‘Killed us twice’: Families of US drone victims seek reparations in Somalia

Growing up in a nomadic family in central Somalia’s Galgaduud region, Luul Dahir Mohamed, like many girls in her Bedouin community, never got the opportunity to go to school.

But as she grew up, married and had two children – Mohamed and Mariam – she dreamed of a better life for them. After her marriage ended, the young mother decided to relocate from her rural community in Bergan to the central Somali city of El Buur in 2018, hoping the move would help her provide for her children.

But just a few months later, Luul, 22, and Mariam, aged four, were killed.

It was April 1, 2018, when Luul and her daughter joined several other passengers in a pick-up truck headed to the town of Dac, about 18km (11 miles) from El Buur. They were on their way to visit Luul’s older brother Qassim when the vehicle was struck.

“She’d only been there [in El Buur] for a couple [of] months, before she was killed in the [United States] drone strike,” her other brother, 38-year-old Abubakar Dahir Mohamed, told Al Jazeera.

That day, according to media reports and Luul’s family, US drones bombed the pick-up truck. Immediately after, locals found several bodies in and around the site. Further down the road, about 60 metres (200 feet) away, was the lifeless body of Luul, clutching onto her child, whose small body was covered in shrapnel.

“When they fired on the vehicle, Luul made it out with her daughter. They knew it was a woman and child, and then they fired once again, killing them both in the second strike,” Abubakar said from the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

“The Americans claim to uphold human rights, but apparently, when it comes to people like my sister and niece, their lives don’t matter.”

Reparations ‘not feasible’

The Africa Command (AFRICOM), which oversees US military operations on the continent, has carried out more than 410 air raids in Somalia since 2005, according to the think tank New America, which tracks such attacks. According to AFRICOM’s own data, the command carried out 37 strikes in Somalia in 2018, including the one that killed Luul and Mariam.

A day after the April 1 strike, AFRICOM released a statement claiming it struck “five terrorists” and destroyed one vehicle in the strike.

“No civilians were killed in this airstrike,” said the statement.

The US military says its air raids target armed groups, including al-Shabab, in Somalia. However, locals and rights groups often report civilian deaths.

Twelve months after the attack, following pressure from rights groups, AFRICOM conducted an internal review and admitted that a “mother and child” had been killed in an attack near El Buur.

This marked the first-ever US admission of civilian casualties from their decades-long air campaign in Somalia. The report did not name Luul and Mariam.

This month, legal rights organisation Humanus, which represents civilian victims of attacks like these, received a letter from AFRICOM, seen exclusively by Al Jazeera, confirming that Luul and her daughter were killed in a US attack.

AFRICOM is “committed to learning from the circumstances around these tragic deaths”, the letter read, but said making a “condolence payment” to Luul’s relatives, including her young son, now 13, is “not feasible”.

Victims’ families and rights groups say it is not enough.

Search for answers

“AFRICOM has never reached out to us directly,” Abubakar told Al Jazeera, saying he tried to contact them for answers on two separate occasions – first through the “contact us” section on their website to reach public relations, and later by utilising the command’s civilian harm reporting portal.

“I even left them my contact details,” he said, but he never received a response.

A year after AFRICOM’s internal review and its admission about civilian deaths, the command created a civilian casualty reporting form on its website where people could share information on those killed or injured by US air raids.

From a distance, the initiative seems good for filing complaints, but the move has come under sharp criticism by researchers for several reasons, including being in English, a language not familiar to most Somalis, and being impossible for civilians in al-Shabab-controlled areas, where most air raids happen, to access as the armed group puts prohibitions on internet, mobile data and smartphone use.

“The current civilian complaint system is profoundly inadequate for the context,” Eva Buzo, the executive director of Humanus, told Al Jazeera.

“It is a system that has repeatedly failed victims. In our clients’ cases, they exhausted every available channel, including an online portal that is utterly inappropriate for a population with high levels of illiteracy and a lack of internet access.”

Abukar Arman, a Somali analyst and author who has written extensively on US drone attacks and the so-called “war on terror” in Somalia, believes AFRICOM’s civilian reporting portal has more to do with optics than accountability.

