Washington's silence creates doubt on deaths
Justin Elliott
June 23, 2012
Numbers of civilians killed in air strikes do not add up, writes Justin Elliott, of ProPublica.
NEW YORK: A senior United States official said last month the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under the US President, Barack Obama, was in the ''single digits''. But last year, other US officials said drones in Pakistan killed about 30 civilians in just a year-long stretch under Mr Obama.
Both claims cannot be true.
A centrepiece of Mr Obama's national security strategy, drone strikes in Pakistan are credited by the administration with crippling al-Qaeda but criticised by human rights groups and others for being conducted in secret and killing civilians. The underlying facts are often in dispute and claims about how many people died and who they were vary widely.
Given the uncertainty, ProPublica decided to find out if the Obama administration's own claims have been consistent.
It collected claims by the administration about deaths from drone strikes in Pakistan and compared each not to local reports but other US administration claims. The numbers sometimes do not add up. Setting aside the discrepancy between official and outside estimates of civilian deaths, our analysis shows the administration's figures quoted over the years raise questions of credibility.
There have been 307 American drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004, according to a New America Foundation count. Just 44 occurred during the Bush administration. President Obama has greatly expanded the use of drones to attack suspected members of al-Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban, and other groups in Pakistan's remote north-west region.
Obama officials generally do not comment by name on the drone strikes in Pakistan, but they frequently talk about it to reporters on condition of anonymity. Often those anonymously sourced comments have come in response to outside tallies of civilian deaths from drone attacks, which are generally much higher than the administration's own figures.
The outright contradiction we noted above comes from two claims made about a year apart:
April 22, 2011: McClatchy reports US officials claim ''about 30'' civilians died between August 2009 and August 2010.
May 29, 2012:The New York Times reports that, according to a senior Obama administration official, the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under President Obama is in the ''single digits''.
Other anonymous administration claims about civilian deaths are possible but imply conclusions that seem improbable.
Consider: April 26, 2010:The Washington Post quotes an ''internal CIA accounting'' saying that ''just over 20 civilians'' have been killed by drones in Pakistan since January 2009.
August 11, 2011:The New York Times reports that CIA officers claim zero civilians were killed since May 2010.
August 12, 2011 CNN quoted a US official saying there were 50 civilians killed over the years in drone strikes in Pakistan.
If this set of claims is assumed to be accurate, it suggests that the majority of the 50 total civilian deaths occurred during the Bush administration - when the drone program was still in its infancy. In the entire Bush administration, there were 44 strikes. During the Obama administration through to August 12, 2011, there were 222.
So according to this set of claims more civilians died in just 44 strikes under Bush than did in 222 strikes under Obama.
Consider also these three claims, which imply two lengthy periods when zero or almost zero civilians were killed in drone strikes:
September 10, 2010:Newsweek quotes a government estimate that ''about 30'' civilians were killed since the beginning of 2008.
April 22, 2011: McClatchy reports that US officials claim ''about 30'' civilians died in the year between August 2009 and August 2010.
July 15, 2011: Reuters quotes a source familiar with the drone program as saying ''about 30'' civilians were killed since July 2008.
It is possible all these claims are true. But if they are, it implies the government believes there were zero or almost zero civilian deaths between the beginning of 2008 and August 2009, and zero deaths between August 2010 and July 2011. Those periods comprise a total of 182 strikes.
The administration has rejected in the strongest terms outside claims of a high civilian toll from the drone attacks. Those outside estimates also vary widely.
A count by Bill Roggio, editor of the website the Long War Journal, which bases its estimates on news reports, puts the number of civilians killed in Pakistan at 138. The New America Foundation estimates that, based on press reports, between 293 and 471 civilians have been killed in the attacks. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London, which draws on a wider array of sources including researchers and lawyers in Pakistan, puts the number of civilians killed at between 482 and 832.
The authors of the various estimates all emphasise that their counts are imperfect. There are likely multiple reasons for the varying counts of civilian deaths from drone strikes in Pakistan.
The attacks are executed remotely in often inaccessible regions. And there's the question of who US officials are counting as civilians. A story last month in The New York Times reported Mr Obama adopted a policy that ''in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants''.
There are also ongoing debates in the humanitarian law community about who the US may legitimately target with drone strikes and how the CIA is applying the principle of proportionality - which holds attacks that may cause civilian deaths must be proportional to the level of military advantage anticipated.
In a rare public comment on drone strikes, Mr Obama told an online town hall meeting in January that the drones had not caused ''a huge number of civilian casualties''.
When giving their own figures on civilian deaths, administration officials are often countering local reports. In March last year, for example, Pakistanis including the country's army chief accused a US drone strike of hitting a peaceful meeting of tribal elders, killing about 40 people. An unnamed US official rejected the accusations, telling the Associated Press: ''There's every indication that this was a group of terrorists, not a charity car wash in the Pakistani hinterlands.''
The Los Angeles Times reported unnamed US officials said last year ''they are confident they know who has been killed because they watch each strike on video and gather intelligence in the aftermath, observing funerals for the dead and eavesdropping on conversations about the strikes''.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said during a visit to Pakistan this month there should be investigation of killings of civilians by drones and that victims should be compensated. The US has given compensation to victims of airstrikes in Afghanistan but there are no reports of victims of drone strikes in Pakistan being compensated.
Since the various administration statements over the years were almost all quoted anonymously, it's impossible to go back to the officials in question to ask them about contradictions.
Asked about the apparent contradictions, a National Security Council spokesman, Tommy Vietor, said: ''[We] simply do not comment on alleged drone strikes.''
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Washington's silence creates doubt on deaths
