Leaked secret document records 330 US drone strikes in Pakistan
30 January 2014, 20:10
Secret documentation collected by Pakistani field officers gives detailed information on 330 US drone strikes that have occurred in Pakistan since 2006. The document is the fullest official record of drone strikes in Pakistan to have yet been published. It provides rare insight into what the government understands about the campaign.
It also provides details about exactly when and where strikes took place, often including the names of homeowners. These details can be valuable to researchers attempting to verify eyewitness reports – and are often not reported elsewhere. But interestingly, the document stops recording civilian casualties after 2008, even omitting details of well-documented civilian deaths and those that have been acknowledged by the government.
The CIA-run program is estimated to have killed 2,371 people.
The most complete official record of American drone activity in Pakistan yet published provides an account as to the time and place of each strike, even including in some cases the identity of the homeowners.
The document is unique in that it provides a "strike-by-strike account," opening the window on Pakistan's view of each incident with that of other authorities.
Strangely, the retrieved data stops recording civilian casualties after 2008, while even failing to mention details of civilian deaths that have been widely acknowledged by the Pakistani authorities. It also inexplicably excludes information from the year 2007.
The news watchdog said the leaked documents are based on information filed to the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) Secretariat each evening by local Political Agents in the field. However, TBIJ noted that the leaked documents are just one of several sources of information the Pakistani government has on US drone activity in the country.
Although the document records civilian casualties in the early years, from 2009 these almost disappear. Even well-documented cases of civilian deaths are omitted. These include at least two incidents where the tribal administration is known to have admitted to the families that it knew civilians had died.
Among the civilian deaths that go unmentioned is one of the most high-profile attacks of the past 18 months – an October 2012 attack that killed Mamana Bibi, an elderly woman, as she was in a field. Her grandchildren were nearby, and several were injured by debris.
'If a case as well-documented as Mamana Bibi's isn't recorded as a civilian death, that raises questions about whether any state records of these strikes can be seen as reliable, beyond the most basic information,' said Mustafa Qadri, a researcher for Amnesty International, who investigated the strike for a major report published last autumn. 'It also raises questions of complicity on the part of the Pakistan state – has there been a decision to stop recording civilians deaths?'
In the first part of the report, 746 people are listed as killed in the drone strikes, at least 147 of the victims are said to be civilians, 94 of which are thought to be children. From 2009 to Sept. 2013, it is estimated that 1, 625 people were killed by drone strikes, a figure that closely matches those of the TBIJ.
The London-based journalism watchdog emphasized that some entries in the report included ambiguous language, hinting that possible civilian deaths are being deliberately concealed.
In a report dated August 11, 2011, the New York Times quoted US officials, who spoke on the condition anonymity, that the US Drone program "has killed more than 2,000 militants and about 50 noncombatants since 2001," a hit-miss ratio that the paper described as a "stunningly low collateral death rate by the standards of traditional airstrikes."
Meanwhile, Islamabad has so far refused to confirm the authenticity of the latest leaked information obtained by TBIJ, but it is not refuting the document's claims of high civilian deaths.
Voice of Russia, RT, GlobalResearch.ca, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism
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