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All right, so I mentioned to you guys earlier on the show there was this thing in the Rolling Stone.
New report documents the human cost of U.S. drone strikes in Yemen.
And human rights activists interview witnesses to the strikes' civilian casualties.
Well, I have on the line the author, the activist who wrote this study.
It's Kareem Sayyad from Al-Karama in Switzerland.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
I'm fine, thank you.
Did I get your, did I basically get that right?
Al-Karama is the organization, and did I say your name right?
Yeah, everything was right.
The only thing is I didn't write directly the report.
I contributed with my buddy in Yemen to coordinate and to write it.
But mainly the inquiries on the ground were done by my friend and colleague, Mohammed Al-Ahmadi, who is our coordinator in Sana'a, Yemen.
So it's teamwork.
Okay, good deal.
All right, and now, so what you've done here is you've gone back to, I guess, as many drone strikes as you could document.
I know that the numbers are vague about how many drone strikes there have even been since 2002, and obviously the vast majority of those in the Obama years.
Yeah.
You say between 134 and 266 attacks.
How many of those were you able to go back to the scene of the crime and interview witnesses?
So we basically in our reports document ten strikes.
There are many more.
Then some of them are difficult to document because they were on the roads and there are just nothing left.
For example, you shoot a motorcycle or a car in the middle of nowhere, and they just take all the rest away.
But the ten that we documented were the ones we could accede to, and as well were some of the strikes which targeted a lot of civilians and were most discussed in Yemen.
So that was mainly the thing.
Now, before we get into it, and we have half an hour, well, 25 minutes, so we'll have plenty of time for you to tell the individual stories.
But first of all, just on the overall numbers, you say in the report it's something between 1,150 and 1,952 civilians or total Yemenis killed in these strikes.
That's one of the main problems.
What is a civilian, what is a fight?
Sometimes the limit between the two is not clear.
One of the biggest problems is the fact that both the U.S. and Yemeni government doesn't communicate on the casualties.
Basically, it would help us to tell if the Yemeni government or the U.S. government can tell us, okay, we killed this one, and he did that, that, and that.
The thing is that having these numbers and these figures, plus the fact that the attacks we documented, the vast majority of the people were civilian casualties, children, women, and things, is not very, how to say, it's not something like, yes, it doesn't, I don't know how to tell you, but it's just, it raises big concerns about the civilian casualties on this policy, because at the end we have some cases, for example, of people as well killed in these attacks who were jailed by Yemeni authorities for three or four years without being judged on terror-related charges or even people spent three years in jail for terror-related charges but were released innocent and were killed two or three months after the release.
So in these cases, for example, how can you say that you couldn't arrest them and that they were imminent threats to the security of the U.S., for example?
All right, yeah, and of course, with the signature strikes, basically what they're saying is anyone that they killed was a militant or else we wouldn't have killed them.
That's basically, if you ask the Americans or ask the Yemeni government, the fact that they're dead means they were guilty.
And even in America where at least half the population is armed when it comes to killing people with remote control planes in other countries, if a man has a rifle, well, then that is proof that he's al-Qaeda, militant, warrior, whatever, because what's he going to do, put on an al-Qaeda uniform?
So an AK is the uniform.
An AK is all you need to be guilty to a remote control plane operator based back in Nevada or in New York State.
One of the other things that the Yemeni, because I went to Yemen, I just came back a month ago, and one of the things as well for Yemeni people who are having these strikes is they don't basically understand why Americans so far away kill people, even if they are al-Qaeda militants, for the single fact that most of the casualties of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula are Yemeni.
So they say, okay, maybe we don't agree with them, basically, and we are the first casualties of this group.
So why do you come, moreover, to kill lots of innocents and people, moreover?
And that's something at the end that strengthens al-Qaeda instead of combating it.
And I spoke to many activists and lawyers and people involved in the cause, and they all say the drone strikes made al-Qaeda stronger than ever in Yemen, because it's now the only radical way of being against the U.S. and the government policy which acknowledges all the strikes.
So basically, if the strategy is to weaken al-Qaeda, these strikes are definitely not contributing to weaken them, among all the people I heard.
