Donald Trump ends order to publish drone deaths data
US President Donald Trump has ended an Obama-era requirement for intelligence officials to publicly report the numbers of people killed in drone strikes and attacks on terrorist targets outside active conflict zones.
Signing an executive order, Mr Trump took the long suspected step of ending the requirement. Last year, the administration missed the annual deadline to file reports on civilians and enemy combatants or terrorist suspects.
The order signed by Mr Trump revokes the requirement that the administration release an unclassified summary of “the number of strikes undertaken by the United States government against terrorist targets outside areas of active hostilities, as well as assessments of combatant and non-combatant deaths resulting from those strikes, among other information”.
During his time as president, Barack Obama ordered casualty reports to be published in an attempt to improve accountability of the shadowy process by which drone strikes are authorised.
Congress also passed a law last year that requires the Department of Defence to provide it with a report of civilian casualties, although parts of it may be classified.
Under the Obama presidency, the number of US drone strikes skyrocketed and became a key tool in the US arsenal in the war against terrorism. But as civilian casualties mounted – with figures often at odds with the official accounts – Mr Obama faced criticism for his reliance on remote warfare methods.
Under the administration of George W Bush between 2001 and 2009, the US carried out 51 drone strikes in
Pakistan. Under Mr Obama, that number rose quickly to 372, according to the Bureau for Investigative Journalism.
In 2010 alone, there were 122 drone strikes in Pakistan, more than three times as many as all those carried out by the Bush administration.
Proponents of the use of drones say the ability to remotely monitor targets for long periods and then strike from a distance – keeping US or local forces away from potential fighting that can put them or nearby civilians at risk – makes unmanned aerial vehicles better suited to counterterrorist operations than conventional forces.
By 2012, the Obama administration had given the go-ahead for intelligence agencies to carry out strikes against those suspected of endangering the US without needing to know the exact identities of the suspects in Yemen and Pakistan.
In 2011, three US nationals were killed in drone strikes in Yemen, leading to questions about whether the method was constitutional.
The American Civil Liberties Union launched but ultimately lost a legal bid against the government for the killing of Samir Khan, Anwar Al Awlaki and his son Abdulrahman Al Awlaki, 16.
Khan was suspected of running the online English language magazine of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula while Al Awlaki was believed to be involved in planning attacks with Al Qaeda.
Bilal Abdul Kareem and Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan, both US nationals, have been living and working in Syria for years.
Both deny being members of militant groups – they are journalists – but both suspect they are on a classified US kill list.
Zaidan was previously Al Jazeera’s Pakistan bureau chief and one of few people to have interviewed Osama bin Laden before 9/11. Abdul Kareem is a former stand-up comedian and now reports from rebelheld areas of north Syria where he has filmed interviews with Al Qaeda members.