“Unless details are provided on specific incidents, it’s not possible to determine if individuals killed were civilians, and thus whether the U.S.is complying with its own policy and with worldwide law”, she said.
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DNI only released aggregate figures, excluding when or where the attacks occurred.
“But the fact is, these operations that will be the substance of an announcement today, are the kinds of operations that just a couple of years ago we wouldn’t even confirm existed”, he said.
Watchdog and rights groups have long claimed that the U.S. administration does not know how many civilians it has killed and does not do enough to prevent civilian casualties when carrying out counterterrorism operations.
However, the figures, which covered strikes from the day Obama took office in January 2009 through December 31 last year, were below even the most conservative estimates by non-governmental organizations that spent years tallying U.S. strikes in countries such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
“We acknowledge these assessments may be imperfect”, said a senior administration official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.
President Barack Obama also issued an executive order asking agencies to “maintain and promote best practices that reduce the likelihood of civilian casualties, take appropriate steps when such casualties occur, and draw lessons from our operations to further enhance the protection of civilians”.
“This is a fraction of the 380 to 801 civilian casualty range recorded by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism from reports by local and global journalists, [nongovernmental organization] investigators, leaked government documents, court papers, and the result of field investigations”, the group said. And it provides no detail on when or where those strikes happened.
The official total is lower than the estimates of outside groups, which have ranged from around 200 to more than 1,000.
“This is a powerful tool, one that has been used to great effect and one that has made Americans safer”, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said of the strikes. The administration makes assessments based on drone video, electronic intercepts of communications, intelligence sources on the ground, foreign governments, and public information such as media reports and reports from non-governmental organisations, the official said.
Obama’s executive order codifies standards put into place in May 2013 through a still-secret document called Presidential Policy Guidelines. They included a “near certainty” that “the terrorist target is present” and that “non-combatants will not be injured or killed”.
The count was disclosed as part of Obama’s efforts to elucidate government’s controversial military tactics during “terror” times.
The executive order the president signed Friday directs future administrations to release annual numbers by May 1 of the next year.
This year, the military began publicly acknowledging drone strikes on al-Qaida targets in Yemen, a step that the Pentagon had refused to take in previous years largely out of concern that identifying its own operations, while the administration remained silent on others, would indirectly expose those carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency.
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The US also says that it killed about 2,500 enemy militants in those same non-combat zones. They said they believe a USA drone was behind the attack, though it was not immediately possible to verify their account.