Okay, now, this is a very important thing that you're getting to right there, and it's not just the second part about how we're making more enemies by doing this, because it's important that David Gregory asked Leon Panetta, the former head of the CIA, that, hey, people keep saying that in Yemen, that every time you kill some al-Qaeda guys with a drone, or try to, and kill innocent people, that that recruits more al-Qaeda people.
And Panetta, because of course there's no accountability, so Panetta just said, look, these are the tools we have, these are the bad guys that we have to kill, and so we've got to do it.
And if we're making matters worse, well, jeez, I guess we'll just have to kill them too, and we'll just have to keep digging this hole in order to get out of it.
And that's bad enough.
I'm sorry for going on so long, but this is a very important point that you just made that I think we really need to focus on, which is that I think if I understood what you're saying correctly, Kareem, you're saying the people of Yemen hate al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda, those guys are the scum of the earth, they're horrible, and the people of Yemen would get rid of them themselves if we would not intervene.
So not only are we swelling their ranks, but they might have ceased to exist by now if we had not been drone-striking.
Yeah, definitely.
I think it's maybe not as black or white as you say, but definitely there is something like this.
Let me explain to you.
For example, an attack we document in our report, which is the Rabaa attack, which killed, if I'm not mistaken, 12 or 14 Syrians.
It was a total mistake from the U.S. and the Yemenis, as ever.
So the Yemenis, they say, we did the strike.
Then a lot of people, when they come to try to check, they see it's impossible for the Yemeni army to lead such strikes because they just don't have the weapons to do so.
And then, so we know it's American people.
Or even in some cases we have doubts of Saudi strikes, but we have no proof for that.
The thing is now, when you take this attack, for example, and you have people, so Yemen is a very poor country now, and you have the father of a family, maybe the guy has, I don't know how many children, you kill the father.
And then it's maybe the brother who will be in charge of three additional people, and he doesn't have money.
So then when you have an al-Qaida guy coming and giving him money to revenge and to take care of his children, how can he refuse?
Because basically the government, Yemeni government in the U.S., say in some cases, okay, when they do mistakes, they pay for people.
But in fact it was never the case.
So when it was the case, it was such small amounts, like $200 for a father of a family or something like this, but basically they just never documented all the places we went.
They didn't receive compensation for all the civilian casualties we found.
And the other thing is the other are even some of the people you can qualify as combatants.
I saw President Obama's speech, it was in May if I remember well, and he described the targets are imminent threats to the security of the American people and people you cannot arrest.
And in fact even small-range militants, we documented the cases of people, they were just, yes, lost.
There was this revolution in Yemen.
They basically demonstrated for the fall of the regime.
And then seeing that it wasn't working, they went to the south to combat the central government with al-Qaeda or whatever group.
So in these cases, again, it's Yemeni internal affairs, and Yemenis do not understand why the U.S. interfere in that, whatever the flag they are fighting for their business in Yemen.
But the thing is now, yes, basically the thing is we don't have the cases on all the hundreds of deaths caused by the American strike.
How many of them were stopped combatants and posing a real threat to the security of American people?
That's the question we would like to ask, and we don't have any answer because no one is answering us for that.
So that's why we will try to document and to make it a bit clearer.
Right.
Okay, now, so we still got about 15 minutes here, so I hope that you could get in depth and tell the stories of these individual lives and how they've been destroyed by the drone campaign there.
Yes.
For me, there is a story I really would like to tell because it touched me, and it's the story of three brothers of the same family.
Two of them were killed by a drone strike and one in fighting with the Yemeni army.
But the story of this family is the Hassani family.
So basically the first brother, Bander, was arrested as he was 15 by the Yemeni security and in a terrorist case.
So he spent three years in jail in Sana'a for having been part of an al-Qaeda-related group.
The thing is, they had nothing against him, and he was severely tortured in jail, and he was released because innocent.
He was judged and released because innocent.
After the judge rendered his decision, he stayed another six months in jail before going out.
During this time, his brother, Abdullah, was so upset from what happened to his brother that he went to fight in the south.
