TEHRAN (FNA)- Two major human right groups blasted the US for killing large groups of civilians in its so-called drone campaign against the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.Dave Lindorff in an article said that two respected human rights organizations (Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International) blasted the US for its use of missile-firing drone aircraft over Pakistan and Yemen to kill alleged Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders, saying that both campaigns were causing extensive civilian deaths.
The two human right organizations reported these casualties may constitute war crimes, and the Amnesty report even goes further and suggests that the extrajudicial killing of terrorists may also constitute war crimes based on the Geneva codes.
While drone strikes date back to the presidency of Bill Clinton, and were employed to a significant extent in Afghanistan and Pakistan under President George W. Bush, since President Obama took office in January 2009, the frequency of drone-fired missile attacks, particularly in Pakistans Baluchistan Province, has soared, Lindorff said.
One analysis by the New America Foundation suggests that there have been 365 such strikes there--313 of them on Obamas watch as commander in chief .These attacks are said to have killed between 1,611 and 2767 militants, along with between 258 and 307 civilians, he added.
Estimates of the organization, Drone Watch, say the number are even higher. Last January over 3000 people had been killed, the vast majority of them civilians, it said.
One reason for the discrepancy in the numbers is that the CIA and the Pentagon do not reveal the details of drone strikes, and in fact for the most part do not report them at all. When there are reports, almost all those killed are identified as enemy combatants as the US considers all males over the age of 12 to be enemy fighters -- itself a violation of Geneva Conventions signed by the US, which require all those under the age of 16 to be classified as protected civilians, Lindorff underlined.
He also stated that Amnesty International has criticized the US for keeping the reports of drone operations in secret, and said, What is certain from Amnesty Internationals research, however, is that the cases in this report raise serious concerns that the US has unlawfully killed people in drone strikes, and that such killings may amount in some cases to extrajudicial executions or war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law.
He believed that the US is not alone on this path and there are some other countries which possess the drone technology, saying, If drones proliferate to many countries, and even worse, fall into the hands of non-governmental organizations, it wont be long before Americans will have to look up at drones with the same kind of anxiety that Pakistanis and Yemenis do today.
Of course, given the expressed desire of federal, state and local intelligence and law-enforcement organizations within the US to buy and operate spy drones -- and even armed attack drones -- there may be even more reasons for Americans to head for cover when a drone appears in the air, he said.
By Fars News Agency
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