24/01/2014 09:26
Obama's drone campaign: more than 2,400 people killed in five years
US drone attacks against terrorists in Pakistan in 2009 also killed civilians. But in spite of this the Obama administration has stepped up the use of drones. Since Obama’s inauguration in 2009, the CIA has launched 330 strikes on Pakistan. His predecessor, President George Bush, conducted 51 strikes in four years. In Yemen Obama has opened a new front in the secret drone war. Across Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, the Obama administration has launched more than 390 drone strikes. These strikes have killed more than 2,400 people, at least 273 of them reportedly civilians, the Voice of Russia said.
Although drone strikes during Obama’s presidency have killed almost six times as many people as were killed under Bush, the casualty rate – the number of people killed on average in each strike – has dropped from eight to six under Obama. The decline in casualties could be explained by reported improvements in drone and missile technology, rising tensions between Pakistan and the US over the drone campaign and greater scrutiny of the covert drone campaign.
While US drone campaigns continued killing people Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The US Joint Special Operations Command have used various weapons including drones and conventional jets as well as cruise missiles against al-Qaeda militants.
However, in recent years drones have come to dominate Obama’s war in Yemen and Pakistan. The escalation in the drone war was not much in the news. It took Obama three years to publicly mention the use of drones. He said that drones did not cause a huge number of civilian casualties, for the most part they were precision strikes against al-Qaeda and affiliates.
Still, a letter written by Attorney General Eric Holder and leaked to the NBC reads that drones killed four US citizens living abroad.
In April 2013 a leaked Department of Justice memo outlined the administration’s legal justification for such killings: the US has the right to kill US citizens if they pose an imminent threat.
The following month Barack Obama made a major policy speech in which he codified the rules his administration must follow as it selects targets for drone strikes and special forces teams.
The rules also meant to constrain the use of drones. Obama said that the US only carries out such attacks against individuals who pose a continuing and imminent threat to US citizens, not to punish individuals.
However, Bureau analysis shows that more people were killed in Pakistan and Yemen in the six months after the speech than the six months before and the casualty rate also rose over the same period.