Long War Failure: Drone Strikes

[Rune]

[h=1]This time Britain must resist colluding in US drone terrorDonald Trump is threatening to bring back the drone strikes that brought terror to the country for more than a decade. In doing this he is gambling with the lives of innocent people as diplomatic bargaining chips to punish the Pakistan government. Our prime minister should refuse to play any part.[/h]

Analysis by the human rights charity Reprieve and its partner organisation, Foundation for Fundamental Rights, in Pakistan, found that on average it takes the US three attempts to kill an intended target; and in at least two-thirds of strikes, the missiles hit the wrong place and kill the wrong people. Drones may be precise, but it appears that they are precisely killing innocent people. Many civilians have lost their lives in the attempts by the US to assassinate terrorists: for example, in attempts to eliminate the current head of al-Qaida, 76 children and 29 adults have been killed; in attempts to take out four men in Pakistan, 221 people, including 103 children, have been killed – three of those targets are still alive, and the fourth died of hepatitis


It will take strength to untangle our involvement in America’s unlawful drone programme. But untangle ourselves we must. Far from being an effective tool in the “war on terror”, the use of drones outside areas of armed conflict devastates communities and fuels recruitment of the very terrorists the drones are meant to target. Terrorist organisations capitalise on the fear of drones and the resentment caused by the countless civilians killed by this “precise” technology.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/30/drones-britain-colluding-us-terror-trump-theresa-may-pakistan

 

[Rune]

41 men targeted but 1,147 people killed: US drone strikes – the facts on the ground


New analysis of data conducted by human rights group Reprieve shared with the Guardian, raises questions about accuracy of intelligence guiding ‘precise’ strikes











‘Drone strikes have been sold to the American public on the claim that they’re ‘precise.’ But they are only as precise as the intelligence that feeds them.’ Photograph: Khaled Abdullah/Reuters


The drones came for Ayman Zawahiri on 13 January 2006, hovering over a village in Pakistan called Damadola. Ten months later, they came again for the man who would become al-Qaida’s leader, this time in Bajaur.

Eight years later, Zawahiri is still alive. Seventy-six children and 29 adults, according to reports after the two strikes, are not.
However many Americans know who Zawahiri is, far fewer are familiar with Qari Hussain. Hussain was a deputy commander of the Pakistani Taliban, a militant group aligned with al-Qaida that trained the would-be Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, before his unsuccessful 2010 attack. The drones first came for Hussain years before, on 29 January 2008. Then they came on 23 June 2009, 15 January 2010, 2 October 2010 and 7 October 2010.
Finally, on 15 October 2010, Hellfire missiles fired from a Predator or Reaper drone killed Hussain, the Pakistani Taliban later confirmed. For the death of a man whom practically no American can name, the US killed 128 people, 13 of them children, none of whom it meant to harm.




















































































































A new analysis of the data available to the public about drone strikes, conducted by the human-rights group Reprieve, indicates that even when operators target specific individuals – the most focused effort of what Barack Obama calls “targeted killing” – they kill vastly more people than their targets, often needing to strike multiple times. Attempts to kill 41 men resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1,147 people, as of 24 November.

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