Two Weddings and a Funeral

By Simon Wood (The 99.99998271%)

Author’s Note: Time is becoming scarcer and scarcer and I have less opportunities to write and research. For this reason I will slightly change the approach of this blog: in future I will write shorter, hopefully more frequent articles. I will still write my ‘feature-length’ ones (sorry!), but to keep this blog alive it needs to be updated more regularly. Today’s article will be my first ‘miniature’ offering. Thank you for your understanding and continued support. 

“What Wessab’s villagers knew of the U.S. was based on my stories about my wonderful experiences here. The friendships and values I experienced and described to the villagers helped them understand the America that I know and that I love. Now, however, when they think of America, they think of the terror they feel from the drones that hover over their heads, ready to fire missiles at any time. What the violent militants had previously failed to achieve, one drone strike accomplished in an instant. There is now an intense anger against America in Wessab. This is not an isolated incident. The drone strikes are the face of America to many Yemenis. I have spoken to many victims of U.S. drone strikes, like a mother in Jaar who had to identify her innocent 18-year-old son’s body through a video in a stranger’s cellphone, or the father in Shaqra who held his four- and six-year-old children as they died in his arms. Recently in Aden, I spoke with one of the tribal leaders present in 2009 at the place where the U.S. cruise missiles targeted the village of al-Majalah in Lawdar, Abyan. More than 40 civilians were killed, including four pregnant women. The tribal leader and others tried to rescue the victims, but the bodies were so decimated that it was impossible to differentiate between those of children, women and their animals. Some of these innocent people were buried in the same grave as their animals.” – US-educated Yemeni activist/writer Farea al-Muslimi’s testimony at Senate hearing (April 2013)

In July 2008 47 Afghan civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in a US military airstrike. The group was escorting a bride to her wedding ceremony in the groom’s village in Nangarhar province. Three bombs hit the group in succession as they stopped for a rest. The first bomb killed a group of children that were ahead of the main group. The aircraft returned and dropped a second bomb in the middle of the main group, killing a large number of women. The bride and two other girls miraculously escaped the second bomb, but the third finished them as they tried to escape. The US government initially denied that any civilians had been killed until an Afghan government investigation determined the facts. It is known as the Deh Bala wedding party airstrike.

In November of the same year 63 people including 37 civilians – again mostly women and children – were killed in another US military airstrike at a housing complex where a wedding was being celebrated in the village of Wech Baghtu in Kandahar province, Afghanistan. Two days after the strike, Afghan President Hamid Karzai demanded that then newly-elected Barack Obama (soon to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize) end the killing of civilians: “Our demand is that there will be no civilian casualties in Afghanistan. We cannot win the fight against terrorism with airstrikes — this is my first demand of the new president of the United States — to put an end to civilian casualties.” A US government official commented, “If innocent people were killed in this operation, we apologize and express our condolences.”

In June 2009 US drones launched an attack on a funeral procession in the city of Makeen, South Waziristan. Militants killed earlier that same day were being buried. 60 people were killed, while other sources claim that there were up to 83 casualties. The ‘Makeen airstrike’ is considered to be one of the most deadly attacks in the drone era.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism based in London has carried out painstaking research on drone strikes, using extremely conservative methods, meaning it is likely that its figures are well below the reality. Its research has found clear evidence that not only do the US and NATO bomb weddings and funerals, they also target rescuers aiming to recover the bodies of their loved ones and neighbors in so-called ‘double-tap‘ strikes.

John Brennan, CIA Director and former top counter-terrorism adviser to Barack Obama stated that the US has the right to unilaterally strike terrorists anywhere in the world, even away from battlefields:

“Because we are engaged in an armed conflict with al- Qaeda, the United States takes the legal position that, in accordance with international law, we have the authority to take action against al-Qaeda and its associated forces. The United States does not view our authority to use military force against al-Qaeda as being restricted solely to ‘hot’ battlefields like Afghanistan.”

