The Guardian notes that the White House’s numbers omit civilian deaths from strikes in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq, and the report fails to specify where many of these strikes occurred.
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The report, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Friday, aimed to provide more transpaency on the use of drones around the world.
USA strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are not taken into account as they take place in what the US terms “areas of active hostilities”.
Reprieve, an worldwide human rights organisation, said the United States government’s previous statements about the drone programme have proven to be false by its own internal documents. It says the government should include “credible reporting” by non-government groups when it reviews strikes to determine if civilians were killed.
Although this report is a decent start, the misleading numbers demonstrate the administration’s unwillingness to take full responsibility for the damage the strikes have caused.
There’s interest from Congress to pass a law requiring those reports, ensuring that no president can ever again run its drone program with so much secrecy.
In releasing the report, the Obama administration acknowledged the lack of a clear answer on how many civilians have died as a result of its drone strikes.
President Obama also issued an executive order Friday afternoon that makes protecting civilians a more integral part of planning USA military operations.
Gibson spoke of 14-year-old Faheem Qureshi, who she said was severely injured in Obama’s first drone strike, and nine-year old Nabila Rehman, who traveled to the U.S.in 2013 to seek answers about an attack in Pakistan that killed her grandmother.
The report does not say where those strikes took place, or how many casualties were from each geographical region.
Recent announcements by USA defence officials have revealed strikes on the Taliban in Pakistan, Isis in Libya and al-Shabaab in Somalia.
Still, at least some are hopeful this report will trigger more transparency, and responsibility, by the USA government.
“The Government continues to hide the identities of people it has killed, the specific definitions it uses to decide who can legitimately be targeted, and its investigations into credibly alleged wrongful killings”.
The order also makes civilian protection a priority. “The U.S. government may have reliable information that certain individuals are combatants, but are being counted as non-combatants by non-governmental organizations”, it reads.
Strikes in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan were not included in these newly released numbers, as the Department of Defense has its own procedures for releasing such information in active US war zones, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Friday, shortly before the information’s release.
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“The president believes that our counter-terrorism strategy is more effective and has more credibility when we’re as transparent as possible.There are obviously limitations for transparency when it comes to matters as sensitive as this”.
