The Obama administration acknowledged that the U.S. has killed as many as 2,581 terrorists and up to 116 civilians in drone strikes in countries where the U.S. isn’t at war and issued stricter guidelines for future attacks.
Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said the total number of drone strikes outside Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria was 473 during the first seven years of Mr. Obama’s presidency. The range of “combatant deaths” was estimated from 2,372 to 2,581; noncombatant deaths were estimated from 64 to 116.
The administration said the estimate of civilian deaths is lower than figures often given by nongovernmental organizations and attributed the discrepancies to varying definitions of who is a combatant and to difficulty in getting accurate information in some of the target areas.
“Although the U.S. government has access to a wide range of information, the figures released today should be considered in light of the inherent limitations on the ability to determine the precise number of combatant and noncombatant deaths given the nonpermissive environments in which these strikes often occur,” Mr. Clapper’s office said.
Mr. Obama also issued a series of executive orders Friday aimed at preventing civilian deaths from drone strikes and providing a regular accounting of the casualties.
The order requires U.S. agencies to work with the International Committee of the Red Cross and nongovernmental organizations, “as appropriate,” to help distinguish between military targets and civilians. It also spells out the U.S. policy of acknowledging the government’s responsibility for civilian casualties and “offering condolences, including ex gratia payments, to civilians who are injured, or to the families of civilians who are killed.”
The estimate is believed to cover drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and Somalia. It does not cover drone strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria, where U.S. forces have conducted thousands of air attacks.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has estimated that more than 1,000 people have been killed by drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.
The executive orders will ensure that Mr. Obama’s counterterrorism strategy remains transparent, said White House press secretary Josh Earnest.
“The president believes our counterterrorism strategy is more effective and has more credibility when we’re as transparent as possible,” Mr. Earnest said. “There are obviously limitations to transparency when it comes to matters as sensitive as this.”
Mr. Obama pledged to be more transparent about drones during a 2013 speech at the National Defense University in Washington.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said he will keep pushing to require annual reporting on drone casualties and more detailed criteria on combatants and civilians.
“It is important that we continue to acknowledge those incidents, learn from them, hold ourselves accountable and be as transparent as possible,” Mr. Schiff said. “I also believe that the release of this data will help to undercut inflated estimates of civilian casualties.”
Naureen Shah, a top official at Amnesty International, said the disclosure is “a crucial shift away from the Obama administration’s long-standing policy of concealing information about civilians killed in drone strikes.”
“It is a vital step in dismantling the dangerous precedent of a global, secret killing program,” she said.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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