Death of a Civilian

How the technology and language we use propagates the killing of civilians

James Nicol

The Syrian civilian was killed by an RAF Reaper drone, similar to that pictured (MoD)

If you are a Netflix junkie like me, you may have noticed the acclaimed BBC television drama Line of Duty popping up among the new releases for May. For those of you familiar with the show, you will of course know the harrowing scenes that open the first season. However, for those unfamiliar, let me fill you in. 

The opening scenes plays out a chaotic and ultimately disastrous domestic counter-terrorism operation. While attempting to apprehend a suspected Al-Qaeda cell in Birmingham, the Counter-Terrorism unit storms the wrong apartment. Mistaking an innocent man for their target, they shoot and kill him, leaving behind his distraught wife and infant child.

  

In the aftermath of this deadly operation, the police immediately set in motion a campaign to obfuscate the truth and publicly minimize any mistakes and flawed processes that may have led to the death of this innocent man. The operation thus remained “well planned and executed” and the Counter-Terrorism officers showed “great courage and professionalism”. 

The outcome was, of course, a regrettable aberration. 

But as viewers our moral outrage has already been stoked. An innocent man has been killed, yet it is treated as more of an inconvenience than anything. This response just does not site right with us.  

Rigorous and Professional

Secretary of Defense, Gavin Williamson, right (Guardian)

Now, that very same week that Line of Duty was re-released by Netflix, the UK Ministry of Defense admitted to accidentally killing a civilian in a drone strike against ISIS fighters in Eastern Syria.  According to a written press release on May 4^th by Secretary of Defense Gavin Williamson,

“We do everything we can to minimise the risk to civilian life from UK strikes through our rigorous targeting processes and the professionalism of UK Service personnel. It is therefore deeply regrettable that a UK air strike on 26 March 2018, targeting Daesh fighters in eastern Syria, resulted in an unintentional civilian fatality. During a strike to engage three Daesh fighters, a civilian motorbike crossed into the strike area at the last moment and it is assessed that one civilian was unintentionally killed.”

Looking at both events – one fiction, one fact – play out almost simultaneously in the same week, we are left facing some uncomfortable similarities in the tone and terminology used in excusing and allowing such death and suffering. For through these excuses we are tacitly approving of more death and suffering in the future. Let us also not forget that Line of Duty first aired in 2012, almost six years ago. Yet, incredibly, this admission by the MoD on May 4^th marked the first time since RAF operations against ISIS began that the UK has formally owned up to any role in causing the death of a civilian.

A Lack of Evidence

Until this past month, the MoD has repeatedly claimed that there is no evidence suggesting that civilians have been killed in the more than 1,600 airstrikes conducted against ISIS targets since 2014. Previous Defense Secretary Michael Fallon claimed in 2015 to the BBC that: “Our estimate is that there hasn’t yet been a single civilian casualty because of the precision of their strikes.”

These claims have been harshly criticized by many, and rightly so. Particular flak has come from journalists, researchers and NGOs who cover war zones and know full well the chaotic and hazardous nature of war. As Martin Shaw, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex has concisely put it, “war today means blowing people up”. As much as we might wish it weren’t, that is an inherently messy strategy.

"Blowing People Up"

A drone is armed with Hellfire missiles (NPR)

Let us face the stark reality for one moment. An RAF drone firing a Hellfire AGM-114N4 missile weighing 50 kg, travelling at 450 m/s, carrying a thermobaric warhead at a target inan urban environment is not a contained event.

When such a warhead detonates it releases a cloud of highly explosive material that rapidly burns as it expands. The explosion sustains an unusually long high-pressure wave creating a vacuum and an extremely powerful shock wave. Anyone in the immediate vicinity will likely die from catastrophic internal organ damage.

A thermobaric warhead detonates during testing (Drone Wars)

According to an unnamed MoD official, these weapons were “particularly designed to take down buildings and kill everyone within them”.

However, as Chris Woods from Airwars justifiably points out, “we don’t live in a world with magic bombs and missiles that only kill bad people”.

AOAV Monitoring Explosive Violenve in 2017

The extent to which this is true can be seen in a 2017 survey by Action on Armed Violence which found that 93% of all people killed by explosive devises in urban environments were civilians, of which the largest proportion, 45%, were caused by airstrikes.

How Precise Is 'Precise'?

In light of the use of such weapons which, even when properly deployed, wreak so much destruction; we must also be alert to the use by officials of very precise phrasing that offers very vague promises. Like the sanitized Bush-era language of “enhanced interrogation”, today’s abstruse language of “no evidence” and “no reports”, or “surgical” missions and “precision strikes” can also lead us condone and propagate ethically fraught practices.

Such phrases, “precision” and its kin in particular, have become a most pernicious part of our modern lexicon when discussing war and conflict. Of course, we no longer indiscriminately carpet bomb cities. We use drones, smart bombs and laser-guided missiles. Today’s strikes are far more precise and targeted than anything we could hope for in wars past. However, to steadfastly peddle the line that it took 1,600 strikes over four years for the RAF to kill its first civilian because these strikes involved such “rigorous targeting” and “precision weapons” is dangerously misleading in terms of what “precision” actually means within a military context.

As Lt. Col. Jill Long USAF warns in a research paper delivered to the U.S. Army War College,

“precision does not imply, as one might assume, accuracy. Instead, the word precision exclusively pertains to a discriminate targeting process…[but] by using a word that has such specific meaning in the mind of most civilians, it is easy to see how a gap in understanding and expectations has been fostered.”

Where to from here?

This assumption that precision means we are only killing bad guys has, as Chris Cole from Drone Wars puts it, “create[d] public permission for the expansion of air campaigns”. In fact, as discovered by Drone Wars through Freedom of Information Act requests, the first quarter of 2018 saw a dramatic rise in the number of RAF drone strikes. The 92 strikes carried out between January and March this year is more than the total number of strikes authorized in the previous 18 months. What can more drone strikes mean but more civilian deaths?

At least now we’re beginning to admit to them.