Since the September 11 attacks, the United States has carried out drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.Cora Currier, Everything We Know So Far About Drone Strikes, Pro Publica (February 5, 2013).Obama’s covert drone war in numbers: ten times more strikes than Bush, Bureau of Investigative Journalism (January 17, 2017).
Drone strikes are part of a targeted killing campaign against militants. Determining precise counts of the total number killed, as well as the number of non-combatant civilians killed, is impossible; and tracking of strikes and estimates of casualties are compiled by a number of organizations, such as the Long War Journal (Pakistan and Yemen), the New America Foundation (Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya), and the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism (Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan). The "estimates of civilian casualties are hampered methodologically and practically";Counting Drone Strike Deaths, Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic (October 2012). civilian casualty estimates "are largely compiled by interpreting news reports relying on anonymous officials or accounts from local media, whose credibility may vary."
Sometimes, the U.S. military conducted in-depth investigations in cases when U.S. forces killed or injured civilians (including drone strikes in Somalia and Yemen). At times, these investigations have resulted in the military publicly acknowledging and explaining the reasons behind the civilian harm; providing condolence payments to families; and, in some cases where members of the military have violated the law, they have been held accountable. However, in many cases the military failed to conduct effective investigations.IN SEARCH OF ANSWERS: U.S. Military Investigations and Civilian Harm
Total numbers Independent estimates Taken together, independent estimates from the non-governmental organizations New America and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism suggest that civilians made up between 7.27% to 15.47% of deaths in U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia from 2009–2016, with a broadly similar rate from 2017–2019.Nicholas Grossman, Trump Cancels Drone Strike Casualty Report: Does It Matter?, War on the Rocks (April 2, 2019). Civilian casualties as a percentage of overall deaths were highest in Yemen and lowest in Somalia.
The New America figures report that:
The first known U.S. drone strike in Pakistan was June 19, 2004, and the most recent U.S. drone strike as of the report's publication was in Pakistan on July 4, 2018. Over those 14 years, there were 413 reported strikes in Pakistan (with the peak being in 2010), which killed a total of between 2,366 and 3,702 people; of the total deaths, between 245 and 303 were civilians. The first known U.S. drone strike in Yemen was November 3, 2002 (killing al-Qaeda operative Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi), and the most recent U.S. drone strike in Yemen as of the report's publication was May 17, 2020. Over those 18 years, there were 374 reported strikes in Yemen (with the peak being in 2012), which killed a total of between 1,378 and 1,775 people; of the total deaths, between 115 and 149 were civilians. In Libya, from the end of the 2011 UN-approved military intervention through March 31, 2020, there were 4,500 air, drone, and artillery strikes in Libya, carried out by many warring Libyan factions and their foreign supporters including the American, Russian, United Arab Emirates, Turkish, and Egyptian governments. The U.S. carried out 550 strikes (from all methods, not just drones), almost all of them in Operation Odyssey Lightning in 2016. The U.S. strikes killed between 238 and 298 people, of whom between 227 and 277 were combatants, and between 11 and 21 were civilians. In Somalia, there were a total of 263 U.S. counter-terrorism airstrikes, drone strikes, and ground raids from 2003 to 2021. Of the 263, the majority (202) occurred under the Trump administration. Collectively, between 1,479 and 1,886 people have been killed in the U.S. strikes in Somalia: between 1,389 and 1,696 militants, between 34 and 121 civilians, and between 56 and 69 unknowns.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) reported the following figures for U.S. strikes from January 2004 through February 2020. For Pakistan, the BIJ figures below cover only U.S. drone strikes; for Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia, the BIJ figures include both drone strikes and other actions, including airstrikes, missile attacks, and ground operations.Our Methodology, Bureau of Investigative Journalism (last modified 2020).
Country Minimum strikes Civilians dead Children dead Total dead Injured Total casualties Ref(s)Afghanistan13,072300–90966–1844,126–10,076658–1,7694784–11,845Somalia20212–971–131,197–1,41055–1011252–1,511Pakistan430424–969172–2072,515–4,0261,162–1,7493,677–5,775Yemen336174–22544–501,020–1,389155–3031175–1,692Total14,040910–2,200283–4548,858–16,9012,030–3,92210,888–20,823
Office of the Director of National Intelligence The Office of the Director of National Intelligence reported that:
Between January 20, 2009, and December 31, 2015: 473 U.S. strikes "against terrorist targets outside areas of active hostilities" (i.e., outside Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria) with between 2,372 and 2,581 combatant deaths and between 64 and 116 non-combatant deaths, i.e., a civilian casualty rate of 2.63–4.30%. For the calendar year 2016: 53 U.S. strikes "against terrorist targets outside areas of active hostilities" (i.e., outside Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria) with 431-441 combatant deaths and 1 non-combatant death; i.e., a civilian casualty rate of 0.2%.
