One of the troubling aspects of these attacks, however, has been the deaths of civilians. The article discusses why this is and what measures the military is using to minimize civilian casualties:
While there are more attacks, fewer civilians have been killed. It's difficult to tell who is an innocent civilian in these circumstances, but since the Taliban have rarely claimed, and identified civilian deaths from these attacks, there are apparently very few civilians killed.There's much else of interest in the Strategy Page report. Check it out.
There are several reasons for this. One is better intel, but there's a new weapon in use. The CIA controlled UAVs are now using a smaller missile; the Griffin. This enables targets to be destroyed with less risk to nearby civilians.
In the last three years, the UAV campaign in Pakistan has killed about a thousand people. Some 30 percent of the dead were civilians, largely because the terrorists use human shields, and try to surround themselves with women and children. Many of these civilians were wives and children of the Islamic radicals.
As the CIA intelligence got better, and the locals more insistent on not being human shields, more and more of the civilians were close kin of the terrorists, and at least aware of the danger they were in because of their husband's line of work.
Civilian deaths are minimized by trying to catch the terrorists while traveling, or otherwise away from civilians. Journalists visiting the sites of these attacks later, find few locals claiming lots of civilian casualties.
