia via Flickr/undergroundchurch-somalia)

Published

February 6, 2015

Written by

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

A US drone strike which killed a senior al Shabaab leader in Somalia last Saturday appears to have been part of a change of tactics by the Americans since it started targeting the militant group in 2007.

It was the fifth consecutive such strike against al Shabaab’s leadership, with drones now appearing to have superseded other, manned aircraft and cruise-missiles in the seven years since attacks began in Somalia.

The unmanned systems are now widely seen as the US’s weapon of choice in its war on terror, as they can “strike their targets with astonishing precision,” according to CIA director John Brennan.

But despite their vaunted precision, there are reports the latest strike in Somalia, on January 31, killed or injured civilians.

The attack killed at least five people, all reportedly members of al Shabaab and one of them identified as Yusef Dheeq, a senior figure in the group.

The attack reportedly hit an al Shabaab convoy at about 9am local time (6am GMT). The US carried out the attack, Pentagon press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby told reporters.

“This was done with Hellfire missiles fired from UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles],” he said at a press briefing on Tuesday. “There were no US boots on the ground” in this mission, he added.

Al Shabaab commander Yusef Dheeq was killed in the attack, according to the Somali government and an unnamed US official.

The US would not officially confirm Dheeq was dead, with Kirby telling reporters: “He has not been officially declared dead. I’m not in a position now to confirm the results of the strike but if successful, if he no longer breathes, then this is a significant, another significant blow to al Shabaab.”

“It goes to show how long our reach can be when it comes to counter-terrorism,” he added. The Bureau understands the US will confirm Dheeq’s death in the coming days.

It is not clear exactly what role Dheeq had within al Shabaab. Kirby said he was the group’s “intelligence and security chief, and director of external planning”. The Somali intelligence services said Dheeq – also known as Abdi Nur Mahdi – was a bomb making expert.

At least four other people were reportedly killed with him – all described as al Shabaab fighters. A local resident told AFP there were four civilian casualties in the strike, but it was not clear if they were injured or killed in the attack.

An official told the Bureau the US was aware of civilian casualty reports and was “looking into it”. However the official reiterated what Kirby said at the briefing, that “we don’t assess there to be any civilian or bystander casualties as a result of the strike”.

This is the third consecutive drone strike in Somalia that has been publicly acknowledged by a US spokesman from a podium in the Pentagon press room. Such public acknowledgement is considerably rare.

The military is also responsible for some of the minimum 89 drone strikes in Yemen but the US has never gone on the record about specific drone strikes there.

The Pentagon would not be drawn on why there appears to be greater transparency about strikes in Somalia but not Yemen, telling the Bureau: “We are as transparent as we can be on all strikes, regardless of location.”

More drones: A change in US tactics?

The recent glut of drone strikes in Somalia is a departure from how the US covert war began in the country in 2007. The first confirmed US drone strike hit Shabaab in June 2011 and since then, there have been eight such strikes in all, killing at least 23 people.

There have been eight other confirmed US attacks recorded by the Bureau that killed at least 40.

Two of these included cruise-missiles launched from ships off the Somali coast. There was also one naval bombardment, when a US warship the Chafee, used its deck gun on June 1 2007 to fire shells onto the shoreline, supporting US commandos who were taking fire from al Shabaab fighters.

Most of the other US attacks were by AC-130s – formidable gunships resembling Hercules transport aircraft that bristle with weapons.

Five of the first six confirmed US attacks in Somalia reportedly involved AC-130s. They killed at least 30 people. There has not been a reported AC-130 attack since the end of 2008.

The first AC-130 strikes, on January 7 and January 9, hit as Ethiopian ground forces invaded Somalia, reportedly with secret US backing. The targets of these strikes were reportedly suspects in the 1998 east African embassy bombings who appeared to have been churned out of their bases in Somalia by the advancing Ethiopian troops.

The US’s recent reliance on drones to kill leading al Shabaab fighters could be because the US fleet of armed drones has grown considerably. The US Air Force had funding in the 2007 budget to run 37 Reaper drones from 2005 to 2011. By 2012, this had risen to 401 aircraft, according to a Pentagon inspector general report released this year.

This increase was in response to the US recognising how useful drones were in the counter-terrorism and counter insurgency battles it was fighting around the world.

The first strike in Somalia demonstrates how arming drones has helped the US fight its global war on terror. While the January 7 2007 strike was an AC-130 strike, the gunship was guided to its target by an unarmed Predator drone that had been following the al Shabaab convoy. The Predator is an older, smaller, less powerful and well armed version of the Reaper.

The Predator’s ability to stay aloft above the battlefield for hours on end helped it stay on the target. However the strike had to wait until the gunship could arrive.

The US would have been able to fire at will at its target in this strike, if the drone were armed. However the strike would have been reportedly hamstrung by shaky intelligence, even if carried out using the Predator’s apparently surgical accuracy.

A Pentagon spokesman said the US based the strike on intelligence “that led us to believe we had principal al Qaeda leaders in an area where we could identify them and take action against them.” But another US official said: “Frankly, I don’t think we know who we killed.”

Main image of an AC-130 gunship releases flares (Lockheed Martin/Flikr)

Published

February 3, 2015

Written by

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

Pakistani tribesmen offer funeral prayer -Thir Khan/AFP/Getty Images

In May 2013, faced with persistent reports of drones killing civilians, President Obama announced that no strike would be authorised unless there was: “near certainty that no civilians would be killed or injured.” It was, he said, “the highest standard we can set.”

The new rule seemed to make a difference. Before the speech the US had, according to Bureau of Investigative Journalism data, mounted 371 strikes in Pakistan that killed between 416 and 953 civilians.

Since the speech, 42 strikes have killed between 0 and six civilians. Or, put another way, there has been no confirmed civilian death as a result of a drone strike in Pakistan since the speech.

The drop in the number of strikes is not solely explained by the near-certainty standard constraining drone operators. The Pakistan government’s attitude has also affected the frequency of drone attacks.

In late 2013, for example, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif complained that US drone strikes had ruined his attempt to open up a dialogue with the Taliban.

Accepting Sharif’s demand for a ceasefire so that he could try to negotiate a settlement, the US suspended its strikes for several months.

As for the sharp drop in the number of civilians killed per strike, improved technology is making a difference. Drones can now stay airborne longer and their missiles have smaller explosive yields.

There is also speculation about new methods of marking targets. According to the rumour mill in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, the US now has some kind of dust that can be sprayed or brushed onto a vehicle. Invisible to the human eye, the dust can be seen by drones that can then fire on the vehicle once it is in an isolated area away from civilians.

Bureau consultant Owen Bennett-Jones

Asked about the dust by the Bureau, a former UK drone programme operative did not deny that the dust exists but he refused to discuss how it works, saying the issue was too sensitive.

The civilian fatality rate is also affected by the quality of the intelligence provided to drone operators. As part of its decade-long campaign against the Afghan Taliban, the US spent huge sums building up an increasingly accurate picture of militant activity both in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Whatever the precise reasons for the post-speech figures, the data suggests that if it wants to the US can reduce the number of civilian casualties.

But there has been no equivalent trend in Yemen. Before the Obama speech there had been at least 54 strikes in Yemen killing between 49 and 56 civilians. Since the speech 23 strikes killed between seven and 24 civilians.

One explanation for the disparity between drone casualty rate in Pakistan and Yemen is that the US has relatively poor intelligence in Yemen.

But it could also be a management issue. Because the US drones in Pakistan are unacknowledged, the CIA has been the lead agency there. In Yemen, the government in Sanaa publicly backed the US drone campaign against Al Qaeda. As a result the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command has had more control of the programme in Yemen.

It’s not clear why the US military might have failed to implement the “near-certainty” standard with as much rigor as the CIA. But there have been hints that in other parts of the world the military has been resistant to Obama’s approach.

When the US announced it would use drones against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (Isis), the Pentagon’s press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby announced a dilution of the near-certainty standard.

He said the military was taking “extreme care and caution” in air operations which he said “carried a special kind of risk”. Asked why the policy had changed, the White House spokesperson Caitlin Hayden said the near certainty-standard applied “only when we take direct action outside areas of active hostilities”.

The relatively low number of civilian casualties in Pakistan suggests that the US is capable of assessing whether or not it has sufficient information to mount an attack with a good chance – or even a near-certainty – of avoiding civilian casualties.

Yemeni civilians as well as those in Iraq and Syria can only hope that US officials will start applying those standards not only in Pakistan but in their country too.

Owen Bennett-Jones is a Consultant to the Bureau. He is one of the UK’s most distinguished and experienced journalists specialising in South Asia and the Middle East. He has worked for the BBC for 25 years and has published widely on Pakistani politics and society.

Follow our drones team Owen Bennett-Jones, Abigail Fielding-Smith and Jack Serle on Twitter.

Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project, subscribe to our podcast Drone News, and follow Drone Reads on Twitter to see what our team is reading.

 

 

Published

February 2, 2015

Written by

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

At least 2,464 people have now been killed by US drone strikes outside the country’s declared war zones since President Barack Obama’s inauguration six years ago, the Bureau’s latest monthly report reveals.

Of the total killed since Obama took his oath of office on January 20 2009, at least 314 have been civilians, while the number of confirmed strikes under his administration now stands at 456.

Research by the Bureau also shows there have now been nearly nine times more strikes under Obama in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia than there were under his predecessor, George W Bush.

And the covert Obama strikes, the first of which hit Pakistan just three days after his inauguration, have killed almost six times more people and twice as many civilians than those ordered in the Bush years, the data shows.

The figures have been compiled as part of the Bureau’s monthly report into covert US drone attacks, which are run in two separate missions – one by the CIA and one for the Pentagon by its secretive special forces outfit, Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).

The research centres on countries outside the US’s declared war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The first strike of the Bush administration, outside Afghanistan, was on November 3 2002, in Yemen. However there was not a reported drone strike outside Iraq or Afghanistan for 18 months, until the CIA killed 6-8 in Pakistan on June 17 2004. That was more than three years into President Bush’s first term.

In total, there were 52 strikes under Bush, killing 416 people, of whom 167 were civilians.

According to the Bureau’s latest report, January 2015 saw an intensification of the US campaign in both Pakistan and Yemen.

    Most strikes in January in Pakistan since July 2014. Highest monthly casualty rate in Pakistan for six months. A confirmed CIA drone strike in Yemen reportedly kills a child. Two possible US strikes kill at least 45 in a day in Somalia.

Pakistan

January 2015 actions

    Total CIA strikes in January: 5  Total killed in strikes in January: 26-37

All actions 2004 – January 31 2015

    Total Obama strikes: 362  Total US strikes since 2004: 413  Total reported killed: 2,438-3,942  Civilians reported killed: 416-959  Children reported killed: 168-204  Total reported injured: 1,142 

For the Bureau’s full Pakistan databases click here.

The US has stepped up its drone campaign in Pakistan in January, launching more strikes and killing more people in a month than any since July 2014.

The CIA killed at least 26 people in five strikes giving January the highest casualty rate in six months.

The casualty rate – minimum number of people reported killed – in Pakistan from July 2014 to January 2015 (source: TBIJ data)

Four of the five strikes reportedly targeted the Shawal area – a thickly wooded region with steep valleys that crosses the borders of North and South Waziristan, and of Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is reportedly a major stronghold for armed groups in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

The Pakistan military has continued its air and ground operation in North Waziristan. The ongoing offensive has reportedly pushed Arab and Central Asian fighters out of Pakistan, into Afghanistan, according to the Wall Street Journal. US drone strikes have continued across the border, despite the Nato mission there having come to an end.

Every strike this month reportedly killed foreigners as well as local men. The nationality of these foreign fighters was not always clear, though they were often described as being Uzbeks. It is not clear if this is a reference to their nationality or ethnicity.

Some of the dead were described in media reports as being loyal to Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a well known warlord from the tribal areas. There were reports he was killed in the first strike of the year, but they later turned out to be false.

Also this month, the Bureau has completed an audit of its Pakistan drone data. It has now available to download as a spreadsheet.

Yemen

January 2015 actions

    Confirmed US drone strikes: 1  Further reported/possible US strike events: 1  Total reported killed in US operations: 3-7  Civilians reported killed in US strikes: 1-2, including 1 child

All actions 2002 – January 31 2015*

    Confirmed US drone strikes: 88-107  Total reported killed: 424-629 Civilians reported killed: 65-96  Children reported killed: 8  Reported injured: 86-215 Possible extra US drone strikes: 71-87  Total reported killed: 307-439  Civilians reported killed: 26-61 Children reported killed: 6-9  Reported injured: 75-102
    All other US covert operations: 15-72  Total reported killed: 156-365  Civilians reported killed: 68-99  Children reported killed: 26-28  Reported injured: 15-102 

Click here for the full Yemen data.

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

Two reported US drone strikes left at least six people dead in the final week of January. An unnamed US official confirmed the first attack was carried out by the CIA. It reportedly killed a child. The second strike remains unconfirmed.

These attacks came as armed rebels took over the streets of the capital, toppling the government of former president Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi. It is the worst political crisis in Yemen since the 2011 revolution that ultimately forced Hadi’s predecessor from power. The fall of Hadi’s government has robbed the US of a close ally. It has left the US “facing increasing difficulty acquiring intelligence” for its drone programme.