“Look at the language [English] the civilian harm reporting portal is in, and you can just imagine the hurdles and exercise in futility that many Somalis go through when attempting to report or complain about their loved ones who might have been harmed in US drone strikes,” he said.

Still, for Abubakar, trying to use the online portal was worth the effort, despite his intermediate English language skills, as he was desperate for answers about the deaths of his sister and niece.

But it was to no avail. He says his messages were ignored.

In an email sent to Al Jazeera, AFRICOM said “those affected had representatives engage on their behalf”, and the command determined that “it would be more appropriate to communicate through those representatives” instead of with individual queries.

However, Abubakar told Al Jazeera that AFRICOM’s claims were not true, as when he reached out to them in 2019 and used the civilian harm reporting portal in 2020, “there was no one representing our family with AFRICOM”.

Humanus took up only Luul’s family’s case in 2023, he said, which Buzo also confirmed.

There had been “persistent and ultimately futile attempts by the victims’ families to seek a response from the US military”, Buzo said about Luul’s case, as well as another family her organisation is representing, the Kusows.

“In both cases … they exhausted every available channel … Until Humanus provided legal support, these efforts were met with silence.”

‘She would scream nearly every night’

The Kusow family has lived for generations in the Jubba Valley of southern Somalia.

On the night of February 2, 2020, while preparing dinner, the family’s home in Jilib was struck by a missile from a US drone. AFRICOM in a press release initially claimed the air raid “killed one terrorist”, adding that the “removal of even one terrorist makes the region and the US safer”.

However, AFRICOM’s own internal review and investigation found that that particular strike killed one civilian and injured three others, according to another letter sent to Humanus in September, and seen by Al Jazeera, in which they named the victims.

“Bombing people while they’re having dinner, only to say they killed terrorists despite having the capabilities to determine who the targets actually are beforehand, shows their complete disregard for the lives of my family,” Mohamed Osman Abdi, a relative of the Kusow family, told Al Jazeera.

The attack injured Mohamed’s mother-in-law, 74-year-old Khadija Mohamed Gedow. After the strike, she initially struggled to walk due to her injuries. Her health has deteriorated further, and she is now unable to walk at all and has become blind in her right eye.

Mohamed’s three young nieces were also casualties of the attack.

Fatumo Kusow Omar, 14, suffered serious injuries to her shoulder and still struggles to pick up things five years later, Mohamed said. “But the first two years were the worst, because she was battling trauma,” he added. “She had difficulties sleeping at night and would have flashbacks of the loud explosion [from the missile] and the dust, debris and fire that engulfed their home.”

Fatumo is yet to fully recover, he says, but feels it is his other niece, Adey Kusow Omar, who was nine at the time, who has suffered worse. “She would scream nearly every night; I tried to put her to sleep because she feared another explosion … I knew she was traumatised, but there was nothing I could do for her.”

A third niece, Nuro Kusow Omar, 17, was the most tragic victim that day; she was killed in the attack. At her burial the following morning, in accordance with Islamic traditions, both relatives and community members were terrified because drones were spotted hovering over the town, including over her funeral procession, causing fears that another US air raid was imminent.

“We didn’t know if they’d be bombed again and whether we’d lose more family members,” Mohamed said. “It was like reliving the nightmare, but this time, we were more scared, not knowing who could die next.”

Lives lost ‘worth nothing’ to the US

Humanus has been advocating for both the Kusow family and Luul’s relatives since 2023, trying to help them get answers as well as accountability from AFRICOM.

Buzo told Al Jazeera it took intervention by the Humanus legal team just for the cases to be noticed by AFRICOM, only for them to be refused any further action.

“This lack of a functional, accessible path to redress is not just a procedural flaw; it compounds the suffering of victims by silencing their attempts to seek justice,” she said.

When it comes to the prospects for any form of reparations or financial compensation for the victims and their families, AFRICOM stated in the letters to Humanus that under “current Department of Defense guidelines and policies, US Africa Command determined it is not feasible to make a condolence payment in this matter”.

