Dear RTE Complaints,

Re: ‘US to deploy unmanned drones in Libya‘

It might be worth highlighting for readers that the US military’s unmanned predator drones are not simply “used to target militants along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan”, they are also one the major causes of civilian deaths in the region. According to a 2010 report by the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), which looked at a sample of drone attacks in 2009, there were an average of 3.33 civilian casualties for each drone attack.

Best wishes,

It’s a shame to have to link to a human rights organisation report such as this though. In the section on drone strikes at least (I only scanned the rest of the document) it seemed as if the interviewers – having collected data showing these people had lost partners, parents, friends and children – stood, head tilted to one side and asked, “but you’d have to acknowledge that these attacks have been relatively accurate wouldn’t you?”

[“Civilians…acknowledge the relative accuracy of US drone strikes”, CIVIC, ‘Civilian Harm and Conflict in Northwest Pakistan’, 2010, pp 66]