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United Nations urges states to support casualty recording

Published

July 14, 2023

Written by

Megan Karlshoej-Pedersen

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UN Headquarters in Geneva (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

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New UN Human Rights Council study emphasises importance of casualty recording for human rights

A breakthrough United Nations report outlining the importance of casualty recording for the protection and promotion of human rights has received nearly universal support at the Human Rights Council’s 53rd session.

The report, which linked casualty recording and human rights obligations directly, received widespread support at the council on July 3rd – with 19 states and observers expressing support for the findings and recommendations. Only one state, Venezuela, expressed objections.

The study will create pressure on states – many of which have previously expressed confusion and hesitancy regarding their obligations around casualty recording – to do more to monitor the civilian impact of conflict.

Setting the tone for the Council session, the report from the High Commissioner for Human Rights recommended that states: “ensure that casualty recording systems and policies are in place and report publicly on all casualties believed to have resulted from hostilities or violence and their circumstances, including for reparations and accountability”.

If implemented, such measures would create a global best practice around casualty monitoring. There is currently little transparency about how states record casualties from their own actions, and state militaries often face accusations of undercounting the civilian impact of their actions.

In the United Kingdom, for example, the Ministry of Defence refuses to publicly disclose details on its own mechanism for casualty recording in the war against ISIS. Airwars is challenging this position in a tribunal later this year.

The importance of casualty recording

The High Commissioner’s report emphasised; “Casualty recording is an important and effective means of delivering on a range of fundamental human rights”. The report further notes: “In addition to disciplinary and accountability measures, such information can be used to foster compliance with international law, including by changing practices and behaviour and enhancing training to this end.”

The US delegation reflected on casualty recording in Ukraine, acknowledging that: “we still do not know the full picture. For that reason, we must advance efforts to create a comprehensive casualty recording system that accounts for all casualties, both civilian and military.”

The delegation went on to emphasise that the US is keen to “aid the international community in developing a casualty reporting mechanism at the international level to contribute to equal access to justice for all”

The support for casualty recording is particularly significant in the context of other successes for civilian protections at the UN last week. In a statement welcoming the report on casualty recording, 56 states of the ‘Group of Friends of R2P’ emphasised the connection between casualty recording and atrocity prevention.

A week earlier, a resolution was adopted at the General Assembly creating an independent institution to examine the fate of all people who are missing in Syria. Since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in 2011, an estimated 130,000 people have gone missing or been forcibly disappeared.

The moves at the UN follow other international assertions on the importance of casualty recording. The Explosive Weapons Declarations, signed by nearly 90 states in November last year, urges states to “record and track civilian casualties, and [ensure] the use of all practicable measures to ensure appropriate data collection.” The US’ Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMRAP), which is widely seen as one of the most ambitious and detailed national policies on this topic, highlights that “developing standardized reporting procedures for operational data to inform civilian harm assessments …will improve DoD’s ability to mitigate and respond to civilian harm.”

The work of independent civil society organisations

Airwars has been collaborating with civil society organisations, particularly Every Casualty Counts and other partners in the Casualty Recorder’s Network, to present evidence for the Human Rights Council report over the last year.

Last year, Every Casualty also released a hard hitting report outlining the requirements for casualty recording across legal regimes. It found that “international humanitarian and human rights law contain extensive requirements regarding states’ duties to account for the dead and missing in armed conflict and other situations of gross human rights violations… these duties are universally binding on all states.”

The work of these organisations was emphasised throughout the report. On the work of Airwars, the report highlighted our work with the US military and Government in particular, highlighting that: “more than 70 per cent of United States internal inquiries into civilian casualties caused by air strikes in the Syrian Arab Republic and Iraq since 2014 have been based on casualty recording submitted by Airwars.”

The report also drew attention to the advocacy work of organisations like Airwars, writing: “…following years of advocacy and engagement based in part on [Airwars’] findings on casualties in Iraq, Libya, Somalia, the Syrian Arab Republic and Yemen, the United States Department of Defense issued the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan in August 2022.”

We welcome the findings of the report on casualty recording and the widespread support it received at the Human Rights Council last week. It brings clarity to the requirements on states and reaffirms, at an international level, the importance of accurately recording and reporting on casualties in warfare.

▲ UN Headquarters in Geneva (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

What next for the Explosive Weapons declaration?

Published

November 25, 2022

Written by

Megan Karlshoej-Pedersen

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The signing ceremony for the Political Declaration on the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas (EWIPA) on November 18th 2022 in Dublin Castle. Over 80 state delegations such as the UK (pictured) officially endorsed the declaration.

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An overview of the actions needed

On Friday November 18th, states and civil society joined together in Dublin Castle to officially endorse the long-awaited international Political Declaration on the use of explosive weapons in populated areas (EWIPA). So far, 82 states have signed onto the declaration; this is a similar number to the initial signatories to other international declarations that have created new norms and standards in warfare, such as the Safe Schools Declaration. Among the signatories to the EWIPA declaration are states such as the US, UK, Netherlands, and Belgium, all of which made sizable contributions to the coalition against ISIS in Iraq and Syria that killed an estimated 8,194–13,249 civilians.

According to Action on Armed Violence, when EWIPAs are used, over 90% of those harmed are civilians. Airwars recently put together a series of maps showing the clear and troubling connection between population density in cities and civilian deaths during urban warfare. Even beyond those who are killed immediately, the reverberating effects are often severe and pervasive, with schools, hospitals, livelihoods, and basic resources like food and water becoming inaccessible for years. This has played out in recent conflicts in cities such as Mosul and Raqqa, in which entire city parts were destroyed and have been made uninhabitable.

The Irish-led, UN backed international declaration is a groundbreaking step towards curbing the use of such weapons. It comes at the back of a decade of civil society focus and pressure on this, led by the INEW network, which Airwars is a part of. As with any political declaration, the results are only as good as the implementation. Below, we outline some of the challenges states must address as they begin the process of implementing the EWIPA declaration.

States must be frank about gaps in their current approach

The first step in understanding how to implement the declaration to limit the use of EWIPAs must be for each state to critically examine current gaps in its own approach and engage in a meaningful process to address these. This in itself might be a stumbling block for some; while states such as the US and the Netherlands have shown increasing willingness to address gaps in their approach to the protection of civilians by working with civil society and experts, others have not.

The UK for instance, still falls behind allies in terms of transparency on evidence collection around civilian harm. Under the declaration, states committed to: “Collect, share, and make publicly available disaggregated data on the direct and indirect effects on civilians and civilian objects of military operations involving the use of explosive weapons in populated areas, where feasible and appropriate”. Despite the UK representative in Dublin noting during the signing ceremony that “the UK already has policies and procedures in place to support the implementation”, this has to date not been evident when it comes to public reporting on the effects of UK military actions.

As it stands, the UK maintains that it has evidence of only a single civilian casualty from its actions in the seven year anti-ISIS campaign, for example, despite extensive military involvement. The US, by comparison, has admitted to over 1,400 civilian casualties as part of the Coalition. When challenged, UK officials tend to emphasise that they are aware that is not a case of lower civilian casualties than in previous conflicts – but of poor evidence gathering. This position was summarised by former Armed Forces Minister, Mark Lancaster, who emphasised in 2019 that; “[I]t is not our position that there has been only a single civilian casualty as a result of our military action. What we are saying is that we have evidence of only a single, or what we believe to have been a single, civilian casualty.”

In spite of this oft-repeated recognition that the evidence gathering mechanisms of the UK are not able to accurately reflect the reality on the ground, there is, to our knowledge, no process in place to improve this approach and little willingness to engage with civil society to address this. If this is not addressed, there will be a significant gap between the rhetoric of UK leadership when it comes to EWIPA and the reality on the ground.

States must build clarity on who is responsible for implementing the EWIPA declaration on a national level

The second step states must take to implement the EWIPA declaration is to gain better internal understandings of who will be involved in its implementation. This must include those focusing specifically on EWIPA, but also those focusing on topics such as human security, the protection of civilians, humanitarian response, development, diplomacy, and all the other elements required to protect those caught in conflict from being harmed by explosive weapons.The structures behind overseas military engagements are complex, quick changing, and lines of responsibility are often murky. Yet it is only if all involved in such operations, across parliament, ministries of defence, and ministries of foreign affairs and overseas development, are dedicated to limiting the use of EWIPA, understanding their impact, and tracking civilian harm that occurs if they are used, that implementation will be effective.

States must be open to civil society inclusion in the implementation of the EWIPA declaration

Civil society actors, many of us united under the INEW banner, played a significant role in the development of the EWIPA declaration and the advocacy that brought states to the process, a fact that was acknowledged by a large number of states at the conference in Dublin. We stand ready to support the implementation in national contexts and across international coalitions. Many civil society organisations have spent years – sometimes decades – developing protection mechanisms and civilian harm tracking mechanisms, as well as conducting research into valuable lessons on the impact of EWIPA. Civil society organisations are also often direct links to the communities affected. It is in all of our interests that these resources are effectively shared with those in power.

In those states where there is a history of poor transparency and accountability on civilian harm and civilian harm tracking, governments and their militaries must also commit to a certain level of transparency on the implementation of the EWIPA declaration. They should work with civil society actors to understand the gaps in their current approach and set up milestones for implementation.

Looking forward

The endorsing ceremony was a promising step towards recognising the immense harm that these weapons have caused in recent years – and the harm they will continue to cause as their impact reverberates through communities. If the declaration is implemented well, fewer civilians will be harmed by explosive weapons in their cities, towns, and camps.

Yet there are pitfalls each state must avoid if their implementation of the declaration is to be meaningful. They must be frank about current gaps in their system and must be willing to address them. They must gain an oversight of everyone who will play a role in the effective implementation of EWIPA. And they should work with civil society actors who have resources to share and stand ready to support implementation.

Additional resources:

Implementation Brief: Political Declaration on the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas, CIVIC, November 2022 (here) Safeguarding Civilians: A Humanitarian Interpretation of the Political Declaration on the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas, Human Rights watch and the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law school, October 2022 (here) Implementing the Political Declaration on the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas: Key Areas and Implementing Actions, INEW and Article 36, November 2022 (here) Over 80 Countries Committed to Curb Use of Explosive Weapons, Now Comes the Hard Part, Bonnie Docherty, Human Rights Watch for Just Security, November 23rd 2022 (here)

▲ The signing ceremony for the Political Declaration on the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas (EWIPA) on November 18th 2022 in Dublin Castle. Over 80 state delegations such as the UK (pictured) officially endorsed the declaration.

United States new Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan cautiously welcomed by civil society

Published

August 26, 2022

Written by

Megan Karlshoej-Pedersen

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New action plan contains positive steps - the focus now is on implementation and renewed efforts to ensure past cases are not forgotten.

Airwars joins our civil society partners in welcoming the publication of the much awaited Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP), released yesterday by the US Department of Defense.

The CHMR-AP reflects a years-long process of sustained pressure by individuals, civil society, journalists, activists and legislators to challenge the way the US military conducts itself in the battlefield, and force the Department of Defense to review practices that have had deadly outcomes for civilians across the globe – from the battles of Mosul and Raqqa in the war against ISIS, to the botched Kabul strike last year.

In response to this sustained pressure, catalysed by a series of Pulitzer-winning New York Times articles exposing serious concerns with US military practices in January 2022, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III issued a memorandum calling for the creation of the CHMR-AP. Austin called for the CHMR-AP to set up a process for the establishment of a new centre of excellence, and a framework for standardising civilian harm reporting, investigation and mitigation.

The 46-page document is an unprecedented move toward transparency, and was put together following a series of key engagements with civil society actors and independent specialists. Presenting a far reaching future-looking agenda, it is applicable to the ‘full spectrum of conflict’ – from current operations, large and small, to any future situations of high-intensity conflict.

Covering 11 distinct objectives – ranging from actions to reduce confirmation bias to implementation of a new data management system; each with a proposed set of phased actions and associated resource plan, the CHMR-AP presents an ambitious set of actions that, if implemented appropriately, could present a radical departure from existing policy in some areas. It sets a strong precedent for future US military action – and, importantly, an example for allies to follow.

Read the DoD factsheet here and the full action plan here.

Why is the CHMR-AP so important?

While the action plan itself is focused on reviewing and reforming the US’ policies on civilian harm mitigation and tracking, it should also have significant implications for the partners that support the US in modern conflicts, such as the UK, France, Netherlands, Belgium, and others. As it stands, US allies have been shown to have limited oversight, transparency, or accountability for civilian harm from their own actions. The UK, for instance, admits to only a single civilian casualty from its 8 years of support to the anti-ISIS coalition in Iraq and Syria, in which the UK has been second only to the US in the number of munitions dropped in some battlefields. Airwars’ estimates of civilians killed by this coalition could be well over 8,000.

Over the last few years, Airwars and our civil society partners have advocated with several of these states to review and improve national approaches and policies to civilian harm mitigation; yet, while some states have taken on such reviews, none have been as far-reaching or ambitious as the CHMR-AP.

Beyond these national processes to improve approaches to civilian harm mitigation, the CHMR-AP also comes out in the context of a new international agreement on the use of explosive weapons in populated areas, due to be signed by the US and key allies in October this year. The CHMR-AP’s introduction of the term ‘civilian environment’ presents a broad understanding of civilian harm – with reference to the need to understand population density, urban systems and the ‘the interconnected relationships between the civilian population, natural resources, infrastructure, and essential services’. This is an important move towards acknowledging the long-term consequences of military action on civilians caught in conflict.

What does this mean for civilians harmed by the US in past actions?

Perhaps the biggest gap in the CHMR-AP is that it includes no reference to reviewing past cases of alleged civilian harm; including addressing the 37 cases that are still open pending assessment for civilian harm claims made against the US-led Coalition in the war against ISIS.

According to Airwars’ archive, the likely death toll resulting from the actions of the US-led Coalition’s actions in the war against ISIS alone could be at least 8,192 and as many as 13,247 civilians. The US has conceded causing overall at least 1,417 civilian fatalities – but has rejected 2,674 harm claims. These rejected cases could account for thousands of casualties.

Total estimates for the last twenty years of US actions reach as many as 48,308 civilian deaths – with over 90,000 declared strikes across seven major conflict zones throughout the so-called ‘forever wars’.

Key questions therefore remain unanswered: will the remaining open cases be reviewed? Will they be reviewed with this new policy in mind? How might the new policy change the outcome of those investigations? And if these open cases are reviewed in line with new policies – what does that mean for the cases that have previously been rejected as ‘non-credible’ under a system that has now been widely acknowledged to have been in need of reform?

Looking back at past cases has significant implications for commitments to amends processes – a section outlined as an objective in the CHMR-AP, although with no mention of how the new action plan would affect outstanding claims or clear detail on implementation of future processes.

What should we be looking out for now?

The implementation of the CHMR-AP will be key. While the action plan outlines a comprehensive set of actions and resource plans, it is yet to be determined the extent to which the policy will be implemented effectively and with continued consultation with independent voices. This is particularly important as US actions are on-going across the globe – Airwars has recorded an uptick in strikes in Somalia since Biden announced his decision to redeploy troops in May this year, while a new set of strikes were announced in Syria on Iran-backed militants just as the CHMR-AP was released.

Additionally, as noted by Human Rights Watch Washington Director Sarah Yager in a comment to CNN, the staffing and resources required must be arranged as soon as possible in order to ensure that “the principles and values behind doing this are deeply embedded in the Pentagon”, before any significant leadership change in the US administration, which could delay or even derail current plans for improvements.

Allies of the US should also take notice – and take action. Particularly with key sections of the CHMR-AP including reference to the application of the new action plan to multinational operations, US allies will have to review their own practices.

Several crucial points in the action plan are also still lacking clarity, and it will likely be some time before the full extent of the policy has been reviewed in its entirety by experts. Airwars is coordinating closely with our civil society partners in the US to ensure a comprehensive and thorough review of the proposed action plan, in order to ensure appropriate oversight and support from civil society as the action plan enters into the next phase of implementation.

▲ Ruins of a family home in which 35 civilians died at Mosul on June 13th 2017 - in what is now known to have been US and Australian airstrikes (Image courtesy of the Al Saffar family. All rights reserved.)

As key Geneva meet ends, states edge towards explosive weapons deal

Published

April 8, 2022

Written by

Sanjana Varghese

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International gathering brings nearer a protocol on restricting explosive weapon use in urban areas.

States edged closer to a political declaration on the use of explosive weapons in populated areas on April 8th, after three days of crunch talks in Geneva.

More than 65 states descended on the Swiss city for key talks on the wording of a political declaration that advocates believe would save thousands of lives by restricting the use of wide area effect explosive weapons in populated areas (EWIPA). Detractors, such as the United States government, argue it would unfairly limit the freedom of their own military actions and have threatened not to sign.

While no final text was agreed upon Friday, all sides struck an optimistic tone at the end of the three-day meet – saying a deal was nearer than ever. Delegates will meet again for one day in two months before an adoption ceremony expected in the summer.

“There are clearly differences of opinion but we have seen a very positive, solution oriented approach,” the chairperson, Ambassador Michael Gaffey of Ireland, said. “We are not simply working on a formula of words in a political declaration – we want to make a real difference and impact on the ground and foster behavioural change.”

The talks were given additional urgency by the ongoing war in Ukraine, and Russia’s extensive use of explosive weapons on its cities. Moscow did not attend the talks.

Even the United States, widely viewed as one of the most hostile states to a declaration with teeth, struck a more positive tone than in previous meets. “There are still tough drafting issues and decisions ahead, and we have to get them right. The US delegation pledges our goodwill, to help to get to a positive outcome. We look forward to doing so.”

Since 2018, Ireland has chaired consultations on the use of explosive weapons in populated areas. In the sessions since, the need for such a declaration – which is not legally binding and so does not create new legal obligations – has only become clearer.

“The draft declaration text holds the potential to make a meaningful contribution to the protection of civilians, and negotiations over the past few days have overall been constructive,” Laura Boillot of INEW, a network of NGOs pushing for the protocol, told Airwars.

“But decisions will now need to be made if the final text is going to have humanitarian effect. Most importantly it needs to establish a presumption against the use of explosive weapons with wide area effects in towns, cities and other populated areas.”

It will be a failure to leave this room agreeing that simply restating existing laws will reduce civilian harm – a failure for all of us who came here with the intention to reduce that harm in the first place." @alma_osta in HI concluding remarks at #EWIPA negotiations today. pic.twitter.com/pTKpgfqWWU

— HI_Advocacy (@HI_Advocacy) April 8, 2022

Civil society groups and international agencies made a strong case for restricting EWIPA.

