By Gareth Porter
TRUTH OUT
An aerial drone launches from the guided-missile frigate USS Thach. (Photo: U.S. Navy / Flickr)
Detailed information from the families of those killed in drone strikes in Pakistan and from local sources on strikes that have targeted mourners and rescue workers provides credible new evidence that the majority of the deaths in the drone war in Pakistan have been civilian noncombatants – not “militants,” as the Obama administration has claimed.
The new evidence also shows that the statistical tally of casualties from drone attacks in Pakistan published on the web site of the New America Foundation (NAF) has been systematically understating the deaths of large numbers of civilians by using a methodology that methodically counts them as “militants.”
The sharply revised picture of drone casualties conveyed by the two new primary sources is further bolstered by the recent revelation that the Obama administration adopted a new practice in 2009 of automatically considering any military-age male killed in a drone strike as a “militant” unless intelligence proves otherwise.
The detailed data from the two unrelated sources covering a total 24 drone strikes from 2008 through 2011 show that civilian casualties accounted for 74 percent of the death toll, whereas the NAF tally for the same 24 strikes showed civilian casualties accounted for only 30 percent of the total.
The data on 11 drone strikes from 2008 through 2011 were collected in 2010 and 2011 from families of victims of the strikes by Pakistani lawyer Mirza Shahzad Akbar. Those 11 cases represent only a fraction of the total number on which Akbar has obtained data from victim’s relatives.
Related articles
- US Cover-Up of Drone-Murdered Pakistani Civilians: New Evidence (thesantosrepublic.com)
- Cover-Up of Civilian Drone Deaths Revealed by New Evidence (zionistoutrage.com)
- Cover-Up of Civilian Drone Deaths Revealed by New Evidence (blacklistednews.com)
- Cover-Up of Civilian Drone Deaths Revealed by New Evidence (truth-out.org)
- Are drones any more immoral than other weapons of war? | Peter Beaumont (guardian.co.uk)
