US Afghan drone strike kills at least 39 farm laborers

(Sept 19) A US drone strike whose intended target was an ISIS hideout in Afghanistan instead killed at least 30 farm laborers resting after their day of labor in the Khogyani district of Nangarhar province.

The attack

The attack also wounded 40 peope after mistakenly targeting farmers and laborers who were just finished a day's work collecting pine nuts in the mountainous Wazir Tangi in the eastern part of Nangarhar proviince. Tribal elder Malik Gul said: "The workers had lit a bonfire and were sitting together when a drone targeted them.” Pine nuts are eaten in many parts of the world and are described by Wikipedia: "Pine nuts, also called piñón (Spanish: [piˈɲon]) or pinoli (Italian: [piˈnɔːli]), sometimes called pignoli in the US, are the edible seeds of pines (family Pinaceae, genus Pinus). About 20 species of pine produce seeds large enough to be worth harvesting; in other pines, the seeds are also edible, but are too small to be of notable value as a human food."

The owner of the pine nut property said about 150 workers were there harvesting. He said that as well as those confirmed dead or wounded some were still missing. A survivor of the strike said about 200 laborers were sleeping in five tents pitched near the far when the attack took place. Juma Gul who had traveled with the laborers said: “Some of us managed to escape, some were injured but many were killed.”

Some reports give different casualty figures: "Attaullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the provincial governor of Nangarhar confirmed the air strike. “The government is investigating the incident, so far nine bodies were collected from the attack site near a pine nut field.”"

Some angry residents of Nangarhar province demanded an apology as well as monetary compensation from the US for the attack. Javed Mansur, of Jalalabad city said: that such mistakes cannot be justified. American forces must realize that they will never win the war by killing innocent civilians.

Some sources do not report on civilian casualties

Although both the Afghan Defense Ministry and a senior US official in Kabul the capital confirmed the drone strike they did not share any details about civilian deaths. Colonel Sonny Leggett, a spokesperson for the US forces in Afghanistan said:“U.S. forces conducted a drone strike against Da’esh (IS) terrorists in Nangarhar. We are aware of allegations of the death of non-combatants and are working with local officials to determine the facts.” Afghan and US officials are often reluctant to report civilian casualties and sometimes even deny reports of their happening.

ISIS in Afghanistan

ISIS forces appeared in Afghanistan in 2014 and since have made inroads in both the east and the north. They are battling not only US and Afghan forces but also the Taliban. The exact number of fighters in not known and groups often switch allegiance. The US military puts the number at about 2,000. ISIS has released no announcement about the US attack.

The collapse of peace talks and renewed fighting

Even though both sides had been carrying out attacks during the peace talks an agreement in principle had been reached. Nevertheless Trump rejected the agreement and called off the talks partly because a Taliban attack had killed a US soldier. Since then both sides have increased their attacks in the 18 year old conflict.

The UN claims that in just six months this year nearly 4,000 civilians have been killed or wounded. This included a large increase in casualties caused by the Afghan and US forces.

Cases of hitting the wrong targets not uncommon

In the past there have been many cases where wrong targets were hit as in this example back in March: " For the second time in a few days, an Afghan Army base was destroyed on Wednesday — but this time by American airstrikes that followed a firefight between the Afghans and Americans, Afghan officials said.A local Afghan official said six soldiers were killed and nine others badly wounded, out of 17 soldiers at the base. Qais Mangal, a spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, confirmed that the airstrikes had taken place after another Afghan unit attacked a joint convoy of Afghan Special Forces and American troops. He put the death toll at five soldiers, with 10 wounded."

Another incident happened in June.

Previously published in the Digital Journal

Former drone pilots speak out against US drone program

According to human rights attorney, Jesselyn Radack, the U.S. government has tried to silence four former drone pilots who are now critics of the drone program.