Three days of consultations

During three days of focused talks, several key fissures bubbled. While states in attendance – and civil society organisations – repeatedly emphasised the shared desire to produce a tangible and meaningful political declaration that could help save civilian lives on the ground, the practicalities of the process made clear that good intentions weren’t going to be enough.

On the first day of the informal consultations on April 6th, states made general remarks – affirming their support for the proceedings as well as their national positions – after an introductory statement from Ireland, the penholder.

In these general remarks, most states tended towards re-affirming the positions they had made clear in previous negotiations. On the hawkish side, the UK, US, Israel and Canada all emphasized that their positions as militarily active states meant that they would not sign a declaration in its current form, which included strong language about avoiding the use of explosive weapons in urban areas. Throughout the week, the delegates from these countries could often be seen meeting as a bloc outside of formal proceedings.

Many of the sticking points that emerged on the first day continued to dominate both the main floor and side conversations. The predominant line of argument was between those who argued that the declaration needed only to reaffirm the importance of international humanitarian law and provide further guidance about how to do so in this context; and those who asserted that this declaration needed to strengthen existing commitments and add new ones for states around the use of explosive weapons.

The second day of discussions took a more technical turn, with the majority of interventions focused on the wording of specific clauses and paragraphs of the text.

Clause 3.3, which attracted much attention in previous consultations, was once again hotly debated. It is one of the first clauses in Section B, the operative section – which lays out the actions that states have to comply with if they choose to sign onto the declaration.

In the current draft, Clause 3.3 says states must: “Ensure that our armed forces adopt and implement a range of policies and practices to avoid civilian harm, including by restricting or refraining from the use of explosive weapons with wide area effects in populated areas, when the effects may be expected to extend beyond a military objective.”

The bulk of the discussion around this clause was on the second sentence, as many states intervened on the use of “restricting or refraining,” with some suggesting it was strong enough while others lobbied instead for the use of “avoid”.

A split between the majority of civil society organisations and militarily-powerful states was apparent during these parts of the discussions, with NGOs and international agencies pushing for stronger language, rather than trying to place limits on what kinds of civilian harm would be protected under this new declaration.

Airwars’ incoming director and current head of research Emily Tripp also made an intervention – emphasising how crucial it was for states to actually track civilian harm.

Airwars’ incoming director Emily Tripp addresses a UN-backed conference on explosive weapons in Geneva on April 7th, 2022 (Image: Airwars)

At the end of day two INEW, one of the organisers, named nine states – Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Israel, the Republic of Korea, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States – that it said had “worked to weaken declaration provisions.” The UK delegation, for example, agreed that tracking civilian harm was a ‘moral obligation,’ but then highlighted ways in which it claimed this was not feasible – arguing that live hostilities made it near impossible to monitor casualties properly.

But INEW also said that there had been a “shift in the collective tone set by states since the last round of negotiations, with more governments explicitly committed to strengthening the protection of civilians through the declaration.”

The statement said this was likely as a response to the bombing of Ukrainian towns and cities, and the Ukraine crisis loomed large over the conflict. Not only did the majority of states open their remarks with condemnation of the Russian aggression in Ukraine, many also emphasised the importance of a meaningful political declaration with specific reference to Ukrainian cities and towns such as Mariupol, Bucha and Khrarkiv.

There was also an emphasis on the value of protecting civilian objects and infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals, with states such as Mexico and the delegate for the Holy See (which holds observer state) urging specific language around the need to protect hospitals, blood transfusion centres, and environmental and religious sites.

Speaking at the end of the latest talks, Ambassador Gaffey said Ireland and organisers would review the submissions from all parties before a month or two of further work on the text. He said states and NGOs would then hold a final one-day consultation in a couple of months, before a political adoption ceremony where states would declare their support for the text.

As Alma Taslidžan Al-Osta, of Humanity and Inclusion, noted in her own concluding remarks to delegates: “Eleven years in Syria, seven years in Yemen and over a month in Ukraine have taught us that explosive weapons with wide area effects should not be used in towns, cities and populated areas. The status quo is no longer an option.”

Civilians increasingly bear the brunt of modern conflicts. Addressing the devastating harm to civilians from Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas is a priority for 🇮🇪. We welcome states, international organisations and civil society to consultations in Geneva this week #EWIPA pic.twitter.com/pAyglwZO9D

— Disarmament IRELAND (@DisarmamentIRL) April 6, 2022

Ireland chaired Geneva talks on restricting urban use of explosive weapons

▲ The three-day EWIPA conference in Geneva sought to reach a deal on the use of explosive weapons in urban environments (Airwars)

Airwars adds voice to 104 organisations calling on President Biden to overhaul US civilian harm approach

Published

February 9, 2022

Written by

Airwars Staff

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President Joe Biden in the Oval Office, November 2021 (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)

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“For two decades, U.S. operations overseas have killed tens of thousands of civilians around the world – primarily from Brown, Black, and Muslim communities.”

On February 8th, Airwars joined its voice with 104 other organisations – including human rights, humanitarian, protection of civilians, peacebuilding, civil liberties, social and racial justice, government accountability, veterans, and faith based NGOs – to call for President Joe Biden to act urgently to overhaul US civilian harm policies and practises.

Recent New York Times investigations have documented significant shortcomings in how the US government – and its allies – monitors, investigates, and accounts for civilian harm as a result of its own military action. These have shown how the US military has routinely rejected civilian harm incidents, with decisions often riddled with basic errors, translation problems, or a lack of judgement and oversight. The Times reports echo years of similar findings by casualty monitors and human rights investigators.

There is now renewed attention within Congress and the Department of Defense on the vital changes needed, for example with the announcement of a Pentagon inquiry into how the military covered up civilian harm in Baghouz, and during recent sessions of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“As an organisation committed to reducing civilian harm in the battlefield, we join our many partners in urging President Biden to publicly recognise systemic and structural flaws in the US military’s approach to civilian casualties,” says Airwars advocacy officer Georgia Edwards. “Fulfilling his earlier pledges on human rights and moral leadership, he must now set a new course for the US government and military which opens up pathways to justice and accountability for civilians affected by US military actions.”

▲ President Joe Biden in the Oval Office, November 2021 (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)

US Defense Secretary announces major shakeup of Pentagon civilian harm policies

Published

January 28, 2022

Written by

Sanjana Varghese

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Civilian harm reduction proposals cautiously welcomed by NGOs - but delivery will be key.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has announced major proposals to overhaul how the US military monitors, assesses and documents when its actions kill civilians, a move warily welcomed by human rights and civilian harm mitigation NGOs.

Building on years of documentation by groups like the Syrian Network for Human Rights and Airwars, since late 2021 the New York Times has produced a series of deep investigations documenting systemic flaws in the way US military operations track casualties from their strikes. These revelations have prompted further scrutiny of the US military’s approach to civilian harm and raised pressures on the Biden administration to intervene.

In a directive released on January 27th, Austin announced a major shake-up of Department of Defense (DoD) policies on civilian harm reduction, including the establishment of a ‘civilian protection center of excellence’.

“The protection of innocent civilians in the conduct of our operations remains vital to the ultimate success of our operations and as a significant strategic and moral imperative,” Austin told reporters.

The directive gives the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Dr Colin Kahl, 90 days to prepare a “comprehensive” Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan, or CHMRAP, that emphasises that “efforts to protect civilians are the responsibility of all leaders throughout the (DoD), always, and not only that of our commanders and personnel in the field in the execution of missions assigned.”

Austin’s directive also paves the way for the establishment of a new ‘civilian protection center of excellence’ which according to DoD, will enable it to “better expedite and institutionalize the advancement of our knowledge, practices, and tools for preventing, mitigating, and responding to civilian harm.”

And there are also plans to shake up how the Pentagon collects, shares and learns from casualty data; to re-examine the issue of condolence payments to victims; and to “Incorporate guidance for addressing civilian harm across the full spectrum of armed conflict into doctrine and operational plans, so that we are prepared to mitigate and respond to civilian harm in any future fight.”

The CHMRAP will then itself feed into a forthcoming Department of Defense Instruction, or DODI – a long awaited department-wide policy on civilian harm reduction. Airwars was among more than a dozen US and international NGOs which engaged extensively with the Pentagon on the DODI – which has been awaiting a signature since November 2020, when drafting was completed.

According to Austin, the DODI “should be informed by the CHMRAP and presented to the Secretary of Defense for signature within 90 days of the CHMRAP’s conclusion” – meaning it should come into force by late July.

“Austin’s directive and the promised release of the DODI could be a crucial step towards standardising the US military’s approach to civilian harm assessments across US commands,” Emily Tripp, Airwars’ research manager, said.

Marc Garlasco, a military advisor at PAX and former civilian harm assessor with NATO, was among those cautiously welcoming the Pentagon announcements. “The memo sends a strong message that civilian harm mitigation (CHM) is not simply an issue for counterinsurgency. The US military is embracing CHM as it shifts to great power competition,” he said in a thread on Twitter.

🧵 on today's memo on "Improving Civilian Harm Mitigation & Response" by @SecDef. The memo is welcome focus from the highest level of @DeptofDefense showing leadership & taking ownership of the issue of civilian harm. Allow me to cover the salient points both pro & con 1/ #CIVCAS https://t.co/BJ83W6mXX9

— Marc Garlasco (@marcgarlasco) January 28, 2022

Critical study

On the same day that Secretary Austin announced his shakeup, the RAND Corporation also published a major Congressionally-mandated review of the US military’s approaches to mitigating civilian harm.

The deep-dive report, ‘US Department of Defense Civilian Casualty Policies and Procedures,’ argues that while the DoD may have made progress in some areas, “additional concrete steps are overdue.”

RAND points to several weaknesses in the DoD’s own policies and procedures – including that military officials often did not “sufficiently engage external sources” such as Airwars before they concluded investigations and designated them as non-credible; that investigations are often treated as independent of each other and so levels of detail between them vary widely; and that military assessments are often subject to long delays.

Several graphics in the report demonstrate the often extreme gap between US military estimates of civilian harm, and those of NGOs such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Airwars – noting that in Syria in 2019, more than 1,100 civilian deaths were locally alleged from US actions, yet with only 21 fatalities so far officially admitted.

The RAND report makes a number of recommendations, noting that many were called for several years ago. These include incorporating civilian harm assessments into intelligence estimates; reducing the eligibility conditions for those who can claim ex gratia payments; and implementing a standardised civilian harm reporting process across conflicts.

Airwars was among several stakeholders which met with RAND during the drafting of the report. “Many of the critical recommendations in this valuable study have long been requested by the NGO community and by Congress – and we urge the Biden Administration to now act swiftly,” Airwars director Chris Woods said.

▲ US Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, tour the Pentagon on February 10th 2021 (Official White House photo by Adam Schultz)

New UN report insists Soleimani assassination by US was ‘unlawful’

Published

July 9, 2020

Written by

Airwars Staff

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Killing of Iranian commander by US drone strike represents 'not just a slippery slope. It is a cliff', warns Special Rapporteur

The US assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in Baghdad in January 2020, was unlawful on several counts, according to a new report submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council by its expert on extrajudicial killings.

Dr Agnes Callamard, the current UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial Executions, asserts in her latest report that Soleimani’s controversial assassination by a US drone strike on Baghdad International Airport on January 3rd 2020 had violated international law in several ways.

Noting that the US drone strike had also killed several Iraqi military personnel, Dr Callamard notes that “By killing General Soleimani on Iraqi soil without first obtaining Iraq’s consent, the US violated the territorial integrity of Iraq.”

The Special Rapporteur also argues that by failing to demonstrate that Soleimani represented an imminent threat to the United States – and instead focusing on his past actions dating back to 2006 – that his killing “would be unlawful under jus ad bellum“, the criteria by which a state may engage in war.

In the bluntest condemnation yet of the Trump Administration’s killing of Iran’s leading military commander, Dr Callamard argues that “the targeted killing of General Soleimani, coming in the wake of 20 years of distortions of international law, and repeated massive violations of humanitarian law, is not just a slippery slope. It is a cliff.”

She also warns that the killing of Iran’s top general may see other nations exploit the US’s justification for the assassination: “The international community must now confront the very real prospect that States may opt to ‘strategically’ eliminate high ranking military officials outside the context of a ‘known’ war, and seek to justify the killing on the grounds of the target’s classification as a ‘terrorist’ who posed a potential future threat.”

Speaking to Airwars from Geneva ahead of her presentation to the UNHRC, Dr Callamard described the US killing of General Soleimani as “a significant escalation in the use of armed drones, and in the use of extraterritorial force. Until now, drones have focused on terrorism and on counterterrorism responses. Here we’re seeing the displacement of a counterterrorism strategy onto State officials.” She described the Trump administration’s justification of the assassination of a senior Iranian government official as “a distortion of self defence.”

Qasem Soleimani, Iran’s highest ranked military commander, was assassinated in a US drone strike near Baghdad on January 3rd 2020 (via @IRaqiRev).

‘The second drone age’

Dr Callamard’s denouncement of the US’s killing of Qasem Soleimani marks the latest in almost 20 years of concerns raised by United Nations experts on the use of armed drones for targeted assassinations. In 2002, following the killing of five al Qaeda suspects in Yemen by the CIA, then-rapporteur Asma Jahangir warned for example that the attack constituted “a clear case of extrajudicial killing”.

UN reports since then have tended to focus on controversial drone campaigns outside the hot battlefield, in countries including Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Palestine’s West Bank and Gaza Strip.

With her new report, delivered to the UNHRC on July 9th, Dr Callamard seeks to bring the discussion on armed drone use up to date, noting that “the world has entered what has been called the ‘second drone age’ with a now vast array of State and non-State actors deploying ever more advanced drone technologies, making their use a major and fast becoming international security issue.” The term ‘second drone age’ was originally coined by Airwars director Chris Woods, to reflect a growing wave of armed drone proliferation among state and non-state actors.

My latest report to the UN #HRC44 focus on targeted killings by armed drones: https://t.co/qLsqubaMpA The world has entered a “second drone age”, in which State and non-State actors are deploying ever more advanced drone technologies, a major international, security issue.

— Agnes Callamard (@AgnesCallamard) July 8, 2020

As Dr Callamard and her team write: “The present report seeks to update previous findings. It interrogates the reasons for drones’ proliferation and the legal implications of their promises; questions the legal bases upon which their use is founded and legitimized; and identifies the mechanisms and institutions (or lack thereof) to regulate drones’ use and respond to targeted killings. The report shows that drones are a lightning rod for key questions about protection of the right to life in conflicts, asymmetrical warfare, counter-terrorism operations, and so-called peace situations.”

Many of the conflicts monitored by Airwars are referenced by Dr Callamard.

In Iraq, she notes that non state actors including ISIS deployed armed drones, sometimes to devastating effect. “In 2017 in Mosul, Iraq, for example, within a 24-hour period ‘there were no less than 82 drones of all shapes and sizes’ striking at Iraqi, Kurdish, US, and French forces.” In Libya, the Special Rapporteur asserts that “The Haftar Armed Forces carried out over 600 drone strikes against opposition targets resulting allegedly in massive civilian casualties, including, in August 2019, against a migrant detention center.” Callamard notes that a ‘nations unwilling or unable to act’ defence – first used by George W Bush’s administration to justify drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere – had been employed by several nations, including Turkey and Israel, to justify attacks in Syria. The UN Special Rapporteur also cautions that as more States acquire armed drones, their use domestically has increased: “Turkey has reportedly used drones domestically against the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), while Nigeria first confirmed attack was carried out against a Boko Haram logistics base in 2016. In 2015 Pakistan allegedly used its armed drones for the very first time in an operation to kill three ‘high profile terrorists.’ Iraq has similarly purchased drones to carry out strikes against ISIS in Anbar province in 2016.” Finally, Dr Callamard warns that non-State actors including terrorist groups increasingly have access to remotely piloted technologies – noting that “At least 20 armed non-State actors have reportedly obtained armed and unarmed drone systems.”

“Drones are now the weapon of choice for many countries. They are claimed to be both surgical and to save lives – though we have insufficient evidence to conclude either,” Dr Callamard told Airwars. “Drones may save the lives of ‘our’ soldiers – but on the ground is another matter.”

Civilian harm concerns

The UN Special Rapporteur’s latest report highlights concerns about ongoing risks to civilians from armed drone use. Citing multiple studies, she writes that “even when a drone (eventually) strikes its intended target, accurately and ‘successfully’, the evidence shows that frequently many more people die, sometimes because of multiple strikes.”

Callamard also cautions that “Civilian harm caused by armed drone strikes extends far beyond killings, with many more wounded. While the consequences of both armed and non-combat drones remain to be systematically studied, evidence shows that the populations living under ‘drones’ persistent stare and noise experience generalized threat and daily terror’.”

The UN’s expert on extrajudicial killings additionally notes the key role drones play in helping militaries to determine likely civilian harm: “Without on-the-ground, post-strike assessment, authorities rely on pre- and post-strike drone-video feeds to detect civilian casualties leaving potentially significant numbers of civilian casualties, including of those misidentified as ‘enemies’, undiscovered. Studies showed that in Syria and Iraq the initial military estimates missed 57% of casualties.”

The Special Rapporteur does however point out that civilian harm can be reduced by militaries, “through stronger coordination, improved data analysis, better training of drones’ operators, and systematic evaluation of strikes.”

▲ Aftermath of US drone strike on Baghdad International Airport in January 2020 which assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani (via Arab48).

New Somalia resource shines light on US counterterrorism campaign

Published

February 25, 2020

Written by

Airwars Staff

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Airwars review raises tally of declared strikes, and reported civilian and militant deaths.

Airwars has launched a major new online resource for Somalia, providing the most comprehensive look yet at more than a decade of US counterterrorism actions in eastern Africa, and associated civilian harm claims.

The nine month review has identified significantly higher levels of locally reported civilian harm than previously thought, with up to 280 non combatants alleged killed in US actions since 2007. Declared US actions and reported militant deaths are also sharply up.

In Spring 2019, Airwars took over from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism its own long running monitoring of US drone strikes and civilian harm in Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan, with some Somalia events dating back as far as 2007. The first step was to bring event monitoring across to Airwars’ own standards. Over nine months, the team comprehensively reviewed several hundred declared and alleged US airstrikes and ground actions in Somalia, and 61 claimed civilian casualty incidents.