The first strike on January 26 hit four days after Hadi’s government resigned and the day after President Obama declared the US would continue its counter-terrorism operations in Yemen, despite the political situation. The CIA attack killed Mohammed Toaymen, a child reportedly aged between 12 and 15. He died alongside Awaid al Rashidi, a Saudi in his 30s, and Abdel Aziz al Zidani, a Yemeni.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) said all three were members of the group, though an unnamed AQAP source made a distinction between a supporting member of the group and an operative with an active roll.

“Be logical,” an AQAP source told the Yemen Times. “How can a 12-year-old be a member of al Qaeda? Our aim was to convince him to join us in the future, especially considering that his father was killed in a drone strike.”

A US official confirmed to the New York Times that the CIA carried out the strike. It was the first reported US attack in the country for 51 days.

A second attack was reported on January 31. This unconfirmed US drone strike killed 3-4 people in a car in southern Shabwa province.

The attacks hit during one of the worst crises to affect the country, according Yemen expert Adam Baron at the European Council on Foreign Relations. He told McClatchy: “The phrase, ‘Yemen on the brink’ is one of the most pervasive clichés in coverage of the region. But Yemen is clearly more on the brink than it’s ever been in its history of being on the brink.”

The ongoing political crisis is “obviously a fantastic opportunity for al Qaeda”, Baron told the Bureau. The armed group took advantage of instability during the 2011 revolution that unseated then-president Ali Abdullah Saleh. It took control of a large swathe of the southern province of Abyan, setting itself up as the local government – providing people with power and meting out justice to petty criminals.

Also this month, the Bureau has completed a thorough audit of its drone strike data in Yemen. The number of confirmed drone strikes has consequently increased and the number of possible drone strikes has decreased. The data is now available for download as a spreadsheet

Somalia

January 2015 actions

    Total reported US operations: 2  Total reported killed: 45-69

All actions 2007 – January  31 2015

    US drone strikes: 7-12  Total reported killed: 18-102  Civilians reported killed: 0-5  Children reported killed: 0  Reported injured: 2-7
    All other US covert operations: 7-11  Total reported killed: 40-141  Civilians reported killed: 7-47  Children reported killed: 0-2 Reported injured: 11-21 

Click here for the Bureau’s full data on Somalia.

There were two possible US drone strikes in Somalia on January 31, with between 45 and 69 people reported killed.

It was not clear from the reporting when the strikes took place. Both attacks reportedly killed al Shabaab fighters, though their identities were unknown. Both attacks were reported to have been US attacks. The US Department of Defense, which runs the US drone programme in Somalia, declined to comment on the reported strikes. A spokesman for Amisom, the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia, told the Bureau it was not responsible for the attack. And the Kenyan Defence Force (KDF), which has launched air strikes in Somalia, did not respond to Bureau requests for comment.

South-western Somalia. Click to see the full map (Based on OCHA/Relief Web)

The first strike was reported to have killed at least 40people when it reportedly hit an al Shabaab training camp in the Lower Shabelle region, south of the capital Mogadishu. The region’s governor told reporters the strike was carried out by drones. However the death toll was disproportionately higher than any other drone strike in Somalia. If US involvement is confirmed, it would be the most fatal drone strike recorded anywhere by the Bureau since Jun 2009 when CIA drones killed at least 60 in Pakistan.

The KDF reportedly targeted al Shabaab in southern Somalia with greater frequency last year than the US. This January 31 attack could have been a KDF strike – the Kenyan air force operations tended to have high reported death tolls, though these casualty counts were according to the KDF itself and not independently verified. For example, in November 2014 100 al Shabaab were reportedly killed by a Kenyan strike.

A second strike also reportedly hit on Saturday. It was said to have killed at least five people and reportedly hit either an al Shabaab convoy or an al Shabaab house in the Bay area, to the west of Mogadishu. A local resident told AFP the strike may have killed some civilians. Ali Yare said “four civilians were among the casualties” though did not specify if they were injured or dead.

Also this month, the Bureau has published its data on US strikes in Somalia as a spreadsheet to download.

Photo: US increases its strikes in Pakistan with drones flying out of Afghanistan (David Axe/Flickr).

Published

January 7, 2015

Written by

Jack Serle
This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
    CIA Pakistan drone campaign reported to have killed nearly five times more people under Obama than under Bush No confirmed civilian casualties in Pakistan for second year running Domestic buildings continue to be the most frequently hit target in Pakistan Highest ever number of drone strikes in a year in Somalia Total people killed per strike in Yemen hits highest level

Follow our drones team Jack Serle and Abigail Fielding-Smith on Twitter.

Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project, subscribe to our podcast Drone News, and follow Drone Reads on Twitter to see what our team is reading.

Pakistan

December 2014 actions

Total CIA strikes in December: 4

Total people reported killed: 14-20

All 2014 actions

Total strikes: 25

Total reported killed: 114-183

Civilians reported killed: 0-2

Children reported killed: 0-2

Total reported injured: 44-67

All actions 2004 – 2014

Total Obama strikes: 357

Total US strikes since 2004: 408

Total reported killed: 2,410-3,902

Civilians reported killed: 416-959

Children reported killed: 168-204

Total reported injured: 1,133-1,706For the Bureau’s full Pakistan databases click here.

Although the CIA did not carry out a strike in Pakistan for the first five months of the year, drones were reported to have killed at least 114 people in 2014, more than in all of the previous year. The number of people killed per strike, or casualty rate, also increased slightly.

The CIA’s strikes have been concentrated on North Waziristan where the Pakistan military has been conducting its own counter-terrorism operation.

The drone strikes began on June 11, five days before the Pakistani offensive. The timing fuelled speculation that the Pakistani and US governments had resumed coordination on drone strikes after an apparent deterioration of relations in 2011.

Pakistan’s military offensive came after the breakdown of peace talks between Islamabad and the Pakistan Taliban.

All but one of the CIA’s strikes this year hit in an area where the Pakistan military has been carrying out air or ground operations. Almost half the strikes were concentrated on the area in and around the North Waziristan town of Datta Khel – home to numerous Taliban fighters, weapons markets and bomb factories.

Five strikes hit in the Shawal area, a mountainous and thickly forested region that spreads across North Waziristan, South Waziristan and Afghanistan. It has long been a haven for armed groups because of its harsh, easily defended terrain.

While the concentration of CIA strikes would imply coordination with the Pakistani military, the reported affiliation of the victims suggests the two are not working from the same target sheet. The US appears to be targeting members of al Qaeda and groups, like the Haqqani Network, that concentrate on attacking US and allied troops across the border in Afghanistan.

The Pakistani military meanwhile has focused on militants fighting Islamabad such as the Pakistan Taliban.

Map: Sarah Leo

Although the two types of groups are often aligned, sometimes Washington and Islamabad’s priorities diverge.

On September 28 for example a CIA drone was reported to have killed between two and four people near Wana, the capital of South Waziristan – an area that the Pakistani military claims to control. The strike reportedly killed members of a so-called “good” Taliban faction that eschewed attacking Pakistan in favour of fighting across the border in Afghanistan.

This strike, like all but three of the attacks in 2014, reportedly hit a house. This year a Bureau investigation showed the CIA has consistently targeted domestic buildings more than any other target type in Pakistan. This contrasts with the approach in neighbouring Afghanistan, where drone strikes on buildings have been banned in all but the most urgent situations since 2008 as part of measures to protect civilian lives.

Overall, there were fewer strikes in 2014 than any year since 2007 – the year before the drone war began to escalate.

President Barack Obama’s incoming administration dramatically increased the rate of strikes in 2009. The president is coming to the end of his sixth year in office and the CIA has now carried out more than 350 strikes during his tenure. This means there have been more than seven times as many drone strikes during Obama’s time in office than both of President Bush’s terms as of the end of 2014. The strikes under Obama are reported to have killed at least 2000 people, nearly five times as many as the 410 reported killed under Bush.

While there have been more strikes in the past six years, the casualty rate has been lower under Obama than under his predecessor. The CIA killed eight people, on average, per strike during the Bush years. Under Obama, it is less than six. The civilian casualty rate is lower too – more than three civilians were reported killed per strike during the past presidency. Under Obama, less than one.

There were no confirmed civilian casualties in Pakistan in the past year, as in 2013. There were two reported civilian casualties in 2014 but, like the four reported civilian deaths in 2013, the Bureau has as yet been unable to confirm the reports.

Yemen

December 2014 actions

Confirmed US drone strikes: 1

Other US operations: 1

Total reported killed in all US operations: 20-21

Civilians reported killed in all US operations: 8

All confirmed drone strikes in 2014

US drone strikes: 13-15

Total reported killed: 82-118

Civilians reported killed: 4-9

Children reported killed: 1

Reported injured: 7-14

All actions 2002 – 2014*

Confirmed US drone strikes: 72-84

Total reported killed: 371-541

Civilians reported killed: 64-83

Children reported killed: 7

Reported injured: 81-199

Possible extra US drone strikes: 101-120

Total reported killed: 345-553

Civilians reported killed: 26-68

Children reported killed: 6-11

Reported injured: 90-123

All other US covert operations: 16-81Total reported killed: 168-404Civilians reported killed: 68-97Children reported killed: 26-28Reported injured: 22-115Click here for the full Yemen data.

* All but one of these actions have taken place during Obama’s 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.

There were at least 13 confirmed US drone strikes in 2014, along with 18 further incidents reported but as yet unconfirmed as US drone strikes. This is a decrease on the total strikes in 2013 and continues a downward trend in reported strikes since they peaked in 2012.

The frequency of strikes may have fallen in 2014 but more people were killed, on average, per strike than in any previous year.

The casualty rate for last year even outstrips 2012 – the bloodiest year recorded in the US’s drone campaign in Yemen when at least 173 people were reported killed in 29 strikes. In 2014 at least 82 people were reported to have died in just 13 strikes.

Far fewer civilians were reported killed in 2014 compared with the 17-37 reported dead in 2013. All but one of the 4-9 reported killed by US drones this year died in a CIA attack on April 19.

Reports of the strike all described an attack on a vehicle carrying alleged militants, in which a separate vehicle full of civilians was also hit.

2014 was a particularly turbulent year for Yemen, with the Shiite Houthi group pushing in to the capital, Sanaa, in September, and then expanding in to other parts of the country, clashing with Sunni tribesmen and al Qaeda-affiliated fighters. In October, two suspected drone strikes took place in al Bayda province, where Houthi fighters have been fighting al Qaeda-affiliated militants.

There were also three US special forces raids in 2014. This was a departure from the norm – the last time the Bureau recorded a reported US ground assault in Yemen was in 2010. Two of the attacks were in conjunction with Yemeni forces.

The first was a joint US-Yemeni operation on April 21. Helicopter-borne commandos ambushed a car, killing three or four people including a child. The attack came after two drone strikes were reported to have killed 37-52 people, including 4-9 civilians, one of them a 14-year old boy.

The second ground operation – a hostage rescue mission on November 26 – freed eight al Qaeda captives and left seven terrorists dead. However the raid failed to rescue the key hostage: Luke Somers, a US journalist. He had been moved days before the operation.

Somers tragically died in the third US ground operation – another special forces hostage rescue mission on December 6. Somers and another captive, South African Pierre Korkie, were both killed by al Qaeda fighters. It emerged after the operation that intermediaries believed they had negotiated Korkie’s release and that he would be free the following day.

Somalia

All Somalia actions in 2014

Total US drone strikes: 3

Total reported killed: 10-18Civilians reported killed: 0

Children reported killed: 0

Somalia December 2014 actions

Total reported US operations: 1Total reported killed: 2-3

All Somalia actions 2007 – 2014

Drone strikes: 7-10

Total killed: 18-33

Civilians killed: 0-1

Children killed: 0

Injured: 2-3

Other covert operations: 8-11Total killed: 40-141

Civilians killed: 7-47

Children killed: 0-2

Injured: 11-21Click here for the Bureau’s full data on Somalia.

There were three confirmed US drone strikes in 2014, the most reported in any year. Each US attack reportedly killed a senior al Shabaab figure.

The first hit on January 26, reportedly targeting al Shabaab’s leader Ahmed Abdi Godane. The drone missed him but did kill Sahal Iskudhuq – said to be one of Godane’s senior aides and a leading figure in Amniyat, al Shabaab’s intelligence unit.

The second attack, on September 1, did kill Godane. US military drones killed the group’s leader in an encampment where he had stopped for the night. It was not clear if Godane had been killed and there was feverish speculation about whether the US had got its man in the days after the strike.

 

African Union peacekeepers advance liberate key town from al Shabaab (Photo: AU UN IST PHOTO / Tobin Jones)

 

Unusually a Pentagon spokesman publicly acknowledged the US had carried out the attack and confirmed his death, saying in a statement: “The US military undertook operations against Godane on Sept. 1, which led to his death… Removing Godane from the battlefield is a major symbolic and operational loss to al Shabaab.”

The third strike, on December 29, killed Abdishakur, reportedly the group’s chief of intelligence.

