Drones killed more civilians in Pakistan than Afghanistan: US military Think-tank

In the light of a UN resolution that ensures all drone strikes abide by International law , CNA (Centre for Naval Analyses) a military think tank of USA has released a research paper stating the reasons for the cause of heavy civilian casualties in military drone strikes in Pakistan saying that ‘we observed more civilians were killed in Pakistan than Afghanistan, however the observations warrant further examination’.

The paper written by Larry Lewis, a military analyst, provides the reasons as well as the recommendations to curb the loss of civilian lives by drone strikes.

[caption id="attachment_1109" align="aligncenter" width="448"] CNA emphasizes US military should assess the root cause of civilian causalities. Photo: Wikipedia via Creative Commons.[/caption]

It states that US has lack of ground forces in Pakistan and it is ‘difficult’ to operate in areas without them, adding that the numbers of civilian strikes in Afghanistan by drones were 10 percent more than by ‘manned’ aircrafts.

Larry in his research paper acknowledges that US government may have the accurate data but it does not share with the media. ‘We only get data in the form of US military officials statements’ he adds.

However, he says there are other organizations that closely monitor drone strikes data and share it in news format these institutes include Bureau of Investigative journalism and New America foundation. He says that these independent organizations collect data from different news sources and their results are not ‘disparate’. He cites that Pakistani Government also takes the tolls provided by these organizations as ‘under estimated’ due to the challenges of reporting in FATA.

Moreover, the report cites that US has improved its ability to keep civilian loss of life to a minimum however factors like ‘inaccurate assessment, misidentifications lead to civilian casualties’.

However, the report further adds that the ‘misidentification of bodies’ due to ‘absence of US ground forces in Pakistan’ is also an influential reason that ‘grants the status of civilian’ to those bodies.

It is a common fact that drone strikes that kill civilians affect the bilateral cooperation of both the countries and is considered as a threat to the sovereignty of the latter country.

The research analyst recommends that the US government should conduct an independent study of the civilian casualties by the drone strikes and employ the methods that they used in Afghanistan to employ drones.

He further adds that if previous drone strikes are analyzed and used in planning for future the results civilian casualties by US military drones in Pakistan can be minimized.