Somalia Civilian Casualties: Loosened Targeting Rules and Transparency Rollbacks

Overview

War requires rules. Rules about when it is lawful to strike, what level of certainty about civilian harm is required before a strike is authorized, how civilian casualties are assessed and reported. The Obama administration had spent years developing these rules through the Presidential Policy Guidance framework. The Trump administration systematically dismantled them.

The most significant change was the near-certainty standard. Under Obama's framework, strikes in areas not designated as active hostilities required near-certainty that no civilians would be harmed. Trump's Somalia designation created a zone where that standard did not apply.

The Scale of Change

Airwars, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and other civilian casualty monitoring organizations documented significant increases in reported civilian harm across all theaters where the Trump administration increased operational tempo and reduced targeting restrictions.

In Somalia specifically, AFRICOM acknowledged a marked increase in strikes. The Hiraan strike in early 2017 became a test case: the number of reported civilian casualties was so disputed between AFRICOM, local sources, and monitoring organizations that the true figure was never established. What was established was that people who were not combatants died.

Transparency Rollbacks

The Trump administration compounded the harm by reducing transparency. The annual civilian casualty report required by Obama's executive order was eliminated. AFRICOM stopped publishing certain strike statistics. The mechanisms by which the public and Congress could assess the human cost of U.S. operations were reduced at the same time the human cost was rising.