Will Trump Stay Silent on the Drone War He Inherited From Obama?

Three US drone strikes in Yemen over the weekend, a country deemed by America as being an area outside of active hostilities, killed five Al-Qaeda members. The drone victims are the first under President Trump.

While on Monday the Pentagon confirmed the strikes, initial reporting of the attacks came from local sources speaking to the Associated Press. Like most drone strikes, the specific numbers or allegiances of the victims vary depending on the media outlet, source, or information from the victims' families. As per the Pentagon's official line, five Al-Qaeda operatives were killed. Local security forces tallied three deaths at first. Discrepancies like these have come to be expected in America's drone war, as one of Obama's last acts of office last Thursday highlights.

According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), acting under Obama's July 2016 decision to publish drone strike victim summaries along with an executive order calling on relevant agencies to reduce civilian deaths, the US conducted 53 strikes against terrorist targets outside of areas of active hostilities between January 1, 2016, and December 31, 2016, killing 431 to 441 combatants, and one civilian.

These figures don't quite add up when compared to other sources, however. As The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported on January 20, by its own count, the US conducted 49 strikes in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan during 2016, killing four to six civilians. The Bureau goes into great deal about how it sourced its own figures, only adding credence to its long-running drone investigation. The same can be said for Obama's entire two terms of drone strikes, too, dating back to 2009. There are always discrepancies.

But some solace should be found in Obama's decision to bow to pressure in 2016 and start publishing summaries of civilian casualties from drone strikes, because they might not exist under Trump.

"There is a lot of thinking that [O]DNI could be cut and that President Obama's rules for drone strikes may be cut as well," Dan Gettinger, researcher at the ‎Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College, told Motherboard. However, Gettinger was clear to point out that this all remains speculation for the moment.

Executive orders are easily overturned, and if President Trump follows through with his campaign rhetoric of targeting entire families of terror suspects, the civilian casualty numbers may not find a way into the public sphere. Trump has also been vocal on his desire to shake up the ODNI, a move that might help the disappearance of Obama's voluntary publishing of civilian casualties. Motherboard has attempted to contact the ODNI by phone but has yet to speak with anyone at the office.

According to the ODNI, its statistics are the result of processes that "include careful reviews of all strikes after they are conducted to assess the effectiveness of operations". These review processes include gathering intelligence from the media, too. The ODNI, however, admits to discrepancies between the US government and non-governmental assessments, but claims these discrepancies are only found with non-credible reporting outlets.

Yet the ODNI admits that, although the US government has access to a wide range of information, the figures released for 2016 "should be considered in light of the inherent limitation on the ability to determine the precise number of combatant and non-combatant deaths given the non-permissive environments in which these strikes often occur."

Still, under a Trump administration already taking action without sharing basic information with the public, and placing gagging orders on governmental agencies, it's easy to imagine statistics and summaries that don't lend themselves favourably to the White House getting swept under the carpet; summaries that are a welcome mark of transparency in murky theaters of war. The executive order that urges all agencies, from the CIA to the US Air Force, to thoroughly attempt to investigate civilian deaths and offer payments to victims' families may be a curse for the Trump administration worth lifting.

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