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Radack claims the U.S. government tried to silence them through threats of criminal prosecution and also attempts to intimidate some family members.The four former pilots are Michael Haas , Brandon Bryant, Cian Westmoreland and Stephen Lewis. The four have written an open letter to President Obama, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and CIA Director John Brennan: They all claim the drone attacks are unconstitutional, and engender further hatred for the United States: We are former Air Force service members. We joined the Air Force to protect American lives and to protect our Constitution. We came to the realization that the innocent civilians we were killing only fueled the feelings of hatred that ignited terrorism and groups like ISIS, while also serving as a fundamental recruitment tool similar to Guantanamo Bay. This administration and its predecessors have built a drone program that is one of the most devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilization around the world.Some details of the drone program and pilot experiences are covered in the appended video Drone.

Michael Haas said the culture of the program emphasized and encouraged the dehumanization of those targeted. Haas said he took refuge in alcohol and drug abuse, a common occurrence he claimed among drone pilots. Haas took part in the mission that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen. Haas considered in doing so, even if he was a traitor and deserved to die, was a violation of his oath to uphold the U.S. constitution:“We were told that al-Awlaki deserved to die, he deserved to be killed as a traitor, but article 3 of section 2 of the U.S. Constitution states that even a traitor deserves a fair trial in front of a jury of his peers."

Haas said you were made to think of killing the targets as like stepping on ants. The people are just black blobs on a screen. This made it easier to do the job. You had to ignore any inner voices saying what you were doing was not right.

Bryan Brant recalls his first shot. He guided in a F-16 fighter aircraft to kill three individuals said to be reinforcements coming to help the Taliban. However, when he saw the targets, their body motions indicated they were terrified, and were gesturing wildly, suggesting to Bryant they were not trained fighters but likely individuals trying to escape the battle. In another instance he watched what was supposedly a group with a camel carrying weapons to the Taliban. He saw no evidence of weapons. After the group settled down for the night they were all killed with a Hellfire missile. Bryant noticed that there were no secondary explosions suggesting that there had been no weapons or at least ammunition with them.

When a pilot leaves the service they are given an envelope with a sort of report card in it showing the number of killings the pilot played some part in. When Bryant was discharged honourably in 2011 the number on his card was 1626. Haas did not open his card. There are interviews with some of the pilots on Democracy Now.

In US drone signature strikes targets often unknown

"Signature strikes" are drone attacks based solely on a target's behaviour with the identity of the target not known. Sometimes such an attack may hit a high value target but at other times they may kill innocent civilians.

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On June 9, the United States launched a drone strike that killed Nasir al-Wuhayshi, a high-ranking leader in the Islamic militant group al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). However, the leader was not the target as the attack was a signature strike carried out on the basis of activities observed thought to be by militants. While Obama often claims drone attacks are employed against high-value targets and only when it is virtually certain that no civilians are present, this is not the case with signature strikes. These strikes are made on the basis of behaviour patterns that observers associate with militant activity.In assessing who was killed the Pentagon counts all males of military age killed as militants. As a New York Times report indicates:"Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: People in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good." Often targets are decided on the basis of activity monitored on cell phones.

Drone strikes began during the George W. Bush administration — 51 drone strikes were launched in Pakistan during the eight years Bush was in power, killing between 410 and 595 people. When Obama became president attacks happened in much greater numbers, not only in Pakistan, but other countries as well. So far Obama has launched 419 strikes in Pakistan alone. Deaths from Obama drone strikes have been over 4,500 in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia since 2009.

There are a number of cases where drone attacks have misidentified targets, mistaking a funeral procession for a militant convoy for example. In other cases those killed are simply collateral damage:One example is 16-year-old U.S. citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki (son of Islamic militant preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, also a US citizen killed in a US drone strike) in 2011. Then-Attorney General Eric Holder said Abdulrahman was not ''specifically targeted.'' Another is Mohammed Tuaiman, a 13-year-old Yemeni boy who was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen last February. Drones had killed his brother and father beforehand.

