Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force
April 10, 2013 |
The Obama administration hasn’t been forthright about who it kills with drones, according to classified intelligence reports
obtained by McClatchy.
Contradicting previous rhetoric claiming the U.S.’s targeted killing program
only targets
“specific senior operational leaders of al-Qaida and associated
forces,” the documents corroborate existing reports that hundreds of
“other” Pakistanis and Afghans have died at the hands of the Obama
administration’s drone attacks. McClatchy’s analysis goes into numbers
and details:
The intelligence reports list killings of alleged Afghan
insurgents whose organization wasn’t on the U.S. list of terrorist
groups at the time of the 9/11 strikes; of suspected members of a
Pakistani extremist group that didn’t exist at the time of 9/11; and of
unidentified individuals described as “other militants” and “foreign
fighters.
…
At least 265 of up to 482 people who the U.S. intelligence reports
estimated the CIA killed during a 12-month period ending in September
2011 were not senior al Qaida leaders but instead were “assessed” as
Afghan, Pakistani and unknown extremists. Drones killed only six top al
Qaida leaders in those months, according to news media accounts.
The documents also provide a glimpse into the Obama administration’s
seemingly thin rationale for executing some attacks. Contrary to claims
of the CIA program’s precision and “
exceedingly rare”
civilian casualties, the intelligence reports proves that “drone
operators weren’t always certain who they were killing.” McClatchy’s
report notes that several drone victims “died in what appeared to be
signature strikes,” or attacks carried out based on a “signature”
pattern of behavior, rather than a known identity.
The documents also reveal a breadth of targeting that is
complicated by the culture in the restive region of Pakistan where
militants and ordinary tribesmen dress the same, and carrying a weapon
is part of the centuries-old tradition of the Pashtun ethnic group.
As
others have
pointed out, the documents merely support what several investigative
journalists have already revealed—that the scope of Obama’s drone
targets extend far beyond its stated standards. Reports from the Bureau
of Investigative Journalism estimates that up to 3,581 people, including
up to 884 civilians, have died in drone strikes in Pakistan from 2004
to 2013.
Steven Hsieh is an editorial assistant at AlterNet and writer based in Brooklyn. Follow him on Twitter
@stevenjhsieh.
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