And during Bander's detention, he was killed in fight, so he had the choice.
Bander, when he went out, because he was in jail, because of his brother, who was fighting in the south with the terrorist group and things, when he went out, he just wanted to be in peace and to restart his life.
He was just 19, but he was harassed by security, Yemeni security.
And then, after six months' harassment, because they wanted him to spy, because he told, OK, your brother was fighting in the south, so you have to give us information for free and things.
So basically, he fled to the south as well, as a reaction of all that, and he was badly shocked of the torture he endured in jail.
And he went there, and he and his brother engaged in fighting.
It's not clear.
We spoke with the father.
We don't really know what they did exactly, but we know they went there.
And we know from the father as well that in jail, he was 15, 16, and he was with very old people, and people that were probably real terrorists.
So the thing is, when you are so young, you go out shocked by this experience.
I'm not excusing, but it's just to tell the difficulty of these people.
He made the choice to go there.
And then the security took the third brother, whose name is Abdel Majid.
He was 16 as well, and he spent, the small brother, three years in jail without any judgment or legal proceedings as a hostage, because they told the father, okay, you have to tell where Bander is in order we release your son.
So the thing is, Bander was shot by a drone attack in end of, no, it was January 2013.
And Abdel Majid went out of jail for the aid, which was three months before January.
So it's October.
And two days after Bander was shot, he was shot in another strike.
So the thing is, this family basically lost three of his sons, of their sons.
And the thing is, these guys were not, they did things.
At the end, Abdullah was in fighting with the army.
And Bander, he went there after having been arbitrarily detained for three years.
And Abdel Majid was in a bad place because, just after going out of jail.
So this story, what I want to say in this story is these guys were harassed and arbitrarily detained, and they reacted for that again.
And the thing is, in the case of Bander and the case of Abdel Majid, they could have kept them in jail.
And if they were really dangerous for the security of Yemen and the United States, why didn't they keep them in jail?
Why didn't they judge them for what they did wrong?
That's all these questions.
The thing is, at the end, you have this family.
The father lost three of his sons.
The elder of the son was not over 26 or 27.
They all have children.
And now, OK, they have nothing, no money, nothing, and just their pain for themselves.
And the thing is, again, the case of Abdel Majid and Bander, especially, they were detained.
And the security intelligence were after them since they were 15, so they knew everything about them.
So why just kill them?
That's one of the things.
And it explains something else.
It explains, as well, the fact that some of the case, we cannot specify it, but we have high suspicion that in some cases, you have the Yemenis who told to the Americans these ones are terrorists just because politically they don't like them or for other things.
And the Americans did after.
The thing is, then, you have this problem of people hating the United States and the people.
So the government of the United States is doing it because they don't understand why you take three of my sons.
Yeah, well, it's the same old story, too, going all the way back to Ayman al-Zawahiri and then Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, both.
They were a couple of nobodies until they were tortured by American sock puppet governments.
And then they became the horrible terrorists that they became.
So this kind of thing happens, you know.
And Americans, you know, if somebody attacks our towers, Americans go join up the army, but they cannot understand that exact same sentiment in others.
They just can't see it.
It must be the Islam that makes you so crazy.
Yeah.
My point is, there are two clear things.
The first is regarding the strategy of the United States.
If the United States leads such an attack to protect its people, I think it would do exactly the opposite.
Because me, personally, I don't think Yemenis are maybe one, but it's a really weak percentage.
But the thing is, when you see that going on, what you create is terrorists in the U.S., in Europe.
You see people from the Muslim, European Muslim or American Muslim, seeing how the government deal with the core legionaries abroad.
At least I can speak for Europe, but in some countries they feel discriminated and have reasons to.
And then they see how they kill people innocently.
And then they want to carry revenge.
And you create interior enemies by doing that far abroad.
That's one of the things.
And the second thing, I think, again, regarding the strategy of the states there, I don't understand.
The thing is, I don't understand why they go on by strengthening them and targeting them.
But the thing is, at the end, we ask ourselves, there was a revolution in Yemen.