Newsweek has a useful chart detailing drone strikes in different countries.

Of late the number of drone strikes in Pakistan has been sharply reduced with none in the last month. This may be because the Pakistani armed forces are on an offensive in areas that were often subject to drone attacks. The U.S. often complained that the Pakistani armed forces needed to be more active and drone attacks were in part a substitute for ground action. In other areas such as Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia the number of drone attacks is increasing:American drone strikes killed hundreds of people in Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia in July, according to a report by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a London-based nonprofit. The TBIJ produces monthly reports about highly secretive U.S. drone operations around the globe as part of its goal to provide the public “with the knowledge and facts about the way in which important institutions in our society operate, so that they can be fully informed citizens.”

Recent attacks show a different function for the drone strikes. Patrick Barnes a spokesperson for the US Africa Command said that the strikes were "in defense of the African Union forces in Somalia who were under imminent threat of attacks":The Los Angeles Times reports that the influx of strikes indicates a shift in U.S. policy toward directly aiding African peacekeepers in their fight against the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Shabab. “Up until now, we’ve focused strikes on high-value targets,” an unnamed U.S. military official told the Times. “These strikes were launched to defend forces on the ground.”

The official story claims that drone strikes are precise, and based upon reliable intelligence gathered by increasingly sophisticated and high-tech methods. However, the use of drones is not only being extended to signature strikes but also to defensive and support actions of the type that are also carried out by conventional bombing and attack aircraft. The number of civilians who die as collateral damage in these actions is bound to be large. The idea that these high-tech operations are precise is mostly market hype: Futuristic, high-tech militarism is not as "clean" nor "precise" as it is marketed. Drone strikes, particularly signature strikes, are very imprecise, kill thousands of people, and inflict serious harm, suffering and injury. What this new form of militarism does do, however, is maintain the US's permanent war machine in a new form. The US's goals of global hegemony and full-spectrum dominance remain the same. This latest military-technical revolution is simply another - more sophisticated and less visible - way of achieving it.

US launches 500th drone attack

As Micah Zenko noted in an article in 2012, November 3 that year marked the tenth anniversary of the first drone attack by the US. No one took notice. The same will apply to the 500th confirmed US drone attack today outside of combat zones.

In his 2012 article Zenko called the drone strikes America's Third War. Micah Zenko is the Douglas Dillon fellow in the Center for Preventive Action (CPA) at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He has worked previously at Harvard and the Brookings Institution. Targeted killings were originally directed supposedly at a small number of key terrorist leaders thought to be an imminent threat to the US. Now the attacks barely merit a mention in the press. As Zenko puts it in his 2012 article: What was once considered an immediate response to an exceptional threat to the United States is now a permanent and institutionalized feature of U.S. foreign policy. Perhaps by November 3, 2022, policymakers and the American people will have noticed.
 Certainly in November 2014 Zenko is one of the few who have noted that a recent drone strike in Pakistan was the 500th such attack. The attack destroyed a house in Mada Khei a village in North Waziristan. The attack reportedly killed six people and wounded three others. All six who were killed were said to be suspects but none were identified. The reports were from a security official in the area.
 The Pakistan military has been carrying out an offensive in the area and claims to have killed about 1,200 militants. Before the offensive the population of the area about a million people were told to leave their homes, creating a huge flood of displaced people.
In the final years of the Bush administration there were just a few attacks each year. However, since Obama came to power attacks have increased in number and been extended to both Yemen and Somalia. In all, the 500 attacks are estimated to have killed 3,674 people but only 473 are listed as confirmed civilian casualties with the rest usually never identified but classified as "suspects". The 500th strike was reportedly also the 21st strike of this year in Pakistan. The Pakistan government constantly complains about the strikes but does nothing to stop them. Of the 500 drone strikes 50 were authorized by president George W. Bush and the other 450 by the Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama.