Through seven separate attacks by the United States—six drones strikes and one raid—36 members of the al Ameri and al Taisy families were killed.
“What is compelling about this case is the argument it makes about the lack of any other remedy available to these victims,” said Priyanka Motaparthy of Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute. “It makes the really stark point that they have been unable to go through U.S. courts; that no mechanism for redress exists even when their family members were killed, even when they’ve suffered very serious injuries, even when their homes, or places of work, or vehicles were destroyed. There is no recourse for them.”The families, led by Aziz al Ameri, are now filing a petition on January 25 against the U.S. government through the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
While the Obama years saw a marked escalation of the war in Yemen, attacks spiked in 2017 under the Trump administration, with 133 declared U.S. airstrikes and raids. Over four years, the number of declared attacks during the Trump administration—181—nearly equaled the total of eight years under President Obama. This may also be a drastic undercount, since CENTCOM publicly declares only some of its actions and CIA strikes are officially neither confirmed nor denied. The UK-based monitoring group Airwars, however, counts another 146 alleged strikes during the Trump years.A 2014 study of drone strike casualties in Pakistan and Yemen by Reprieve also found that as many as 1,147 people may have been killed during attempts to assassinate just 41 men.
A Yemeni national security official told CNN at the time that “none of the killed was a wanted suspect by the Yemeni government.” A Human Rights Watch investigation of the attack also “found that the convoy was indeed a wedding procession,” and “some, if not all those killed and wounded were civilians.” According to the report, the families were then compensated for their loss. In 2014, the Washington Post reported that the Yemeni government paid more than $1 million in compensation and that “U.S. officials have said that both the CIA and the National Counterterrorism Center, which was directed by the White House to review the operation, concluded that civilians were probably injured or killed.” “Provincial authorities then unofficially acknowledged civilian casualties by providing money and assault rifles—a traditional gesture of apology—to the families of the dead and wounded,” stated the Human Rights Watch report. There were also other unusual aspects of the case that made AQAP affiliation even more unlikely; experts told Human Rights Watch that if the family members killed had indeed been members of AQAP, the local government wouldn’t have apologized (the governor of the province and other Yemeni politician called the strike a “mistake”), the militants would have been named by both the U.S. and Yemeni governments, and AQAP would have likely described the militants supposedly killed as “martyrs.”Those killed were farmers, shepherds, construction workers, and even members of the Yemeni army—not exactly the hardened AQAP operatives the U.S. government claimed to be targeting.
“None of the people in our family or our tribe has been wanted by the security service. We don’t know any members of AQAP,” said al Ameri. Al Taisy said that given that some of their family members, including themselves, are now part of the Yemeni military, “anyone who is saying they have targeted terrorists [with the drone strikes against our family] is either lying or doesn’t know us.” Daniel Mahanty, who ran the State Department’s Office of Security and Human Rights during the Obama administration and now head of the U.S. program at the Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC) sees these attacks on the al Ameri and al Taisy families as emblematic of America’s forever wars. “The cases represented in the dossier are representative of so many of the issues that remain unresolved in the way the US executes its ‘war on terror’ and the way it deals with reports of civilian casualties, he told VICE World News. “The Biden administration should review these and other cases, and moreover, should take a close look at them for ways it can improve every aspect of the process.” The cases also highlight a pervasive lack of U.S. accountability in the face of the killing of innocent children and their families when it comes to U.S. quasi-wars in Africa and the Middle East. “The lethal killing program has been one of the least transparent and least accountable programs that the U.S. government has carried out,” said Motaparthy of Columbia Law School. “The Department of Defense’s own reporting on ex gratia payments shows there have been zero payments made in Yemen. As far as we know, they haven’t directly paid anyone compensations, made amends, offered redress.”“Anyone who is saying they have targeted terrorists [after the drone strikes against our family] is either lying or doesn’t know us.”
