Maria’s Note: One Day After His Re-election, Obama’s Drones Strike Yemen
One day after his triumphant re-election as the president of the United States, Mr. Barack Obama has authorized a new drone attack in Yemen. As the Huffington Post reported:
On Wednesday morning, as many Americans sifted through the voter data and exit poll numbers of President Barack Obama’s reelection the night before, the Twitter feeds of close watchers of Yemen lit up with reports of another sort of presidential event: an apparent U.S. drone strike had killed several individuals in that country.
The strike, that targeted a cell of Al-Qaeda militants, took place in al-Sarin village, less than 40km away from the capital Sanaa. The drone strike killed three militants and injured others, including a young boy, as it has been reported.
Ten years have already passed since the first U.S drone strike killed a member of Al-Qaeda. According to a report by Yemen’s National Organization for Defending Rights and Freedom, more than 300 citizens have been assassinated in Yemen in 2012. Besides Yemen, U.S have carried out drone attacks in Pakistan, Somalia and Afghanistan, killing over 7000 people, according to the report, Living Under Drones, by Stanford Law School.
It is not the military but the CIA who is behind the attacks of these remote-controlled machines, with no kind of accountability or information on the attacks.
In the case of no manifest armed conflict, the CIA and the US must respect the application of international human rights laws. Also, they must provide clear reports about the targets, the frequency of the strikes, the number of casualties and other essential information.
In his second term, Obama faces a number of important international challenges that he will hardly be able to disregard. And the drone program is one of them.