Event assessments were also significantly reoriented towards local Somali voices, adding many hundreds of new sources – including videos, photos, and social media posts. Airwars also worked closely with other NGOs, researchers and investigative reporters to ensure that their own important findings were incorporated.

The result is the most comprehensive understanding yet of US military and CIA actions in Somalia against al Shabaab, ISIS and al Qaeda over a thirteen year span.

Overall, there are more than 280 declared and alleged US kinetic actions in Somalia since 2007 in the data – with 61 alleged civilian harm events. With a wider focus on US ground operations plus important new FOIA information, Airwars now places the number of declared US actions at more than 200 (40% up on previous estimates.) The likely civilian fatality range from US actions is significantly up from the Bureau’s former estimate of 10 to 58 deaths, to Airwars’ own minimum estimate of 71 to 139 civilians killed since 2007 – with 284 non combatants locally alleged slain in total. Event data has also identified claims of as many as 2,320 al Shabaab and ISIS militants allegedly killed by US forces.

Airwars geolocation of all strikes and reported civilian harm opens up new mapping capabilities.

“Adding Somalia to our roster of monitored conflicts helps bring greater public scrutiny to this long running US campaign,” says Airwars director Chris Woods.

“While AFRICOM itself has admitted just two civilian deaths in more than a decade of strikes against terrorist groups like al Shabaab, the true toll is significantly higher. Our work with the US-led Coalition in Iraq and Syria shows that militaries can improve their understanding and admission of civilian harm, when their actions are routinely and publicly scrutinised.”

A comprehensive Airwars approach to both strike reports and casualty monitoring has seen thousands of additional sources being added to the Bureau’s original records – most of them via local Somali media and social media. Hundreds of photographs and videos have also been added – with the names of dozens of Somali victims now listed in our comprehensive and fully searchable public database.

Airwars has also geolocated all declared and claimed US actions in Somalia since 2007 – with consultant design team Rectangle building comprehensive new maps and timelines which can now be searched separately by civilian fatalities; militant fatalities; strike locations; and strike targets. A fully searchable database can also refine by civilian harm events; civilian victim names, age and gender where known; declared versus possible US actions; and air versus ground actions.

In addition, Airwars has also permanently preserved the Bureau’s own decade-long research into Somalia – ensuring that future researchers and academics will always be able to interrogate its own groundbreaking findings. Hundreds of the Bureau’s archive news stories on US actions in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan have also been added to the Airwars site.

“If you don’t even count how many air strikes there are and how many civilians are being killed, what chance is there of reducing casualties?” notes Meirion Jones, deputy editor at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. “The Bureau has been chronicling the death toll in Somalia for 10 years, and is now proud to hand that task over to Airwars which already does such a thorough job of counting strikes and casualties in Syria, Iraq and Libya.”

Airwars provided US Africa Command with comprehensive details of alleged civilian harm events in Somalia during 2019, and also asked for clarification on alleged US actions that year. Officials have now confirmed no US military involvement in 21 claimed events last year – while promising to respond on civilian harm claims in the near future.

Several thousand militants have allegedly been killed by US actions in Somalia since 2007.

▲ The funeral of Abow Ali Wardi, according to al Shabaab killed in a lethal US drone strike on June 25th 2019 (via SomaliMemo)

Airwars annual report: over 2,200 civilians claimed killed in 2019

Published

February 11, 2020

Written by

Alex Hopkins

Assisted by

Dmytro Chupryna, Laurie Treffers, Maysa Ismael, Mohammed al Jumaily and Oliver Imhof

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During 2019 - for the first time in five years - monitors tracked a sharp move away from US-led Coalition civilian deaths.

Airwars research shows that at least 2,214 civilians were locally alleged killed by international military actions across Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Somalia during 2019 – a 42% decrease in minimum claimed deaths on the previous year. This sharp fall was largely because deaths from reported US-led Coalition actions plummeted following the territorial defeat of ISIS in Syria in March.

However, elsewhere civilians remained in significant danger. Russian strikes in support of the Assad regime claimed at least 1,000 lives in the fierce Idlib and Hama offensives. Meanwhile, Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria in October saw over 300 non-combatants alleged killed.

The year also saw alarming developments in Libya. From April, the Libyan National Army’s Tripoli offensive had a devastating impact on civilians. As more foreign powers joined the conflict, alleged deaths rose by an astonishing 720% on 2018. Almost half of all civilian deaths in Libya’s civil war since 2012 occurred last year.

Download our full annual report for 2019

The US-led Coalition in Syria: a brutal final assault

On March 23rd, after 55 months of war, ISIS was finally ousted from Syria, when the Syrian Democratic Forces seized the town of al-Baghuz al Fawqani in Ezzor governorate. This followed the terror group’s earlier defeat in Iraq in December 2017.

Yet this final assault came at a terrible cost for civilians trapped on the ground. Of the minimum of 2,214 civilians locally alleged killed during 2019, at least 470 deaths (21%) reportedly occurred as a result of US-led Coalition strikes in the first quarter of 2019, in Deir Ezzor governorate.

The aftermath of alleged Coalition shelling of Al Baghouz camp, March 18th – 19th 2019, which allegedly killed at least 160 civilians (via Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently)

After March 23rd, with ISIS downgraded to an insurgency, there was a significant winding down in Coalition strikes. As a result, locally alleged civilian deaths from alliance actions rapidly declined.

For the first time in five years, the Coalition was no longer the primary driver of civilian harm in Airwars monitoring. Indeed, our tracking shows that many more civilians were claimed killed by almost every other monitored belligerent than by the US-led alliance between April and December 2019.

With this shift away from Coalition civilian deaths, Airwars’ focus with the alliance and with partner militaries began moving towards post-conflict restitution and reconciliation engagements.

Syria’s civilians remain at great risk

Civilians may finally have gained respite from Coalition strikes, but 2019 saw them face increased danger on other fronts. Russia’s ongoing campaign in Syria continued to devastate civilian populations and infrastructure.

In total, our researchers tracked at least 1,000 civilian deaths in 710 casualty incidents reportedly carried out by Russia. Some 81% of these events were in Idlib governorate, where Russia lent its formidable airpower to the regime’s offensive to oust the rebels.

The aftermath of an alleged Russian airstrike on a popular market in Saraqib on July 30th (via Edlib Media Center).

Additionally, in October, Syria’s civilians faced a new threat from Turkey. The offensive came against a backdrop of repeated Turkish threats to unilaterally invade northern Syria. The chaotic withdrawal of US forces on October 7th gave Turkey a green light to launch its ‘Operation Peace Spring’.

Airwars research shows that there were between 246 and 314 locally alleged civilian deaths in 207 casualty incidents involving both sides during the final three months of 2019. Most disturbingly, there were numerous claims of war crimes by both sides, including summary executions of civilians and enemy fighters.

Libya: a 720% rise in civilian deaths

Meanwhile, civilian harm spiralled in Libya. Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) launched its offensive on Tripoli in April. However, what was intended to be a brief conflict soon turned into a protracted siege, with foreign powers playing an increased role, particularly in a proxy drone war between the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.

The impact on civilians was dire. Between April 4th and December 31st 2019, local sources reported between 279 and 399 civilian deaths. A measure of the intensity of 2019’s bombing is shown by the fact that more than 48% of all locally reported civilian fatalities in Libya’s civil war since 2012 occurred during the nine months between April and December 2019.

Image caption translation: “Warlord Haftar’s warplane bombs oil facility and tannery in Tajoura, east Tripoli”, June 19th 2019 (via Libya Observer)

Somalia: Record number of declared US actions

In April, Airwars expanded its conflict portfolio when it took over the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s long running monitoring of US counter terrorism drone strikes and civilian harm claims in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan. We are currently reviewing this significant dataset using Airwars’ own internationally-respected methodology.

Our assessment of US air and ground operations in Somalia since 2007 is now complete – with our annual report revealing that a maximum of 44 civilian deaths were alleged during 2019, in thirteen locally claimed civilian harm events. Overall the US declared 63 airstrikes against both al Shabaab and ISIS for the year – the highest ever tally.

Advocating on behalf of affected non-combatants

Our emphasis at Airwars has always been working on behalf of affected civilians. Throughout 2019, our advocacy teams continued to engage with the US-led Coalition and its allies. More than half of all Coalition-conceded conceded civilian harm events during the year were Airwars referrals for example – with at least 220 additional deaths conceded.

Substantial talks on transparency and accountability for civilian harm were also held with senior Pentagon officials; with the British and Dutch ministries of defence; and with NATO’s Allied Rapid Reaction Corps.

In November, the Netherlands finally admitted responsibility for a June 2015 strike in Hawijah, Iraq, which killed at least 70 civilians, according to locals. Airwars is now partnering with a number of Dutch NGOs and academics, with a focus on securing long term improvements in transparency and accountability for civilian harm by the Netherlands military.

“Since Airwars began in 2014, our exceptional team has tracked more than 50,000 locally reported civilian deaths across several conflict nations,” notes Airwars director Chris Woods. “As our 2019 report demonstrates, civilian harm remains a constant in war. Yet too often, belligerents deny or downplay civilian harm – even when local communities themselves are making clear the true costs of conflict.”

Download our full annual report for 2019

Scene of a devastating Coalition strike at Hawijah, Iraq which killed up to 70 civilians (via Iraqi Spring)

▲ The aftermath of an alleged Russian or Syrian regime airstrike on Saraqib, Idlib, June 22nd 2019 (via White Helmets)

Pentagon report: 120 civilians killed in operations abroad

Published

May 2, 2019

Written by

Jessica Purkiss

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

American military operations killed 120 civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Somalia last year, according to a report released by the Pentagon today.

The report, mandated by Congress, contains a detailed breakdown of the incidents that led to the civilian casualties, including where and when these took place. This differs from last year’s release which gave a total civilian casualty toll across all countries, making the figures difficult to interrogate.

Despite the increased detail, the figures released do still differ from those given by other organisations, which have recorded much higher numbers.

The US estimates 76 civilians were killed and another 58 injured in its operations in Afghanistan in 2018. Meanwhile, the UN’s mission in Afghanistan puts the figure much higher – with US strikes killing 393 and injuring a further 239 civilians.

They also differ on the death toll from individual incidents. In one strike on November 27 in Helmand province, the UN claims 23 civilians died and the US says only 14 were killed.

In Yemen, the Pentagon report states that there were no credible reports of civilian casualties in 2018. We have recorded at least eight and up to 15. Most of these deaths came from a single incident where a strike killed relatives looking for a missing child, which was reported on by AP.

The US meanwhile conceded just two civilian deaths in Somalia, and zero the year before. Research from Amnesty International found compelling evidence that US strikes in Somalia killed a total of 14 civilians and injured eight more between October 2017 and December 2018.

Airwars data also suggests much higher rates of civilian harm in Iraq and Syria than the report claims – with over 800 civilian deaths credibly reported by local communities as a result of strikes carried out by the US-led coalition, compared to the 42 admitted by the US.

The release comes two months after President Trump’s administration ended a separate annual report on civilian casualties that included information from all government agencies. The decision means that the public will no longer have access to information on CIA strikes.

Dan Mahanty, director for the US Program at the Center for Civilians in Conflict, said the recent report showed an improvement in military transparency around overseas operations, but that there was still a transparency gap that needed closing around intelligence agencies’ operations after the administration’s decision.

“The report brings into sharp relief the fact that US government agencies that do not operate transparently may not be applying the same standards when using lethal force, which introduces an unnecessary degree of inconsistency and undermines the effort represented by the DOD report,” Mahanty said.

Photo by Staff Sgt. Clayton Cupit for US Air Forces Central Command Public Affairs

US mulls more secrecy on drones

Published

May 2, 2018

Written by

Jessica Purkiss

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

The Trump administration is considering overturning a key Obama-era policy which sought to make counter-terrorism operations more transparent, even as it ramps them up.

The announcement, given to the Bureau by the US National Security Council late on Tuesday night, offers one of the clearest indications yet of the administration’s differing stance of transparency in counter-terrorism (known in military jargon as CT).

In response to growing concerns about accountability and civilian harm in strikes in places like Pakistan and Yemen, the Obama administration issued an Executive Order in 2016 requiring the government to release an annual report on these operations and the casualties associated with them. The Executive Order stipulated that the release of each year’s figures should come no later than May 1 of the following year.

On May 1, the deadline passed without the release. A National Security Council spokesperson told the Bureau that the Executive Order (EO) was under review and could be modified or rescinded. While they remained committed to avoiding civilian casualties, the spokesperson said, “the previous administration’s EO requirement for the public report was based on Obama era CT policies, many of which were rescinded to allow the warfighter to better pursue the evolving terrorist threat”.

The figures previously released under Obama, though cautiously welcomed by civil society organisations, offered only limited accountability for the US drone wars. They were aggregate figures, not broken down by where or when the strikes took place. This made it difficult to interrogate the data and work out why it differed from other estimates of the drone war’s civilian death toll.

However, their release was seen as an important step towards greater transparency. This trend had already started to reverse under Trump by the end of 2017, when the Bureau stopped receiving monthly reports on airstrikes in Afghanistan.

The restricted flow of information about counterterrorism strikes comes at a time when they are increasing substantially. President Donald Trump launched at least 161 strikes in Yemen and Somalia during his first year in office, according to the Bureau’s data, more than triple the number carried out the year before.

While the Trump administration did not release a report on counterterrorism operations as per the Executive Order, the NSC spokesperson did say that there had been no increase in the number of civilian casualties compared to the previous year. The Obama administration found one non-combatant had been killed in strikes outside of areas of active hostilities in 2016.

It is hard to evaluate the NSC spokesperson’s estimate of the 2017 civilian casaulty toll, because the Trump administration reportedly declared parts of Yemen and Somalia to be areas of active hostilities last year. Areas of active hostilities – conventional warzones like Iraq and Syria – are not included in the tally required by the Executive Order. When asked by the Bureau whether any parts of Yemen and Somalia were excluded from the latest estimate, the NSC spokesperson said they didn’t “have any further clarity to provide.”

The Bureau recorded at least three civilian deaths in Yemen and Somalia in 2017. However, both the Bureau’s and the administration’s figures could well be an underestimate. Information from remote parts of Yemen and Somalia is hard to come by, and CENTCOM, the US military command responsible for Yemen, told the Bureau it deemed civilian casualty allegations non-credible if there was not sufficient information about them.

The robustness of the US government’s own assessments of civilian casualty claims has long been a point of concern for civil society organisations. This is acknowledged in the Executive Order – now threatened with cancellation – which obliges the government to engage proactively with non-governmental organisations in compiling the civilian casualty estimate.

Hina Shamsi, director of the National Security Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, called the Trump administration’s decision not to comply with the “meagre” transparency requirements of the Executive Order “a dangerous low”.

“This increased secrecy about the costs and consequences of Trump’s killing policies prevents public oversight and accountability for wrongful deaths. The victims of our government’s lethal actions deserve better, as does the American public in whose name the Trump administration is secretly killing people,” Shamsi said.

“The Trump Administration’s backsliding on transparency continues with its failure to publicly report on civilian casualties yesterday,” said Alex Moorehead, an expert on counterterrorism and human rights at Columbia Law School.

“Increased secrecy makes effective Congressional oversight even more crucial. Congress should ask the Trump administration for details on US involvement in civilian casualties, what accountability there is for civilians killed and injured in US strikes, and demand that this information be made public,” Moorehead added.

The worst civilian casualty incident recorded by the Bureau in 2017 came from a ground operation, which would not have been included in the Executive Order-mandated tally even had it been released. On January 29 2017, US forces stormed the village of Yakla. A Bureau investigation found that 25 civilians died in this attack, including nine children under the age of 13.

President Trump called the raid “successful”, crediting with capturing key intelligence. But clips shared by US Central Command seized from a computer during the raid turned out to ten years old and readily available on the internet. Soon after, a US military investigation found that US forces killed between four and 12 civilians.

Main photo: Drone on patrol (US Air Force photo: Lt. Col Leslie Pratt)

A battle for transparency: putting names and numbers to the US drone war

Published

April 16, 2018

Written by

Jack Serle

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

This is an extract from the Bureau’s report, Naming The Dead, published in April 2018, written by Jack Serle

The phenomenal assassination tool that is the attack drone was born of frustration – the inability of the US to kill Osama bin Laden.

The CIA and its Afghan militia allies were pretty sure they knew where he was, training would-be suicide bombers in his Afghan hideout. Whenever they did get a read on his location, albeit briefly, it was thanks to the CIA’s small fleet of surveillance Predator drones. They could fly high and for more than 12 hours on end, constantly filming the scene below them and sending the footage back to the US. But the CIA could never pin down his location long enough for bombers or cruise missiles to be called in to do anything about it. The solution? Add anti-tank missiles to the remotely piloted drones. By arming its drones, the US could get a fix on a target, show the video feed to lawyers in real time so they could assess if it was lawful, and wait to take the shot when there were no bystanders around to get hurt. The Predator drones and their more advanced successors, the Reapers, have been used hundreds of times for such “targeted killing”, in particular in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has been tracking these strikes for more than seven years, monitoring and recording the date, time and location; and importantly, those killed. We have been doing this because there has been next to no official transparency about the US drone war. Individual strikes are usually reported in the newspapers and on social media but for the majority of drone strikes, there has been no official word on the attack.

The armed drone has the undoubted potential for being one of the most discriminating weapons ever devised. Yet the Bureau’s work shows that it doesn’t always work out this way. Among the more controversial tactics adopted by the CIA was the signature strike. This is when drones are used to kill people based on their behaviour, not identity. Intelligence gathered over many days or weeks provides a pattern-of-life-analysis which is used to determine someone’s guilt or likelihood of being a terrorist. These strikes have been used to kill a handful of people or even large crowds. There are multiple examples of a type of signature strike, so-called “double-taps”, where CIA drones carry out a strike and wait for people to come and pick through the wreckage before striking again. These attacks have killed plenty of Taliban fighters but they have also killed scores of civilians, according to field investigations by the Bureau. The Obama administration did, through the course of his Presidency, bring in rules to govern the use of armed drones. This included putting the military in charge of the lethal end of drone operations and limiting the CIA to providing intelligence. However, the Trump administration has put the CIA back in charge, which has had an impact on transparency. The CIA has provided some information to the media, briefing reporters on successful strikes. It has also hidden behind anonymity to attack the Bureau and our findings, or issued the standard response: “feel free to say the CIA declined to comment.” The US military, in contrast, has become more forthcoming with information about its use of armed drones. Before 2013 both US Central Command (Centcom) and US Africa Command, which are responsible for US strikes in Yemen and Somalia respectively, would have little if anything to say publicly about their strikes. Now they give details in press releases, when security and diplomatic interests allow, they say. For the rest they will only confirm they happened if someone asks them directly.

