Rights Groups Say Some U.S. Drone Strikes May Be War Crimes

Two prominent human rights groups today blasted America's drone wars in Pakistan and Yemen, painting a grim picture of massive civilian deaths and potentially grave violations of international law.

One report by Amnesty International ("Will I Be Next?") focuses on recent drone strikes in Pakistan while the other, by Human Rights Watch ("Between a Drone and al-Qaeda"), centers on Yemen.

According to Amnesty International, at least one attack "violated the prohibition of the arbitrary deprivation of life and may constitute war crimes or extrajudicial execution" and said that those responsible should stand trial.

The White House rejected the claims of the reports and denied any wrongdoing in the administration's drone program.

"U.S. counterterrorism operations are precise, they are lawful and they are effective," said White House spokesman Jay Carney in a press conference.

The Obama administration has been better at distancing itself from drone strikes than providing the legal and policy justification for the program.

"Realistically, the policy window for reforming how the U.S. conducts lethal counterterrorism strikes is closed in Washington," says Council on Foreign Relations fellow Micah Zenko, the author of Between Threats and War: U.S. Discrete Military Operations in the Post-Cold War World.

One of the more disturbing case studies in the Amnesty International report is of Mamana Bibi, a 68-year-old grandmother killed as she tended her crops in Ghundi Kala, North Waziristan, Oct. 24, 2012:

“She was standing in our family fields gathering okra to cook that evening,” recalled Zubair Rehman, one of Mamana Bibi’s grandsons, who was about 119ft away also working in the fields at the time. Mamana Bibi’s three granddaughters: Nabeela (aged eight), Asma (aged seven) and Naeema (aged five) were also in the field, around 115 and 92ft away from their grandmother to the north and south respectively. Around 92ft to the south, another of Mamana Bibi’s grandsons, 15-year-old Rehman Saeed, was walking home from school with his friend, Shahidullah, also aged 15.

Accustomed to seeing drones overhead, Mamana Bibi and her grandchildren continued their daily routine. “The drone planes were flying over our village all day and night, flying in pairs, sometimes three together. We had grown used to them flying over our village all the time,” Zubair Rehman continued. “I was watering our animals and my brother was harvesting maize crop,” said Nabeela.

Then, before her family’s eyes, Mamana Bibi was blown into pieces by at least two Hellfire missiles fired concurrently from a US drone aircraft.

Follow-up strikes injured her grandson as he rushed to respond to the first blast.

As is the case with the overwhelming majority of investigations into drone strikes, Amnesty International said their study was limited by a lack of transparency from the administration, something that has also frustrated Congress.

Earlier this year, when the Obama administration declined to send a representative to a Senate hearing on drone operations, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said that "more transparency is needed to maintain the support of the American people and the international community." He added that the White House should provide details on its claim to "its legal authority to engage in targeted killings and the internal checks and balances involved in U.S. drone strikes."