Dirty Wars Page #8

you execute them on

the battlefield?

Yes.

So that other

foreigners expect no mercy.

[Indistinct conversations]

How did the Americans

find men like Indha Adde?

And to what end?

After a decade of covert war,

Somalia was in ruins.

Half the country was ruled

by the local

al-Qaeda affiliate,

the other half by men

like the general,

wandering the streets

with an endless kill list

and a band of men.

[Indistinct conversations]

Every time we stopped,

people looked at us nervously,

and I was told that

my very presence

was endangering them.

Bashir would insist we leave

moments after we arrived.

Okay, we go.

I wanted to see beneath

the surface of the war

to understand what it meant

to ordinary Somalis.

[Indistinct conversations]

But I was passed from

warlord to warlord

and soon realized

the only people

I'd be able to meet

were men with guns.

MOHAMMED QANYARE

US-BACKED WARLORD

For years, Mohamed Qanyare

was Washington's

man in Mogadishu.

His methods were extreme,

but Washington insisted

Qanyare's services

were vital to their

kill campaign.

Who were the people

that the Americans wanted

your help tracking?

You don't want to

talk about that.

Did they offer to

fund any operations?

You don't want to

comment on that.

But you're targeting

people for the Americans.

And when these

American operations

kill innocent people,

what's the impact?

They're all being taken

to Madina Hospital?

For over a decade,

JSOC and the CIA had

free rein in Somalia.

All their tactics

were on display-

drone strikes, night

raids, mercenaries.

As the War on Terror

entered a second decade,

Somalia seemed like a

laboratory of the future,

and the future looked bleak.

KENYA-SOMALIA BORDER

I was ready to leave Somalia

and decided to call my editor.

But the news from home

what not what I expected.

Anwar al-Awlaki was dead,

killed in a drone strike

authorized by the

President himself.

Another name struck

from the list.

I wanted to go home,

to be done with it all.

But I couldn't.

SANA'A, YEMEN

I got another call,

and this one left me stunned.

Two weeks after

al-Awlaki's death,

the U.S. had launched

another strike in Yemen.

Another American

had been killed.

But this time, it

was a teenage boy.

They had killed Anwar

al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son,

Abdulrahman.

I returned to Sana'a,

but I wasn't sure why.

Was it to file another story?

To investigate another crime?

Or was it to apologize?

Abdulrahman left

without telling us.

He said in a small note

that he's going to

look for his father.

He left from the kitchen window,

and he took a bus to the

governorate of Shabwah.

Then when his father was killed,

his grandmother told him,

"There is no use for

you to stay anymore. "

And he said, "Yes, I will

come back in two days. "

On the morning of October 15th,

we got a telephone call,

and they told us he was

blown up to pieces

by the drone.

And they saw only the

back of his hair.

You know, his

relative, his cousin,

he knew his hair from the back,

and he recognize it, and he knew

that Abdulrahman

really was dead.

But they could not recognize

his face or anything else.

I always teased with him

about his, you know, big-

his hair, you know,

that he should cut it,

because I thought that

he should do that.

The drone had not

just killed the boy,

it vanished him.

I asked to see photos

of Abdulrahman

and suddenly realized

why I was here.

It wasn't to investigate

another death.

I wanted to see him when

he was still alive.

[Indistinct conversations]

Abdulrahman's grandmother

was in mourning

but sat down with me

for a moment to talk.

What did Abdulrahman do?

Who ordered the killing

of Abdulrahman?

He was sitting, having

dinner with his friends.

How come he was killed?

What did he do?

You know, Abdulrahman was...

He was a very, very gentle boy,

and he never hurt anybody.

I tried to make sense

of Abdulrahman's death.

His father's could at

least be explained.

But a teenager with

a Facebook page

and a group of

adolescent friends,

why would his name have

been put on the list?

What could he

possibly have done?

The Americans said

Abdulrahman was

collateral damage,

but they offered no

explanation for the strike.

And unlike Gardez,

they made no apology.

It seemed an impossible

coincidence.

They killed the father

and then the son.

But maybe it was

as simple as that.

Like a tale from

Greek mythology,

Abdulrahman was killed

not for what he'd done

but for who he might

one day become...

A twisted logic,

a logic without end.

Nasser had lost

his firstborn son

and his first grandson.

But what did we lose

when the drone struck

Abdulrahman and his

teenage friends?

When I first visited Gardez,

I had no idea where the

story would lead me.

I didn't know just how much

the world had changed...

Or how much the journey

would change me.

But I realize now the

story has no end.

Somehow, in front of our eyes,

undeclared wars

have been launched

in countries across the globe,

foreigners and citizens

alike assassinated

by presidential decree...

The War on Terror transformed

into a self-fulfilling

prophecy.

How does a war like

this ever end?

And what happens to us

when we finally see what's

hidden in plain sight?

END:

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