While a step forward, the amount of information they are willing to give remains limited. At most they will confirm the date, the general location of the strike, a standard rationale for taking the strike, and occasionally a casualty estimate. As often as not the US and the Bureau numbers don’t tally.

US Air Force / Jonathan Snyder

In March 2017, I sat at the back of a Senate hearing room, watching General Joseph Votel, the man in charge of Centcom, testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said with evident sincerity that he was apologising for the killing of between four and 12 civilians in a botched special operations raid and drone attack in Yemen in January 2017.

Seven months later it turned out he got the numbers wrong. An investigation by NBC News revealed internal US estimates showed at least 16 civilians died. Centcom told me that Votel spoke “with the best information he had at the time”. Yet both figures are lower than the 25 civilian deaths uncovered by researchers working with the Bureau, who visited the scene of the strike. Despite advances in transparency, it can be hard to understand how the US comes to its own estimates.

In the summer of 2016 the Obama White House released its own figures of those killed in counter-terrorism strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya – operations that were outside the declared battlefields of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria – between 2009 and 2015. This was a big step forward for transparency advocates. Unfortunately, the White House published total figures for strikes and casualties for all six years in the three countries, rather than broken down by year or country. This made it impossible to examine where the US records differed from the Bureau’s data.

The figures were supposed to be published every May thereafter. Then in late January 2017, with Donald Trump just days away from moving into the White House, the Obama administration put out its estimate for the 2016 figures.

Clearly, any effort towards greater transparency is only as strong as the will of the current administration. Current guidance, although not an official instruction, is that the Pentagon doesn’t want to release information that would give the enemy an advantage. This means that it is much harder to find out details such as the date and location of strikes.

With the Trump administration clamping down on transparency around US air wars in Afghanistan and Yemen, it seems highly unlikely it will turn the data release into an annual event. This only serves to underline the importance of the Bureau’s work.

The use of drones in counter-terrorism operations has no end in sight. So far thousands have been killed, both terrorists and civilians. Continuing to investigate how the US and its allies pursue the never-ending war on terror has never been more vital.

Header image: US Air Force / Erik Gudmundson

Read the full report:

Trump’s first year in numbers: Strikes triple in Yemen and Somalia

Published

January 19, 2018

Written by

Jessica Purkiss

Web link

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

President Donald Trump launched at least 161 strikes in Yemen and Somalia during his first year in office, the Bureau’s latest figures show – more than triple the number carried out the year before.

This means there were over 100 times more strikes in Yemen and more than 30 times as many strikes in Somalia during President Trump’s first year in office than during his predecessor, Barack Obama’s.

Obama carried out a single strike in Yemen and one in Somalia during his first year as president. However, by the end of his two terms, Obama had embraced the US drone programme and carried out far more strikes than his predecessor President George W Bush. Strikes in Pakistan were in their hundreds, and yearly strike totals in Yemen and Somalia had reached double digits.

President Trump inherited the framework allowing US aircraft to hit suspected terrorists outside of declared battlefields from Obama. His administration has largely stuck within the framework set by the previous administration.

The vast majority of the 126 strikes that have hit Yemen since Trump’s inauguration followed reports in March 2017 of the Trump administration declaring parts of the country areas of “active hostilities”.

This effectively side-stepped measures introduced by Obama that meant strikes in areas of countries that were not active war-zones, such as Pakistan and Yemen, had to go through an elaborate sign-off process with the White House. In Yemen, 30 strikes hit within a month of the declaration being reported – nearly as many as the whole of 2016.

Strikes in Yemen

In Somalia, the Obama administration officially designated the al Shabaab group as an al Qaeda affiliate at the end of November 2016, essentially widening who could be targeted. In March, it was also reported that parts of Somalia had been declared areas of “active hostilities”, but there was no increase in strikes until July 2017, with 33 of the 35 strikes carried under President Trump taking place since then.

Meanwhile in Afghanistan, the number of weapons dropped is now approaching levels last seen during the 2009-2012 surge, despite combat operations officially ending in December 2014.

In November last year, US forces began hitting Taliban drugs labs in Helmand. General Nicholson, commander of US Forces – Afghanistan, said the strikes were carried out under new authorities provided under President Trump’s eagerly awaited South Asia strategy.

The Bureau counted five strikes confirmed in Pakistan during Trump’s first year in office. At least four air operations were also reported along the Afghan-Pakistan border in October and November, although it was unclear on what side of the border they fell.

At its height in 2010, the CIA drone programme hit 128 targets in Pakistan. Strikes fell with each passing year after that, falling to just three in 2016.

Country Strikes since Trump’s inauguration

Yemen	126
Somalia	35
Pakistan	5

To read more on what happened last year in the countries we cover, click here.

Main photo: President Trump on the South Asia strategy during a press conference on August 21 2017. (DoD photo by Army Sgt. Amber I. Smith)

US counter terror air strikes double in Trump’s first year

Published

December 19, 2017

Written by

Jack Serle and Jessica Purkiss

Web link

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

The number of US air strikes jumped in Yemen and Somalia in 2017, pointing to an escalation of the global war on terror.

President Donald Trump inherited the framework allowing US aircraft to hit suspected terrorists outside of declared battlefields from his predecessor, Barack Obama. Bar some tinkering, his administration has largely stuck within the framework set by the previous one.

However, the quantity of operations has shot up under President Trump. Strikes doubled in Somalia and tripled in Yemen.

In Afghanistan, where the Bureau has been monitoring US airstrikes since it was officially declared a noncombat mission at the end of 2014, the number of weapons dropped is now approaching levels last seen during the 2009-2012 surge.

Meanwhile, there are signs that the drone war may be returning to Pakistan, where attacks were also up, compared with 2016.

Strikes in Somalia since 2007 via the Bureau

“We should keep a close eye on the increase in strike volume, as it does suggest a more aggressive approach, but it’s not yet clear to me that it represents a truly gloves off approach,” said Luke Hartig, a former counterterrorism advisor in the Obama administration and now a fellow at the New America Foundation, a US thinktank.

Hartig told the Bureau he was concerned that there had not been any significant public explanation of what the US government was now trying to achieve: “we don’t have any real basis to assess, for example, why strikes have doubled in Somalia, or if any of these operations are being conducted in direct support of partner forces on the ground rather than as unilateral actions against the threats we face as a nation.”

The Trump administration paved the way for the dramatic increase in the number of strikes in Yemen and Somalia when, in March this year, it was reported that parts of both countries had been exempted from targeting rules brought in by Obama to prevent civilian casualties.

In 2013, Obama introduced measures that meant that strikes in areas of countries that were not active war-zones, such as Pakistan and Yemen, had to go through an elaborate sign-off process with the White House.

The Trump administration effectively side-stepped the restrictions by declaring parts of Somalia and Yemen to be areas of “active hostilities”.

General Thomas Waldhauser, the man in charge of US military operations throughout Africa, told journalists in April 2017 that though he now had leeway to order strikes without clearing them with the White House, he would be retaining the criteria introduced by Obama that a strike could only happen if there was a near-certainty that no civilians would be harmed.

In Somalia, the Obama administration had officially designating the al Shabaab group as an al Qaeda affiliate at the end of November 2016, essentially widening who could be targeted. But there was no increase in strikes until July 2017, with all but 2 of this year’s 32 strikes carried out since then.

In Yemen, 30 strikes hit within a month of the declaration being reported – nearly as many as the whole of 2016.

In August, President Trump announced his South Asia strategy. The new plan deepened America’s commitment in Afghanistan, with additional troops deployed and an increase in strikes.

US strikes accounted for 177 civilian casualties in the first nine months of the year, up from 97 in the same period the previous year, the UN mission in Afghanistan found.

But as air operations in Afghanistan have intensified, and with indications civilian casualties are on the up, US transparency appears to have decreased. In September 2016, Resolute Support, the Nato mission through which the US conducts its operations in Afghanistan, started providing us with monthly data on strikes. However the flow of this crucial information has stopped as of October 2017.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan, Trump’s speech announcing the new Afghan strategy prompted further speculation that drones would return to the skies of Pakistan. “We can no longer be silent about Pakistan’s safe haven for terrorist organisations,” he said. At its height in 2010, the CIA drone programme hit 128 targets. Strikes fell with each passing year after that, falling to just three in 2016.

The Bureau counted fives strikes in Pakistan in 2017. At least four air operations were reported along the Afghan-Pakistan border in October and November, although it was unclear on what side of the border they fell.

US operations in Yemen since 2002 via the Bureau

In March Trump gave the US military’s Africa Command (Africom) greater freedom to carry out strikes without having to run them by the White House first. However, this did not presage an immediate surge in strikes as expected – most strikes this year came after the end of June.

While Africom will not say how many ground operations it has carried out in Somalia, details of some have emerged. One operation ended with a US fatality after American and Somali troops were ambushed on their way to their target.

Another operation left 10 civilians dead. There is substantial evidence indicating they were killed by American troops who had been told they were al Shabaab fighters, the insurgent group linked to al Qaeda.

Most US operations this year have focused on al Shabaab, which the US has been targeting since January 2007. The US also carried out five airstrikes against a band of fighters from the semi-autonomous region of Puntland who split from al Shabaab in 2015 and announced it was now loyal to the Islamic State group.

Al Shabaab marginalised the IS loyalists to a mountain range in Puntland, successfully suppressing any major schism. The IS-supporting faction has managed to flourish nonetheless. Recruiting scores of fighters, it has grown from approximately 24 fighters in 2016 to as many as 200 by the summer of 2017, according to a UN monitoring body.

More US strikes hit Yemen this year than the past four years combined.

Most of the 125 strikes in 2017 hit in central Yemen, where the US military’s Central Command (Centcom) vigorously pursued fighters from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

In March 2017 the US designated parts of Yemen as an “area of active hostilities”, covering several unspecified Yemeni provinces in the country’s centre, essentially laying out the ground for anunprecedented aerial bombardment.

The US also started targeting fighters loyal to Islamic State – Centcom reported it carried out at least nine strikes targeting the group.

US Special Forces carried out two ground raids this year as well, the first such operations in Yemen to be publicly reported since December 2014. Both operations targeted what the US believed were AQAP positions. Both resulted in civilian casualties.

On 29 January 2017 American Navy commandos with UAE troops in support attacked a village in the central province of Bayda. The US initially claimed no civilians had been killed in the raid, but the Bureau found nine children under the age of 13 had died. NBC News later reported that the Pentagon did not dispute our numbers.

The second raid, in May, targeted an “AQAP associated compound” in Marib province. The raid was the “deepest the military has gone into Yemen to fight al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula”, according to a Pentagon spokesperson. The operation left seven AQAP fighters dead, Centcom said, but five civilian tribesmen were also killed, according to the journalist, Iona Craig.

Strikes doubled in Afghanistan in 2017 compared to the year before.

This trend looks set to continue. President Trump announced in August 2017 that the US commitment in Afghanistan would deepen. General John Nicholson, the top general in Afghanistan, confirmed that this would include a ramping up of air support.

As part of this strategy, US forces in Afghanistan were given new authority to target the Taliban’s revenue streams. These did not come to light until November 20 2017 , when General Nicholson announced a number of strikes on Taliban drugs labs in southern Helmand.

For the Bureau, Trump’s August speech confirmed what our data had already showed. For months, we had been tracking a high number of strikes. This was made possible by key data provided to us by Resolute Support, the Nato mission in Afghanistan. We began getting monthly strike totals in September 2016. In July and August, we also received a breakdown of US strikes in Afghanistan by province.

However, the provincial data has since stopped with Resolute Support citing “capacity” issues. In October and November this year Resolute Support also failed to provide the monthly strike figures to the Bureau. It is unclear whether the US will continue to withhold this information next year.

Despite the increasing strikes, the Taliban continued to put pressure on the Afghan security forces in 2017. Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s branch of Islamic State has proved difficult to dislodge from its eastern stronghold, despite a concerted air campaign against the group.

As strikes have risen, so have civilian casualties. The UN mission in Afghanistan has found a nearly 50 per cent increase in the number of civilians killed and injured by US strikes in the first nine months of 2017 compared to the year before.

This year we continued our Naming the Dead project, collecting the names of over 150 casualties in Afghanistan in 2017.

Strikes resumed in Pakistan in March 2017, nearly two months after President Trump came into office, following a nine-month hiatus. Strikes since then have been sporadic, and none of them have been acknowledged officially by the US.

Tensions between Washington and Islamabad escalated this year, following reports that the US administration was exploring ways to harden its approach to Pakistan, with drone strikes one of the measures being considered. In June 2017, a rare strike hit outside Pakistan’s tribal regions – only the third in 429 strikes since 2004 – angering Pakistan’s military chief. The Pakistan military has historically stayed tightlipped about such operations.

In August 2017, President Trump announced his South Asia strategy, which further angered Islamabad. In his speech, the president accused Pakistan of sheltering terrorists and threatened tougher action. This only fuelled concerns that drones would return to Pakistan’s skies.

However, only one strike has been confirmed since the President Trump’s speech. A glut of strikes were reported along the border, but it was unclear whether they hit on Pakistan or Afghan soil.

Photo of Donald Trump greeting reporters in the spin room following a debate sponsored by Fox News at the Fox Theatre on March 3, 2016 in Detroit, Michigan, by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

https://vimeo.com/247810752247810752

Stories from the Drones team in 2017

US strikes shoot up in Somalia

Published

December 12, 2017

Written by

Jack Serle and Jessica Purkiss

Web link

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

US strikes in Somalia shot up in November, with American planes carrying out five times as many strikes as they did in the previous month.

Nearly half of these strikes targeted Islamic State, with the US hitting the group in Somalia for the first time at the beginning of the month.

A band of fighters from the semi-autonomous region of Puntland pledged loyalty to the Islamic State group in 2015, breaking their ties to al Shabaab. Last year the group numbered just a few dozen fighters but has since grown to as many as 200, according to a UN monitoring body.

The fact that the US now has two targets in Somalia could mean a rise in US air operations. A record 31 strikes have hit Somalia this year, with a third of these taking place solely in November.

Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama had already escalated strikes in Somalia to 14 in 2016, reflecting the growing number of attacks by al Shabaab insurgents.

However, since Trump came to office the rate of drone strikes in the East African country has doubled.

This partly reflects new rules introduced by the Trump administration in March 2017 which exempted swathes of Somalia “areas of active hostilities”. This has given commanders a freer hand to launch strikes.

Main photo: An MQ-9 Reaper (John Bainter/US Air Force)

New rules pave way for escalating war in Somalia

Published

November 19, 2017

Written by

Jack Serle

Web link

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

Last week’s US air operation in Somalia took the total number of strikes carried out in 2017 to a record 29, raising the possibility of an expansion in military operations outside of conventional battlefields under President Donald Trump.

Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama had already escalated strikes in Somalia to 14 a year, reflecting the growing number of attacks by al Shabaab insurgents.

However, since Trump came to office the rate of drone strikes in the East African country has doubled. This partly reflects new rules introduced by the Trump administration in March 2017 which exempted swathes of Somalia from restrictions on targeting procedures introduced by Obama in response to concerns about civilian casualties.

In 2013, Obama brought in measures that meant that strikes in areas that were not active warzones – places like Pakistan and Yemen – had to go through an elaborate sign-off process with the White House.

The Trump administration effectively side-stepped the restrictions by declaring parts of Somalia and Yemen to be areas of “active hostilities”.

Somalian President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed seen here with commander US Marine Corps Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser earlier this year via Africom

This does not necessarily mean that Obama-era measures designed to protect civilians from harm have been thrown out of the window.

General Thomas Waldhauser, the man in charge of US military operations throughout Africa, told journalists at the time that though he now had leeway to order strikes without clearing it with the White House, he would be retaining the criteria introduced by Obama that a strike could only happen if there was a near-certainty that no civilians would be harmed.

But the change of rules does seem to have paved the way for greater US military activity in Somalia, the consequences of which are unclear.

The US’s counterterrorism activities in Africa have traditionally been a fraction of those in other parts of the world. Even the record number of strikes launched in Somalia this year amounts to less than a quarter of the number to hit Yemen.

But the US’s involvement appears to be gradually deepening, and not just through air strikes.

The US has around 500 soldiers stationed in Somalia, including special forces advisers that accompany Somali troops and Amisom – the African Union mission in Somalia – on operations. On several occasions this year, the US has been compelled to provide them with close air support when they have come under attack from al Shabaab insurgents.

There is also a coordination cell in Mogadishu staffed by American officers who coordinate operations with Somali and Amisom commanders. US drones and jets are based in Djibouti to the north of Somalia, where Africom runs its operations across East Africa.

It is hard to say how extensive the US’s operational activity on the ground is and whether or not it is increasing. Officials won’t say how often US forces have carried out “partnered ground operations” this year, though will confirm US involvement when questioned about individual incidents. In addition to the four partnered ground operations that needed air support, three others have come to light in 2017. Two proved controversial: they caused either American or civilian casualties.

On 25 August 10 civilians were reportedly killed in a US-Somali operation in Bariire, southern Somalia. Villagers had spotted they were under surveillance had told the Somali military that they were civilians and there was no Shabaab there, fearing an assault.

On 5 May a US Navy Seal died in an operation against al Shabaab. The SEALs and their SNA partners were flown in by helicopter, but came under fire “in the early phase of the mission” after landing near an al Shabaab compound, the target of the mission. Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator Kyle Milliken was killed in the ambush.

The increased US military activity in Somalia of course does not occur in a vacuum – al Shabaab have launched bold and ruthless attacks over the course of the year. 10 of this year’s 29 strikes have been carried out since 14 October when an al Shabaab bomber detonated a truck bomb on at a busy intersection in Mogadishu, killing more than 350 people and wounding as many more.

Somali officials have connected the increase in air attacks with the October suicide bombing, though the US command in Africa would not confirm this.

Main picture, of a Reaper drone, courtesy of USAF.

New tack for presenting data on Yemen and Somalia

Published

September 25, 2017

Written by

Jack Serle and Jessica Purkiss

Web link

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

The Bureau has decided to change how it presents its data on Yemen and Somalia to make our datasets more user-friendly.

Our database records all reported US counter-terrorism operations in the two countries, dating back to November 2001 in Yemen and January 2007 in Somalia.

