THE US REMOTE KILLING OF PEOPLE INCLUDING CHILDREN IN MUSLIM COUNTRIES

by Syarif Hidayat*

In regions of IRAQ, Afghanistan, Pakistan, YEMEN AND SOMALIA – ALL ARE MUSLIM COUNTRIES, children are having to live with the fear that they could be killed at any point in time while they are sleeping or playing by unmanned drones patrolling the sky.

 Drones are unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). They are aircraft which are either controlled by pilots on the ground, often thousands of miles away from the action,  or  are programmed to function autonomously without any direct human control. Drones can be  used for reconnaisance and surveillance or to drop missiles and bombs.

 The use of drones for reconnaissance took off during the Vietnam war but it was the 1980s which saw a significant development in their military use.  The Predator RQ-1L, made by General Atomics was deployed in the Balkans in 1995, in Iraq in 1996 and Afghanistan from 2001.  This was followed by the development of the Reaper, (also known as Predator B) which became operational in 2007.

MQ-9 Reaper Hunter/Killer UAV

 The drones used in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq are controlled from Creech Air Force Base in Nevada which is home to the 432d Wing pilots who fly the MQ-1B Predator and MQ-9 Reaper aircraft in support of US and  Coalition troops.

 The drones are used for three main purposes: to support ground troops under attack by launching missiles and bombs from the air; giving a 24 hr a day surveillance of the ground and observing the ‘pattern of life’; to conduct targetted killings.

 The CIA also, reportedly, controls a fleet of drones from its headquarters in Langley, Virginia, in coordination with pilots near hidden airfields in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The drones are reportedly flown by civilians, including both intelligence officers and private contractors (often retired military personal) and the list of targets approved by senior Government personnel, although the criteria for inclusion and all other aspects of the program are unknown. The CIA is not required to identify its target by name; rather, targeting decisions may be based on surveillance and “pattern of life” assessments.

Robotic killing

 Drones are increasing the remote and robotic nature of modern hi-tech warfare. They are encouraging a ‘Playstation Mentality’ amongst the troops where killing is simply watching the movement of figures or vehicles on the ground, pushing a button and seeing them engulfed in an explosion plume.  There is a huge margin of error, often because of faulty intelligence, and civilian casualties are mounting.

 According to Pakistan body count, 2867 people have been killed or injured by drones in Pakistan alone, with a 2.5% success rate against Al-Qaida. Figures for Afganistan and Iraq are unknown.  There is also no measure for the terror and psychological damage being done to the millions of children and adults who are in the constant sights of these unmanned systems.

The Weapons

 The MQ-9 Reaper carries a variety of weapons including the GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided bomb, the AGM-114 Hellfire II air-to-ground missiles (including the Thermobaric version AGM- 114N), the AIM-9 Sidewinder and recently, the GBU-38 JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) Testing is underway to support the operation of the AIM-92 Stinger air-to-air missile. The Reaper can remain for 14 – 16 hours in the air.

UK use of drones

 The Royal Air Force operates General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper, carrying GBU-12 Paveway 11 precision guided bimbs and AGM-14 Hellfire air to surface missiles. The Government is refusing to disclose how many of the 84 Hellfire missiles launched from Reaper drones have been the AGM-14N (thermobaric) missiles.

•  There have now been over 190 drone strikes in Afghanistan by British Reaper crews
•  Hellfire missiles are three times more likely to be uses than the 500lb bomb

Watch keeper

 The  WK450 Watchkeeper UAV is a collaboration between Thales UK and  Elbit. It will be deployed to Afghanistan in2012.It is currently unarmed but this could change at a later date. In the meantime it will be used by the Royal Artillery along with a ‘loitering munition’ prowler bomb- a bomb which is fired up into the sky where it can loiter for up to ten hours until it is given the signal to plunge.

 Thales UK provides interim tactical UAV services using unarmed Hermes 450s leased from the Israeli firm Elbit.

THE DRONES OPERATION IS NOT CLEAN AND NOR PRECISE

 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 in Libya. But she could, if you ignore the comment about wooden coffins, be writing about any recent war the West has embroiled itself in. Bosnia, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan. All subject to fierce media scrutiny.

 This scrutiny is a problem for any developed nation pursuing war. Keeping the public on the government’s side is as important, in many respects, as supplying the troops on the ground. To this end, governments maintain powerful PR operations during wartime and beyond.

 Journalists are embedded and vetted. Press conferences carefully regulated. There are very few photos of US body bags coming home. War is presented, where possible, as one where the enemy is quickly routed and ‘our’ troops are kept alive, healthy and well-fed.

 So ideal is this image that warfare itself is being molded to adhere to it. And drone warfare has rapidly become the poster child for this type of fighting.

 Drone strikes are largely not televised, as they happen in areas no film crew given western ‘credibility’ operates. No US soldiers are killed. It is ‘clean, precise and targeted’. And, compared to having actual soldiers on the ground, it is comparatively cheap too.

Ideal, really.