When asked for further clarification, in an email response sent to Al Jazeera, AFRICOM said it carried out an assessment bearing in mind the “mission objectives, cultural norms, local economic realities; the feasibility, safety, security, and logistics of making the payment itself” and made their decision based on the risk that funds meant for surviving family members could be “subject to confiscation, extortion, or unofficial taxation by terrorist or hostile insurgent groups”.

In a statement published on Tuesday, Humanus said, “AFRICOM’s perfunctory acknowledgment and empty condolences are not just underwhelming, they are a profound injustice. Our clients have already navigated a long and arduous process exhausting every available channel, only to be met with a system designed to look the other way.”

It added: “Reparations are not just about money; they are a formal recognition of the harm and a vital, final step toward a full stop for survivors. When this crucial component is absent, the so-called ‘accountability process’ reveals itself as little more than an elaborate exercise in futility.”

Mohamed and Abubakar say AFRICOM’s reasoning for not paying compensation is “painful” and “more injustice” at the hands of those who killed their loved ones.

“It’s a cheap excuse. They killed and maimed these people [the Kusow family]. Using fears of the money being extorted or confiscated is another way of saying the lives [lost] are worth nothing to us [the US],” Mohamed said.

“It’s painful and shows how desperate they are to rid themselves of any accountability.”

Abubakar also slammed AFRICOM’s explanation. “It shows they totally are unwilling to pay and will go to extreme lengths to avoid compensation for what they did to my sister and niece,” he said.

“Every year, the US gives [millions] of dollars [in aid] to Somalia in different sectors, and there is never any fear of the money being stolen or being exploited by armed groups, but when it comes to us [our family], they say things like this.”

Additionally, in the letters seen by Al Jazeera, AFRICOM said it is unable to meet the surviving family members due to the “security situation in Somalia” and “threats to US personnel”.

“Such a claim is illogical. AFRICOM and the US in general have people [personnel] already stationed in Mogadishu,” the Kusows’ relative, Mohamed, told Al Jazeera. “If they wanted, they could easily meet with my family, but it’s clear that they are avoiding to go before the families they hurt to avoid further scrutiny.”

On September 3 – the day AFRICOM wrote the letters to Humanus – General Dagvin Anderson, the recently appointed commander for AFRICOM, arrived in Mogadishu and met leadership from the Somali government and international coalition, including US officials. The AFRICOM commander would later give an interview to the Somali-run television.

“If he [the AFRICOM commander] can sit down in front of cameras, then he and other [US] personnel can sit down with our family, instead of slaughtering them like animals and looking the other way,” Mohamed added.

Culture of ‘impunity’

Over the years, rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have raised concerns about AFRICOM’s lack of transparency and openness when dealing with family members of drone attack victims, as well as in investigating cases and providing compensation.

Analysts who spoke to Al Jazeera say the refusal by AFRICOM to pay compensation is part of a culture of impunity that has persisted with US drone operations in Somalia for nearly two decades.

“When US authorities are unwilling to do the right thing [compensate financially] with surviving family members, it shows not only their complete disregard but how even AFRICOM themselves know they’re immune from accountability – no matter how many civilians that continue to lose their lives at the hands of US drones,” said Arman.

AFRICOM’s refusal to provide compensation “is deeply disappointing” to Buzo and her team at Humanus. “It reinforces the perception that seeking justice through official military channels is an incredibly difficult and often unrewarding process for victims,” she said.

During President Donald Trump’s first term in office, the US carried out more than 200 air raids in Somalia, surpassing all his predecessors combined, according to the United Kingdom-based watchdog, Airwars. This year, the US has carried out 80 air raids in Somalia, according to New America, surpassing all strikes conducted during former President Joe Biden’s time in office.

Abubakar and Mohamed told Al Jazeera they feel they are being forced to relive the nightmare of the attacks that killed their relatives because of the continued “disregard” of the US in the handling of their cases.

Mohamed believes AFRICOM does not care whether their air raids hit al-Shabab or civilians who are nothing more than “collateral damage” to them, while Abubakar says the lack of concern from the US “will never bring us closure” after the killing of Luul and Mariam.

Source: Aljazeera