Many of these were reported as drone strikes, whilst others are more ambiguously described merely as “strikes”. The US has also carried out several ground raids with special forces and at least two attacks with cruise missiles. In Somalia, a US gunboat also bombarded al Shabaab fighters on the shoreline.

We had been pulling all air strikes reported to have been carried out by drones into their own year-by-year summaries in the datasets for the two countries. All other strikes would then fall into the category of “other US operations”.

However, events this year have made it evident that our method could be tweaked to give a clearer picture of the air war in these countries.

For example, during the massive US bombardment in Yemen in March and April, the US announced how many strikes it had carried out, but did not specify whether they had used a drone in most of these cases. This means that 95 per cent of the strikes were presented as operations in our year-by-year summaries, giving the casual viewer the impression we had omitted them from our tally entirely.

Because of this, we have decided to re-organise how we aggregate the individual strike figures. We are now pulling all air strikes, including those reported to have been carried out by a drone, into the same tally.

We have also added another year-by-year summary into the Somalia dataset, which pulls in all possible strikes. Prior to this, we had a single summary which included confirmed strikes as the minimum number of strikes and possible strikes included in the maximum.

The “other US operations” category will now tally ground operations, such as special forces raids, and the naval bombardment and the cruise missile attacks.

US investigates civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Somalia

Published

September 6, 2017

Written by

Jack Serle and Jessica Purkiss

Web link

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

The US military is investigating allegations that two separate operations involving American troops killed at least 22 civilians in the space of a week.

The US military has confirmed it supported a Somali operation during which 10 civilians, including three young children, were reportedly shot dead. Reports suggest the raid targeted a farm in Bariire in Somalia’s Lower Shabelle region on August 25. The extent of the US role is not yet clear.

The UN mission in Afghanistan has found strikes killed at least 13 civilians and injured 12 others – all women and children – in Logar province, south of Kabul, on August 30. The US has launched an official investigation into the incident. Reports suggest possible US strikes targeted Taliban insurgents using a civilian compound to attack an aircraft.

The allegations come at a time when the US is increasing operations in both countries. Analysts fear that as the number of strikes and raids rise, so will civilian casualties.

In Afghanistan, additional US troops are already arriving, with more to follow over the next few months. The further escalation of the war announced by US President Donald Trump will also include a continued ramping up of air strikes. In August, there were 387 strikes, US data shows, a steep increase from the 80 carried out in the same month last year.

Meanwhile, strikes in Somalia have also been on the up. In March, President Trump approved a Pentagon proposal to declare certain parts of Somalia an “area of active hostilities”, freeing up commanders to carry out strikes and raids without going through the White House bureaucracy.

Despite the new authorities, there were no strikes in Somalia until June. With each passing month since then, strikes have however increased. The March authorities may expire at the end of September, meaning the uptick could be short-lived.

Photo: F-16 Fighting Falcons at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, Aug 31 2017.

White House releases annual counterterrorism CIVCAS figures

Published

January 20, 2017

Written by

Jessica Purkiss

Web link

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

The outgoing Obama administration said on Thursday the US had conducted 53 strikes outside areas of active hostilities in 2016, killing one non-combatant.

This contrasts slightly with reports collated by the Bureau – we recorded 49 counter-terrorism strikes in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan in 2016, killing four to six civilians.

The White House began publishing casualty data on its counterterrorism operations last year amid calls for more transparency from civil society organisations including the Bureau. The numbers are not broken down by country however, making it hard explain differences between official figures and our data.

The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) statement did not specify where 2016’s strikes occurred, but said that areas of active hostilities included Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.

One of the civilian deaths recorded by the Bureau took place in the restive Pakistani region of Balochistan. According to the victim’s family, a drone hit taxi driver Mohammed Azam while he transported Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour, unaware of Mansour’s identity. Azam’s family launched a criminal case against the US demanding accountability for his death.

The Bureau also recorded reports of three civilians killed in an attack on what the US described as an al Shabaab camp in Somalia on April 11-12. Witnesses and local officials said the strikes actually hit a village under the control of the militants.

The Bureau put this version of events to a Pentagon spokesperson at the time but were told there were no reports of civilian casualties.

The DNI statement said that “no discrepancies” were identified between its post-strike assessments and credible reporting from non-governmental organisations about civilian deaths resulting from these strikes.

The Bureau recorded the deaths of 362-507 people, including the four to six civilians, as a result of US strikes outside areas of active hostilities last year. The US government put the figure of “combatants” killed in counterterrorism strikes at 431-441.

Follow the Bureau’s dedicated drone war Twitter feed: @dronereadsFollow the Bureau’s Twitter feed tracking each strike when it happens: @latest_strike

Photo of unmanned US predator aerial vehicle with a hellfire missile attached via US Air Force

Trump, Obama and the future of targeted killing

Published

January 19, 2017

Written by

Jack Serle

Web link

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

Barack Obama’s foreign policy legacy is often discussed in terms of things he didn’t do: intervene in Syria, reset with Russia, get out of Afghanistan.

In one area however, Obama developed and expanded a defining policy architecture which his successor Donald Trump now inherits: the ability to kill suspected terrorists anywhere without US personnel having to leave their bases.

While his administration lauded the drone programme for being so “surgical and precise” it could take out the enemy without putting “innocent men, women and children in danger”, human rights groups lambasted it for doing just that – hundreds of civilians were reported killed outside active battlefields during Obama’s eight years in power.

As his presidency progressed, Obama put restraints in place aimed at reducing civilian casualties – but experts are now worried those limitations will be swept away by Trump in favour of an “anything goes to get the bad guys” approach.

Armed drones were first used under George W Bush. But it was Obama who dramatically increased their use. Responding to evolving militant threats and the greater availability of remote piloting technology, Obama ordered ten times more counter-terror strikes than his predecessor over the course of his term.

These operations have resulted in the deaths of senior terrorists such as Baitullah Mehsud, the head of the Pakistani Taliban, and Nasser al Wuhayshi, the commander of the Yemeni branch of al Qaeda. But they have also killed civilians, stoked resentment, and helped establish what civil liberties advocates say is the template for an unaccountable forever war.

Demand for drones has been so high under Obama that the Air Force has struggled to train enough new pilots to keep up with the burnout rate. This year it introduced $35,000 a year retention bonuses to try to persuade more drone pilots to stay on, working long hours in windowless rooms.

Secret operations

It is not just that Obama has put more of a certain type of aircraft in the skies. The low-footprint nature of drone strikes – which can be carried out without having personnel in the country being hit – made it politically easier for the US to mount operations in countries with which it was not technically at war.

The Bureau has recorded 546 strikes against suspected terrorists in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan since Obama took office.

These operations have been run by highly secretive organisations – the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command – and have been much less accountable to public scrutiny than conventional military operations. In Iraq and Syria, the Pentagon releases data on most of the strikes it carries out. But the US would neither confirm nor deny the existence of operations in Pakistan until a drone accidentally killed an American civilian in Pakistan in 2015.

The legal justification for these operations comes from one sentence in the piece of legislation passed in the wake of 9/11, which authorised action against the perpetrators and those who helped them. The president was authorised “to use all necessary and appropriate force” against the nations, organisations and people who planned and abetted the attacks, “in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States,” the resolution stated.

In the following 15 years that authorisation was stretched to justify US action as far afield as Libya and Somalia. Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) national security programme, says that the drone campaign has “no meaningful temporal or geographical limits”.

The drone programme has consistently enjoyed popular support among broad swathes of US society. Its advocates say it has saved American lives and reduced the need for messy ground operations like the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Outrage over civilians deaths

But it has also caused outrage. Drones have hit hundreds of ordinary civilians going about their everyday life. Towards the peak of the covert drone war, the Bureau found reports of at least 100 civilians killed during Obama’s first year in power in Pakistan alone. Across his eight years in power the Bureau has recorded between 384 and 807 civilians killed by drones in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. (The Obama administration insists the drone war civilian death toll is substantially lower than that recorded by the Bureau and other civil society organisations.)

Experts warned the civilian casualties could have a radicalising effect on the very societies US drones are trying to eliminate extremists from, and human rights organisations lambasted the targeted killing programme for its “clear violations of international humanitarian law.”

Following such criticisms, drone strike procedures seem to have changed. In 2013, Obama announced that he had signed a piece of Presidential Policy Guidance (PPG), formal policy governing kill or capture missions outside declared battlefields, including drone strikes.

It was the product of four years work, the president said in his 2013 announcement, applying a framework of “clear guidelines, oversight and accountability” to the drone war. This was lacking during the early years of his presidency, Obama said in April last year, when the US drone campaign in Pakistan peaked and the attacks were increasing in frequency in Yemen.

“Continuing imminent threat” rule applied

According to these guidelines, parts of which were published in 2016 after years of legal pressure from the American Civil Liberties Council, strikes were only approved when it had been determined that the targeted individual constituted a “continuing imminent threat”, that there was no way of capturing them, and there was near-certainty that no civilians would be killed.

Reports of civilian casualties in Pakistan plummeted from 52 in 2011 to zero by 2013, suggesting the rules Obama officially announced that year had gradually been adopted in the preceding years.

Ongoing civilian casualties in Yemen suggest the new procedures were not always robustly applied in practice. But they were cautiously welcomed by civil liberties groups as being better than no restrictions at all.

In a further bid to embed policies preventing civilian casualties before leaving office, Obama also issued an Executive Order in 2016. The order called for transparent reporting of civilian casualties in US military operations, including those outside of declared battlefields. White House insiders said the move was a direct response to continued pressure by the Bureau and other organisations which collect and publish data on drone war deaths.

The problem, as Hina Shamsi points out, is that the constraints on the drone programme instituted by Obama are “recognised as a matter of policy not of law.” This means they could be overturned by the Trump administration.

Constraints could be dismantled

Luke Hartig, formerly senior director for counter-terrorism at the National Security Council and now a fellow at the New America Foundation, identified two elements of the PPG as specifically vulnerable.

One is “the continuing, imminent threat” standard, an overarching principle that stipulates a terrorist can only be targeted if their activities pose a real and immediate danger to US citizens.

It could be scrapped because “it speaks to what some critics would say is a legalistic approach from the Obama administration,” Hartig said.

He suggested that the “near-certainty” standard might also be changed – a rule whereby a terrorist can only be taken out if there is near certainty no non-combatants will be killed or injured (except in extraordinary circumstances).

“If you’re in the Trump administration and you’re saying you’re going to be tough on terrorism, some of these standards could be perceived as tying your own hands,” Hartig said.

Hartig stressed however that the PPGs were not the only constraints on drone strikes.

“The PPG also reflects pragmatic realities about civilian casualties, the diplomatic realities surrounding the use of force, and what our operators know based on 15 years of fighting terrorist and insurgent networks,” he said.

“If you loosen the standard on civilian casualties, you may see an increase in such incidents, but it won’t be off the charts because our operators have become so good at preventing collateral damage.”

This caveat was echoed by Christopher Kolenda, a former US military commander in Afghanistan and co-author of a June paper for the Open Society Foundation on civilian casualties in the country.

“I frankly don’t see a doomsday scenario in the near term,” he told the Bureau. “This generation of senior leaders has all experienced Iraq and Afghanistan, and have all experienced the consequences of civilian harm that occurs within laws of armed conflict.

“I can’t see them taking a different approach than what they know to be right.”

Kolenda is worried about the long term however. People retire or move on and “if you don’t have things institutionalised as doctrine some of those lessons are at risk.”

What Trump is planning is anyone’s guess

No-one knows exactly what Donald Trump’s intentions are for the drone programme.

He has selected as National Security Advisor a retired general who has said the religion of Islam is a “cancer”. Michael Flynn was at the heart of the US counter-terrorism campaigns in Pakistan and Afghanistan that saw widespread use of drones. However he was also one of the voices warning that careless drone strikes only served to radicalise populations.

The President-Elect himself has made inflammatory statements while campaigning that could indicate how he will act. He told ecstatic crowds of thousands at his rallies that he would “bomb the shit” out of Islamic State.

In an interview with the Daily Mail last May he suggested he would continue the covert drone war.

“As far as drones are concerned, yes. To take out terrorists,” he said. “The only thing is, I want them to get it right. But to take out terrorists, yes, I would think that that is something I would continue to do.”

What this means in practice however remains unclear.

“I don’t want to talk about it because I do want to be unpredictable in a sense,” said Trump. “I don’t want the enemy to know exactly where I’m coming from.”

Obama’s covert drone war in numbers: ten times more strikes than Bush

Published

January 17, 2017

Written by

Jack Serle and Jessica Purkiss

Web link

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

There were ten times more air strikes in the covert war on terror during President Barack Obama’s presidency than under his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Obama embraced the US drone programme, overseeing more strikes in his first year than Bush carried out during his entire presidency. A total of 563 strikes, largely by drones, targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during Obama’s two terms, compared to 57 strikes under Bush. Between 384 and 807 civilians were killed in those countries, according to reports logged by the Bureau.

The use of drones aligned with Obama’s ambition to keep up the war against al Qaeda while extricating the US military from intractable, costly ground wars in the Middle East and Asia. But the targeted killing programme has drawn much criticism.

The Obama administration has insisted that drone strikes are so “exceptionally surgical and precise” that they pluck off terror suspects while not putting “innocent men, women and children in danger”. This claim has been contested by numerous human rights groups, however, and the Bureau’s figures on civilian casualties also demonstrate that this is often not the case.

The White House released long-awaited figures last July on the number of people killed in drone strikes between January 2009 and the end of 2015, an announcement which insiders said was a direct response to pressure from the Bureau and other organisations that collect data. However the US’s estimate of the number of civilians killed – between 64 and 116 – contrasted strongly with the number recorded by the Bureau, which at 380 to 801 was six times higher.

That figure does not include deaths in active battlefields including Afghanistan – where US air attacks have shot up since Obama withdrew the majority of his troops at the end of 2014. The country has since come under frequent US bombardment, in an unreported war that saw 1,337 weapons dropped last year alone – a 40% rise on 2015.

Afghan civilian casualties have been high, with the United Nations (UN) reporting at least 85 deaths in 2016. The Bureau recorded 65 to 105 civilian deaths during this period. We did not start collecting data on Afghanistan until 2015.

Pakistan was the hub of drone operations during Obama’s first term. The pace of attacks had accelerated in the second half of 2008 at the end of Bush’s term, after four years pocked by occasional strikes. However in the year after taking office, Obama ordered more drone strikes than Bush did during his entire presidency. The 54 strikes in 2009 all took place in Pakistan.

Strikes in the country peaked in 2010, with 128 CIA drone attacks and at least 89 civilians killed, at the same time US troop numbers surged in Afghanistan. Pakistan strikes have since fallen with just three conducted in the country last year.

Obama also began an air campaign targeting Yemen. His first strike was a catastrophe: commanders thought they were targeting al Qaeda but instead hit a tribe with cluster munitions, killing 55 people. Twenty-one were children – 10 of them under five. Twelve were women, five of them pregnant.

Through 2010 and the first half of 2011 US strikes in Yemen continued sporadically. The air campaign then began in earnest, with the US using its drones and jets to help Yemeni ground forces oust al Qaeda forces who had taken advantage of the country’s Arab Spring to seize a swath of territory in the south of the country.

In Somalia, US Special Operations Forces and gunships had been fighting al Qaeda and its al Shabaab allies since January 2007. The US sent drones to Djibouti in 2010 to support American operations in Yemen, but did not start striking in Somalia until 2011.

The number of civilian casualties increased alongside the rise in strikes. However reported civilian casualties began to fall as Obama’s first term progressed, both in real terms and as a rate of civilians reported killed per strike.

In Yemen, where there has been a minimum of 65 civilian deaths since 2002, the Bureau recorded no instances of civilian casualties last year. There were three non-combatants reportedly killed in 2016 in Somalia, where the US Air Force has been given broader authority to target al Shabaab – in previous years there were no confirmed civilian deaths.

Strikes in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia have always been dwarfed by the frequency of air attacks on battlefields such as Afghanistan.

December 2014 saw the end of Nato combat operations there, and the frequency of air attacks plummeted in 2015. Strikes are now increasing again, with a 40% rise in 2016, though numbers remain below the 2011 peak.

The number of countries being simultaneously bombed by the US increased to seven last year as a new front opened up in the fight against Islamic State (IS). The US has been leading a coalition of countries in the fight against IS in Iraq and Syria since August 2014, conducting a total of 13,501 strikes across both countries, according to monitoring group Airwars.

In August US warplanes started hitting the group hard in Libya. The US declared 495 strikes in the country between August 1 and December 5 as part of efforts to stop IS gaining more ground, Airwars data shows.

In the final days of Obama’s time in the White House, the Bureau has broken down his covert war on terror in numbers. Our annual 2016 report provides figures on the number of US strikes and related casualties last year, as well as collating the total across Obama’s eight years in power:

Total US drone and air strikes in 2016 Pakistan Yemen Somalia Afghanistan

Strikes	3	38	14	1071
Total people reported killed	11-12	147-203	204-292	1389-1597
Civilians reported killed	1	0	3-5	65-101

Notes on the data: The Bureau is not logging strikes in active battlefields except Afghanistan; strikes in Syria, Iraq and Libya are not included in this data. To see data for those countries, visit Airwars.org.

Somalia: confirmed US strikes December 2016 2016 2009 to 2016


US strikes	0	14	32-39
Total people reported killed	0	204-292	242-454
Civilians reported killed	0	3-5	3-12
Children reported killed	0	0	0-2
Total people reported injured	0	3-16	5-26

Notes on the data: in the final column, strikes carried out between Jan 1 and Jan 19 2009 are not included. The figure refers to the number of strikes that took place from Jan 20, 2009, onwards – the data Obama’s presidency began. This applies to all the tables in this report.

The US officially designated Somali militant group al Shabaab as an al Qaeda affiliate at the end of November amid a rising number of US strikes in the country last year.

One week after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Congress passed the Authorisation for Use of Military Force law allowing the president to go after those responsible and “associated forces”.

The US has used this law, which predates the formation of al Shabaab, to target individual members of the group deemed to have al Qaeda links. The military has also hit the group in defence of partner forces. The group is now deemed an “associated force”, meaning all members are legitimate terrorist targets.

The US has been aggressively pursuing al Shabaab. At least 204 people were killed in US strikes in Somalia last year – ten times higher than the number recorded for any other year. The vast majority of those killed were reported as belonging to al Shabaab.

