Ref: AD-2824
Summary: Somalia faces a multifaceted crisis characterised by escalating US counter-terrorism operations, particularly against IS-Somalia in Puntland, amidst controversial allegations of the UAE using the region for illicit arms transfers to Sudan. This volatile situation is further complicated by persistent concerns over civilian casualties from airstrikes and ongoing debates about the feasibility and implications of negotiating with the resilient Al-Shabaab group.
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You write that ‘Abdullahi Hassan, a Somali researcher for Amnesty, speculates that the discrepancies in casualty numbers and and the persistent misidentification of civilians may stem from “either gross incompetence or a deliberate attempt to evade accountability for war crimes.” ‘
The latter is more likely, and seems to have been the case for a dozen years:
“It is also because Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts 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 insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good. “Al Qaeda is an insular, paranoid organization — innocent neighbors don’t hitchhike rides in the back of trucks headed for the border with guns and bombs,” said one official, who requested anonymity to speak about what is still a classified program.
“This counting method may partly explain the official claims of extraordinarily low collateral deaths. In a speech last year Mr. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s trusted adviser, said that not a single noncombatant had been killed in a year of strikes. And in a recent interview, a senior administration official said that the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under Mr. Obama was in the “single digits” — and that independent counts of scores or hundreds of civilian deaths unwittingly draw on false propaganda claims by militants.
“But in interviews, three former senior intelligence officials expressed disbelief that the number could be so low. The C.I.A. accounting has so troubled some administration officials outside the agency that they have brought their concerns to the White House. One called it “guilt by association” that has led to “deceptive” estimates of civilian casualties.
“It bothers me when they say there were seven guys, so they must all be militants,” the official said. “They count the corpses and they’re not really sure who they are.” (The New York Times, May 29, 2012)
While such lax rules of engagement may be advantageous in the short -term, they tend to be Pyrrhic in the long-term: unsurprisingly, the relicts usually object to their relations being killed, and may either cease co-operating with the security forces, or start actively to co-operate with the insurgents. As Thompson’s 2nd Principle of Counter-Insurgency puts it: “The government must function in accordance with law.”
As noted, such attacks probably violate the Law of Armed Conflict principle of Discrimination (and possibly Proportionality), possibly rendering the pilots and commanders liable for prosecution.