The stance of the US raises serious questions with regard to international law and the strategies employed in the ‘war on terror’.

From an article on this blog last year:

Let’s take a closer look at international law. The Third Geneva Convention states that a so-called ‘unlawful combatant’ is a civilian who directly engages in armed conflict in violation of the laws of war.

Targeted killing, often executed by drone aircraft, is the intentional killing of a target deemed to be an ‘unlawful combatant’ not currently in the custody of the attacking power. This assumes that the person has allegedly lost the immunity granted by the Third Geneva Convention because they are allegedly engaged in terrorism or another form of armed conflict. Note that under the most basic concepts of most legal systems, such intent can only be surmised in a court of law or similar tribunal.

More:

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) provided in August 2010 a succinct FAQ of what is wrong with targeted killing, [standing] in stark contrast to the assertions of Mr. Brennan.

From the FAQ:

Both the Constitution and international law prohibit the use of lethal force against civilians outside of armed conflict except in very narrow circumstances: as a last resort to prevent an imminent attack that is likely to cause death or serious physical injury.

Allowing the use of warlike tactics far from any battlefield — using drones or other means — turns the whole world into a war zone and sets a dangerous example for other countries which might feel justified in doing the same. If the U.S. claims it can kill suspected enemies of the U.S. anywhere — using unmanned drones or otherwise — then other countries will regard killing their enemies within our borders as justified. We wouldn’t be okay with the prospect of other countries executing their suspected enemies within U.S. borders.

The targeted killing of individuals who are suspected — but not proven — to be guilty of crimes also risks the deaths of innocent people. Over the last decade, we have seen the U.S. government wrongly imprison hundreds of men as terrorists based on weak, wrong or unreliable evidence, only to eventually free them. The consequence of such mistakes is far greater when the end result is death; there is no recourse for killing the wrong person.

What about innocent until proven guilty? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which all NATO nations are signatories to, states in article 11:

“Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.”

Tragic consequences are not limited to the strikes themselves: A Los Angeles Times article reports that a militant group called Khorasan Mujahedin targets people suspected of being US or NATO informants. The group kidnaps, tortures and usually kills suspects, then distributes videotapes of killings in street markets to serve as warnings. Almost certainly many of these ‘informants’ will be mistakenly kidnapped, while local power brokers will inevitably abuse the climate of fear to remove rivals: more innocent deaths and grief for families.

As stated by the ACLU, John Brennan’s attempt to justify these killings sets an extremely dangerous precedent. By US logic, any suspected terrorist defined as ‘in conflict’ with a nation state is a viable target at any location on the planet. China or Russia, therefore, can now feel perfectly free to target anyone they deem a ‘terrorist’ anywhere, including – say – a wedding in New York or a funeral in Boston. Can one even begin to imagine what would happen if Russia bombed a New York wedding? Would the Western media label the act as anything other than the most repugnant act of terror possible? Such an action is unacceptable, whatever the justification, and is a textbook example of a terrorist act, hence making the US and its NATO allies purveyors of terrorism on an industrial scale in the nations it targets.

International law, embodied in treaties signed between the nations of the world in good faith, must be regarded neither as an inconvenience nor something to be twisted using weasel reasoning. Any legal ‘ambiguity’, seized upon by the US and NATO for their own strategic goals, is an enormous threat to world security. This faux-perceived ambiguity must be urgently addressed, and any nation which regards itself as moral must stand up to this campaign of mass murder disguised as warfare. There can only be one answer to the murder of children.

Simon Wood (Twitter: @simonwood11) is the author of ‘The 99.99998271%: Why the Time is Right for Direct Democracy‘ and the founder of The Movement, a non-profit organization dedicated to peace, justice and democracy. Please follow and support The Movement on Twitter: @1themovement as it strongly urges all progressive movements to unite and pool their resources in the common goal of removing the cancer of corruption that threatens us all. You can also follow Simon Wood on Facebook and at his blog.

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