Alongside the strikes, African Union peacekeepers have carried out operations against Shabaab and has made gains, including pushing the group out of the port town of Barawe – a key hub for al Shabaab’s illegal, lucrative charcoal trade.

Whether the ongoing efforts by the peacekeepers and the US decapitation strikes hasten the demise of the group remain to be seen. Al Shabaab continues to hold sway over rural areas of southern and central Somalia. It carried out bloody attacks throughout 2014, including attacking the president’s residence and parliament – both within the fortified centre of Mogadishu. The group has also murdered several members of the Somali parliament.

The group was also behind a number of cross-border attacks last year. One attack in May killed at least three in Djibouti. Several attacks in Kenya this year left scores of people dead.

The Bureau’s work in 2014

In January, the Bureau published a leaked Pakistani government document showing details of more than 300 CIA drone strikes between 2006 and 2013. It challenged some of the US’s rare public statements on its drone campaign in Pakistan.

In one particularly glaring discrepancy, the document recorded the deaths of 10 people during a 2012 attempt to kill Abu Yahya al Libi, al Qaeda’s second-in-command. Congressional aides told LA Times reporter Ken Dilanian however that the CIA had shown footage of the strike to politicians in which only one person was seen to be killed.

The lull in drone strikes in Pakistan continued in to February. A Pakistani journalist involved in negotiations between Islamabad and the Pakistan Taliban (TTP) confirmed to the Bureau that the Pakistani government had requested a pause to support the latest round of peace talks.

In March, the UK parliament’s defence select committee released its report in to drones, to which the Bureau submitted evidence.

The report was broadly positive about the UK’s use of drones, but called for greater transparency “in relation to safeguards and limitations the UK Government has in place for the sharing of intelligence”. There are concerns that the UK may be sharing locational intelligence with the US which is used to carry out targeted killings.

In April the Bureau reported on the bloodiest weekend of US attacks in Yemen that year. At least 40 people were reported killed in two US drone strikes and a US-Yemeni special forces raid. At least five civilians were reported to be among the dead, including children aged 14 and 16.

In May, the Bureau published its analysis of where the drones strike in Pakistan, produced in collaboration with Forensic Architecture, a research project based at London’s Goldsmiths University, and New York-based Situ Research.

The data was presented as an interactive online map which later in the year won a bronze medal in the Lovie Awards. These recognise outstanding achievement in computer technology.

In June, the Bureau reported on the end of the longest pause of Obama’s Pakistan drone campaign when two strikes hit North Waziristan in Pakistan’s tribal northwest.

In July, Bureau researchers published the results of their scoping study in to the feasibility of tracking drone strikes in Afghanistan, commissioned by the Oxford Research Group’s Remote Control project.

The report found that drones played an increasingly important role in the Afghan conflict (accounting for 18% of all strikes in 2012, as opposed to 5% in 2011). It concluded however that the obstacles to tracking their use with open source data as the Bureau has done in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen are significant.

In the same month, the number of victims of drone strikes in Pakistan identified by the Bureau’s Naming the Dead project reached 700.

In August, the Bureau published an interactive graphic showing the different calls for transparency about the US drone warfare programme.

In September, the Bureau explained the limitations of drones in the US’s new campaign against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

In October, the Bureau analysed data from its Naming the Dead project and concluded that only 4% of those reported killed in the 10 year drone campaign in Pakistan are named and identified as members of al Qaeda.  It also published a graphic visualisation of the data.

The Bureau’s Drone News podcast meanwhile interviewed a former UK drone operator, Paul Rolfe, who described how jarring it was to engage in combat on the other side of the world while based in Nevada.

In November, the Bureau was shown a letter sent to Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond by the former head of GCHQ and other signatories urging the UK government to publish the legal guidance governing its intelligence sharing with the US on individuals at risk of targeted killing.

December the Bureau highlighted the paucity of information coming out of Pakistan’s tribal areas, pointing out that a far lower proportion of the victims of Pakistan drone strikes have been identified in 2014 than in the previous year.

Published

December 3, 2014

Written by

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

For this week’s Drone News, Abigail Fielding-Smith went to Copenhagen to interview the maker of a new documentary on drone warfare, Tonje Hessen Schei.

The documentary, Drone, draws on interviews from Washington DC to Waziristan. The director explains that she is alarmed at the direction the technology is going in.

Listen to this week’s episode.

“This is just the beginning of this new kind of warfare,” she told Drone News. “What is coming we can only guess.”

Fielding-Smith also met a former US Airforce drone sensor operator who appears in the film, Brandon Bryant. Sensor operators work alongside pilots ensuring the drone’s cameras and, when necessary, targeting lasers, are focused.  Bryant talked about the stress of watching and helping to end peoples’ lives from afar.

“My imagination would give these people personalities, I’d give them personalities, I’d give them lives, wondering what they were talking about, what they were thinking about, give them real personal depth.  It might have been false personal depth but it made them more human to me,” he said. “It didn’t coincide with my military training too well.”

Follow our drones team Jack Serle and Abigail Fielding-Smith on Twitter.

Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project, subscribe to our podcast Drone News, and follow Drone Reads on Twitter to see what our team is reading.

Published

December 1, 2014

Written by

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

Three drone strikes hit houses and vehicles in Pakistan’s North Waziristan area (Flickr/Maverick bashoo)

Report of children killed in drone attack in Pakistan.

Four strikes hit Yemen – most in a month since April.

No strikes reported in Somalia.

Four names added to Naming the Dead, including two children.

Pakistan

November 2014 actions

Total CIA strikes in November: 3

Total killed in strikes in November: 13-24, of whom 0-2 are reportedly children

All actions 2004 – November 30 2014

Total Obama strikes: 353

Total US strikes since 2004: 404

Total reported killed: 2,396-3,882

Civilians reported killed: 416-959

Children reported killed: 168-204

Total reported injured: 1,131-1,704For the Bureau’s full Pakistan databases click here.

An al Qaeda spokesman said that two children were killed in a CIA drone strike in November. If confirmed these would be the first childrens’ deaths since August 2012.

They were said to be the teenage sons of an Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent fighter. The man, his sons and at least one other person were reportedly killed in a strike on November 11. The attack targeted a house in the Datta Khel area of North Waziristan. Some reports say a four-wheel drive vehicle was also hit.

This was the first of three CIA strikes to hit Pakistan’s tribal areas this month. The attacks killed at least 13 and as many as 24 people.

Between five and eight people died in the second strike of the month, on November 20, which also targeted a house and possibly a vehicle in the Datta Khel area. The attack reportedly killed Uzbeks and men from the Haqqani Network and the group loyal to Hafiz Gul Bahadur.

The third strike, on November 26, killed between four and nine people in the Shawal area which straddles the North and South Waziristan borders. The strike again targeted a house and possibly a car. Two “foreigners” were reportedly among the dead.

Most US strikes this year have clustered in and around Datta Khel and the Shawal area – only six of 21 attacks this year have hit outside these areas. Datta Khel has been a focus of operations for the Pakistan military in its ongoing offensive against the Pakistan Taliban in North Waziristan. The Pakistan Army took a reporter for NBC News on an embedded tour of Datta Khel to show the media how sophisticated the Taliban operation was in the town.

There was one strike reported just across the border in Afghanistan that almost killed Mullah Fazullah, the leader of the Pakistan Taliban.

According to an analysis of Bureau data this month by legal charity Reprieve, the US has killed 874 people whilst targeting the same 24 men on multiple occasions in Pakistan.

Yemen

November 2014 actions

Confirmed US drone strikes: 4

Further reported/possible US strike events: 1

Total reported killed in US operations: 22-35

Civilians reported killed in US strikes: 0

All actions 2002 – November 30 2014*

Confirmed US drone strikes: 71-83

Total reported killed: 362-531

Civilians reported killed: 64-83

Children reported killed: 7

Reported injured: 78-196

Possible extra US drone strikes: 101-120

Total reported killed: 345-553

Civilians reported killed: 26-68

Children reported killed: 6-11

Reported injured: 90-123

All other US covert operations: 15-80Total reported killed: 157-393Civilians reported killed: 60-89Children reported killed: 25-27Reported injured: 22-115Click here for the full Yemen data.

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

Four US drone strikes hit Yemen in November, the highest number of confirmed US attacks in a month since April.

Three of the strikes hit vehicles in and around the town of Radaa, in Bayda province. The attacks came in quick succession, making it difficult to determine the exact course of events and the death toll (between 9 and 20 people were reported dead).

In one of the strikes two alleged casualties were named, both reportedly associated with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Nabil al Dahab was reported to be AQAP’s leader in Bayda. The US had tried to kill him in May 2012. His family has been associated with AQAP frequently in the past, and his sister married the US-born preacher Anwar al Awlaki.

The other reported casualty was Shawki al Badani.  According to two unnamed US officials, Shawki al Badani was the target of a calamitous drone strike in December 2013 that targeted a wedding party, killing several civilians and wounding the bride. He was said to be the cause of global terror alert in the summer of 2013 that prompted the US to close 19 embassies.

On November 25 US special forces from the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) attempted to rescue a US citizen held hostage by AQAP. Some Yemeni special forces took part in the operation. The commandos freed eight captives and killed seven people in the operation. The US citizen however, along with a Briton, and an Iranian and a Saudi Arabian diplomat, had been moved before the operation.

This is the second JSOC ground raid reported in Yemen this year. On April 20 US and Yemeni soldiers ambushed a vehicle – reportedly a failed attempt to kill master bomb maker Ibrahim al Asiri. Three or four people died, including a 16-year old child.

Somalia

November 2014 actions

Total reported US operations: 0

All actions 2007 – November 30 2014

US drone strikes: 6-9

Total reported killed: 16-30

Civilians reported killed: 0-1

Children reported killed: 0

Reported injured: 2-3

All other US covert operations: 8-11

Total reported killed: 40-141

Civilians reported killed: 7-47

Children reported killed: 0-2

Reported injured: 11-21Click here for the Bureau’s full data on Somalia.

There were no reported US operations in Somalia this month – the third consecutive month without a reported strike.

The fight against al Shabaab remains active however. The group continues to battle the African Union peacekeeping force Amisom and the Somali military.

Al Shabaab is losing fighters as they become disenchanted with the organisation and its practices. The death of Ahmed Abdi Godane, the group’s leader in the last reported US drone strike on September 1 is believed to have contributed to the defections. This has led to some reports suggesting al Shabaab is unraveling.

However the group demonstrated it is still capable of causing carnage beyond Somalia’s borders. On November 22 the group murdered 28 people on a bus in northern Kenya. Nairobi retaliated immediately, claiming to have killed more than 100 al Shabaab fighters the following day in airstrikes in Somalia.

There is growing insecurity across northern Africa. An an estimated 400 people have died in the past six weeks of fighting in Benghazi, Libya, and more than 100 people died in a multiple suicide-bomb attack on the largest mosque in Nigeria’s second city, Kano. France has a 3,000 counter-terrorism force stretched across the region and the US has increased its drone and special forces presence there, reports the Financial Times.

Naming the Dead

Four names were added to the Naming the Dead database this month. A strike on November 11 killed at least four people. Adil Abdul Quddus, a former major in the Pakistan Army, and Dr Sarbuland, a Pakistani doctor who ran a clinic for injured Taliban fighters in the tribal area, were identified as members of al Qaeda by one of the group’s spokesmen.

Two teenage boys were reportedly killed in the strike, however they were only named as among the dead by the same al Qaeda spokesman. Suleman, 15, and Uzair, 13, were reportedly Dr Sarbuland’s sons.

Follow our drones team Jack Serle and Abigail Fielding-Smith on Twitter.

Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project, subscribe to our podcast Drone News, and follow Drone Reads on Twitter to see what our team is reading.

Published

November 3, 2014

Written by

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

CIA drone strikes rocket in Pakistan while the casualty rate is relatively low (US Air Force/Sr Airman Andrew Lee)

Obama drone strikes in Pakistan reach 350.

US drones kill at least four in Yemen.

Al Shabaab lose ground in Somalia but remain a threat.

Seven names added to the Bureau’s Naming the Dead project.

Pakistan

October 2014 actions

Total CIA strikes in October: 9

Total killed in strikes in October: 29-49

All actions 2004 – October 31 2014

Total Obama strikes: 350

Total US strikes since 2004: 401

Total reported killed: 2,383-3,858

Civilians reported killed: 416-957

Children reported killed: 168-202

Total reported injured: 1,125-1,695For the Bureau’s full Pakistan databases click here.

A barrage of drone strikes this month took the total attacks under Obama in Pakistan past 350. There have now been more than 400 drone strikes since June 2004.

These milestones were reached this month as the CIA went on the offensive. It hit the country nine times, the most strikes in a month since October 2011. This doubled the number of strikes recorded this year, taking the total to 18.

Despite the intensity of the attacks, on average 3.2 people died per strike. This is a relatively low monthly casualty rate in the 10 year campaign.

Four strikes this month hit the Shawal valley – a heavily wooded and mountainous area that straddles the border between North and South Waziristan, and abuts the Afghan border. It is favoured as a base of operations for various armed groups because the geography makes it easily defensible.

The CIA attacks come as the Pakistan military continues its offensive against armed groups in the tribal areas. The Shawal has been hit by Pakistan Air Force strikes as well as by drone attacks since the offensive began in June. It will be one of the most challenging areas encountered by the Pakistan Army ground forces in this operation.