An attack on an al Shabaab training camp in the Hiran region on March 5 accounts for 150 of these deaths. This is the highest death toll from a single US strike ever recorded by the Bureau, overtaking the previous highest of 81 people killed in Pakistan in 2006.

One of the more controversial of last year’s strikes occurred on September 28. Somali forces were disrupting a bomb-making network when they came under attack from a group of al Shabaab fighters. The US launched an air strike to “neutralize the threat”.

Local officials said 22 local soldiers and civilians were killed. In the city of Galkayo, where the strike took place, citizens protested in the streets.

US Africa Command told the Bureau the reports of non-combatant deaths were wrong. However the US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced the next day that the Pentagon would investigate the strike. The investigation found the strike had not killed members of al Shabaab. It instead killed ten members of a local militia reportedly allied with the Americans, US Africa Command concluded.

Afghanistan: Bureau data on US drone strikes and other airstrikes December 2016 2016 2015-2016

US strikes	8	1071	1306-1307
Total people reported killed	24-26	1389-1597	2371-3031
Civilians reported killed	0	65-105	125-182
Children reported killed	0	3-7	6-23
Total people reported injured	12	196-243	338-390

Notes on the data: The US Air Force has a variety of aircraft carrying out missions over Afghanistan, including jets, drones and AC-130 gunships. The UN reported in August 2015 that most US strikes were by unmanned aerial vehicles. This matches the Bureau’s records that show most US air attacks since January were by drones. However in the absence of US authorities revealing which type of aircraft carried out which attack, it remains unclear which of the attacks recorded were by manned or unmanned aircraft.

The Bureau’s data on strikes in Afghanistan is not exhaustive. The ongoing war creates barriers to reporting and the Bureau’s data is an accumulation of what publicly available information exists on specific strikes and casualties. The US government publishes monthly aggregates of air operations in Afghanistan, minus information on casualties.

US Air Force data: Afghanistan in 2016

Total Close Air Support (CAS) sorties with at least one weapon release	615
Total CAS sorties	5162
Total weapons released	1337

US warplanes dropped 1,337 weapons over the country last year, a 40% rise on 2015, according to data released by the US Air Force.

The increase follows President Barack Obama’s decision in June to give US commanders more leeway to target the Taliban, amid the Afghan army’s struggle to keep strategic cities from falling into the insurgents’ hands.

Strikes conducted under this authority, referred to by the military as “strategic effects” strikes, have increased in frequency since the new rules came into force.

The continuing rise in attacks against the Taliban demonstrates the battle against the insurgents is far from over, despite combat operations targeting the group officially ending almost two years ago. Since then, Taliban violence has increased and Afghanistan’s branch of Islamic State has been trying to carve out territory in the east of the country.

IS emerged in Afghanistan in late 2014, growing as a force through 2015. The US responded by allowing the military to specifically target the group in a bid to stop it gaining strength.

As strikes have risen, so have reports of civilian casualties, with some significant incidents taking place in the second half of 2016.

The UN’s biannual report on civilian casualties released in July detailed the deaths of 38 civilians in US strikes. Since then, the UN has highlighted two US strikes that took the lives of a further 47 civilians.

One of the more controversial strikes hit a house in Nangarhar province on September 28. While the US has maintained that members of Islamic State were killed in the attack, the UN, with uncharacteristic speed, released a report saying the victims were civilians. In subsequent reporting, the Bureau was able to confirm this and identify the victims.

This particular strike caused a rift between the UN and US. In an unusual step, the US commander in charge of the Afghanistan operations General Nicholson reportedly considered banning or restricting UN access to a military base in Kabul as a result of its assertion.

There could be more civilian casualties than the two incidents highlighted. These may be documented in the UN’s annual report due for release in February. The Bureau recorded the deaths of up to 105 civilians in Afghanistan as a result of US strikes in 2016.

Not included in these figures were instances of “friendly fire” attacks. The Bureau published an investigation into one of the three such incidents in 2016 when a US strike on a Taliban prison killed Afghan police officers being held captive.

Yemen: confirmed US strikes December 2016 2016 2009 to 2016

US strikes	1	38	158-178
Total people reported killed	2	147-203	777-1075
Civilians reported killed	0	0	124-161
Children reported killed	0	0	32-34
Total people reported injured	0	34-41	143-287

Last year American air operations in Yemen reached their second highest level since 2002, when the US conducted its first ever lethal drone strike in the country.

At least 38 US strikes hit the country in 2016, targeting operatives belonging to terrorist group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) amid Yemen’s civil war.

The conflict ignited when the Houthi militant group stormed the capital of Sanaa in September 2014. Allied to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, the rebels pushed the internationally-recognised government of Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi into exile.

On October 12, the military launched cruise missile strikes at three rebel targets in Houthi-controlled territory following failed missile attacks on a US Navy ship. This is the first and only time the US has directly targeted Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Last year, a Saudi-led coalition began airstrikes against the rebels, which has led to widescale destruction. One of these strikes hit a funeral ceremony, killing 140 people. The munition used was identified by Human Rights Watch as a US-manufactured air-dropped GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided bomb.

Pakistan: confirmed US strikes December 2016 2016 2009-2016

US strikes	3	373
Total people reported killed	11	2089-3406
Civilians reported killed	1	257-634
Children reported killed	0	66-78
Total people reported injured	3-6	986-1467

Drone strikes in Pakistan last year fell to their lowest level in a decade, with only three strikes conducted in the country.

The most recent attack targeted Mullah Akhtar Mansour, the leader of the Afghan Taliban. Mansour was killed on May 21 while being driven through Balochistan, a restive region home to a separatist movement as well as the Afghan Taliban’s leadership. His civilian taxi driver, Mohammed Azam, was also killed in the strike.

It was the first ever US strike to hit Balochistan and only the sixth to hit a location outside Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas. It was also the first to be carried out by the US military in Pakistan. The CIA has carried out strikes since the drone program began in Pakistan in 2004.

The Pakistan government summoned the US ambassador in protest following the strike. Sartaj Aziz, foreign affairs special adviser to Pakistani Prime Minister, also claimed that killing Mansour had dented efforts to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table.

US drone strikes in Pakistan peaked in 2010, during which at least 755 people were killed. It is unclear what has led to the steep drop in strikes since then. The Pakistani military conducted an 18-month ground offensive in the tribal regions flushing out many militants and pushing them into Afghanistan. It is possible that the US ran out of targets.

This does not mean that the drone programme in Pakistan has come to end. Strikes paused for a six-month period at the end of December 2013 while the Pakistani government unsuccessfully tried to negotiate a peace accord with the Taliban. It is possible attacks will resume with the change in presidency in January.

Main photo by Pete Marovich/Bloomberg via Getty Images

US accused of killing 22 Somali soldiers and civilians

Published

October 11, 2016

Written by

Jessica Purkiss

Web link

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

US Special Forces AC-130 gunships have been the primary platform for attacks in Somalia

Somali officials have claimed that the US killed 22 local soldiers and civilians in a drone strike that hit the north-central city of Galkayo late last month.

The US has confirmed it conducted a strike in the area on the same date, but claims all those killed were members of the Islamist militant group al Shabaab.

According to a press release from US Africa command, Somali forces were disrupting a bomb-making network when they were attacked by a group of al Shabaab fighters. The US intervened to “neutralize the threat”.

Officials in the semi-autonomous region of Galmudug dispute this, saying that the strike actually hit their forces. They have accused officials in the rival region Puntland of requesting US air support to attack the men on the pretext they were al Shabaab members.

The US has been carrying out covert operations against al Qaeda and its allies in Somalia since 2001. It has been using airstrikes to target alleged terrorist leaders and their henchmen since 2007, initially using gunships and cruise missiles, and more recently using drones.

The frequency of US strikes has increased considerably in the past two years. The US carried out 15 strikes from 2007-2014, according to the Bureau’s data. Seven of these were drone strikes and eight strikes were conducted using other weapons.

In 2015 alone there were 11 strikes and in the first nine months of 2016 there have already been 15 strikes.

The latest strike has been one of the most controversial.

In apparent support of the Galmudug officials’ claims, al Shabaab told BBC World’s Mary Harper that none of its fighters were targeted or killed by an air strike. The group also said that it has no fighters or bases in the area that was hit.

The situation on the ground in Somalia has meant details about drone strikes, including specifically who is killed, are often hard to come by.

There has been plenty of confused and at times contradictory reporting about this latest attack, not least because Galmudug and Puntland have clashed on a number of occasions.

Somalia’s government has taken an unusual step of asking the US to explain what happened during the attack.

At first the US brushed aside allegations of civilian casualties, telling the Bureau they believed the reports of non-combatant deaths were incorrect. However the US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced the next day that the Pentagon would investigate the incident.

Follow the Bureau’s drone updates on Twitter: @latest_strike

Photo via Lockheed Martin/Flickr

Why White House civilian casualty figures on civilian are a wild underestimate

Published

July 1, 2016

Written by

Chris Woods

Web link

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

Chris Woods set up the Bureau’s award-winning Drones Project in 2011, and is the author of Sudden Justice: America’s Secret Drone Wars. He now runs Airwars, which monitors international airstrikes and civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria.

Targeted killings or assassinations beyond the battlefield remain a highly charged subject. Most controversial of all is the number of civilians killed in US covert and clandestine drone strikes since 2002.

The new White House data relates only to Obama’s first seven years in office – during which it says 473 covert and clandestine airstrikes and drone attacks were carried out in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya.

The US claims that between 64 and 116 civilians died in these actions – around one non-combatant killed for every seven or so strikes. That official estimate suggests civilians are significantly more likely to die in a JSOC or CIA drone attack than in conventional US airstrikes. United Nations data for Afghanistan indicates that one civilian was killed for every 11 international airstrikes in 2014, for example.

But for Obama’s secret wars, the public record suggests a far worse reality. According to Bureau monitoring, between 2009 and 2015 an estimated 256 civilians have died in CIA drone strikes in Pakistan. A further 124 civilians are likely to have been slain in Yemen, with less than 10 non-combatants estimated killed in Somalia strikes. Similar tallies are reported by the New America Foundation and the Long War Journal.

So why have civilians been at greater risk from these covert and clandestine US airstrikes? Part of the answer lies in who the US kills. Many of those pursued are high value targets – senior or middle ranking terrorist or militant group commanders. Bluntly put, the higher the value of the target – and the greater the threat they represent to you – the more the laws of war allow you to put civilians in harm’s way.

The CIA also frequently missed those same high-value targets. A 2014 study by legal charity Reprieve suggested that US drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan had killed as many as 1,147 unknown people in failed attempts to kill 41 named targets.

It’s also clear the CIA has been using a very different rule book. In an effort to lower civilian deaths in Afghanistan, international airstrikes on buildings and urban locations were mostly banned from 2008. Yet in Pakistan, more than 60% of CIA strikes have targeted domestic buildings (or “militant compounds”) according to Bureau research.

When President Obama apologised for the accidental 2015 killing of US aid worker Warren Weinstein, he revealed that the US had kept the target building under surveillance for “hundreds of hours” – yet had never known there were civilians inside. Many of the women and children credibly reported killed by the CIA in Pakistan have died in similar circumstances – though few of their deaths have ever been conceded.

Then there have been the more shocking tactics employed by the CIA. There was the deliberate targeting of funerals and rescuers, again first revealed by the Bureau. And the widespread use of so-called signature strikes during the Obama years – the targeting of suspects based not on their known identities, but on their behavioural patterns.

In the most notorious such incident, at least 35 civilians died when the CIA targeted a tribal meeting in 2011 – an action which significantly damaged US-Pakistani relations. None of those deaths appear have been included in the White House’s casualty estimates. Missing too are the 41 civilians – including 22 children – slain in a JSOC cruise missile strike on Yemen in 2009. These two events alone indicate more civilian deaths than all of those now admitted across seven years.

The CIA has long played down the number of civilians killed in its drone strikes. It was the Bureau which first challenged John Brennan after he claimed there had been no civilian deaths from CIA strikes for 15 months. The public record showed otherwise. Even leaked CIA documents demonstrated Brennan’s economy with the truth.

US Special Forces have also long hidden the true effect of their actions. Leaked cables obtained by Wikileaks revealed that under Obama, Centcom conspired with Yemen’s then-president to cover up US involvement in the deaths of civilians. And four years later, JSOC’s bombing of a Yemen wedding convoy led (anonymous) CIA officials to criticise the elite unit – even as the Pentagon publicly denied any civilian deaths.

Today’s official White House estimates should be read in the context of these continued evasions and untruths. Though welcome as a general step towards improved transparency – and with new rules which may reduce the risk to civilians – they do little to reconcile the continuing gulf between public estimates and official claims.

Image via USAF

Obama drone casualty numbers a fraction of those recorded by the Bureau

Published

July 1, 2016

Written by

Jack Serle

Web link

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

The US government today claimed it has killed between 64 and 116 “non-combatants” in 473 counter-terrorism strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya between January 2009 and the end of 2015.

This is a fraction of the 380 to 801 civilian casualty range recorded by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism from reports by local and international journalists, NGO investigators, leaked government documents, court papers and the result of field investigations.

While the number of civilian casualties recorded by the Bureau is six times higher than the US Government’s figure, the assessments of the minimum total number of people killed were strikingly similar. The White House put this figure at 2,436, whilst the Bureau has recorded 2,753.

Since becoming president in 2009, Barack Obama has significantly extended the use of drones in the War on Terror. Operating outside declared battlefields, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, this air war has been largely fought in Pakistan and Yemen.

The White House’s announcement today is long-awaited. It comes three years after the White House first said it planned to publish casualty figures, and four months after President Obama’s chief counter-terrorism adviser, Lisa Monaco, said the data would be released.

The figures released do not include civilians killed in drones strikes that happened under George W Bush, who instigated the use of counter-terrorism strikes outside declared war zones and in 58 strikes killed 174 reported civilians.

Graphic by Dean Vipond

Today’s announcement is intended to shed light on the US’s controversial targeted killing programme, in which it has used drones to run an arms-length war against al Qaeda and Islamic State.

The US Government also committed to continued transparency saying it will provide an annual summary of information about the number of strikes against terrorist targets outside areas of active hostilities as well as the range of combatants and non-combatants killed.

But the US has not released a year-by-year breakdown of strikes nor provided any detail on particularly controversial strikes which immediately sparked criticism from civil liberty groups.

Jamel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union said: “While any disclosure of information about the government’s targeted-killing policies is welcome, the government should be releasing information about every strike—the date of the strike, the location, the numbers of casualties, and the civilian or combatant status of those casualties. Perhaps this kind of information should be released after a short delay, rather than immediately, but it should be released. The public has a right to know who the government is killing—and if the government doesn’t know who it’s killing, the public should know that.”

The gap between US figures and other estimates, including the Bureau’s data, also raised concerns.

Jennifer Gibson, staff attorney at Reprieve said: “For three years now, President Obama has been promising to shed light on the CIA’s covert drone programme. Today, he had a golden opportunity to do just that. Instead, he chose to do the opposite. He published numbers that are hundreds lower than even the lowest estimates by independent organisations. The only thing those numbers tell us is that this Administration simply doesn’t know who it has killed. Back in 2011, it claimed to have killed “only 60” civilians. Does it really expect us to believe that it has killed only 4 more civilians since then, despite taking hundreds more strikes?

“The most glaring absence from this announcement are the names and faces of those civilians that have been killed. Today’s announcement tells us nothing about 14 year old Faheem Qureshi, who was severely injured in Obama’s first drone strike. Reports suggest Obama knew he had killed civilians that day.”

The US government said in a statement: “First, although there are inherent limitations on determining the precise number of combatant and non-combatant deaths, particularly when operating in non-permissive environments, the US Government uses post-strike methodologies that have been refined and honed over years and that use information that is generally unavailable to non-government organsations.”

Bibi Mamana

Bibi Mamana was a grandmother and midwife living in the the tribal region of North Waziristan on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.

On October 24 2012, she was preparing for the Muslim festival of Eid. She used to say that the joy of Eid was the excitement it brought to children. Her eight-year-old granddaughter Nabeela was reported to be in a field with her as she gathered vegetables when a drone killed Mamana.

“I saw the first two missiles coming through the air,” Nabeela later told The Times. “They were following each other with fire at the back. When they hit the ground, there was a loud noise. After that I don’t remember anything.” Nabeela was injured by flying shrapnel.

At the sound of the explosion, Mamana’s 18-year-old grandson Kaleem ran from the house to help. But a few minutes later the drones struck again, he told the BBC. He was knocked unconscious. His leg was badly broken and damaged by shrapnel, and needed surgery.

Atiq, one of Mamana’s sons, was in the mosque as Manama gathered vegetables. On hearing the blast and seeing the plume of smoke he rushed to the scene. When he arrived he could not see any sign of his mother.

Picture credit: BBC

“I started calling out for her but there was no reply,” Atiq told the Times. “Then I saw her shoes. We found her mutilated body a short time afterwards. It had been thrown quite a long distance away by the blast and it was in pieces. We collected many different parts from the field and put a turban over her body.”

Atiq’s brother Rafiq told Al Jazeera English he received a letter after the strike from a Pakistani official that said the attack was a US drone strike and that Mamana was innocent. But nothing more came of it, he said. The following year Rafiq, a teacher, travelled to the US to speak to Congress about the strike.

“My job is to educate,” he said in an emotional testimony. “But how do I teach something like this? How do I explain what I myself do not understand?”

Evaluating the numbers

The administration has called its drone programme a precise, effective form of warfare that targets terrorists and rarely hits civilians.

With the release of the figures today President Obama said, “All armed conflict invites tragedy. But by narrowly targeting our action against those who want to kill us and not the people they hide among, we are choosing the course of action least likely to result in the loss of innocent life.”

In June 2011 Obama’s then counter terrorism chief, now CIA director, John Brennan made a similar statement. He also declared drone strikes were “exceptionally precise and surgical” and had not killed a single civilian since August 2010. A Bureau investigation in July 2011 demonstrated this claim was untrue.

Most of the Bureau’s data sources are media reports by local and international news outlets, including Reuters, Associated Press and The New York Times.

The US Government says it has a much clearer view of post-strike situations than such reporting, suggesting this is the reason why there is such a gap between the numbers that have been recorded by the Bureau, and similar organisations, and those released today.

But the Bureau has also gathered essential information from its own field investigations.