And the revolution in Yemen, as in other countries, could have been the way for people to, in a specific way, develop politics, movements that can express the will in a peaceful way.
And by being so influenced on this transition and being so influenced on this thing, sometimes we just ask ourselves, if it's not the interest to keep this country unstable in order to preserve its interest, then let all the process of the democratic transition allow people for a more democratic and peaceful way of combating it.
Because knowing that people will not agree to let military in Yemen or to let them do as they are doing now.
So that's another question I ask myself when I come back, because I cannot understand how.
I mean, I'm sure the senior security leaders in the United States are not just stupid people not understanding what they do.
So that's a question I'm asking myself.
Well, you know, there are cynical interests who prefer to just keep us at war and then, you know, I don't know.
There are Hellfire missile salesmen that, you know, have to keep their numbers up and who knows what.
But certainly it's not reason behind the policy, certainly not reason and the national interest behind the policy.
You got that right.
You're right to be confused, you know.
But the thing is, I want to say something as well from the Yemeni people we met there.
And that's something they say every single people say.
They say, look, Al-Majalah attack in 2009, for example.
I don't know if it's the exact figures, but I can imagine they say, OK, they fired four Tomahawk missiles on Al-Majalah.
Each Tomahawk is $1 million, the cost.
They say if with $4 million they came to Al-Majalah to just put electricity, water, the world in the middle and just basic infrastructure, you can be sure.
So Al-Majalah was civilians killed.
But the thing is, people do not understand Yemen and they tell us, why do they spend million dollars in bombing us?
If they want us to love them, they could just invest them in developing the south of Yemen.
The thing is, all the money from the states coming there is for weapons and to buy weapons.
There are, of course, development things, but that's something I heard several times.
Why do you spend million dollars in bombing us as we don't have even water in our house?
We have to go to the river or the thing.
So that's something that touched me as well when I was there and I met with people.
And they're right, I think.
An activist there told me, you cannot combat terrorism by force.
You can just combat it with culture and education.
And the thing is, there is a huge lack of infrastructure and state and development in south of Yemen where these groups are strong.
Yeah, well, I think you're absolutely right.
And part of it, I think, as silly as it sounds to say it this way, Kareem, a big part of it is just that Yemen is so far away from here.
And so the people being blown apart, they're kind of imaginary, even to me.
And I care and I make a point of caring about it, but it's so far away.
And most Americans, they can't smell the burning bodies.
They can't hear the screams of the wailing grandmothers and whatever.
So it's just unreal to them.
And TV will never show them the real pictures of this is what it's like to be a father whose young child has just been torn limb from limb by shrapnel.
You know what I mean?
They don't expose us to it.
Basically, that was our purpose with this report and this investigation we began.
Yemen, it's not easy to go there.
It's not easy to document it there.
Al-Qarama is an Arabic organization.
So it was founded in 2007 in Geneva.
So we have an office in Yemen.
And we have some facilities to go there.
Our office coordinator is Yemeni.
He was a journalist.
He's a journalist as well.
And so the thing was, OK, we had this access.
And our colleague there is very good.
He documented all these attacks.
He filmed each of one.
We have a huge amount of videos now.
We had French journalists to go there to make a documentary as well.
But the thing is, for Americans, we had a group of Americans, you know, probably them, Coach Pink.
And they went to Yemen a month ago.
They met with our friend there.
And the thing is, basically, it was one of the goals of this report.
It was to name these victims, to try to ask, OK, maybe people killed are not good people and things.
But we are based on international rights and international law.
And individual rights, yeah.
Well, no, it's really important.
I'm sorry, Kareem.
We're out of time.
That's why I'm talking all over you here.
We've got to go.
But it's so important that you do name them as individuals the way you do.
And I really appreciate it.
I'm going to do my best to keep spreading this thing around.
Thanks again for your time.
I appreciate it.
No, thank you.
I hope my English was not so bad.
No, no, you're just fine.
That's Kareem Sayyad at alkarama.org, en.alkarama.org, for the new report on the Yemen drone strikes.
I'll post up on my Facebook page for you, too.
See what happens at wallstreetwindow.com.
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