One strike this month, on October 11, killed 4-6 in Khyber tribal agency. The strike hit the Tirah valley, a region where the Pakistani military has opened a new front in its ongoing efforts to clear the tribal areas of terrorist organisations.

CIA drones have also hit targets in Datta Khel, North Waziristan, striking three times in four days. Datta Khel is a notorious hub for armed groups operating in the tribal areas. It has been the target of eight US drone strikes this year and numerous Pakistani air strikes.

One strike this month targeted and killed several members of the Haqqani Network near Wana, the capital of South Waziristan. South Waziristan has largely been spared from the Pakistani armed forces’ airstrikes and ground operations in the current counter-terrorist offensive.

Yemen

October 2014 actions

Confirmed US drone strikes: 1

Further reported/possible US strike events: 2

Total reported killed: 4-34

Civilians reported killed: 0-20

All actions 2002 – October 31 2014*

Confirmed US drone strikes: 67-79

Total reported killed: 347-503

Civilians reported killed: 64-83

Children reported killed: 7

Reported injured: 78-196

Possible extra US drone strikes: 101-120

Total reported killed: 345-553

Civilians reported killed: 26-68

Children reported killed: 6-11

Reported injured: 90-123

All other US covert operations: 14-79Total reported killed: 150-386Civilians reported killed: 60-89Children reported killed: 25-27Reported injured: 22-115Click here for the full Yemen data.

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

The US killed four alleged members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in a drone strike on October 15.

The men died while travelling in a pick-up truck in the southern province of Shabwa. Local sources and the Yemeni defence ministry identified one of the four as local leader Mahdi Badas, also known as Abu Hussein. Freelance reporter Iona Craig identified three further casualties: Musab al Wawari, Fares Azunjubari and Hudhaifah al Azdi, from Saudi Arabia.

As well as this confirmed strike, two further attacks were reported which may have included US drones.  These left 15-30 people dead, according to media reports, including 2-20 civilians. Both strikes hit the central province of al Bayda. The attacks hit near ongoing battles between AQAP, Sunni militias and the Shiite Houthi group. Because of this, it is not clear from the reporting around the attacks whether the US, the Yemeni military or the Houthis were responsible for the casualties.

The first attack, on October 24, killed 3-10 people. It was not clear if the dead were AQAP fighters or members of Sunni militias engaged in a sectarian fight with the Houthis.

The second was on October 26 and killed between 12 and 20 people, though there may have been many more casualties.  US drones and conventional jets and the Yemeni Air Force were all reported to have been involved.

There were also reports the Yemeni army used indiscriminate artillery weapons in the attacks as well. The full extent of the strikes remains unclear, and it has not been possible as yet to disaggregate which belligerent was responsible.

Yemen’s security situation deteriorated yet further this month as fighters from the Shiite Houthi group pushed in to new territory following their seizure of Sanaa, the capital, in late September. The group clashed with Sunni fighters including al Qaeda in different parts of the country amid growing fears of an all-out sectarian conflict.

On November 1, Yemen’s main political factions gave president Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi a mandate to form a new government in an attempt to defuse tensions. However the country was thrown back in to turmoil the next day when unknown gunmen assassinated liberal politician Mohamed Abdelmalik al Motawakal.

Somalia

October 2014 actions

Total reported US operations: 0

All actions 2007 – October 31 2014

US drone strikes: 6-9

Total reported killed: 16-30

Civilians reported killed: 0-1

Children reported killed: 0

Reported injured: 2-3

All other US covert operations: 8-11

Total reported killed: 40-141

Civilians reported killed: 7-47

Children reported killed: 0-2

Reported injured: 11-21Click here for the Bureau’s full data on Somalia.

There were no reported US operations in Somalia this month. The last reported US attack, on September 1, killed al Shabaab’s leader Ahmed Abdi Godane.

That strike hit Barawe, a port south of Mogadishu. Earlier this month, African Union peacekeeprs and Somali soldiers forced al Shabaab from the town. It had been a key point for al Shabaab to bring weapons into the country and illegally export charcoal – an important source of income for the group.

However the loss of both Barawe and Godane does not seem to have subdued al Shabaab’s violent ambitions. On October 15 the US embassy in Ethiopia warned of an impending al Shabaab terrorist attack in the capital Adis Ababa. On October 30 the US State Department issued a travel warning for Burundi, reporting al Shabaab “has threatened to conduct terror attacks” in the country and US interests could be targeted.

Both Ethiopia and Burundi have soldiers stationed in Somalia fighting al Shabaab. Uganda remains one of the largest contributors to the African Union peacekeeping force in the country – Amisom. Uganda is sending a fresh consignment of soldiers to the country. The detachment has had several weeks of specialised training from French and US troops, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The 2,700 new troops will reinforce security in and around the airport and presidential compound in Mogadishu. The area is nominally the most secure in Somalia, yet al Shabaab has been able to launch bloody attacks in this diplomatic and government quarter, seemingly at will.

Naming the Dead

Seven of the 29-49 people killed by drones in Pakistan this month have been named in media reports this month – all allegedly militants. Sheikh Imran Ali Siddiqu (aka Haji Sheikh Waliullah), a senior figure in the newly formed Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, was killed in a strike in Khyber on October 11. The same day, in North Waziristan, drones killed Mohammad Mustafa, reportedly “a local leader” in the Hafiz Gul Bahadur group.

Five victims were named in an October 30 strike in South Waziristan. Abdullah Haqqani appears to be an important hit for the US as it pulls out of Afghanistan. Abdullah was reportedly a senior member of the Haqqani Network “responsible for sending suicide bombers to Afghanistan”. Also killed were four people identified as Arabs by unnamed sources in media reports. The names given were: Adil, a Yemeni; Abu Dawooduddin, from Sudan; and Umar and Amadi, from Saudi Arabia.

Follow Jack Serle and Abigail Fielding-Smith on Twitter.

Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project, subscribe to our podcast Drone News, and follow Drone Reads on Twitter to see what our team is reading.

Published

October 17, 2014

Written by

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

Nek Mohammed, the first recorded casualty in the US drone war in Pakistan, attends a jirga in May 2004 – three weeks before his death (REUTERS/Kamran Wazir)

This week’s Drone News looks at casualty recording; how it’s done, and what we know about the victims of airstrikes by the US and its allies.

The Bureau’s Naming the Dead project has been trying for over a year to identify people killed in US drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004. Jack Serle told Owen Bennett-Jones that the project has used publicly available sources and independent reporting to add around 100 names to the list, bringing it to just over 700, but that more than 1500 victims remain unidentified.

Listen to the podcast

Identifying the remaining victims is getting “increasingly difficult,” Serle said, explaining that when it comes to women and foreign fighters it often appears as if “nobody knows their names, even amongst local community.”

The Iraq Body Count’s Lily Hamourtziadou, who has been tracking civilian deaths in Iraq for more than eight years, cast light on an overlooked aspect of the campaign against the militant group Isis. According to Hamourtziadou, whilst the recent surge in violent deaths of civilians in Iraq is partly due to Isis, Iraqi government airstrikes have killed 1500 civilians since the end of last year.

The Bureau’s Abigail Fielding-Smith meanwhile raised the question of how the US’s new aerial campaign against Isis in Syria will be affected by the relative sophistication of casualty recording networks there. “Unlike other places where the US has launched aerial bombardment campaigns, there is an incredibly well-developed network of local casualty reporting there, because there’s been this civil war going on for the last two years,” she explained.

Follow Abigail Fielding-Smith and Jack Serle on Twitter. Subscribe to the Bureau’s drones podcast and newsletter and follow Drone Reads on Twitter to see what the team is reading.

Published

October 2, 2014

Written by

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

US strike jets have bombed targets in Iraq and Syria this month (Senior Airman Matthew Bruch/US Air Force)

CIA drones end a 49-day pause in strikes in Pakistan

Alleged al Qaeda fighters killed in Yemen strikes

US military drones kill al Shabaab leader in Somalia

Pakistan

September 2014 actions

Total CIA strikes in September: 2

Total killed in strikes in September: 7-15

All actions 2004 – September 30 2014

Total Obama strikes: 341

Total US strikes since 2004: 392

Total reported killed: 2,354-3,809

Civilians reported killed: 416-957

Children reported killed: 168-202

Total reported injured: 1,104-1,663For the Bureau’s full Pakistan databases click here.

Two US drone strikes killed at least seven people in Pakistan, ending a 49-day pause between attacks.

Between five and 11 people died on September 24. None of the dead were identified but at least two and as many as 10 of them were reported to be Uzbeks.

This was the first strike since August 6, ending the third longest pause in attacks in Pakistan recorded by the Bureau since the start of 2007.

CIA drones struck again, four days later. At least two people were killed in the strike in South Waziristan – the first in that area since September 22 2013. Again, none of the dead were identified. But the strike reportedly hit a house belonging to an alleged militant, Ainullah, described as a commander in a local armed group loyal to the deceased veteran fighter Maulvi Nazir. Ainullah was reportedly the target but it is unknown if he was killed.

Nazir was killed in a drone strike on January 2 2013. He had been an ally of the Pakistani government, but was reportedly responsible for attacks on US and allied troops in Afghanistan. At the time, his death was described as “perhaps the most prized feather in [the] cap” of the US drone campaign.

The Pakistani military offensive has continued in North Waziristan this month, with the Pakistan Army claiming to have successfully cleared 80% of the area from militants. Pressure from the military offensive may have been responsible for factions apparently splitting from the Pakistan Taliban.

This fracturing does not appear to have stopped armed violence, however. A September 28 terrorist bomb attack on a refugee camp reportedly killed eight people, including three children.

Yemen

September 2014 actions

Confirmed US drone strikes: 1

Further reported/possible US strike events: 2

Total reported killed: 10-13

Civilians reported killed: 0

All actions 2002 – September 30 2014*

Confirmed US drone strikes: 66-78

Total reported killed: 343-499

Civilians reported killed: 64-83

Children reported killed: 7

Reported injured: 78-196

Possible extra US drone strikes: 99-118

Total reported killed: 330-523

Civilians reported killed: 24-48

Children reported killed: 6-9

Reported injured: 90-123

All other US covert operations: 14-79Total reported killed: 150-386Civilians reported killed: 60-89Children reported killed: 25-27Reported injured: 22-115Click here for the full Yemen data.

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

A US drone strike killed between four and five people on September 11. The dead were all allegedly affiliated with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The attack targeted a vehicle in the Bejan district of Shabwa province in southern Yemen.

The names of five men reportedly killed in the strike were published in media reports: Abdullah Ahmed Salem Mubarak (aka Abu Habbah), Abu Khaled al Awlaki, Abu Kaab, Saif al Shehri – a Saudi citizen, and Saud al Daghari. It is not confirmed that these are the identities of those killed in this strike, official sources have misidentified drone strike casualties in the past.

Abu Habbah was “an important AQAP leader in southern Yemen” according to the Long War Journal. He was reportedly AQAP’s military leader in Mahfad.

Two possible drone attacks also were reported this month, killing 6-8 and injuring three children. Both strikes were reported as drone strikes but the Bureau has so far not been able to corroborate these reports and confirm US responsibility for the attacks.

The first reportedly hit a vehicle on September 25. Four or five people died in the strike. Four names were reported by various sources. Two alleged AQAP commanders Adel Hardaba and Muhader Ahmad Muhader were killed, according to the Long War Journal. Two more alleged AQAP members were named in Emirati publication Gulf News: Esmail Mohammad Ahmed al Qaisi, 30, and Othman Mohsin al Daghari.

Three children were reported injured in another strike the following day. The attack killed 2-3 people, one of them identified as Abd al Aziz al Omari, a Saudi and AQAP social media propagandist. But it also reportedly injured a boy, 12, and two girls aged eight and five. Their father was quoted as saying: “I swear to God that I have no connection with al Qaeda. Why did not the drone target the car when it was in the desert?”

AQAP reportedly fired a rocket at the US embassy in retaliation for this strike. The US had pulled staff from the embassy earlier in the month in response to a dramatically deteriorating security situation, which has seen Houthi separatists take control of parts of the capital.

Somalia

September 2014 actions

Total reported US operations: 1Total reported killed: 6

All actions 2007 – September 30 2014

US drone strikes: 6-9

Total reported killed: 16-30

Civilians reported killed: 0-1

Children reported killed: 0

Reported injured: 2-3

All other US covert operations: 8-11

Total reported killed: 40-141

Civilians reported killed: 7-47

Children reported killed: 0-2

Reported injured: 11-21Click here for the Bureau’s full data on Somalia.

A drone attack carried out by US special forces killed the leader of al Shabaab, Abdi Ahmed Godane. The strike, on September 1, was the first for seven months. It killed five people besides Godane. The attack was carried out by drones supported by manned aircraft, operating under US Joint Special Operations Command.

The US was unusually transparent about the strike: Pentagon spokesman John Kirby confirmed the US has carried it out, and continued to comment on the record after the event. However it took five days for the US to confirm the death of Godane.