Both the 2009-2015 and the 2016 DNI reports state: "Non-combatants are individuals who may not be made the object of attack under applicable international law. The term 'non-combatant' does not include an individual who is part of a belligerent party to an armed conflict, an individual who is taking a direct part in hostilities, or an individual who is targetable in the exercise of U.S. national self-defense. Males of military age may be non-combatants; it is not the case that all military-aged males in the vicinity of a target are deemed to be combatants."
As the DNI reports acknowledge, the government's reported numbers of civilian casualties are far lower than estimates from non-governmental organizations. Scholar Nicholas Grossman, who studies drone strikes, wrote that the official figures "systematically underestimated civilian casualties" and notes that independent estimates suggest a substantially higher rate of civilian casualties, which is likely attributable to the government methodology for classifying an individual as a "combatant." DNI explains this discrepancy as the result of three causes: (1) the U.S. government "uses post-strike methodologies that have been refined and honed over the years and that use information that is generally unavailable to non-governmental organizations," such as sensitive intelligence reliably indicating "that certain individuals are combatants" although but are being counted as non-combatants by nongovernmental organizations; (2) that the U.S. government uses "post-strike reviews involve the collection and analysis of multiple sources of intelligence before, during, and after a strike, including video observations, human sources and assets, signals intelligence, geospatial intelligence, accounts from local officials on the ground, and open source reporting" and that this often unique set of information "can provide insights that are likely unavailable to non-governmental organizations" and "frequently enables U.S. Government analysts to confirm, among other things, the number of individuals killed as well as their combatant status"; and (3) some terrorist groups and other actors deliberately promote misinformation "in local media reports on which some non-governmental estimates rely."
Sources of evidence Assessing civilian versus militant casualties is difficult. The New America count relies on multiple sources, such as reporting from international and local journalists, corroborating evidence from social media, reports from non-governmental organization (NGOs), and official reports from the U.S. military. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism count also draws from a variety of sources.
Some scholars and human rights activists, such as Sarah Knuckey and Radhya Al-Mutawakel, criticize the U.S. Defense Department failing to "regularly interview" eyewitnesses as part of investigations into civilian casualties, arguing that this is "a critical flaw in their investigation methodology" and that the U.S. military could overcome obstacles such as a "lack of on-the-ground networks, security concerns and/or issues related to impartiality." In response, scholar Charles J. Dunlap argues that the Defense Department does incorporate witness accounts in its assessments, and that over-reliance on witness statements can be problematic since eyewitness testimony and memory are often unreliable.
In February 2013, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a hearing, "But for the past several years, this committee has done significant oversight of the government's conduct of targeted strikes and the figures we have obtained from the executive branch, which we have done our utmost to verify, confirm that the number of civilian casualties that have resulted from such strikes has typically been in the single digits."
Leaked CIA documents provided to The Washington Post in 2013, showed that top Pakistani government officials "have for years secretly endorsed the [CIA’s drone] program and routinely received classified briefings on strikes and casualty counts". The documents indicate that the CIA has "remarkable confidence" in the accuracy of the drone strikes, with the documents often showing no civilian casualties. The Washington Post said this was "at odds with research done by human rights organizations, including Amnesty International".
Approvals of drone strikes During the Obama administration, proposed U.S. drone strikes in locations outside active war zones (i.e., in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia) required high-level approval. The Obama administration process for approving drone strikes in such locations featured centralized, high-level oversight, based on intelligence about individuals suspected of terrorism activity. Obama's approval was required for every strike in Yemen and Somalia, as well as "the more complex and risky strikes in Pakistan" (about one-third of the total as of 2012), and insisted on deciding whether to approve a strike unless the CIA had a "near certainty" that no civilian deaths would result. The process, formalized in a 2013 Presidential Policy Guidance document, was intended to reduce civilian casualties and blowback risks by requiring the targeted person to present a "continuing and imminent threat" to Americans. The process often required multiple interagency meetings to decide whether to go forward with a strike. However, some U.S. military and intelligence officials opposed the restrictive nature of the system, and some Republicans criticized it as too cautious. However, in the pre-strike review, Obama "embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties" that effectively counted "all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent." Counterterrorism officials defended this approach on the idea that people located in close proximity to known terrorists were likely combatants; some Obama administration officials were critical of this approach, who said that it led to implausibly low official counts of civilian deaths, with one administration official telling the New York Times that it amounted to "guilt by association."