Even the most conservative estimates by non-governmental organizations that have spent years tallying US strikes in these countries are higher than the ones acknowledged by the administration. “The government continues to hide the identities of people it has killed, the precise definitions it uses to decide who can legitimately be targeted, and its investigations into credibly alleged wrongful killings”, said the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, Hina Shamsi.
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The 164 figure also conflicts with estimates of independent groups, who believe that anywhere from 200 to 1,000-plus civilians have died. Obama, who ramped up drone warfare after taking office, has ordered Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Department air attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and Somalia and possibly other locations.
The current administration of the United States of America admitted in a statement that it unintentionally killed between 64 and 166 civilians in the period between 2009 and the end of 2015.
The strikes took place in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and Libya targeting terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and its global affiliates.
“Civilian casualties are a tragic and at times unavoidable effect of the use of force in situations of armed conflict”, the order said. “The assessed range of non-combatant deaths includes deaths for which there is an insufficient basis for assessing that the deceased is a combatant”.
Friday’s disclosure was the administration’s first public assessment of the number of civilians killed in these types of operations.
While sketchy details often emerge about individual drone strikes, the full scope of the US drone program – a key tool of Obama’s counterterrorism strategy – has always been shrouded from view.
“So long as the public is examining these casualties in the dark, with these little bitty flashlights, we are never going to understand the depth and breadth of this lethal program”, Tayler said, adding that the administration’s claim of fewer than 100 civilian casualties is “highly questionable”.
Up till Friday, the US government had kept nearly all information relevant to its drone attacks classified, including the civilian casualties. A White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, said that US President considers that counterterrorism strategies can show better results if government’s agencies are as transparent as possible, even if it is quite hard to be transparent when referring to such sensitive issues.
Obama’s executive order requires that government numbers of civilian deaths include reporting from independent groups.
Future presidents, meanwhile, will be free to reverse the executive order. They also exclude casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
Still, the report released by the Obama administration provides a less-than-complete picture of how the U.S. military uses drones. US agencies are also now required to act in a uniform manner to avoid civilian casualties.
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“This is something that we’ve been working on for 10 years”, he said.
