US, Yemen Can't Agree On Responsibility For Drone Deaths
<
http://www.businessinsider.com/author/chris-woods> Chris Woods,
<
http://www.guardian.co.uk/> The Guardian | Sep. 7, 2012, 8:42 AM |
When news flashed of an air strike on a vehicle in the Yemeni city of Radaa
on Sunday afternoon, early claims that
<
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/09/02/uk-yemen-violence-idUKBRE88106O201
20902> al-Qaida militants had died soon gave way to a more grisly reality.
<
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-02/yemen-strike-on-vehicle-kills-11-c
ivilians-website-says.html> At least 10 civilians had been killed, among
them women and children. It was the worst loss of civilian life in Yemen's
brutal internal war
<
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012-05-16/yemen-al-qaeda-war/5504
7454/1> since May 2012. Somebody had messed up badly. But was the United
States or Yemen responsible?
Local officials and eyewitnesses were clear enough. The Radaa attack was the
work of a US drone – a common enough event. Since May 2011, the Bureau of
Investigative Journalism has recorded
<
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drone-data/> up to
116 US drone strikes in Yemen, part of a broader covert war aimed at
crushing Islamist militants. But of those attacks, only 39 have been
confirmed by officials as the work of the US.
The attribution of dozens of further possible drone attacks – and others
reportedly involving US ships and conventional aircraft – remains unclear.
<
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/26/world/middleeast/us-to-step-up-drone-stri
kes-inside-yemen.html> Both the CIA and Pentagon are fighting dirty wars in
Yemen, each with a separate arsenal and kill list. Little wonder that
hundreds of deaths remain in a limbo of accountability.
With anger rising at the death of civilians in Radaa, Yemen's government
stepped forward to take the blame. It claimed that its own air force had
carried out the strike on moving vehicles after receiving "
<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/yemen-drone-strike-kills-al
leged-al-qaida-mastermind-of-2002-attack-on-french-tanker/2012/09/02/feedf31
0-f4f0-11e1-863c-fe85c95ce4ed_story.html> faulty intelligence". Yet the
Yemeni air force is
<
http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/AW_03_19_2012_p71-
433477.xml> barely fit for purpose.
And why believe the Yemeni defence ministry anyway? Just 48 hours earlier it
had made similar claims. But when it emerged that alleged al-Qaida bomber
Khaled Musalem Batis had died in a strike, anonymous officials soon
<
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/08/31/uk-yemen-drone-idUKBRE87U0OX201208
31> admitted that a US drone had carried out that killing.
There is a long history of senior Yemeni officials lying to protect Barack
Obama's secret war on terror. When US cruise missiles decimated a tented
village in December 2009, at least 41 civilians were butchered alongside a
dozen alleged militants, as a parliamentary report later concluded.
As we now know, thanks to
<
http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/wikileaks> WikiLeaks, the US and
Yemen
<
http://www.cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=10SANAA4&q=petraeus%20saleh>
sought to cover up the US role in that attack. We'll continue saying the
bombs are ours, not yours," President Saleh informed US Central Command
(Centcom)'s General Petraeus.
Pakistan's own former strongman, General Pervez Musharraf, had performed a
similar deed for the CIA, with the army claiming early US drones strikes as
<
http://archives.dawn.com/2004/06/19/top1.htm> its own work. A senior
Musharraf aide told the Sunday Times, "We thought it would be less damaging
if we said we did it rather than the US." Only when civilian deaths became
too unbearable in 2006 did Islamabad end that charade.
Still, dictators may have been better able to rein in US covert attacks than
their democratic successors. When US special forces
<
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2010/05/25/uk-yemen-idUKTRE64O17W20100525>
accidentally killed Jaber al-Shabwani, the deputy governor of Yemen's Marib
province in May 2010, Saleh was able to secure a year-long pause in the US
bombing campaign.
With new president Abd-Rabbuh Mansour Hadi owing his position to the US he
is unlikely to enjoy similar leverage, if Pakistan's present impotence
against CIA strikes is any guide.
The odds of finding out who was really responsible for Sunday's deaths are
not good. At the height of this year's US-backed offensive against al-Qaida
in May, at least a dozen civilians died in a double air strike in Jaar. As
onlookers and rescuers came forward after an initial attack, they were
killed in a follow-up strike.
The event was reminiscent of
<
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/02/04/obama-terror-drones-cia-tac
tics-in-pakistan-include-targeting-rescuers-and-funerals/> CIA tactics in
Pakistan, and there is circumstantial evidence that US drones carried out
the attack. Times reporter <
https://twitter.com/ionacraig> Iona Craig
recalls the testimony of one survivor she met in Jaar:
"He didn't know who carried out the strike but said they didn't hear any
planes or fighter jets before either strike and they dived to the ground
when they saw a 'missile' with a jet stream of 'white smoke behind it',
flying through the sky towards them before the second strike happened'."
Four months on, neither Yemen nor the US has taken responsibility for that
attack. <
https://twitter.com/BaFana3> According to Haykal Bafana, a lawyer
based in Sanaa, "the greatest worry for people here is not only a lack of
accountability but a lack of transparency. Civilians at risk in the areas
being targeted are being given no information at all about how best to
protect themselves."
There is also the issue of compensation. Yemen's government has now
<
http://www.sabanews.net/en/news279858.htm> ordered an inquiry into the
Radaa bombing. Yet following the 2009 killing of 41 civilians relatives were
compensated with just a few hundred dollars, after details of Centcom's role
were deliberately hidden from that inquiry. In contrast, US forces in
Afghanistan not only admitted responsibility in a recent incident, but
<
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17503733> paid out $46,000 (£29,000)
for each person killed and $10,000 for those injured.
There is a growing gulf between what Yemen's people are experiencing and
what their government claims. Bafana says Yemen's official news agency Saba
has only used the word "drone" once since February 2011. A confirmed US
strike on August 29 killed not only three alleged militants but a policeman
and a
<
http://narrabyee-e.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/anti-al-qaeda-cleric-killed-in-dr
one.html> local anti-al-Qaida imam, according to local reports. Those
civilian deaths remain <
http://www.sabanews.net/en/news279140.htm> absent
from Saba's coverage.
The US in turn greets queries with obfuscation. The CIA declined to comment
when asked whether it had carried out the lethal attack on Radaa, or had
ever paid out compensation for collateral damage. And a senior Pentagon
spokesman, declining to comment "on reports of specific counterterrorism
operations in Yemen", referred any queries back to Yemen's government.
In the aftermath of Sunday's disastrous air strike, relatives of the dead
threatened to
<
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/03/world/meast/yemen-drone-strike/?hpt=hp_t3
> lay the corpses of the victims in front of the country's new president.
And local activist Nasr Abdullah told
<
http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/cnn> CNN: "I would not be
surprised if 100 tribesmen joined the lines of al-Qaida as a result of the
latest drone mistake. This part of Yemen takes revenge very seriously."
Civilian deaths risk undoing all that the United States is trying to achieve
in Yemen – and an absence of true accountability is making matters worse.
Read more:
<
http://www.businessinsider.com/us-yemen-cant-agree-on-responsibility-for-dr
one-deaths-2012-9#ixzz25mshaAPj>
http://www.businessinsider.com/us-yemen-cant-agree-on-responsibility-for-dro
ne-deaths-2012-9#ixzz25mshaAPj
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Received on Fri Sep 07 2012 - 08:47:36 EDT
