Austin has had plenty of time for phone calls, travel, and elective surgery. He's been around the world and is now hunkered down at home. But what he hasn't done, since the letter from those 24 humanitarian groups was sent to the Pentagon more than a month ago, is make any apparent effort to contact Luul and Mariam's family.
"Since the strike, our family has been broken apart. It has been more than five years since it happened, but we have not been able to move on," wrote Abubakar in December. It's been a common story. In Yemen, where the U.S. has recently ramped up air strikes, victims of past U.S. attacks wait -- just like Luul and Mariam's family -- for acknowledgment and apology.
Between 2013 and 2020, for example, the U.S. carried out seven separate attacks in Yemen -- six drone strikes and one raid -- that killed 36 members of the intermarried Al Ameri and Al Taisy families. A quarter of them were children between the ages of three months and 14 years old. The survivors have been waiting for years for an explanation as to why it happened while living in fear. In 2018, Adel Al Manthari, a civil servant in the Yemeni government, and four of his cousins -- all civilians -- were traveling by truck when a U.S. Hellfire missile slammed into their vehicle. Three of the men were killed instantly. Another died days later in a local hospital. Al Manthari was gravely wounded. Complications resulting from his injuries nearly took his life in 2022. He beseeched the U.S. government to dip into the millions of dollars Congress annually allocates to compensate victims of U.S. attacks. They ignored his pleas. His limbs and life were eventually saved by the kindness of strangers via a crowdsourced GoFundMe campaign.
The U.S. has a long history of killing civilians in air strikes, failing to investigate the deaths, and ignoring pleas for apology and compensation. It's a century-old tradition that Austin continues to maintain, making time to issue orders for new strikes but not to issue apologies for past errant attacks. Through it all, Luul and Mariam's family can do nothing but wait, hoping that the U.S. secretary of defense will eventually respond to the open letter and finally -- almost six years late -- offer amends.
"My sister was killed, and she won't be back again -- but doesn't she have the right to get justice, and for her family to at least be compensated for the loss of her life?" Abubakar wrote in his op-ed. He and his relatives find themselves endlessly grappling with their loss as the Pentagon puts out press releases filled with high-minded and (as yet) hollow, rhetoric about "improving the Department's approach to mitigating and responding to civilian harm," while promising to make amends under the DoD-I.
It isn't the only War on Terror pledge to be broken. President Joe Biden entered the White House promising to end the "forever wars." "I stand here today for the first time in 20 years with the United States not at war," Biden announced in 2021. "We've turned the page." It wasn't remotely true.
Instead, the Forever Wars grind on from the Middle East to the African Sahel. And despite assertions to the contrary, America's conflict in Somalia grinds on, too, without apology -- from Biden for the broken campaign promise and from the Pentagon for Luul Dahir Mohamed and Mariam Shilow Muse's deaths.
"The U.S. claims that it works to promote democracy, social justice, the rule of law, and the protection of rights around the world," Abubakar wrote. "As we struggle to get them to notice our suffering, we hope the U.S. will remember what they claim to stand for."
Copyright 2024 Nick Turse
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