Godane, 37, was killed while travelling in convoy through the Lower Shabelle region of southern Somalia. He had initially trained as an accountant and worked for an airline before becoming embroiled in armed violence. He took control of al Shabaab in 2008 when his predecessor Aden Hashi Ayro was killed in a cruise missile strike.

The US government had put a $7m reward out for information on his whereabouts. His successor, Ahmed Umar, was reportedly elected unanimously. Within a month, the Somali government had put a $3m reward out for Umar.

Reports emerged in the French media after the attack alleging that French spies had provided the US with intelligence needed to locate Godane. The Pentagon would not comment on these reports when approached by the Bureau.

Al Shabaab, despite losing its leader, remains a potent threat inside Somalia and beyond its borders. Uganda declared it had seized explosives and arrested an al Shabaab cell in mid September, halting what was described as an “imminent attack”. The International Crisis Group thinktank meanwhile declared al Shabaab a “more entrenched and a graver threat to Kenya” now than a year ago, when gunmen affiliated with the group stormed Nairobi’s Westgate mall.

Other news from the drone war

The US began targeting the Islamic State group in Syria this month and continued to launch drone strikes against targets associated with the group in Iraq. Several allied countries have joined the US’s campaign against Islamic State, including Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and France.

Citizen journalism pioneer Eliot Higgins told the Bureau US drones had been sighted over both Syria and Iraq. Higgins, who blogs as Brown Moses, said that Islamic State appeared to have inadvertently helped US drones operate over Raqqa by knocking out part of the Syrian air defence system. Drones are slow moving and easily detected by radar, and therefore cannot operate effectively outside permissive airspaces like Yemen’s or Afghanistan’s.

Reports of Russian and Chinese armed drones emerged this month. The Russian Chirok will start test flights next year, while the Chinese CH-4 drone recently took part in multilateral military exercises in Inner Mongolia.

Follow Jack Serle and Abigail Fielding-Smith on Twitter.

Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project, subscribe to our podcast Drone News, and follow Drone Reads on Twitter to see what our team is reading.

Published

September 5, 2014

Written by

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

Nato is building its surveillance capacity with a new drone system (Anguskirk/Flickr)

Bureau journalists discuss the use of drones in Iraq as part of the US military response to the brutality of Islamic State (ISIS) in the latest drones podcast.

The US has been attacking ISIS positions in Iraq since August 8. It has launched more strikes with jets and drones in Iraq in August this year than were carried out in 2009 and 2010 combined, according to open source data collected by freelance journalist Chris Woods.

Download the podcast.

The Bureau’s Jack Serle explains why it is likely that the US is using both drones and manned aircraft to hit targets.

The latest episode of the podcast Drone News also covers other events that have involved drones throughout August.

Victoria Parsons reports on the first US drone attack in Somalia in seven months that may have killed Abdi Ahmed Godane, leader the al Shabaab group.

This episode also features news of Nato developing and operating an integrated surveillance drone system from Italy. And Google has successfully tested its new delivery drone in Australia

Follow Jack Serle, Victoria Parsons and Owen Bennett-Jones on Twitter. Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project, subscribe to our podcast, Drone News from the Bureau, and follow Drone Reads on Twitter to see what the team is reading.

Published

September 3, 2014

Written by

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

African Union and Somali troops advance on al Shabaab positions (UN Photo/Tobin Jones)

A US drone strike hit Somalia, the first in seven months, in an attack aimed at killing al Shabaab leader, Ahmed Abdi Godane (below).

The attack killed “six al Shabaab officers” but it is not clear if Godane was among them, said Abdullahi Abukar, executive director of the Somali Human Rights Association (SOHRA).

Sohra monitors human rights abuses and records casualties from the ongoing conflict in Lower Shabelle, where the strike hit. It destroyed an encampment and at least one vehicle in an area heavily under al Shabaab control.

A Pentagon spokesman confirmed it was a US military operation, telling reporters: “actionable intelligence led us to that site where we believe [Godane] was” and “we certainly believe that we hit what we were aiming at”. However he would not confirm who, if anyone, had been killed.

The spokesman said drones and conventional aircraft flown by US special forces “destroyed an encampment and a vehicle using several Hellfire missiles and laser-guided missiles”.

Related story – Somalia: reported US covert actions 2001-2014

An al Shabaab spokesman declined to say whether Godane was among the six militants killed.

An unnamed Somali intelligence source was similarly cautious, telling the Associated Press Godane “might have been killed along with other militants”.

The attack was the sixth confirmed US drone strike reported in Somalia. There have been at least eight other confirmed US operations in the country – including naval bombardments and special forces operations.

Godane, also known as Mukhtar Abu Zubair, originally trained to be an accountant before joining Itihad al Islamiya, a now defunct armed group.

After fighting in Afghanistan, he became involved in what would later become al Shabaab becoming its leader in 2007. The US government is offering up to $7m as a reward for information about his whereabouts.

Godane has been targeted at least two other times by US forces, according to figures maintained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Two of these were drone strikes, one in 2011 and another earlier this year.

The US may have tried to capture Godane in October 2013, in a failed amphibious assault on a compound in southern Somalia. However there are several conflicting accounts of this operation, and the true target remains unclear.

The first US operation against Godane was in 2003, according to the Bureau’s data. It was a CIA surveillance operation against several people, including Godane.

Godane was also said to be the target of a January 2014 Kenyan air strike that killed 57 alleged al Shabaab militants.

Follow Jack Serle and Joseph Cox on Twitter. Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project, subscribe to our podcast, Drone News from the Bureau, and follow Drone Reads on Twitter to see what the team is reading.

Published

August 31, 2014

Written by

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

US Predator drone (Doctress Neutopia via Flickr)

Pakistan military offensive against the Taliban continues.

Two possible US drone strikes in Yemen, bringing seven-week pause in reported US attacks to an end.

The seventh successive month without a reported US attack in Somalia.

Pakistan

August 2014 actions

Total CIA strikes in August: 1

Total killed in strikes in August: 5-7

All actions 2004 – August 31 2014

Total Obama strikes: 339

Total US strikes since 2004: 390

Total reported killed: 2,347-3,796

Civilians reported killed: 416-957

Children reported killed: 168-202

Total reported injured: 1,099-1,660For the Bureau’s full Pakistan databases click here.

A CIA drone strike in Pakistan killed at least five people and injured two or three more. The strike reportedly occurred in the Datta Khel region of North Waziristan.

None of those killed have been named. Intelligence sources reportedly said “most” of the dead were “foreigners”, though the identity of those killed “could not be ascertained”.

Most reports stated that five were killed on August 6 when a drone fired two missiles at a house. However one report said six died when four missiles were fired at a house and a vehicle, and other reports counted seven killed. This was the fourth drone strike to hit Datta Khel in 2014.

The drone strike casualty rate for August (5) is less than half that of last month’s casualty rate (10.7). In July, 32 people died in three strikes during the bloodiest month for drone strikes in Pakistan since July 2012.

Pakistan is now two months into an offensive aimed at driving the Taliban out of the country. At the beginning of August Islamabad was “bracing” itself for a wave of protests, after the military had to secure the capital during threats of attacks by militant groups.

A Pakistani drone, which was being used for surveillance in eastern Punjab, reportedly crashed at the beginning of the month as it tried to land. Reports said no one was injured.

11 alleged Taliban members were reportedly killed as they attacked air force bases in the west Pakistan city of Quetta on August 15. Four days later, the military claimed to have killed 48 suspected militants in a helicopter raid on militant hideouts in the Khyber and North Waziristan tribal regions.

On August 28 prime minister Nawaz Sharif were named by police in Pakistan as a suspect in a murder case. The allegations of abetting murder are registered against Sharif, his brother and 19 other defendants over the killing of supporters of a cleric in June. Cleric Tahir ul Qadri has been leading anti-government demonstrations in Islamabad, protesting against alleged voting fraud.

Yemen

August 2014 actions

Confirmed US drone strikes: 0

Further reported/possible US strike events: 2

Total reported killed in US operations: 6

Civilians reported killed in US strikes: 0

All actions 2002 – August 31 2014*

Confirmed US drone strikes: 65-77

Total reported killed: 339-494

Civilians reported killed: 64-83

Children reported killed: 7

Reported injured: 78-196

Possible extra US drone strikes: 97-116

Total reported killed: 324-515

Civilians reported killed: 24-48

Children reported killed: 6-9

Reported injured: 87-120

All other US covert operations: 14-79Total reported killed: 150-386Civilians reported killed: 60-89Children reported killed: 25-27Reported injured: 22-115Click here for the full Yemen data.

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

A seven-week pause in attacks ended on August 9 with two possible US drone strikes in Yemen, killing six people.

The first possible US drone strike killed three people in the central Marib province. An unnamed military official told AFP that two women were injured in the strike, which reportedly targeted a house belonging to a local man who was renting it to three men from the north western province of Saada.

The strike came a day after AQAP fighters reportedly beheaded 14 captured Yemeni soldiers. They were killed because they were fighting AQAP in the eastern province of Hadramout, the armed group said in a statement. And the attack came the day before Yemen Air Force jets reportedly targeted al Qaeda training camps in the eastern province of Hadramout.

On August 16 a possible US drone strike in the eastern province of Hadramout also reportedly killed three suspected AQAP members. A local official told Reuters that “three armed men” were travelling in a vehicle when “the drone shot two rockets at them”.

A local military official reportedly said that the vehicle was heading towards an alleged military training camp, where “scores of al Qaeda militants” were gathering.

In addition, on August 16 there were two further possible US airstrikes in the southern province of Abyan. A Yemeni security official said that two separate airstrikes in the south killed seven suspected militants, but it is not clear if they were air or drone strikes and whether they were carried out by US forces or the Yemeni government.

Following the capture and beheading of 14 Yemeni soldiers by AQAP in Hadramout at the beginning of the month, Yemeni president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi vowed a relentless fight against AQAP. Violent clashes between AQAP and the Yemeni military continue in Hadramout province, with AQAP claiming to have killed 50 soldiers on August 7.

On August 23 AQAP planted a bomb on the road which links the two towns of Seiyun and Shibam in eastern Yemen, reportedly killing three soldiers. Four days later three alleged AQAP members were killed outside the town of Shibam when they reportedly attacked troops setting up a checkpoint.

Following the launch of US air strikes targeting the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq, AQAP called for attacks on the US in “solidarity with our Muslim brothers.”

This month an AQAP propaganda film alleged the groups deceased second-in-command, Saeed al Shehri, was killed by US drones in 2013, not 2012 as previously thought. The video was the third of a three-part documentary about his life and death and said al Shehri had survived several US attacks. He also ‘was prisoner number 327 at Guantanamo Bay, captured as he tried to cross the border into Pakistan from Afghanistan late in 2001.’

Somalia

August 2014 actions

Total reported US operations: 0

All actions 2007 – August 31 2014

US drone strikes: 5-8

Total reported killed: 10-24

Civilians reported killed: 0-1

Children reported killed: 0

Reported injured: 2-3

All other US covert operations: 8-11

Total reported killed: 40-141

Civilians reported killed: 7-47

Children reported killed: 0-2

Reported injured: 11-21Click here for the Bureau’s full data on Somalia.

For the seventh successive month there were no reported US operations in Somalia.

Amisom and Somali forces were expected to begin a new drive to push al Shabaab out of territory they hold, according to Somalian President Hassan Sheikh Mohammed.

Al Shabaab spokesman, Abdulaziz Abu Musab, claimed the group killed three policemen in a suicide explosion in the north of the country at the beginning of the month. On August 15, 14 were killed when Somali forces and Amison launched an offensive against al Shabaab in a suburb of Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital.

A week later Lydia Wanyoto, acting special envoy of the African Union to Somalia, announced that the “roadmap” for Amison would be adhered to and troops would pull out of the country in 2016.

Other news from the drone war

An Amnesty International report found that the US military has a “poor” record for investigating war crimes and prosecuting suspected perpetrators in Afghanistan. In nine out of 10 incidents that Amnesty believes “raise concerns about the unlawful use of force” the US appears to have made little effort to document or record what happens, with eyewitnesses to the nine attacks saying they had never spoken to US military investigators.

The Bureau published an interactive timeline showing the growing number of voices calling for transparency on the US’s use of drones. The 20th call for transparency was from a report of the UN Secretary-General which recommended “improving transparency… and developing a robust oversight and accountability mechanism for targeted strikes outside active battlefields.”

Naming the Dead

Bureau reporter Jack Serle talked about the difficulty of identifying those killed in drone strikes with HuffPost Live,  for their “Always at War” web series.  The identities of less than one in three of those killed in drone strikes in Pakistan have been established by Naming the Dead, with some of those only identified by a single source.

Pakistani publication Dawn used data from Naming the Dead to create an infographic highlighting how little we know about drone strikes.

Follow Victoria Parsons on Twitter.

Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project, subscribe to our podcast Drone News, and follow Drone Reads on Twitter to see what the team is reading.

Published

August 19, 2014

Written by

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

In February 2011 the Bureau began investigating CIA drone strikes in Pakistan.

At that time there was a lethal US drone strike in Pakistan every four days or so, and there had been one hundred and eighty drone strikes there since Barack Obama became president. The US was publicly denying the drone strike campaign.

