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As the US makes a rare admission of killing Somali civilians, CJ Werleman gathers eye witness accounts of a drone strike that may well have killed hundreds.
How Would You Feel if Your Home Was Bombed With Missiles?
Background
In what’s been described as a “rare admission” of culpability, the United States military acknowledged on Monday it had killed two civilians and injured three more when it carried out a drone strike in Somalia more than a year ago.
“Regrettably two civilians were killed and three others injured in a February 2019 airstrike,” said Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, Africa Command’s top officer. “We are deeply sorry this occurred.”
Excluding this almost unprecedented claim of responsibility, the Pentagon has long denied its drone strikes and air raids against al Shabaab, an extremist group with ties to al Qaeda, have resulted in civilian deaths, even as human groups organizations, including Amnesty International, have accused the US military of providing “zero accountability” for casualties via its Africa command (AFRICOM).
“Not only does AFRICOM utterly fail at its mission to report civilian casualties in Somalia, but it doesn’t seem to care about the fate of the numerous families it has completely torn apart,” Deprose Muchena, Amnesty’s east and southern Africa director, told The Guardian.
Using its fleet of Reaper drones, the US military started carrying out drone strikes in Somalia in June 2011, deploying them as means for providing aerial support for its known covert operations in the region.
Under the Trump administration, these attacks have experienced a year-on-year increase, rising from 14 in 2016 to 63 in 2019 – and with more than 30 documented in the first four months of the current year, according to the monitoring group Airwars.
But whereas the US military has admitted to only two civilian casualties in the course of its decade long aerial bombardment campaign against al Shabaab, local Somali media outlets estimate the death toll to exceed three hundred, and with Airwars placing the cost of innocent human lives in the range of 139 to 284.
Our Findings
Over the course of the past several weeks, Mohamed Abdulkaadir, a Somali journalist; Samir Abdrisak, a Somali photographer, and myself have collected video testimonies from US drone strike survivors and their families, who have each recently fled their homes for the relative safety of a refugee camp located on the outskirts of the Somali capital Mogadishu, otherwise known as Bagala IDP camp.
These are the victims of the United States’ highly secretive drone war in their own words, interviewed at the Balgala camp for internally displaced people.
INTERVIEW 1: HAWA HAJI ADEN
Question: How many of your family is here?
Hawa: 12
Question: From where did you flee?
Hawa: Janaale
Question: Why did you flee Janaale?
Hawa: Because of the [drone] strikes
Question: Can you let us know when the strikes took place? Was it during the day or the night?
Hawa: Both night and day. They just kept on coming
Question: What happened?
Hawa: Our homes destroyed, livestock destroyed, crops destroyed, people obliterated. our children and I faced so much agony and suffering after being forced to flee. And now we don’t even have a single bag, let alone a home to go to.
One of those killed was my husband. Another one was my sister’s son. And another is my nephew.
*(Hawa then breaks down into tears before sobbing uncontrollably for the next seven minutes)
Question: Do you have any family members, relatives or friends affected by the drone strike?
Hawa: Yes, all the men died
Question: How many people did you know died in the strike?
Hawa: Three people.
Question: What was your relationship to these people?
Hawa: One of those killed was my husband. Another one was my sister’s son. And another is my nephew.
Question: When your husband was killed by the missile fired from the drone and you saw his body laying there, can you say what happened next?
Hawa: When we saw his body, we had no choice but to drop everything and run. We fled for our lives. Even left our cattle behind.
Question: Did you get a chance to bury him?
Hawa: No we didn’t. We left him there. I feared for my life and fled. If I stayed behind, I would have been killed alongside him.
Question: What was your husband doing at the time of the attack?
Hawa: He was working in the field with the crops.
Question: Did this strike happen during the night?
Hawa: Yes, the night.
Question: Did you personally sustain any injuries from the strike?
Hawa: No, but I’m hurt [emotionally] on the inside.
Question: When exactly did the attack occur?
Hawa: [She’s unable to recall the exact date, but said it occurred during the month of March].
Question: Following the strike, how did you end up here?
Hawa: We walked as far as we could until we saw a car driving down the road and than we hitchhiked a ride and arrived here. We arrived with nothing. When it rains the children and I take shelter under a tree.
Question: Do you think you’ll ever return to Janaale?
Hawa: Yes, our crops, farms are there. We might die but our entire lives are back there, but right now it’s Ramadan and we have nothing to break our fast with. We have no home. We’re hungry.
Question: What is the message you want to send the world?
Hawa: What happened to us was pre-destined by Allah and it happened. All we ask is assistance in obtaining food; shelter and a normal livelihood just like the others.