The tribal areas have long been considered a difficult if not impossible area for journalists to access. However, occasionally reporters have been able to gain access to the site of the strikes to interview survivors, witnesses and relatives of people killed in drone strikes.

The Bureau conducted a field investigation through the end of 2011 into 2012, in partnership with The Sunday Times. Through extensive interviews with local villagers, the Bureau found 12 strikes killed 57 civilians.

The Associated Press also sent reporters into the Fata, reporting its findings in February 2012. It found 56 civilians and 138 militants were killed in 10 strikes.

Access to affected areas is a challenge in Yemen too. But in December 2009 a deputation of Yemeni parliamentarians sent to the scene of a strike discovered the burnt remnants of a camp, which had been set up by several families from one of Yemen’s poorest tribes.

A subsequent investigation by journalist Jeremy Scahill revealed a deception that hid US responsibility for the deaths of 41 civilians at the camp – half of them children, five of them pregnant women.

The reality on the ground flew in the face of the US governments understanding of events. A leaked US diplomatic record of a meeting in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, between General David Petraeus and the Yemeni president revealed the US government was ignorant of the civilian death toll.

Salem Ahmed bin Ali Jaber

Salem Ahmed bin Ali Jaber, a 40-year-old father of seven, was exactly the kind of man the US needed in Yemen. A widely respected cleric in rural Yemen, he delivered sermons in his village mosque denouncing al-Qaida.

Picture credit: Private

He gave just such a speech in August 2012 and earned the attention of the terrorist group. Three anonymous fighters arrived in his village two days later, after dark, calling for Jaber to come out and talk.

He went to meet them, taking his policeman cousin, Walid Abdullah bin Ali Jaber, with him for protection. The five men stood arguing in the night air when Hellfire missiles tore into them.

A “huge explosion” rocked the village, a witness said. Jaber’s father, Ahmad bin Salim Salih bin Ali Jaber, 77, arrived on the scene to find people “wrapping up body parts of people from the ground, from here and there, putting them in grave clothes like lamb.”

All the dead were al Qaeda fighters, unnamed Yemeni officials claimed. However Jaber’s family refused to allow him to be smeared as a terrorist.

For three years they fought in courts in America and Germany for recognition that he was an innocent civilian. In November 2013 they visited Washington and even managed to arrange a meeting in the White House to plead their case. In 2014 the family said it was offered a bag containing $100,000 by a Yemen national security official. The official said it was a US strike and it had been a mistake.

By late 2015 the family offered to drop their lawsuits against the US government if the administration would apologise. The Department of Justice refused. In February 2016 the court dismissed the family’s suit but they have not stopped fighting: in April they announced they would appeal.

Falling numbers of civilian casualties

The White House stressed that it was concerned to protect civilians and that best practices were in place to help reduce the likelihood of civilian casualties.

The Bureau’s data does show a significant decline in the reports of civilian casualties in recent years.

In Pakistan, where the largest number of strikes have occurred, there have been only three reported civilian casualties since the end of 2012. Two of these casualties – Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto – were Western hostages held by al Qaeda. The US, unaware they were targeting the American and Italian’s captors, flattened the house they were being held in.

The accidental killing of a US citizen spurred Obama to apologise for the strike – the first and only time he had publicly discussed a specific CIA drone strike in Pakistan. With the apology came an offer of a “condolence payment to both the families,” National Security Council spokesman Ned Price told the Bureau. However, they have yet to receive any compensation from the US government for their loss.

Families who have lost relatives in Pakistan have not reported been compensated for their loss. In Yemen, money has been given to families for their loss but it is not clear whether it actually comes from the US. The money is disbursed by Yemeni government intermediaries, nominally from the Yemeni government.

Tariq Khan

Tariq Khan was a 16-year-old from North Waziristan who attended a high-profile anti-drone rally in Islamabad in October 2011. Only days later, he and his cousin were killed in a drone strike.

Tariq was the youngest of seven children. He was described by relatives as a quiet teenager who was good with computers. His uncle Noor Kalam said: “He was just a normal boy who loved football.”

On 27 October, Tariq made the eight-hour drive to Islamabad for a meeting convened by Waziri elders to discuss how to end civilian deaths in drone strikes. The Pakistani politician Imran Khan, his former wife Jemima, members of the legal campaign group Reprieve and several western journalists also attended the meeting.

Neil Williams from Reprieve said Tariq seemed very introverted at the meeting. He asked the boy if he had ever seen a drone. Tariq replied he saw 10 or 15 every day. He said they prevented him from sleeping. “He looked absolutely terrified,” Williams said.

After a four-hour debate, the audience joined around 2,000 people at a protest rally outside the Pakistani parliament. After the rally, the tribesmen made the long journey home. The day after he got back, Tariq and his cousin Wahid went to pick up his newly married aunt, according a Bureau reporter who met Tariq at the Islamabad meeting. When they were 200 yards from the house two missiles slammed into their car. The blast killed Tariq and Wahid instantly.

Some reports suggested Wahid was 12 years old.

An anonymous US official acknowledged the CIA had launched the strike but denied they were children. The occupants of that car were militants, he said.

Unnamed

Most of the dead from CIA strikes in Pakistan are unnamed Pakistanis and Afghans, according to Naming the Dead – a research project by the Bureau. Over three years the Bureau has painstakingly gathered names of the dead from US drone strikes in Pakistan. The project has recorded just 732 names of people killed since 2004. The project has named 213 civilians killed under Obama.

The fact that so many people are unnamed adds to the confusion about who has been killed.

A controversial US tactic, signature strikes, demonstrates how identities of the dead, and their status as a combatant or non-combatant, eludes the US. These strikes target people based on so-called pattern of life analysis, built from surveillance and intelligence but not the actual identity of a person.

And the CIA’s own records leaked to the news agency McClatchy show the US is sometimes not only ignorant of the identities of people it has killed, but also of the armed groups they belong to. They are merely listed as “other militants” and “foreign fighters” in the leaked records.

Former Deputy US Secretary of State, Richard Armitage outlined his unease with such internal reporting in an interview with Chris Woods for his book Sudden Justice. “Mr Obama was popping up with these drones left, right and down the middle, and I would read these accounts, ’12 insurgents killed.’ ’15!’ You don’t know that. You don’t know that. They could be insurgents, they could be cooks.”

Image of funeral of Akram Shah and at least four other civilians in June 2011 via AFP/Getty Images

Unprecedented death toll from US air strike in Somalia

Published

March 7, 2016

Written by

Jack Serle

Web link

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

The US flattened an al Shabaab training camp in central Somalia and killed around 150 people, the Pentagon said today, making it the highest death toll in a US counter-terrorism strike yet recorded anywhere by the Bureau.

The strike hit approximately 100 miles north of Mogadishu and killed al Shabaab terrorists who posed an imminent threat to the US and African Union peacekeepers, the Pentagon said.

US forces had had the camp under observation for several weeks and believed there were as many as 200 al Shabaab operatives based there.

The US struck after it appeared the terrorists were about to start their operation, Captain Jeff Davis said at the Pentagon.

Somalia’s Foreign Minister Abdusalam Omer told Reuters the Somalia intelligence agencies had been involved in the formative stages of the attack. “There has to be intelligence on the ground for this to happen. Our intelligence had helped,” Omer said.

Reported US drone strikes, Somalia 2001-2016
Strikes:	19-23
Total killed:	188-276
Civilians killed:	0-7
Children killed:	0-2
Injured:	2-8

Download our complete Somalia data here

“Manned and unmanned aircraft” were used to carry out the strike, which hit on Saturday March 5. The last US strike in Somalia was December 22 last year. That was the last of 10 attacks to hit the country in that year – an unprecedented frequency of strikes.

The US military said it was continuing to “assess the results of the operation” but “initial assessments are that 150 fighters were eliminated”.

Drones have been striking terrorists in Yemen since 2001, Pakistan since 2004 and Somalia since 2007 but never has the body count been as high as this.

Previously the highest tally recorded by the Bureau was 81 killed in a single CIA drone strike in Pakistan in October 2006. In Somalia, the biggest body count was in April 2011 when as many as 36 people were killed in an airstrike.

The attack last weekend hit Raso Camp, “a training facility of al Shabaab,” the Pentagon said in a statement. It killed “fighters who were scheduled to depart the camp [and] posed an imminent threat to US and African Union Mission in Somalia forces in Somalia.”

Pentagon spokespeople would not be drawn on exactly what kind of aircraft were used, beyond saying some were manned and some were drones.

The US has used several kinds of aircraft in Somalia besides drones. It has conducted strikes with jets and helicopters. It has also deployed AC-130 gunships – large propeller driven aircraft.

US drone war, November 2015: American troops in Afghanistan and Somalia supported by new strikes

Published

December 1, 2015

Written by

Jack Serle

Web link

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

Gen John Campbell, top US military officer in Afghanistan, admits human error behind the destruction of a hospital on October 3.

US strikes continued in Afghanistan and Somalia last month. Strikes in both countries were carried out to counter a threat to US forces on the ground. There were no attacks reported in Pakistan, where the Pakistan Air Force continues bombing the tribal areas, or in Yemen where the Saudi-led coalition’s aerial bombing campaign continued.

Pakistan

Pakistan: CIA drone strikes
	All strikes, November 2015	All strikes, 2015 to date	All strikes, 2004 to date
CIA drone strikes	0	13	421
Total reported killed	0	60-85	2,489-3,989
Civilians reported killed	0	2-5	423-965
Children reported killed	0	0	172-207
Total reported injured	0	25-32	1,158-1,738

All the strikes in the table above were carried out by the CIA using Predator or Reaper drones. The Pakistan Air Force has also carried out air strikes in the same region as the CIA, using jets and its own armed drone – the Burraq.

November was the second consecutive calendar month without a reported US strike in Pakistan.

Despite this halt in CIA drone strikes, US air operations continue across the border in Afghanistan and the impact is being felt in the tribal areas of Pakistan. On November 20 details emerged of several funerals for people killed in US air strikes in Afghanistan. These ceremonies, held in various districts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, were reportedly attended by thousands of people.

You can download the Bureau’s complete datasheet of CIA drone strikes in Pakistan here.

Afghanistan

Afghanistan: confirmed US drone and air strikes
	All strikes, November 2015	All strikes, 2015 to date
All US strikes	9	175
Total reported killed	64-129	749-1,131
Civilians reported killed	0	44-103
Children reported killed	0	3-21
Total reported injured	21	132-137

The US Air Force has a variety of aircraft carrying out missions over Afghanistan, including jets, drones and AC-130 gunships. The UN reported in August 2015 that most US strikes were by unmanned aerial vehicles. This matches the Bureau’s records that show most US air attacks since January were by drones. However in the absence of US authorities revealing which type of aircraft carried out which attack, it remains unclear which of the attacks recorded were by manned or unmanned aircraft.

US Air Force data, January 1 to October 31 2015
Total Close Air Support (CAS) sorties with at least one weapon release	363
Total CAS sorties	3,824
Total weapons released	847

The Bureau recorded nine US strikes in Afghanistan in November. This is a dramatic fall from the 82 recorded in October. It is not yet known if this is an actual fall, or possibly a sharp decline in the number of strikes publicly reported.

The total number of attacks carried out by US forces in November will be released by the US government at some point in the second week of December.

In November fresh details emerged of the October 3 US air strike on the Kunduz hospital. General John Campbell said the attack was “the direct result of avoidable human error, compounded by process and equipment failures”.

The US will publish a redacted copy of the national investigation, according to US Army Colonel Michael Lawhorn, US Forces – Afghanistan spokesman. Though “that process could take some weeks.”

The Bureau’s complete timeline of reported events in Afghanistan can be found here.

Yemen

Yemen: all confirmed US drone strikes
	All strikes, November 2015	All strikes, 2015 to date	All strikes, 2002 to date*
All US strikes	0	20-21	107-127
Total reported killed	0	71-99	492-725
Civilians reported killed	0	1-7	65-101
Children reported killed	0	1-2	8-9
Total reported injured	0	8	94-223

* 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 US drone strikes reported in Yemen in November, the second calendar month this year without a reported attack.

The multi-faceted civil war in Yemen continued regardless of a halt in US strikes. Concerns over collateral damage in the Saudi-led coalition’s aerial campaign against the Houthi militia continued to build. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said on November 25 they had tracked a missile used in one deadly attack on a ceramics factory back to a British manufacturer.

The Houthis were also criticised, with a senior UN official accusing them of blocking the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian and aid supplies to the city of Taiz.

You can download the Bureau’s complete datasheet of US drone and air strikes in Yemen here.

Somalia

Somalia: all US drone strikes
	All strikes, November 2015	All strikes, 2015 to date	All strikes, 2007 to date
All US strikes	1	9-10	16-20
Total reported killed	5-8	12-83	30-116
Civilians reported killed	0	0-4	0-7
Children reported killed	0	0	0-2
Total reported injured	0	0-4	2-8

The first strike in Somalia since July killed at least five people on November 21, according to three Somali government officials and local residents. The US confirmed its forces “conducted a self-defense airstrike against al Shabaab”.

Also last month, the US announced it was offering rewards for information about six al Shabaab fighters totalling $26m. The men included the new leader of the terrorist group, Abu Ubaidah, and his deputy, Mahad Karate (above).

You can download the Bureau’s complete datasheet of US drone and air strikes in Somalia here.

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At least 80 US airstrikes hit Afghanistan in October: The White House’s covert drone and air war – monthly update

Published

November 2, 2015

Written by

Jack Serle

Web link

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

On October 3 a US airstrike destroyed MSF’s hospital in Kunduz, northern Afghanistan (Photo: Victor Blue/MSF)

Scores of US air and drone strikes hit Afghanistan in October as the country’s military and police continued struggling to control the resurgent Taliban. While at least 80 strikes reportedly hit Afghanistan, the CIA’s drone strikes stopped at the Pakistani side of the border. There were also no US drone or air strikes reported in Yemen or Somalia last month.

Pakistan

Pakistan: CIA drone strikes
	All strikes, October 2015	All strikes, 2015 to date	All strikes, 2004 to date
CIA drone strikes	0	13	421
Total reported killed	0	60-85	2,476-3,989
Civilians reported killed	0	2-5	423-965
Children reported killed	0	0	172-207
Total reported injured	0	25-32	1,158-1,738

There were no reported US drone strikes in Pakistan in October, the third calendar month to pass without a strike there this year.

The Pakistan Air Force continued to target alleged militants in the mountains of Pakistan’s tribal region. Pakistan’s armed drone, the Burraq, carried out its first night strike, according to the Pakistan military’s public relations wing – the ISPR.

You can download the Bureau’s complete datasheet of CIA drone strikes in Pakistan here.

Afghanistan

Afghanistan Bureau data: US drone and air strikes
	Reported strikes, October 2015	Reported strikes, 2015 to date
All US strikes	80	164
Total reported killed	186-270	685-1,002
Civilians reported killed	30-31	44-103
Children reported killed	3	3-21
Total reported injured	82	111-116

The US Air Force has a variety of aircraft carrying out missions over Afghanistan, including jets, drones and AC-130 gunships. The UN reported in August 2015 that most US strikes were by unmanned aerial vehicles. This matches the Bureau’s records which show most US air attacks since January have been by drones. Due to a lack of official US information, it remains unclear which type of aircraft carried out the attacks.

US Air Force data, January 1 to September 30 2015
Total Close Air Support (CAS) sorties with at least one weapon release	328
Total CAS	3,372
Total weapons released	629

A US AC-130 gunship destroyed a hospital in the northern city of Kunduz on October 3, run by the international charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), killing at least 30 staff and patients. The attack hit while Afghan troops and US special forces were battling to retake the city from Afghan Taliban fighters who stormed it on September 28.

There were 79 more US strikes reported in October. Eleven were concentrated on Kunduz city. However most of the strikes last month – at least 63 – reportedly hit in the course of a week in the southern province of Kandahar. The strikes were in support of a large ground assault by US and Afghan to clear “probably the largest” al Qaeda base found during the 14-year Afghan war, according to the leading US army general in Afghanistan.

The Bureau’s complete timeline of reported events in Afghanistan can be found here.

Yemen

Yemen: all confirmed US drone strikes
	All strikes, October 2015	All strikes, 2015 to date	All strikes, 2002 to date*
All US strikes	0	20-21	107-127
Total reported killed	0	71-99	492-725
Civilians reported killed	0	1-7	65-101
Children reported killed	0	1-2	8-9
Total reported injured	0	8	94-223

There were no reported US strikes in Yemen in October – the first calendar month without reported action there since July 2014. Though there were no reported drone strikes, a drone did reportedly crash in the central province of Mareb. It was unarmed and there were conflicting accounts of whether it was a US or Saudi Arabian aircraft.

Visited @MSF hospital in Haidan, northern Yemen after it was hit by multiple Saudi airstrikes. Destruction is total pic.twitter.com/FesfilxnEo

— Sharif Kouddous (@sharifkouddous) October 29, 2015

The Royal Saudi Air Force continued to bomb Yemen in its ongoing battle with the Shiite Houthi militia. In October, Saudi jets also bombed a hospital run by MSF. The facility was in Saada, the Houthi stronghold. No one died in the attack though the hospital was destroyed.

You can download the Bureau’s complete datasheet of US drone and air strikes in Yemen here.

Somalia

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

A small faction of al Shabaab swore allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The splinter group amounted to one senior commander and about 20 fighters, according to Reuters.

Fighting between al Shabaab and African Union peacekeepers continued in October. One skirmish, on October 25, saw Kenyan troops reportedly kill 15 al Shabaab fighters in a raid on a terrorist base on the Jubba river in southern Somalia.

You can download the Bureau’s complete datasheet of US drone and air strikes in Somalia here.

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

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Podcast: US whistleblower Brandon Bryant on Germany’s role in America’s drone wars

Published

October 15, 2015

Written by

Airwars Staff

Web link

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

Former US drone operator Brandon Bryant (photo: Democracy Now!/You Tube)

As a parliamentary inquiry in Berlin explores Germany’s role in America’s drone wars, former drone operator Brandon Bryant tells the Bureau about what he saw of it during his time with the Air Force.

Bryant, who himself gave testimony to the inquiry today, said that drone operators in the US would interact with Ramstein Air Force base in Germany throughout the mission.

“It was a constant communication, before every mission after every mission and every time signal strength was weak or we might lose signal strength we’d always have to call Ramstein Air Force Base for troubleshooting,” he told the Bureau.

“They were the ones that handled all of our…feeds, and they were the ones that assigned us specific codes where we would connect to the relay.”

