![]() ![]() Twenty-one were children – 10 of them under five. His first strike was a catastrophe: commanders thought they were targeting al Qaeda but instead hit a tribe with cluster munitions, killing 55 people. Obama also began an air campaign targeting Yemen. Pakistan strikes have since fallen with just three conducted in the country last year. Strikes in the country peaked in 2010, with 128 CIA drone attacks and at least 89 civilians killed, at the same time US troop numbers surged in Afghanistan. The 54 strikes in 2009 all took place in Pakistan. However in the year after taking office, Obama ordered more drone strikes than Bush did during his entire presidency. The pace of attacks had accelerated in the second half of 2008 at the end of Bush’s term, after four years pocked by occasional strikes. Pakistan was the hub of drone operations during Obama’s first term. We did not start collecting data on Afghanistan until 2015. The Bureau recorded 65 to 105 civilian deaths during this period. ![]() The country has since come under frequent US bombardment, in an unreported war that saw 1,337 weapons dropped last year alone – a 40% rise on 2015.Īfghan civilian casualties have been high, with the United Nations (UN) reporting at least 85 deaths in 2016. That figure does not include deaths in active battlefields including Afghanistan – where US air attacks have shot up since Obama withdrew the majority of his troops at the end of 2014. However the US’s estimate of the number of civilians killed – between 64 and 116 – contrasted strongly with the number recorded by the Bureau, which at 380 to 801 was six times higher. The White House released long-awaited figures last July on the number of people killed in drone strikes between January 2009 and the end of 2015, an announcement which insiders said was a direct response to pressure from the Bureau and other organisations that collect data. This claim has been contested by numerous human rights groups, however, and the Bureau’s figures on civilian casualties also demonstrate that this is often not the case. The Obama administration has insisted that drone strikes are so “exceptionally surgical and precise” that they pluck off terror suspects while not putting “innocent men, women and children in danger”. But the targeted killing programme has drawn much criticism. The use of drones aligned with Obama’s ambition to keep up the war against al Qaeda while extricating the US military from intractable, costly ground wars in the Middle East and Asia. Between 384 and 807 civilians were killed in those countries, according to reports logged by the Bureau. A total of 563 strikes, largely by drones, targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during Obama’s two terms, compared to 57 strikes under Bush. Obama embraced the US drone programme, overseeing more strikes in his first year than Bush carried out during his entire presidency. There were ten times more air strikes in the covert war on terror during President Barack Obama’s presidency than under his predecessor, George W. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |