An annual report from The Bureau of Investigative
Journalism (TBIJ), a London-based nonprofit,
states that “there were no confirmed reports of civilian
casualties” caused by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan in 2013,
though it leaves some wiggle room.
Last year, the U.S. ally was subject to 27 drone bombings
conducted by the CIA. Between 112 and 193 people were killed, while
an additional 41 to 81 were injured. Among the casualties, the
bureau lists “0-4” as civilians, one of which may have been a
child. This makes 2013 the least deadly year for U.S.-Pakistani
relations
since the Bush Administration. The nonprofit makes estimates
based on media reports and data it receives from
governments.
TBIJ provides additional numbers to give context to the
past year’s surprisingly low death toll. The U.S. carried out a
total of 381 strikes in the country from 2004 to 2013, killing as
many as 3,646 people. A wide range of these, between 416 and 951,
are calculated to have been civilians. Attacks
peaked in 2010, when the Obama administration conducted nearly
40 percent of it’s total attacks so far. Almost 200 civilians and
over 1,000 total people were estimated killed that year.
What accounts for the dramatic decrease since 2010? TBIJ
suggests that “improvements in technology since the early years of
Bush’s covert drone strikes, rising tensions between Pakistan and
the US over the drone campaign, and increasing scrutiny of the
covert drone campaign by the international community as well as
Washington and Islamabad” are among the possible causes.
A more important issue, though, is whether or not the civilian
casualty count is accurate.
This is not easy to determine. As Reuters
points out, “The United States releases no information about
individual strikes.” Likewise, Obama and CIA Director John Brennan
embrace a notoriously loose definition of “militant.”
As Reason‘s Scott Shackford
pointed out last year, leaked documents indicate that the
American government itself may not actually know who it is killing
in Pakistan.
Pakistan’s government is no more reliable, as the prime minister
publicly condemns the attacks while covertly
endorsing them.
For years, organizations like the Stanford International Human
Rights & Conflict Resolution Clinic and Columbia Law School
Human Rights Institute have taken skeptical approaches to the
available information about innocent victims of drone strikes.
Although it lauds TBIJ’s work, the Stanford clinic states that for a
target to be considered a militant, a “fundamental set of legal
tests must be satisfied.” This often does not happen, and the
clinic suggests that the current reporting on the dead “reflects
and reinforces a widespread assumption and misunderstanding that
all “militants” are legitimate targets for the use of lethal
force.”
In a press release, Naureen Shah of Columbia Law School,
said “These are good faith efforts to count civilian deaths,”
but the failure to provide accurate numbers “may provide false
assurance to the public and policymakers that drone strikes do not
harm civilians.” She added that “it’s the U.S. government that owes
the public an accounting of who is being killed, especially as it
continues expanding secret drone operations in new places around
the world.”
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