On August 6 2014 the Bureau recorded the 339th drone strike in Pakistan of President Obama’s presidency. The drone campaign in Pakistan, which is conducted by the CIA, remains an official secret.

In June 2012, Obama declassified the campaigns in Yemen and Somalia – but details of the attacks remain shrouded in mystery. The US has declined to release even the most basic details about the strikes, such as when or where they take place. As a result we also rarely know who or what they hit.

But a growing number of voices have been calling for transparency.

Follow Victoria Parsons on Twitter. Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project, subscribe to our podcast, Drone News from the Bureau, and follow Drone Reads on Twitter to see what the team is reading. Homepage photo: White House

Published

August 1, 2014

Written by

Alice Ross, Jack Serle and Victoria Parsons
This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Troops advance during an anti-al Shabaab operation in Somalia (UN Photo/Stuart Price)

Pakistan has the bloodiest month of drone strikes in two years.

July is the first month of the year with no drone attacks in Yemen.

Six months without a reported US attack in Somalia.

Naming the Dead database records 700 names.

Pakistan

July 2014 actions

Total CIA strikes in July: 3

Total killed in strikes in July: 32-46

All actions 2004 – July 31 2014

Total Obama strikes: 338

Total US strikes since 2004: 389

Total reported killed: 2,342-3,789

Civilians reported killed: 416-957

Children reported killed: 168-202

Total reported injured: 1,097-1,657For the Bureau’s full Pakistan databases click here.

At least 32 people died in three CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, making this the bloodiest month since July 2012. The strikes all reportedly occurred in and around Datta Khel in North Waziristan.

The high death toll from just three attacks dramatically increased the casualty rate – the average number of people killed in each strike on average. This month the casualty rate was 10.7 people per strike. That is more than double the rate for June (4.6) and the highest since April 2011, when 24 people died in two attacks.

Just three of those killed have been named. All were members of al Qaeda according to Sanafi al Nasr, a Syrian-based al Qaeda leader, who eulogised the men. Fayez Awda al Khalidi, Taj al Makki and Abu Abdurahman al Kuwaiti died with three unnamed men in an attack on July 10 that reportedly destroyed a house and vehicle in Mada Khel village, near to Datta Khel.

July 16 saw the largest strike in Pakistan in over a year, killing at least 15 people. The CIA were targeting an important meeting, according to an unnamed security official. However one source said two mosques were targeted, killing 12 “people” in one and eight “people” in the other, without specifying whether they were civilians or members of an armed group. The Bureau has been unable to confirm these possible civilian casualties, or the report of strikes on mosques.

Three days later on July 19, Mada Khel village was reportedly hit again. At least 11 people died when a drone reportedly fired multiple missiles at a building or group of buildings.

The Pakistani army offensive against the Taliban in the region continued. The Pakistan military claims to have killed 500 militants with no civilian casualties since the offensive began in June.

On July 16 the military bombed the remote Shawal valley near the border of North and South Waziristan. The military claimed to have killed 35 militants. However AFP later reported that 37 civilians were killed, “including 20 women and 10 children”.

The military offensive has cleared entire towns of people, reportedly displacing a million people. Over 75,000 are said to have gone to Afghanistan and more than 990,000 have been registered in Pakistani camps just outside the tribal regions. The German government announced on July 30 that it would provide €1m (£796,000) to support the World Food Programme’s relief effort.

Yemen

July 2014 actions

Confirmed US drone strikes: 0

Further reported/possible US strike events: 0

Total reported killed in US operations: 0

Civilians reported killed in US strikes: 0

All actions 2002 – July 31 2014*

Confirmed US drone strikes: 65-77

Total reported killed: 339-494

Civilians reported killed: 64-83

Children reported killed: 7

Reported injured: 78-196

Possible extra US drone strikes: 95-114

Total reported killed: 318-509

Civilians reported killed: 24-48

Children reported killed: 6-9

Reported injured: 85-118

All other US covert operations: 14-79Total reported killed: 150-386Civilians reported killed: 60-89Children reported killed: 25-27Reported injured: 22-115Click here for the full Yemen data.

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

There were no reported drone strikes in July, making this the first month without a drone strike in Yemen this year.

This is in contrast to a year ago when a seven-week pause in attacks ended with a 15-day bombardment that lasted into August. Nine drone strikes killed 31-49 people, including three children. It was caused by a global terror alert that made the US close 20 embassies around the world – a move one analyst described as “crazy pants“.

This month a Freedom of Information request revealed that the Australian Christopher Havard, killed in a drone strike in Yemen last November, was subject to an Australian police arrest warrant. Havard was wanted for alleged involvement in a 2012 plot, linked to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), to kidnap an Austrian and two Finnish citizens in Yemen.

The attack that killed Havard also killed a dual Australian-New Zealand citizen named Daryl Jones. A retired politician has urged New Zealanders to demand more information from the government over Jones’ death. Jones and Havard have been reported as the first Australians to die in a drone strike. However, the Bureau has previously reported the case of Saifullah, known locally as “the Australian”, who was killed in a July 2011 strike in Pakistan. The Australian government has denied he was a citizen.

AQAP continued to launch attacks, targeting military sites and personnel in three southern provinces. Local officials said at least eight people died in an attack on two army outposts on July 27.

Security was tightened on US-bound flights from 20 foreign airports, with efforts focusing on scrutinising phones and laptops. US officials said no specific threat caused the increased security measures, although CBS reported that shortly before the alert, AQAP released a video showing the “underpants bomber” shortly before his attempt to blow up an airplane in 2009.

The Guardian and others reported intelligence community fears that notorious AQAP bomb maker Ibrahim al Asiri was working with armed groups in Syria, raising concerns that he would seek to implant “invisible” bombs in fighters with Western passports in order to conduct attacks on European or US targets.

The US designated Anders Dale, a Norwegian, as a terrorist. The State Department alleges Dale joined AQAP and has travelled to Yemen multiple times since 2008. It claims he received terrorist training, including learning to make “bomb-belts, improvised explosive devices, and larger explosives used in car bombs”.

Somalia

July 2014 actions

Total reported US operations: 0

All actions 2007 – July 31 2014

US drone strikes: 5-8

Total reported killed: 10-24

Civilians reported killed: 0-1

Children reported killed: 0

Reported injured: 2-3

All other US covert operations: 8-11

Total reported killed: 40-141

Civilians reported killed: 7-47

Children reported killed: 0-2

Reported injured: 11-21Click here for the Bureau’s full data on Somalia.

For the sixth successive month there were no reported US operations in Somalia, though government troops and soldiers from the UN-backed African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) continue to battle al Shabaab.

On July 8 al Shabaab fighters attacked the presidential compound. The interior ministry said the president was elsewhere at the time though at least three militants and as many as 15 guards died. This is the second attack on the presidential palace of the year, following one in February that killed 12.

On July 15 Somali soldiers and Amisom peacekeepers repelled an al Shabaab attack on Mogadishu’s airport, stopping a car packed with explosives from entering the airport. Less than a week later on July 21, Amisom troops met officials from the new south-western regional state of Somalia, which brings together six provinces. The new administration declared war on al Shabaab, with the regional police chief vowing to kill the relatives of militants who continued to kill innocent civilians.

Hassan Sheikh Mohamed, president of Somalia, leaked information about a new, 150-strong, CIA trained counter-terrorism force called Gashaan, or “the shield”. Meanwhile the government of Djibouti said it would send an additional 950 troops to support Amisom.

On July 23 Somali MP and musician Saado Ali Warsame was killed by militants in a drive-by shooting. She was the fourth MP killed this year. An al Shabaab spokesman said she was killed for her politics and not her music. On the same day the group also reportedly executed a 13-year-old girl following a show trial in southern Somalia, after accusing her of spying for Somali armed forces and Amisom. The al Shabaab “judge” said of the girl: “She was trained to assassinate senior members of the group and pass sensitive information to our enemies.”

Other news from the drone war

A Bureau study on the use of drones in Afghanistan found that despite there being at least 1,000 drone strikes on the country in the past 13 years, almost nothing is known about where they took place or who they hit. Afghanistan is the most heavily drone-bombed country in the world, yet more is understood about the US’s secret campaigns in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.

A new Pew Research Center survey found that 39 of the 44 countries surveyed were opposed to US drone strikes in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan, with opposition to drone attacks increasing in many nations since last year. Israel, Kenya and the US are the only surveyed nations where at least half of the public supports drone strikes.

Naming the Dead

The Naming the Dead project has now recorded over 700 names of those killed by CIA drones in Pakistan. Almost half of those identified were civilians, and 99 were children. Though the database of names has grown since the project launched last year, fewer than one in three of the 2,342 reportedly killed in drone attacks have been identified so far.

New case studies have been added, including profiles of TTP deputy leader Wali ur Rehman, senior al Qaeda operative Abu Sulaiman al Jazairi, and Mohammed Haqqani, who was the brother and son of senior fighters, but may not have been an active member of an armed group himself.

Follow Alice Ross, Jack Serle and Victoria Parsons on Twitter.

Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project, subscribe to our podcast Drone News, and follow Drone Reads on Twitter to see what the team is reading.

Published

July 4, 2014

Written by

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

International terrorism has changed and that change is making lethal drone strikes more likely, according to Paul Rogers, Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University.

‘The whole thing has really made a transition from what you would probably just about call a movement 10 years ago to an idea that really has spread and has taken root in groups that are aggrieved often for other reasons,’ Rogers explained.

Listen to the latest episode of Drone News.

This loose structure without a central leadership makes its harder to gather intelligence, he continued. ‘And if you can’t control them by finding out what they’re doing and what they’re planning you have to use other means which is where I think the use of special forces and drones is more likely to come in.’

Rogers continued: ‘Many of these groups are not looking at a world wide war against the ‘far enemy’ of the United States and its Western allies.’

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‘They are much more focused on their own countries – the one exception to some extent is the Yemenis.’

Also in this episode, the Bureau’s Alice K Ross discusses the Obama administration’s ‘gradual process of disclosure’ after the White House finally released a memo that outlines the legal justification for the US to kill its own citizens abroad.

 

Follow Alice Ross and Jack Serle on Twitter – or to see what the team is reading, follow Drone Reads. Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project and subscribe to our podcast, Drone News from the Bureau.

 

Published

July 1, 2014

Written by

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

An MQ-9 Reaper waits to take flight (Photo: US Air Force/Staff Sgt John Bainter)

Drone strikes restart in Pakistan after a pause of almost six months.

US drone strike casualty rate in Yemen jumps to 8.3 people killed in each attack on average.

Kenyan jets strike al Shabaab in Somalia.

The Naming the Dead project approaches 700 names.

Pakistan

June 2014 actions

Total CIA strikes in June: 3

Total killed in strikes in June: 14-24

All actions 2004 – June 30 2014

Total Obama strikes: 335

Total US strikes since 2004: 386

Total reported killed: 2,310-3,743

Civilians reported killed: 416-957

Children reported killed: 168-202

Total reported injured: 1,091-1,647For the Bureau’s full Pakistan databases click here.

CIA drone strikes in Pakistan‘s tribal area resumed on June 11 with an attack that killed at least four people. The first attack since December 25 2013, this brought to an end the longest pause in drone strikes of Obama’s presidency.

Within hours drones attacked again, killing 6-10 people shortly after midnight on June 12. Some reports said this was a follow-up strike on the same site that targeted rescuers. A third attack killed at least four more people on June 18.

After the first strike, the Foreign Ministry issued a statement condemning the violation of its sovereignty. However, a senior Pakistani official told Reuters: ‘The attacks were launched with the express approval of the Pakistan government and army.’

During the almost six-month hiatus in strikes, the Pakistani government held peace talks with the Pakistan Taliban (TTP), an armed group based in the tribal agency of North Waziristan. These were interrupted by terrorist attacks and retaliatory Pakistan Air Force strikes on the tribal regions. A Bureau investigation found that 15 Pakistani air strikes between December and June 15 reportedly killed 291-540 people, including 16-112 civilians.

The peace talks conclusively ended after a June 8 attack in which gunmen and suicide bombers stormed Karachi airport. At least 34 people were killed in the ensuing gun battle, including 10 attackers. The TTP and Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), also based in North Waziristan, claimed responsibility.

On June 15, the Pakistani government announced a long-awaited military offensive against the TTP in North Waziristan.

More than 450,000 people have fled their homes in North Waziristan since late May. On June 19 the Pakistan government said it would not ask aid agencies, including the UN, for help handling the refugee crisis. A week later the World Health Organisation warned the mass exodus risked increasing the spread of polio beyond the tribal belt – currently Pakistan’s worst affected area.

Nek Mohammed speaks during a tribal jirga in Pakistan (REUTERS/Kamran Wazir)

June 17 marked the tenth anniversary of the first drone strike in Pakistan. In June 2004, CIA drones killed Nek Mohammed and at least five others, including two children. On the anniversary, the Bureau published an interactive timeline of key milestones in the campaign, and eyewitness accounts of this strike. One local told the Bureau he heard a buzzing: ‘There was some noise then from the east, a flash of light came. There was a big blast.’

Also in June, a task force of legal experts, retired military and national security officials convened by the Stimson Center, a Washington-based think-tank, published a year-long analysis of the US use of armed drones for targeted killing.

