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All major publications from Airwars’ documentation, research, investigations and policy teams

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21 Sep, 2012
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

Judges greet US government drone secrecy with skepticism

Appeals court judges scrutinised the US government’s secrecy bid. (www.shutterstock.com) Three federal appeal court judges greeted US government efforts to block the release of information on the CIA’s targeted killings programme with skepticism on Thursday, as they grilled the administration’s lawyers for double the scheduled time. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is challenging the […]
21 Sep, 2012
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

British PM Cameron: ‘We expect drone strikes to avoid civilian casualties’

Prime Minister Cameron and President Obama at the White House. (Photo: UK Government) David Cameron has called for those carrying out covert drone strikes ‘to act in accordance with international law’ and to take ‘all feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties.’ However the British prime minister has carefully avoided any direct criticism of the US, […]
6 Sep, 2012
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

Obama’s five rules for covert drone strikes

President Obama takes a phone call aboard Air Force One, July 2012 (Photo Official White House/ Pete Souza) In his most comprehensive public comments yet on the US covert drone war, President Barack Obama has laid out the five rules he says the United States uses to target and kill alleged terrorists – including US citizens. […]
3 Sep, 2012
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

August 2012 update: US covert actions in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia

Somalia’s parliamentarians meet for the first time in for two decades on August 20 2012. (AU-UN IST / Stuart Price) Pakistan: August sees the highest number of CIA strikes in Pakistan since October 2011. A number of senior militants are killed along with at least two named civilians. Yemen: At least 26 people are killed […]
30 Aug, 2012
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

Apple rejects app built from the Bureau’s data

This is what it could have looked like… An app that uses the Bureau’s covert war data to alert people to the far reaches of the US government’s secret wars has been blocked from Apple’s app store. Drones+, the creation of NYU student Josh Begley, was meant to be a simple way of notifying users […]
1 Aug, 2012
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

July 2012 update: US covert actions in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia

A US Predator drone flying at sunset – Charles McCain/Flickr The Bureau’s covert war investigation tracks drone strikes and other US military and paramilitary actions in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. Here we summarise our key work and findings for July 2012. Pakistan: CIA drones kill more people in July than any month so far this […]
2 Jul, 2012
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

June 2012 update: US covert actions in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia

An armed US military Reaper drone over Afghanistan (US Air Force/ Lt Col Lesley Pratt/ Flickr) The Bureau’s covert war investigation tracks drone strikes and other US military and paramilitary actions in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. Here we summarise our key work and findings for June 2012. We also compare the first six months of […]
29 Jun, 2012
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

‘A journey into moral depravity’ – US Congressman Dennis Kucinich on covert wars

When 26 members of the US Congress wrote to President Obama recently urging him to get a grip on his use of drones as ‘faceless ambassadors that cause civilian deaths,’ one man in particular was responsible. Congressman for Ohio Dennis Kucinich has been a career politician for more than 40 years – but he’s no […]
21 Jun, 2012
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

UN expert labels CIA tactic exposed by Bureau ‘a war crime’

The United Nation’s Human Rights Council in Geneva (UNHRC/ Flickr) The UN’s expert on extrajudicial killings has described a tactic used by the CIA and first exposed by a Bureau investigation as ‘a war crime’. Earlier this year the Bureau and the Sunday Times revealed the CIA was deliberately targeting rescuers and funeral-goers in its Pakistan drone strikes. […]
19 Jun, 2012
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

Analysis: Oversight failures help oil Obama’s killing machine

Revelations that President Barack Obama presides over key aspects of secret kill-list machinery that has sentenced thousands to death by drone have disturbed many. Torture and extraordinary rendition under Bush, it turns out, have been replaced with industrial-scale extrajudicial execution by his successor. Today, CIA and Pentagon armed drones range at will over Pakistan, Yemen […]
16 Jun, 2012
Update
Somalia, Yemen

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

Out of the shadows? President Obama in the Oval Office (Official White House/ Pete Souza) In what is being viewed by some as a significant move towards greater transparency, President Obama has officially acknowledged for the first time previously secret US military combat operations in Yemen and Somalia. The US military has been mounting aggressive […]
14 Jun, 2012
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

Death from above: the New Statesman’s drones issue

As reports of ‘kill lists’ have emerged and murmurs of increasing use of surveillance drones over US soil – not to mention the London Olympics – have grown louder in recent months, drones have leapt onto the news agenda and into public debate. In a special report this week’s New Statesman special looks in detail […]
1 Jun, 2012
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

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

A summary of US actions in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia in the secret war on terror. The Bureau’s Covert War project tracks drone strikes and other US military and paramilitary actions in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. Here we summarise our key work and findings for May. Yemen May 2012 actions Confirmed US drone strikes: 5 […]
29 May, 2012
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

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

President Obama with his Defense Secretary and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Two US reports published today provide significant insights into President Obama’s personal and controversial role in the escalating covert US drone war in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. In a major extract from Daniel Klaidman’s forthcoming book Kill Or Capture, the author […]
24 May, 2012
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

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

Medea Benjamin: ‘US peace movement is a fragment of what it was under Bush’ Walk into any US bookstore and the stacks are crowded with hundreds of books on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet more than a decade in, its hard to find anything on the escalating use of armed drones by the […]
10 May, 2012
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

Analysis: Why we must name all drone attack victims

Drone victim funeral December 29 2010 – two named civilians are known to have died that day. (AP) Sunday’s death of Fahd al-Quso in a CIA drone strike was a significant US success. The admitted al Qaeda bomber had long been sought for his role in the deadly attack on the US navy ship the […]
21 Nov, 2011
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

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

As US under-secretary of defense in the early 1990s, Major General Kenneth Israel was one of the first to see the potential of combat drones. Now a vice-president of arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin, he was in London recently to chair a conference on UAVs, where he spoke to the Bureau.  How did armed drones come about? […]
21 Nov, 2011
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

‘We have to do better’: Protester speaks out

Chris Cole is an activist and campaigner, pushing for accountability on armed drones. He writes the respected blog Drone Wars UK, which earlier this year uncovered details of the first civilian deaths caused by UK drones. Along with others he demonstrated outside the Unmanned Aircraft Systems conference held in London last week.  The conference appears […]
18 Nov, 2011
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

Deaths bring to six total Britons killed by CIA drones

Two British nationals are believed to have been killed in a US drone attack in Pakistan, family and friends of the men have told the Press Association. According to PA, Ibrahim Adam and Mohammed Azmir were killed in Waziristan three months or more ago. Their deaths were confirmed to PA by other sources. According to […]
9 Nov, 2011
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

Democracy Now! interviews Bureau reporter

On Monday October 31, 16-year-old Tariq Aziz was killed in a US drone strike near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Three days earlier, Bureau reporter Pratap Chatterjee met the teenager at a conference in Islamabad, where local people came together to discuss the impact of U.S. drone strikes in their communities. Related article: Bureau reporter meets 16-year-old […]
10 Aug, 2011
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

Analysis: The Covert Drone War

In a recent edition of The Times a correspondent writes: ‘In a war in which information and perception play as important a role as tanks and jets, the images of wooden coffins on the shoulders of grieving men will make uncomfortable viewing in London and Paris.’ The journalist, Deborah Haynes, is reporting from a frontline town […]