In 2017, a senior military intelligence official told NBC News that “new directives” to aggressively pursue the Dhahab and Qayfa clans had been issued. “A military directive to aggressively pursue the Qayfa clans is the equivalent of saying ‘We're going after all the families in, say, Brooklyn,’” explained journalist Iona Craig, who has reported extensively from Yemen, including the immediate aftermath of the Yakla raid. Craig shared with VICE World News the results of demographic modeling done on her behalf by an expert in Yemeni tribal mapping. “Such a declaration of collective punishment of the al Dhahabs and their Qayfa tribe marks more than 21,000 military aged males aged between 16 and 44, according to a 2004 estimate of Qayfa tribe numbers,” she explained, noting that this figure is five times greater than the 2016 State Department estimate of the number of AQAP members. “It's effectively green-lighting going after anyone and everyone living in or from a particular area,” said Craig. The assumption, she added, that “every person from the Qayfa area is a legitimate target is not just extraordinary and terrifying but also a violation of IHL [International Humanitarian Law].”“A military directive to aggressively pursue the Qayfa clans is the equivalent of saying ‘We're going after all the families in, say, Brooklyn.’”
Years later, the psychological toll, impact, family members say, has continued. “The lives of people in the village have become painful, full of fear and terror and anxiety, said Amer al Ameri in an interview with a Reprieve investigator in 2019. “Our lives have changed drastically for the worse.”Though the most recent strike occurred in 2018, Reprieve believes that the families are still at risk. In March 2020, leaflets were dropped over the district of Yakla, where the al Ameri and al Taisy families live, offering a reward in return for information about senior AQAP leaders. The leaflets, according to Reprieve, were reportedly dropped by U.S. helicopters, and Aziz al Ameri told Reprieve that he saw a drone hovering above his hometown in June. In their witness statement, Reprieve wrote, “The families remain at serious and urgent risk of irreparable harm of death or injury.” Even so, this is not the first time that Yemeni families of those killed in drone strikes have pursued legal action against the United States government, though these pursuits have ultimately been unsuccessful. In 2015, three years after two Yemeni civilians were reportedly killed during a U.S. drone strike, their families filed a wrongful death suit against the U.S. government. In 2017, a U.S. federal court tossed out the lawsuit, and the judge said that it was not their place to question military judgement. While it remains to be seen what could come of the family’s petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Gibson believes that the very filing of their grievances sets an important precedent. Still, while Reprieve has requested that the petition be expedited, the process into uncharted legal territory could take up to 10 years and become a generational struggle. “A decision from the Inter-American Commission would at a minimum provide something the families have never had—recognition of the harm that has been done to them,” Gibson said. “They have lost dozens of loved ones, many of them children. A decision in their favor would finally bring some accountability and would force the U.S. to reckon with 10 years of running a shadow killing program that has led to the deaths of hundreds of innocents, including those from the al Ameri and al Taisy families.” Over the years, as Shiban watched the family dwindle under mounting U.S. attacks, he remembered cherished moments from his many visits: Family members’ love of roast lamb, the children racing up hills where they knew they could outrun city-dwellers, and their unyielding generosity. Regardless of what they had, Shiban said, they would “share with whoever they are hosting.” The leaders of the families, he added, never seemed to have a “feeling of anger and a sense of a revenge” about the attacks. Instead, they tried to work within the system, attempting to talk to the right people and seeking mediation. One of their favorite activities, Shiban remembered, was when night came. The families would leave their village and sit on a nearby hilltop, competing with one another in a contest to see the farthest. The sky was clear, and in their village there was no electricity, no bright lights disturbing the peace. So they sat, everyone together, and peered into the darkness, trying to make out the next town, and the one after that.“The lives of people in the village have become painful, full of fear and terror and anxiety.”
Those days are over now. After the Houthis attacked their village, it became dangerous to visit their special hilltop. That conflict, coupled with a fear of drone strikes, made many of the pleasures the families once enjoyed impossible as trauma and displacement have absorbed their attention. “Everyone in the village is affected,” said al Taisy. “They usually can’t sleep properly because of the fear. They can’t even eat properly. Even the children are afraid to go out and play. Some of them are mentally sick right now, because of this constant feeling of fear.”Still, they hope the petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights will bring justice. Al Ameri and al Taisy say they hope for a transparent investigation, accountability for faulty intelligence that caused the strikes, and reparations for the fractured families and orphaned children. “I want to pressure the Biden administration to stop all future drone strikes on our area,” added al Ameri, who, with al Taisy, said their families brought the case forward because of the new president. “We want more voices in America to stand in solidarity with us and ask questions of their government. We are people just like them.”Follow Leah Feiger and Nick Turse on Twitter.“Even the children are afraid to go out and play.”