Ramstein is a well-known US base, but until recently little was known about its role in supporting drone operations. Earlier this year, the Intercept and Spiegel reported on the existence of classified documents adding further weight to allegations that Ramstein plays a vital role in relaying the satellite signal from the machines flying over the Middle East to pilots and analysts in the US. In May, three Yemeni plaintiffs who lost relatives in a drone strike brought a court case against the German government, though the judge dismissed it.

The Bundestag committee’s inquiry was originally set up in the wake of revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden about the extent of US surveillance activities worldwide, including in Germany.

As Bryant sees it, the stakes for the German government are high.

“Ramstein is enabling us to fly in countries where there is no declared warzone as well as declared warzones,” he said. “What does that it mean for us as a country, what does it mean for the German people as a country? Because if they accept the fact that we have used drones in illegal warzones and that’s ok then that makes them complicit in all the strikes we’ve messed up.”

Listen to the full podcast here

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Monthly drone report: Total drone strikes under Obama in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen now 491 after September attacks

Published

October 5, 2015

Written by

Jack Serle

Web link

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

A US Air Force Reaper in Afghanistan (Photo: US Air Force)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

i. Key points:

CIA and Pakistan Air Force drones hit Pakistan’s tribal areas US strikes continue in Yemen as the civil war rages Al Shabaab continue to kill peacekeepers and civilians in Somalia The three drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen in September means a total of 491 drone strikes there under President Obama US air power helps stem the Taliban tide in Afghanistan Medecins Sans Frontiers trauma centre in Kunduz hit in October air strike The Bureau publishes investigation into UK’s Watchkeeper programme as Cameron doubles RAF drone fleet

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	421	107-127	15-19	48
Total reported killed	2,476-3,989	492-725	25-108	420-619
Civilians reported killed	423-965	65-101	0-5	14-42
Children reported killed	172-207	8-9	0	0-18
Reported injured	1,158-1,738	94-223	2-7	24-28

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	35
Total reported killed	N/A	156-365	40-141	79-104
Civilians reported killed	N/A	68-99	7-47	0-30
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 September 2015:

Two drone strikes in Yemen plus one in Pakistan during September means the total strikes in the US’s covert drone war in those countries and Somalia during Barack Obama’s presidency now stands at 491.

September was the second consecutive month when US air and ground forces reportedly came to the aid of the Afghan army and security forces in their struggle to contain a brutal insurgency. US air attacks continued into October when a series of strikes hit a hospital run by international NGO Medecins Sans Frontier, killing at least 19 people, including 12 staff members.

A CIA drone strike hit Pakistan killing five or six people in the same month that Pakistan jets killed civilians in South Waziristan and the first Pakistan Air Force drone strike reportedly killed three people.

In Yemen the US continued drone strikes while the Saudi Arabia-led coalition of Arab and African states continued its air and ground war with the Houthi militia in the north, west and south of the country.

There were no US drone attacks reported in Somalia last month despite al Shabaab continuing to inflict a toll on African Union peacekeepers.

September also saw UK Prime Minister David Cameron announce Britain had killed two British men in a drone strike in Syria. This took the total number of Britons reportedly killed with drones to at least 10 – two by the UK and eight in US strikes in Pakistan and Somalia.

And in the first week of October, the Bureau published an investigation with the Guardian into the British Army’s flagship drone, Watchkeeper, as Cameron announced the RAF’s fleet of armed drones would be doubled to 20 aircraft.

MONTHLY REPORT BY COUNTRY

1. Pakistan

Pakistan: CIA drone strikes
	All strikes, September 2015	All strikes, 2015 to date	All strikes, 2004 to date
CIA drone strikes	1	13	421
Total reported killed	5-6	60-85	2,476-3,989
Civilians reported killed	0	2-5	423-965
Children reported killed	0	0	172-207
Total reported injured	4	25-32	1,158-1,738

Download our full Pakistan data set here.

A single US strike hit Pakistan in September, a month that saw rare reports of civilian casualties from a Pakistan Air Force (PAF) strike and the Pakistan military declare it had used its own drones in combat in the tribal areas.

The CIA strike killed five or six people when it destroyed part of a house at around 11pm on September 1. Up to three of the dead were reportedly foreigners, they were believed to be Uzbeks.

At least 60 people have been killed in the 13 US drone attacks reported so far this year.

On September 7 the Pakistan military said it had used its own armed drone in the tribal areas. The attack killed three people – all reportedly senior militants.

On September 18 there were reports of a third drone strike in Pakistan’s tribal area. A CIA drone reportedly killed at least six people in South Waziristan. It subsequently emerged that the operation was carried out by the Pakistan Air Force.

There was little follow-up coverage of that attack because news broke of a bloody assault on a Pakistan Air Force base in Peshawar by the Taliban that killed at least 29 people.

But a Reuters journalist in Dera Ismail Khan, a region that borders the tribal areas, interviewed a family that was wounded in the attack. They said all the dead were their neighbours and civilians, not terrorists. They said eight or nine civilians were killed in the attack, including three women and at least three children.

2. Afghanistan

Afghanistan: US drone and air strikes
	All reported strikes, September 2015	Official US figures, January to August 2015	Bureau identified figures, January to September 2015*
All US strikes	17	282	83
Total reported killed	30-76	–	499-723
Civilians reported killed	0	–	14-72
Children reported killed	0	–	0-18
Total reported injured	0-6	–	29-34

* The Bureau’s data on US air and drone strikes in Afghanistan is not exhaustive. The ongoing war creates barriers to reporting drone strikes. The Bureau’s data on strikes in Afghanistan is an accumulation of what publicly available information exists on specific strikes and casualties. The US government publishes monthly aggregates of air operations in Afghanistan, minus information on casualties.

US Air Force data, January 1 to August 31 2015
Total Close Air Support (CAS) sorties	2,927
Total CAS sorties with at least one weapon release	282
Total weapons released	523

In September the Taliban launched a surprise assault on the northern city of Kunduz. US ground forces were dispatched to the city to aid Afghan security forces’ attempts to retake the city. And the US provided close air support to Afghan and US troops. These were the first US airstrikes reported on the city of Kunduz in 2015.

At least five US airstrikes on September 29 and 30 helped an Afghan counter offensive eventually drive the insurgents out of the capital of the wealthy Kunduz province, which is just 150 miles north of Kabul.

The Taliban assault and Afghan counter-attacks inflicted a heavy toll on the city’s civilian population. Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) reported that 296 wounded, including 64 children, had arrived at its trauma centre in Kunduz between September 28 and the start of October.

In October, the hospital was hit by several air strikes that left at least 22 people dead. MSF condemned the attack “in the strongest possible terms”. The charity closed the hospital after the attack, evacuating its staff. It had been the only free trauma centre in northern Afghanistan, MSF said.

US and European soldiers were reportedly involved in the effort to retake Kunduz with a US spokesman telling Reuters: “US Special Forces advisers, while advising and assisting elements of the Afghan Special Security Forces, encountered an insurgent threat in Kunduz city.”

The city’s Afghan garrison were driven out to the airport in the suburbs where they regrouped and waited for reinforcements. Special forces from the US were reportedly in the area and moved to the airport to assist. US soldiers called in air support on at least one occasions near the airport, reportedly destroying a tank captured by the Taliban.

UK and German soldiers were also reportedly involved, but British and German authorities have denied their forces were involved.

The month began with the Afghan security forces struggling to retake the district of Musa Qala in northern Helmand – a province in southern Afghanistan that saw fierce fighting between the Taliban and Nato forces. The US gave considerable air support to the Afghans, with 18 strikes in the final of week of August and seven in the first week of September.

After Musa Qala fell, 90 US special forces operatives were reportedly rushed to Helmand’s Camp Antonik military headquarters. This detachment reportedly included joint terminal attack controllers that “must be on the ground directing the strike to ensure they are conducted within our rules of engagement,” according to the US military spokesman in Afghanistan.

Few details emerged from the US strikes in Musa Qalas or Kunduz. The US military released some details but would not say how many people were killed. There were reports one attack in Kunduz killed 15, including Taliban shadow governor for Kunduz, Mawlawi Salam. However he subsequently denied reports of his demise, the Long War Journal reported.

Other attacks this month hit in Kunar, Paktika and Nangarhar – provinces that border Pakistan and where the majority of the reported strikes have concentrated.

The US tally of aggregated monthly data from August was published last month. It showed the number of airstrikes in Afghanistan nearly doubled from 45 in July to 84 in August – both far exceeding the monthly average of 35 per month after eight months. However this is still far lower than when US and allied soldiers were engaged in combat operations in Afghanistan.

3. Yemen

Yemen: all confirmed US drone strikes
	All strikes, September 2015	All strikes, 2015 to date	All strikes, 2002 to date*
All US strikes	2	20-21	107-127
Total reported killed	7-11	71-99	492-725
Civilians reported killed	0-4	1-7	65-101
Children reported killed	0	1-2	8-9
Total reported injured	2	8	94-223

Download our full Yemen data set here.

There were two confirmed US drone strikes in Yemen last month, and two possible US attacks in addition.

The two confirmed attacks killed 9-11 people in Mukalla, a port city on the south coast of Yemen and the capital of Hadramout province. It has become the focus of al Qaeda activity in Yemen this year. It is also a focus of US strikes: 13 have hit since the start of the year.

The two possible attacks killed six in Mareb province in central Yemen. The Bureau cannot confirm US involvement in these strikes because the number of sources reporting US involvement is not sufficient, according to the Bureau’s methodology. Furthermore, the Saudi-led coalition has been bombing in Mareb and it is possible their attacks have been misreported as US attacks.

There were two other, possible US strikes that hit in Mareb province, central Yemen. These attacks were only reported by one or two sources and therefore are not included in the Bureau’s figures for confirmed US operations.

Last month saw foreign forces become more deeply embroiled in Yemen’s civil war, adding a new layer of complexity to the conflict as its toll on civilians continued to rise.

At the beginning of the month, a missile attack by the Shia Houthi militia in the central province of Marib killed at least 55 troops sent by Sunni Arab governments in the Gulf, who were there fighting in support of ousted president Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

Airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition and heavy clashes occurred in different parts of the country, in spite of ongoing attempts by Oman to broker peace talks.

The Islamic State group reminded people of its growing presence in Yemen by claiming responsibility for a suicide bomb attack on a mosque in the capital, Sanaa, which was reported to have killed 25 people.

The Saudi-led coalition pressed on with an offensive in Marib. Towards the end of the month, Hadi returned to the southern city in Aden, which he had attempted to turn in to seat of government after Houthis overran the capital. The Houthis’ advance south forced him to flee the country in March.

September ended with a strike reportedly killing at least 130 civilians at a wedding party near the Red Sea port of Mocha. The attack was reported as a suspected airstrike, but a spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition insisted there were no flights in the area at the time.

4. Somalia

Somalia: all US drone strikes
	All strikes, September 2015	All strikes, 2015 to date	All strikes, 2007 to date
All US strikes	0	8-9	9-13
Total reported killed	0	7-75	23-105
Civilians reported killed	0	0-4	0-5
Children reported killed	0	0	0
Total reported injured	0	0-4	2-7

Download our full Somalia data set here.

The militant group al Shabaab went on the offensive in September, seizing towns in the Lower Shabelle region.

On September 1 reports emerged that the group had raided an African Union base in Janale, killing at least 12 peacekeeping troops. By the second half of the month, the acting governor of Lower Shabelle told Reuters that much of the area was in al Shabaab’s hands, including Janale.

Also in September, the UK announced at the end of the month that it would send up to 70 troops to support the African Union mission in non-combat roles.

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

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Monthly drone report, August 2015: 32 US strikes hit Afghanistan alone

Published

September 2, 2015

Written by

Jack Serle

Web link

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

A US Reaper taxis at Creech airbase in Nevada, USA (US Air Force photo by Senior Airman Larry E Reid Jr)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

i. Key points:

US actions continue in Afghanistan, eight months after combat operations officially ended. American drones continue to kill alleged AQAP fighters as Yemen’s civil war rages. The first strike in two months kills 4-7 in Pakistan.

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	420	105-125	15-19	43
Total reported killed	2,471-3,983	485-714	25-108	393-561
Civilians reported killed	423-965	65-97	0-5	14-42
Children reported killed	172-207	8-9	0	0-18
Reported injured	1,154-1,734	92-221	2-7	18-22

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	23
Total reported killed	N/A	156-365	40-141	76-86
Civilians reported killed	N/A	68-99	7-47	0-30
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 we 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 August 2015:

There were more US air strikes reported in Afghanistan in August than Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia combined. More than half the 32 reported attacks in Afghanistan came in the space of a week. The US was providing air support to Afghan security forces trying to stop a second district in the southern province of Helmand falling under Taliban control.

MONTHLY REPORT BY COUNTRY

1. Pakistan

Pakistan: CIA drone strikes
	All strikes, August 2015	All strikes, 2015 to date	All strikes, 2004 to date
CIA drone strikes	1	12	420
Total reported killed	4-7	55-79	2,471-3,983
Civilians reported killed	0	2-5	423-965
Children reported killed	0	0	172-207
Total reported injured	0	21-28	1,154-1,734

The first CIA drone strike in Pakistan in 61 days reportedly killed between four and seven Haqqani Network fighters on August 6. The alleged militants were killed when the drones destroyed a house in the Datta Khel area of North Waziristan, Pakistani media reported.

This was the only drone strike reported in August. The CIA drone campaign in Pakistan has slowed since the end of January this year – when five strikes reportedly killed at least 26 people. Seven strikes have killed at least 29 people since the start of February.

During this time, the Pakistan military has continued its air and ground attacks on the various armed groups in the tribal areas. Several Pakistani air strikes reportedly killed scores of people in August, including a series of attacks on August 17, which killed at least 65 people, and two on August 19 that left as many as 43 dead.

US-Pakistani relations showed further signs of strain last month, with Washington threatening to withhold $300m in military assistance unless Islamabad did more to tackle the Haqqani network. The US has said it believes the network is behind a recent increase in terrorist attacks in Afghanistan. In response to the US complaints, Pakistan insisted the network had been disrupted.

2. Afghanistan

Afghanistan: US drone and air strikes
	All reported strikes, August 2015	Official US figures, January to July 2015	Bureau identified figures, January to August 2015*
All US strikes	32	198	66
Total reported killed	125-141	–	469-647
Civilians reported killed	0-33	–	14-72
Children reported killed	0	–	0-18
Total reported injured	0	–	23-28

US Air Force data, January 1 to July 31 2015
Total Close Air Support (CAS) sorties	2,435
Total CAS sorties with at least one weapon release	198
Total weapons released	380

The intensity of reported US air and drone attacks in Afghanistan increased again in August. There were 32 reported strikes that killed at least 125 people.

This casualty record is a significant underestimate. There were eighteen US attacks in the Musa Qala district of the southern province of Helmand from August 23 to August 30, according to US officials. However the death toll remains largely unreported. The first three reported attacks, on August 23, killed 40 according to Reuters.

A further 10 people were killed between August 23 and August 29 though it is not clear when or where in Musa Qala district.

The bombardment was in part a failed attempt to stem an advancing tide of Taliban fighters who threatened to take the district and its capital. The insurgents eventually drove the Afghan district administration out of Musa Qala and reportedly overran the district capital on August 24.

The US continued its air attacks as Afghan forces tried to push the Taliban back, eventually succeeding on August 30 when reinforcements arrived from neighbouring Kandahar province. The counter-offensive reportedly left 220 Taliban fighters dead, according to the Afghan ministry of defence.

The beleaguered Afghan army and police garrisons in Musa Qala suffered losses of their own. When the Taliban overran the capital, 25 police officers and soldiers were reportedly killed and 15 more injured.

“We left the district early in the morning because the Taliban were attacking from all sides,” Musa Qala district Governor Mohammad Sharif told Reuters. “We had asked for reinforcements for days but none arrived and this was what happened,” he said

The extent of US involvement in the defence and recapture of Musa Qala remains unclear. Afghan military officials said US ground forces were not involved. However a US military spokesman in Kabul publicly reported the air attacks and told the New York Times: “It is important to note whenever the US conducts airstrikes, a US JTAC [Joint Terminal Attack Controller] must be on the ground directing the strike to ensure they are conducted within our rules of engagement.”

In addition, 10 strikes hit the eastern province of Nangarhar last month, killing at least 72 people. There have been more strikes reported in Nangarhar than any other province. So far in 2015 there have been at least 25 reported attacks killing 276, according to the Bureau’s data. Nangarhar borders Pakistan’s tribal areas, a region the US and Afghanistan have long said is a haven for Afghan insurgents.

Between 56 and 66 people were reported killed in a single day on August 4 when a volley of strikes hit Narngahar and Paktika. Some of the dead were reported to be Islamic State fighters, as well as Taliban.

3. Yemen

Yemen: all confirmed US drone strikes
	All strikes, August 2015	All strikes, 2015 to date	All strikes, 2002 to date*
All US strikes	3	18-19	105-125
Total reported killed	14	64-88	485-714
Civilians reported killed	0	1-3	65-97
Children reported killed	0	1-2	8-9
Total reported injured	0	6	92-221

Drone strikes continued in Yemen as the US and Saudi allied forces loyal to president Hadi sought to press ahead with their campaign to roll back the advance of the Shia Houthi militia after retaking the port city of Aden in July.

There were three confirmed US attacks in August, all in or around the city of Mukalla, reportedly killing 14 people. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) took advantage of the country’s chaos and took control of the city earlier this year. It has been the target of 10 of the 18 confirmed US strikes so far this year.

There was a fourth strike that was attributed to the US drones. It killed three in the central Marib province however the Bureau has yet to confirm it as a US operation.

Since moving into Mukalla in April, AQAP had reportedly adopted a low profile, leaving the day to day running of the city to a council of local residents. However in July the terrorist group spurred people to protest its presence by rounding up and arbitrarily arresting retired military officers and policemen. And in August its fighters blew up an army headquarters. According to AFP, it feared a military operation against them by pro-Saudi forces.

4. Somalia

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

There were no covert actions reported in Somalia in August. The al Shabaab militant group has been gradually pushed back from territories in central and southern Somalia by Somali troops and the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) peacekeepers.

Al Shabaab has posed an increasing threat to neighbouring Kenya however, and still has the capacity to carry out deadly operations inside Somalia itself.

On August 22 the group was reported to have killed 21 in twin suicide bomb attacks, one in the capital and on a military training base in the southern port city of Kismayo.

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

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