The report called for more transparency over drone strikes and voiced concerns that the Obama administration’s ‘heavy reliance on targeted killings as a pillar of US counter-terrorism strategy … risks increasing instability and escalating conflicts.’ The authors also concluded drones do not ’cause disproportionate civilian casualties or turn killing into a “video-game”.’

Six-monthly trends

The absence of reported drone strikes in the first five months of 2014 led some to question whether the campaign in Pakistan had ended entirely.

Several factors may have contributed to the lengthy hiatus. The Pakistani government spent the first half of the year in often fractious peace negotiations with the TTP. A source close to the talks told the Bureau that Islamabad had asked the US to stop drone strikes during the process. All hope of the talks succeeding ended with the TTP’s joint attack on Karachi airport on June 8; drone strikes returned days later.

Drones reportedly continued flying over the tribal regions, and US officials said the administration reserved the right to use lethal force if a target presented itself. It is possible the CIA may have decided to pursue a more limited list of targets.

The campaign may have been affected by the scaling-down of the US intelligence network over the border in Afghanistan. CIA border posts and listening stations are closing ahead of the drawdown and AP reported the CIA is ending payments to its proxy militias in the region, which gather human intelligence on targets in Pakistan.

The strikes may also have been constrained by secret negotiations leading up to the May 31 release of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, the last US prisoner of war. He was exchanged for five members of the Afghan Taliban held in Guantanamo. Bergdahl had been held prisoner in Pakistan’s tribal areas by the Haqqani Network, members of which were the target of at least one of June’s three strikes.

The year’s three strikes so far killed 14-24 people, none of whom were described as civilians. This is the smallest reported death toll for a six-month period of drone strikes in Pakistan since the first half of 2006, when 13-22 people reportedly died.

The average number of people killed in CIA drone strikes in Pakistan during Obama’s presidency.

However the casualty rate – the average number of people killed per strike – for the first half of 2014 is 4.7. This rate has hovered between around 3.5 and 5 for the past three years, after peaking at more than 10 in the first half of 2009.

Yemen

June 2014 actions

Confirmed US drone strikes: 1

Further reported/possible US strike events: 2

Total reported killed in US operations: 5-10

Civilians reported killed in US strikes: 0

All actions 2002 – June 30 2014*

Confirmed US drone strikes: 65-77

Total reported killed: 339-494

Civilians reported killed: 34-83

Children reported killed: 7

Reported injured: 78-196

Possible extra US drone strikes: 95-114

Total reported killed: 318-509

Civilians reported killed: 24-48

Children reported killed: 6-9

Reported injured: 85-118

All other US covert operations: 14-79Total reported killed: 150-386Civilians reported killed: 60-89Children reported killed: 25-27Reported injured: 22-115Click here for the full Yemen data.

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

June saw one confirmed drone strike in Yemen, killing 5-6 people, and two further attacks that may have been drone strikes. One of these possible strikes, on June 4, killed 3-4 people. Casualties were unknown in the other.

Only two of the dead were identified, both described as members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). ‘Tribal sources‘ told reporters that the June 4 strike killed Jafar al Shabwani, describing him as a mid-level AQAP commander. He was the fourth man with this name to have reportedly died in a drone strike this year, but their relation to each other is unclear.

The confirmed US drone strike, on June 13 or 14, killed ‘leading AQAP figure’ Musaed al Habshi al Barasi al Awlaqi and two unnamed Saudis, along with at least two other unidentified casualties.

The US added alleged AQAP member Shawqi Ali Ahmed al Badani to a US sanctions list. According to unnamed officials, al Badani was the target of a disastrous US drone strike on a wedding procession in December 2013.

US citizen Anwar al Awlaki, killed in a drone strike in September 2011 (YouTube screengrab)

On June 23 the US government released, with redactions, a secret memo setting out legal justifications for killing a US citizen, Anwar al Awlaki. The release met with mixed reactions from national security analysts and legal experts.

June also saw the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) overrun major cities in Iraq. So far Washington has refused Baghdad’s requests for airstrikes on ISIS fighters, but has started flying armed drones over the country. And there are now more than 180 US special forces in the country.

Six-monthly trends

Six confirmed drone strikes since January this year have reportedly killed at least 50 people, including four civilians. This makes it the bloodiest six-month period for drone strikes in the country since the first half of 2012, when the US launched at least 21 confirmed drone strikes, killing upwards of 140 people.

While more people died overall in January to June 2012, this year’s drone strikes have had higher death tolls. The casualty rate for the past six months was 8.3 people killed per strike – the highest yet recorded in Yemen, and almost double that recorded in the second half of last year.

The average number of people killed per US drone strike in Yemen and Pakistan during Obama’s presidency.

Since 2011 the casualty rate in Pakistan and Yemen has been at a similar level. But in the first half of 2014, as in the first half of 2012, the casualty rate in Yemen spiked. These periods both coincide with Yemeni government attempts to oust AQAP from territory it had seized.

The increased casualty rate this year is because a cluster of attacks on April 19 and April 20 killed at least 37 people.

This analysis examines only strikes considered confirmed by the Bureau – those described as drone strikes by three separate credible sources, or those acknowledged by US sources. In the first half of 2012, up to 102 air attacks were reported, so the true number of drone strikes is unknown but may be higher. And in the first half of 2014, the Bureau recorded a further 12 possible drone strikes, killing 18-30.

The civilian casualty rate – the number of civilians killed in each strike on average – fell sharply compared to the previous six months but continued a longer-term upwards trend.

The minimum number of civilians reportedly killed by US drones in Yemen during Obama’s presidency.

The high rate in the second half of last year is in large part because at least eight civilians were killed in the catastrophic wedding party strike on December 12 2013 strike. However, the civilian casualty rate in the first half of this year is more than three times that of the same period in 2012.

This could be due to improved reporting: journalists have, until recently, enjoyed better access to parts of the country than they did in 2011 and 2012, when the areas affected by drone strikes were often under AQAP control.

However journalists’ ability to report is now being restricted by the Yemeni government. Journalists have repeatedly been harassed by the security forces, and the government has closed media groups owned by the former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. US journalist Adam Baron was expelled from the country, and UK reporter Iona Craig left shortly afterwards. They were the last accredited international journalists living and working in Sanaa.

Somalia

June 2014 actions

Total reported US operations: 0

All actions 2007 – June 30 2014

US drone strikes: 5-8

Total reported killed: 10-24

Civilians reported killed: 0-1

Children reported killed: 0

Reported injured: 2-3

All other US covert operations: 8-11

Total reported killed: 40-141

Civilians reported killed: 7-47

Children reported killed: 0-2

Reported injured: 11-21Click here for the Bureau’s full data on Somalia.

There were no reported US operations in Somalia for the fifth successive month. However al Shabaab sites came under attack from Kenyan Defence Force jets. Military sources claimed up to 80 alleged militants died, though there were no independent casualty estimates.

The strikes were reportedly in support of the African Union peacekeeping mission, Amisom, which has been trying to roll back al Shabaab control in southern and central Somalia. Amisom has had some success against al Shabaab but a report by the International Crisis Group predicted it will be a long war against the armed group.

Al Shabaab killed at least 48 people in a bloodthirsty attack on people watching the World Cup in Mpeketoni, a poor Kenyan coastal town. Scores of al Shabaab fighters poured into the town after dark, targeting a police station and hotels, reportedly killing men with guns and knives but sparing women and children. Mpeketoni is near the popular tourist destination Lamu. The continuing attacks are harming Kenya’s crucial tourist industry,

The attack echoed a 2010 al Shabaab bombing in Kampala, Uganda, which also targeted crowds watching the World Cup. In that attack more than 70 died.

Six-monthly trends

A single drone strike this year killed 2-9 people on January 26. It reportedly targeted Ahmed Abdi Godane, al Shabaab’s leader. It later emerged one of Godane’s aides, Sahal Iskudhuq, was killed in the attack. Godane had reportedly met with Iskudhuq that evening.

Ethiopian soldiers join the Amisom peacekeeping force in Somalia (Amisom/Flickr)

There have been between five and eight US drone strikes reported in Somalia since the first one in June 2011, a small number compared with Yemen and Pakistan. However, because much of the country remains beyond government control and out of reach for journalists and civil society, it is possible further attacks have gone unreported.

This year Amisom announced Ethiopia would contribute soldiers to the peacekeeping force. Ethiopia unilaterally invaded Somalia in December 2006 and its occupation was marked by accusations of war crimes.

Amisom have made territorial gains against al Shabaab, but the armed group has continued to launch lethal attacks in the heavily defended green zone around Mogadishu’s airport and the presidential palace.

Naming the Dead

This month the Bureau has added 14 names to Naming the Dead project, which identifies those killed in Pakistan drone strikes, taking the number of names published to 698.

These people were killed in June’s second strike. This poses a puzzle: there were only 6-10 people reportedly killed by the strike. However it was just hours after the earlier attack, so some of those 14 names could have belonged to those killed in that strike. Alternatively, the extra names could be pseudonyms or aliases.

The Bureau has profiled Nek Mohammed, the local Taliban commander who was the target of the first CIA drone strike in Pakistan, 10 years ago this month.

Additional reporting by Olivia Rudgard.

Follow Alice Ross and Jack Serle on Twitter – or to see what the team is reading, follow Drone Reads. Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project and subscribe to our podcast, Drone News from the Bureau.

 

Published

June 3, 2014

Written by

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

CIA drones have not hit Pakistan for over five months – some now suggest it is a permanent end to strikes.

The hiatus in drone strikes continues as Pakistan’s military takes the fight to the Taliban.

A US drone strike kills at least four amid an ongoing Yemen military offensive against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Another month without a reported US attack in Somalia as al Shabaab attacks neighbouring countries.

New case studies added to the Naming the Dead project.

Pakistan

May 2014 actions

Total CIA strikes in May: 0

Total killed in strikes in May: 0

All actions 2004 – May 31 2014

Total Obama strikes: 332

Total US strikes since 2004: 383

Total reported killed: 2,296-3,719

Civilians reported killed: 416-957

Children reported killed: 168-202

Total reported injured: 1,089-1,639For the Bureau’s full Pakistan databases click here.

More than five months have passed without a drone strike in Pakistan, and some analysts suggest the campaign is drawing to a close.

The Associated Press reported that CIA drones are still flying armed missions over Pakistan and analysts are still adding targets to the kill list. But the US intends to continue drawing down its forces in Afghanistan, leaving altogether by 2016. This would mean the air bases from which the drones fly and the intelligence outposts that provide them with their targets will close.

Congressman Mike Rogers, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, told AP: ‘By the end of this year we will have a noticeable degradation in our ability to collect intelligence on people of concern.’

President Obama made a major speech on foreign policy at West Point military academy, in which he confirmed the US will continue to conduct off-battlefield drone strikes. But he mentioned Pakistan only once, declaring that ‘al Qaeda’s leadership on the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan has been decimated’.

The Pakistan military has stepped up operations in North Waziristan, continuing the air strikes that began in April and also attacking Taliban targets with artillery, helicopters and ground forces. There have been reports of high casualties from the strikes; at least 60 people reportedly died in a series of attacks on May 21. Thousands of people have already reportedly been displaced, fleeing to neighbouring Bannu region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

The Pakistan Taliban has reportedly fragmented this month as infighting between factions continued. A faction based in South Waziristan, made up of Mehsud tribesmen commanded by Khan Said, has broken from the main group commanded by Mullah Fazlullah. Said’s Mehsud group is reportedly on good terms with the Pakistani government and there is hope this schism could lead to increased stability in South Waziristan.

The US government agreed to publish a redacted version of the memo outlining the legal basis for killing US citizens overseas. The move came after an appeals court ordered the publication last month. However, a week after the judgment, the Justice Department sought a fresh court hearing to redact further sections of the memo, beyond those agreed by the court. The government also sought to have the new hearing held in secret. The court agreed to hear the government’s case for further redactions but refused to do so entirely behind closed doors.

This month the Bureau published major research analysing all strikes that have taken place in Pakistan. This revealed that drones have attacked more domestic buildings than another type of target – more than 60% of strikes hit houses, killing at least 222 civilians.

Since 2008 in Afghanistan air strikes on domestic buildings have been banned in all but the most urgent situations, as part of measures to reduce civilian casualties. But they have been the most frequent targets of attacks in Pakistan in each year of the campaign, including since 2008. The research, a collaboration with Forensic Architecture and Situ Research, is also presented in an interactive map, Where the Drones Strike.

Yemen

May 2014 actions

Confirmed US drone strikes: 1

Further reported/possible US strike events: 0

Total reported killed in US operations: 4-6

Civilians reported killed in US strikes: 0

All actions 2002 – May 31 2014*

Confirmed US drone strikes: 64-76

Total reported killed: 334-488

Civilians reported killed: 34-84

Children reported killed: 7-8

Reported injured: 78-196

Possible extra US drone strikes: 93-112

Total reported killed: 315-505

Civilians reported killed: 24-48

Children reported killed: 6-9

Reported injured: 85-118

All other US covert operations: 14-79Total reported killed: 150-386Civilians reported killed: 59-88Children reported killed: 24-26Reported injured: 22-115Click here for the full Yemen data.