 So ideal that the President of the US can even use drones in a joke about defending the honour of his daughter.

 But it is too easy to accept this idealised image. The Bureau’s research, the result of many months of persistent analysis, lays bare the reality of the drone war.

 Drone strikes are not discriminating. They kill children. They injure civilians. And they are on the increase.

This warfare is not clean. It is not precise. 

 Naturally, the evidence we have gathered will attract criticism as well as coverage. The PR machine of government might dismiss it or ignore it completely. When detractors engage, they will likely say one of three things. That our facts are reported elsewhere; they aren’t ‘new’. That our methodology is flawed. And that we act as biased apologists for militants in Pakistan.

 In one sense, this data is not new. It is taken from a wide range of credible and existing sources. What is new is that we have taken it from a much wider range than some of the existing organisations that seek to cover this area. And we have done it with considerable resources.  We have followed up stories to see if figures rise or fall over time. We have recorded also civilians amongst the numbers.  And we have listed the numbers of injured. The other two major organisations that look at drone attacks have failed to do these things.

 Our transparent methodological approach, open to peer review, is based on the same used by the widely-quoted organization Iraq Body Count. To dismiss ours is to dismiss the approach of many others.

 Finally, any criticism that we are somehow working ‘for the other side’ does not bear up to scrutiny. On occasion we have been more conservative on the number of civilian dead in single attacks, despite the international press reporting otherwise. We have also identified individuals previously reported as being civilians as actually having been militants.  And we have offered an open invitation to the US security forces to engage with us if they see something significantly wrong in our study. If they satisfactorily prove their case, we will amend our data.

 Most of all, though, we may well get the quotidian response – ‘Didn’t we know this already?’

 This sort of reaction to our story is dangerous. Wars today are won and lost as much in the battle for information as they are in numbers killed. The drone war is largely secretive and our study shows unequivocally that there are some serious questions to be asked. Numbers have to be collated in such an age.

 Clearly civilians and children are being killed. As such, one has to ask whether these drone attacks are radicalising those who have lost loved ones as much as they are ‘taking out’ militants.

 We show that they are not discriminating. As such, those forces involved in their use may well be in breach of the Geneva Conventions.

 And, importantly, we are providing an unbiased, independent and journalistic examination of a war.  A war that has hitherto been manipulated by governments, spun by thinktanks and often ignored by a media that– without pictures – finds it hard to report on the horrors of what is really unfolding in Pakistan.

U.S. New Drone Bases for African Shadow Wars

Washington is quietly setting up at least two new East African drone bases, plus one on the Arabian Peninsula, to support the expanding U.S. shadow war against Islamic militants in Somalia and Yemen. An apparently new facility has been built in Ethiopia. In the island nation of Seychelles, a defunct airfield is being reactivated. A third base is being set up in or near Yemen.

 The news, first reported by The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, should come as no surprise to close observers of America’s shadow war on the borders of the Indian Ocean. But the base expansion could be met with outrage by the people most directly affected, especially Africans themselves. For years, Washington has insisted that it wouldn’t build new bases in Africa.

 The new drone facilities are a small step for a Pentagon and CIA already heavily invested in the Indian Ocean region. While mercenaries and U.S. allies — “proxies” — do most of the fighting in Somalia and Yemen, American warships, aircraft and special operations forces also play an important role. U.S. Reaper or Predator drones have struck militants in Yemen at least six times total in 2010 and 2011. In Somalia, drones have attacked at least twice since 2007. U.S. forces have also hit Somalia’s al-Shabab Islamic group a total of six times, that we know of, using cruise missiles and Special Forces helicopters.

 The American base in the tiny country of Djibouti, north of Somalia, provides food and fuel to the warships and serves as a launching pad for the unmanned vehicles and choppers. The Djibouti base has been around since 2001. U.S. Special Forces operated from a small base in Kenya beginning “a few years” prior to 2007, according to military consultant Tom Barnett. American commandos also launched attacks from an unspecified Ethiopian location in early 2007. The Seychelles drone base was open for business in 2009 and 2010 before temporarily shutting down.

 Amid all this activity, Washington insisted it had no plans for new African bases. “I want to dispel the notion that all of a sudden America is, you know, bringing all kinds of military to Africa. It’s just simply not true,” then-President George W. Bush told reporters in Ghana in 2008. Bush was trying to reassure African audiences that the new U.S. Africa Command would not mean an expanded U.S. military presence in Africa. Africa Command kept its headquarters in Germany, but the U.S. presence expanded anyways — though many of the forces operate outside of Africa Command’s purview.

 For Washington, the rationale for new bases is clear. “We do not know enough about the leaders of the Al Qaeda affiliates in Africa,” a senior U.S. official told The Wall Street Journal. “Is there a guy out there saying, ‘I am the future of Al Qaeda’? Who is the next Osama bin Laden?” If finding and killing the next bin Laden means breaking a promise over African bases, the U.S. seems content with going back on its word. (Tx/HSH/E1)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)

*The Editor of Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)