Number of U.S. drone strike victims in Pakistan: 2,500–4000. Number of Fair Trials: 0
Key Points
- Since 2004, Bush and Obama have approved at least 421 reported drone strikes in Pakistan, resulting in between 2,489 and 3,989 deaths
- It is estimated that at least 10% (and up to 38%) of the victims were civilian.
- When targeting militants, drone strikes often targeted low-profile figures. that some human rights organizations doubt were an “…imminent threat to US safety”?
- In 2015, a US drone strike reportedly killed non-militant civilians from NATO countries
Data used in this article is an independent analysis of data collected by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism for their research on Covert Drone War.
Note: Silk has been discontinued as of Dec. 15th 2017 so links are broken and visualizations are static. Will replace them asap.
The United States is using unmanned air vehicles, remotely controlled from US military bases, to carry out targeted killings in Pakistan. President Obama termed these operations, covertly carried out by the CIA, as “lethal, targeted action against al Qaeda and its associated forces”.
But Pakistan sees the 421 US strikes as an intervention in a country’s affairs. A country with which the United States aren’t officially at war. As such, the legal status of these actions is unclear. They were defined as human rights violations and illegal “criminal offenses” by a Pakistan court, and the Pakistani Foreign Ministry referred to CIA’s drone attacks as “illegal, counterproductive, in contravention of international law and a violation of Pakistani sovereignty”.
Pakistan is not alone in complaining about the drone strikes. For years, both the UN and major American civil rights organizations have been demanding greater transparency about the ongoing practice of targeted killings. CIA’s leadership role in the drone strikes implies that these episodes are covert and surrounded by secrecy. There is no complete, exact and independent data to evaluate these practices fully. This makes it hard to know how they are being carried out, against who, and what the amount of civilian ‘collateral damage’ is.
While there is no official, complete, and independent record of civilian deaths, the Bureau of investigative Journalism is researching the victims of the strikes. In this resource, we’ve incorporated their data from the project “Naming the Death”. In the following analysis, we will try to use data to shed light on this issue,
June 17, 2004, 9:45 PM. A US drone silently hovers over Wana, in South Waziristan. Missiles are dropped, hitting a domestic building and causing the death of at least six people, including at least two children. Among the victims is the target of the attack: Nek Mohammed, a local Taliban commander. In short, this is the (known) beginning of US covert operations in Pakistan, which frequently assumes the form of targeted killings through drone strikes.
This was still the Bush era. More than 11 years have passed from that first strike, Obama succeeded Bush, and the strikes continue. This decade the number of US targeted killing operations in Pakistani soil has raised to over 420, killing between 2,489 and 3,989 individuals — according to the data collected by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
Median reported injured and median people killed in drone strikes
At the very least, one of every ten drone strike victim has been civilian
US Drone strikes are often depicted as precise, surgical targeted killings of terrorists. Back in 2011, as criticism of this practice grew, CIA’s Director John Brennan denied that there had been any “collateral [civilian] death” since 2010. According to BIJ’s investigation, there had been at least 45.
Civilian victims of drone strikes by month
After proof of multiple drone strikes that killed civilians and children and longstanding calls for transparency on the topic, President Obama held the first speech in history publicly discussing CIA’a drone operations. He recognized the presence of limited civilian casualties. But again, the rhetoric around the use of drones portraits the operations as extremely precise:
“The use of drones is heavily constrained. […] America does not take strikes to punish individuals — we act against terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people, and when there are no other governments capable of effectively addressing the threat. And before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured.” (Obama, The Future of our Fight against Terrorism, May 2013)
The BIJ’s data contradicts this statement. Among the 420 drone strikes, in 76–135 cases there has been at least one civilian casualty. Between 6 and 23 strikes had ten or more civilian casualties. These numbers include the three disastrous strikes by Bush (B6) and Obama (Ob21 and Ob202), with respectively 80–82, 18–50, and 19–41 civilian casualties. Obama’s 202 strike is of the most controversial of the presidency, and it occurred in March 2011. A period in which, according to Brennan, there had been no ‘collateral damage’.
The 202nd strike ordered by President Obama has been called an example of something called: ‘signature strike’. In a signature strike, “the CIA or the military makes the decision to fire based not on who the targets are but on whether they are exhibiting suspicious patterns of behavior thought to be ‘signatures’ of terrorists”. In this case, what made the local elders such an ‘imminent threat’ to American safety (to the point of justifying an authorized US drone strike), is a local assembly already monitored also by the presence of Pakistani police.
According to BIJ’s estimates, the 421 drone strikes caused between 423 and 965 civilian casualties, out of the overall 2,489–3,989 individuals killed. Depending on the total and civilian death toll ranges considered, these numbers suggest that civilians have been at the very least 10% of the drone strike victims (and up to 38%).
Civilian victims of drone strikes by year
Of these thousands of victims, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has given a name to 731, in their “Naming the Death” database. Here, about 45% of the total are reported civilians. More than those allegedly militants.
Rate of Casualties from Drone Strikes Lower During the Bush Era
Overall, the casualty rate has indeed been lower in the Bush Era than during the Obama administration, especially in terms of civilian deaths.
Civilian victims of drone strikes in 2009
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism also reported the presence of controversial tactics deployed during drone attacks, like following a drone strike with a second attack targeting rescuers, or targeting funerals where prayers are mourning the dead victims of a previous drone strikes. The following table shows 24 drone strikes targeting rescuers. As the BIJ notes, one of these strikes (Ob49) took place just a week after Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.
Drone Strikes with “rescuers” in the summary. Filtered for 2009
When targeting militants, drone strikes often targeted low-profile figures that likely are not an “…imminent threat to US safety”?
Another controversial issue in the legal justification of drone strikes comes from the targeted killing of low profile Islamic militants. The drone strikes appear to target not only senior Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, but also “low-level fighters whose identities may not be known”.
Research is still underway, and there is information only for a limited number of victims. At the moment, however, out of the 731 entries in the database, only 20 are explicitly classified as Senior militants.
This data is only partial, as for most of the military rank is not known yet. At the same time, the fact that the BIJ is not able to yet assess the rank of these militants makes it hard to believe that they are the major al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders the CIA depicts as the main target of their strikes against “imminent threats” to US safety.
Granted, strikes on senior leaders will often impact less senior leaders surrounding them. But the wide disparity highlighted by the BIJ calls into question the “surgical” nature of the targeting.
For the first time this year, a drone strike reportedly killed non-militant civilians from NATO countries.
Pakistani citizens primarily were killed in American drone strikes in Pakistan. Of the 731 named victims identified by BIJ, 328 are civilians. And of these, 212 are locals from Pakistan.
Number of Victims with Reported Civilians, grouped by Nationality
But this year, for the first time since the beginning of the strikes in 2004, we know that drone strikes inadvertently killed citizens of NATO countries as well.
Drone strike data: a question of government accountability and transparency
This year is the anniversary of the first drone strike in Pakistan. After a pause of six months — the longest ever since the beginning of these actions — the strikes have resumed in June. The US government still refuses any independent non-governmental oversight or review of past strikes or the decision-making process. US drone strikes have been criticized by journalists, politicians, academics, human rights organizations and even the United Nations. The latter also expressed concerns over the credibility of the ‘collateral damage’ estimates offered by the US government. We will continue to update in 2016 and look forward to more data on the matter.
This article is part of Silk’s project on drone strikes: an independently crafted interactive database to generate visualizations from BIJ’s drone strikes data. Follow the project to receive updates and explore more data.