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

A US drone killed at least four people in a vehicle in the Wadi Abeeda area of Mareb province. Witnesses named two of the dead as alleged al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) members Naif Faraj and Mousleh al Arahabi.

The Yemeni military continued to carry out operations against AQAP in the central and southern Yemeni provinces of Shabwa, Abyan and al Bayda, with casualties to both sides. AQAP responded with attacks and bombings in the capital and other cities.

The UN estimates more than 24,000 refugees have been displaced by the fighting, as of May 20. The International Committee of the Red Cross and the Yemen Red Crescent have been providing humanitarian relief.

There have been few reports of civilian casualties beyond five civilians killed on May 22, when Yemeni government forces targetted their vehicle with artillery. However the Yemeni government appears to have been taking steps to shut down critical media coverage of its activities.

On May 20 a team of al Jazeera reporters were detained in Shabwa by government forces while covering the conflict and ‘evacuated’ to the capital, Sana’a.

On May 8 the Yemeni authorities expelled Adam Baron, a reporter for McClatchy who had worked in the country for more than three years. On May 12 Iona Craig of The Times left the country; at the airport she was told she would not be allowed to return. She later wrote: ‘The foreign media may not be welcome in Yemen, but if they are quietly trying to remove us then the greatest threat to be faced will be to domestic reporters.’

Barack Obama cited Yemen in his West Point speech, as part of his declaration that the US will continue to launch drone strikes ‘when we have actionable intelligence’. He also announced the US would spend $5bn on developing and training counter-terrorism forces in countries around the world, pointing to the US’s direct support for Yemen’s security forces as an example of the work this new programme will do.

Also this month, it emerged Saudi Arabia had bombed northern Yemen with US-made cluster bombs in 2009 and 2010.

Somalia

May 2014 actions

Total reported US operations: 0

All actions 2007 – May 31 2014

US drone strikes: 5-8

Total reported killed: 10-24

Civilians reported killed: 0-1

Children reported killed: 0

Reported injured: 2-3

All other US covert operations: 8-11

Total reported killed: 40-141

Civilians reported killed: 7-47

Children reported killed: 0-2

Reported injured: 11-21Click here for the Bureau’s full data on Somalia.

There was again no reported US strikes in Somalia – it is now more than four months since the last confirmed US attack in the country.

However al Shabaab continues to penetrate security to carry out attacks in Mogadishu, including an attack on the parliament building that killed 10 people.

The attack came two weeks after 100 Somali MPs signed a letter calling on the president to resign for failing to improve the security situation. The MPs threatened to impeach him. The president rejected the call for his resignation.

African Union peacekeeping forces (Amisom) continue to battle al Shabaab south and west of the capital. On May 18 Kenyan jets killed at least 50 alleged militants in a strike described as an Amisom operation. However the peacekeeper’s UN mandate extends to ‘an appropriate aviation component of up to twelve military helicopters’; not jets. On May 28 the militants hit back, ambushing a column of Amisom forces and killing 32 Ethiopian troops.

Al Shabaab also attacked a restaurant in the tiny African state, Djibouti to the north of Somalia, killing three people. This country is home to the only permanent US base in Africa as well as a French base and EU and Nato naval forces involved in counter-piracy operations. The group has also vowed to take its fight into Kenya. It has continued to attack targets in Kenya, in the capital, Nairobi and in the coastal city of Mombassa. At least 13 were killed in two bomb blasts in Nairobi on May 16.

There is increasing concern that the attacks in Kenya are doing serious damage to the economy, particularly to the  tourism industry – the country’s second-biggest source of foreign currency.

Kenya has continued to crack down on ethnic Somalis living in the country in operations Amnesty International described as ‘a disturbing wave of serious human rights violations’.

Naming the Dead

New case studies on the Naming the Dead website this month include profiles of British brothers Abdul Jabbar and Mohammed Azmir Khan, who died in separate drone strikes in North Waziristan in 2010 and 2011. Following reports that an Australian and Yemeni citizen died in a drone strike in Yemen, we have profiled Saifullah, described in reports as an Australian militant, and Zahirullah, the owner of the house in which Saifullah died. Emeti Yakuf, commander of a Chinese militant group, has also been profiled.

Follow Alice Ross and Jack Serle on Twitter.

Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project and subscribe to our podcast Drone News.

Published

May 1, 2014

Written by

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

The wreckage of a four-wheel drive destroyed by CIA drones in Yemen (EPA/stringer).

More than four months without a drone strike in Pakistan.

US drones and special forces launch barrage of attacks in Yemen.

‘Western’ special forces support peacekeeper offensive in Somalia.

The Bureau has added more than 100 names to its Naming the Dead project since launch.

Pakistan

April 2014 actions

Total CIA strikes in April: 0

Total killed in strikes in April: 0

All actions 2004 – April 30 2014

Total Obama strikes: 332

Total US strikes since 2004: 383

Total reported killed: 2,296-3,719

Civilians reported killed: 416-957

Children reported killed: 168-202

Total reported injured: 1,089-1,639For the Bureau’s full Pakistan databases click here.

It is now more than four months since the last reported drone strike in Pakistan. This is reportedly to allow peace talks to take place between the Pakistan Taliban (TTP) and the government.

While drone attacks have stopped, there have been reports of sightings of unmanned aircraft over Miranshah, North Waziristan and Hangu, beyond Pakistan’s tribal areas, indicating that CIA surveillance may be continuing.

The pause in drone strikes has been welcomed by senior Pakistani military officers, according to Owen Bennett-Jones, who recently visited Waziristan and described the trip for the Bureau’s drones podcast.

It was reported that the US drone strikes in Pakistan are carried out by US Air Force (USAF) personnel, under the direction of the CIA. The strikes are carried out by the USAF 17th Reconnaissance Squadron based at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. The CIA manages the operations but the drones are operated by military crews. Former USAF drone operator Brandon Bryant said: ‘The CIA might be the customer but the air force has always flown it. A CIA label is just an excuse to not have to give up any information. That is all it has ever been.’

A ceasefire between the TTP and the government in Islamabad broke down this month, although both sides have said they want the peace talks to continue. There was a dramatic drop in militant attacks over the first quarter of 2014, according to research organisation the Conflict Monitoring Center. But attacks continued in April, including some before the ceasefire was officially dropped. Policemen and civilians were among those killed in various militant attacks. The Pakistan Air Force (PAF) jets reportedly killed at least 35 people including eight civilians in strikes on Khyber agency.

The US Senate Intelligence Committee dropped a provision from a major intelligence bill that would require the White House to publish yearly drone strike casualty figures. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wrote to the committee saying that the administration is exploring ways to be more transparent about US drone strikes.

Clapper wrote: ‘To be meaningful to the public, any report including the [casualty] information… would require context and be drafted carefully.’

A separate bipartisan bill, also aiming to compel the White House to publish drone strike casualty figures, was put before Congress this month. The independent analysis firm GovTrack gives the bill a negligible chance of passing the committee stage.

Former Australian prime minister Malcolm Fraser said intelligence provided by Australian spies to the CIA could expose Australian spies to prosecution if it is used to target drone strikes in Pakistan. He said intelligence officers working at Pine Gap, a joint Australian-US listening station in central Australia, could be vulnerable to charges of crimes against humanity. Last year an investigation by the Sydney Morning Herald revealed that Pine Gap intercepts mobile phone and radio traffic in Pakistan’s tribal region to identify and track targets for drone strikes in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Yemen

April 2014 actions

Confirmed US drone strikes: 2-4

Further reported/possible US strikes: 1

Total reported killed in US operations: 37–55

Civilians reported killed in US strikes: 4-10

All actions 2002 – April 30 2014*

Confirmed US drone strikes: 63-75

Total reported killed: 330-482

Civilians reported killed: 34-84

Children reported killed: 7-8

Reported injured: 78-196

Possible extra US drone strikes: 93-112

Total reported killed: 315-505

Civilians reported killed: 24-48

Children reported killed: 6-9

Reported injured: 85-118

All other US covert operations: 14-79Total reported killed: 150-386Civilians reported killed: 59-88Children reported killed: 24-26Reported injured: 22-115Click here for the full Yemen data.

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

At least 40 people were killed in a blitz of attacks on Yemen between April 19-20. At least five civilians were reportedly among the dead, including children aged 14 and 16.

CIA drones destroyed a truck carrying alleged militants during the night of April 19, killing at least 10 people. However, a nearby vehicle was also caught in the blast. At least three labourers were killed by flying shrapnel. Up to six other civilians were wounded; they were taken to a nearby hospital where the Yemeni government reportedly paid for their treatment.

CIA drones and Yemen Air Force jets, possibly with support from US warships, killed at least 24 people on April 20. A 14-year-old boy was among the dead from a massive strike on an alleged Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) camp.

On the night of April 20 a further operation left three to four people dead. US and Yemeni special forces ambushed a car travelling through the southern Shabwa province. A 16-year-old boy was reportedly killed in the attack.

AQAP’s master bomb-maker Ibrahim al Asiri and the group’s leader Nasser al Wuhayshi were initially reportedly killed in this strike. However unnamed US officials said they were not the targets of the operation. And it subsequently emerged that DNA tests showed they were not among the dead.

Al Wuhayshi appeared in a widely publicised video with dozens of fighters in late March, reportedly filmed in the same area as the second strike. In the video al Wuhayshi tells the fighters: ‘We should remember that we fight the biggest enemy. We must overthrow the leaders of infidelity and remove the cross and its holder, America.’

After the strikes, Yemen’s armed forces, backed by local militia, began an offensive to ‘purge‘ AQAP from the districts in the southern provinces of Abyan and Shabwa. The militant group established a foothold in Abyan in 2011, spurring the US and Yemeni governments to launch a bloody offensive in 2012. One area the military has said it will focus on is al Mahfed in Abyan – a frequent target of US attacks. Every strike on Abyan since January 2013 has hit in the al Mahfed area, according to Bureau data.

It also emerged this month that two Westerners, described as AQAP ‘foot soldiers’, were killed in a US attack in November 2013. Christopher Harvard, 27, was an Australian citizen who had travelled to Yemen purportedly to teach English. The Australian foreign ministry confirmed his death in the operation. A dual Australian and New Zealand national initially identified as Muslim bin John also died, the New Zealand prime minister confirmed. He was later identified as Daryl Jones – he had reportedly been travelling in the Middle East since mid-2012. Two Yemenis and an Egyptian were also killed in the attack.

Meanwhile, a federal US court of appeal said the government must release its legal justification for killing US citizens abroad in drone strikes. The unanimous decision is in response to a Freedom of Information request by the American Civil Liberties Union seeking government records about the deaths of Anwar al Awlaki, his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman and Samir Khan – three US citizens killed in Yemen in 2011.

Somalia

April 2014 actions

Total reported US operations: 0

All actions 2007 – April 30 2014

US drone strikes: 5-8

Total reported killed: 10-24

Civilians reported killed: 0-1

Children reported killed: 0

Reported injured: 2-3

All other US covert operations: 8-11

Total reported killed: 40-141

Civilians reported killed: 7-47

Children reported killed: 0-2

Reported injured: 11-21Click here for the Bureau’s full data on Somalia.

There are no reported US attacks in Somalia in April, though ‘foreign Special Forces’ and US drones supported an offensive by African Union peacekeepers, according to AFP.

African Union troops (Amisom) soldiers made considerable gains capturing towns from al Shabaab, though the militant group continues to hold swathes of territory.

Sierra Leone sent a battalion of soldiers to join Amisom this month – the fifth state to contribute personnel. Kenya has had troops in the south of Somalia for three years, which are now part of the Amisom force. An investigation by a Kenyan newspaper revealed the strain the three-year occupation of Somalia is putting on its armed forces.

Despite losing ground to Amisom, al Shabaab again launched attacks in Mogadishu, the capital. The militants shot dead a Somali lawmaker less than 24 hours after killing another Somali MP with a car bomb.

The militant group also issued a bloodthirsty video message to the world this month, declaring: ‘We will blow you up, until we finish you off.’

A French citizen and a Briton were shot dead as they arrived in Galkayo. The men were employed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Al Shabaab did not claim the attack, though they did celebrate the foreign workers’ death.

Also this month, Kenya continued to crack down on ethnic Somalis living in the country, reportedly detaining 3,000 and expelling dozens.

Dutch journalists revealed the Netherlands has been intercepting vast amounts of Somali telephone traffic and sharing it with US intelligence – although the Dutch government denied involvement in US drone strikes.

Naming the Dead

The Bureau has now added more than 100 names to the Naming the Dead database since the project launched in September 2013. Over 50 of the new names have come from Bureau research in Pakistan, while the others have emerged from media reports of drone strikes.

Bureau field researchers, working with local officials, have uncovered 35 new names of alleged militants this month. Six names were added to a strike in October 2012 that left 16-26 dead, and 15 alleged militants killed in a strike on January 6 2013 were also identified. The Bureau also added 14 names to three strikes in July 2013: eight new names from a July 3 2013 strike that killed 16-18 people emerged. Two new names were added to the data for a July 13 strike that killed 2-3 people. And four names were added to a July 28 2013 strike that killed 5-8 people.

Picture on homepage: USAF/Senior Airman Jack Sanders

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