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Drone Strikes

White Hole presents a Forensic Architecture’s case study that analyses a rare video, smuggled out of North Waziristan, in order to reconstruct the space of the drone strike.

Although armed drones have been used in Afghanistan from the start of the US campaign in October 2001, the first known targeted assassination by the US outside a theatre of war took place in Yemen on November 3rd, 2002.

Since June 2004 the main focus of the drone campaign has been in the frontier regions of Pakistan. The first Israeli drone strikes in Gaza also started around about the same time in 2004, while in Somalia drone strikes began in 2007. The areas most imperiled by drone warfare are generally outside of the effective control of states.

Forensic Architecture, Drone Strikes. The Miranshah Case, White Hole

Waziristan, part of a region of Pakistan known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), is also effectively under a media blackout due to a siege that forbids the entry and exit of nonresidents including journalists, and the taking of images or bringing out of recording devices. Consequently, few images of the damage caused by drones and even fewer eyewitness accounts and survivors’ testimonies are available outside of these regions. News reporting has also been uneven and sometimes contradictory and some aspects of drone warfare have been more present within public discourse than others.

Forensic Architecture, Drone Strikes. The Miranshah Case, White Hole

Forensic Architecture undertook five detailed case study analyses of drone strikes. These have been created from the perspectives of survivors and on-site witnesses, as well as those that visited the aftermath of the strikes. The aim was to describe the effects of these strikes on the ground, on architecture, and on the people within them. In each case the research team cross-referenced the different types of data available, including satellite imagery, local and international media reports, witness statements, and on-the-ground images when and if available. Through these analyses Forensic Architecture was able to demonstrate that, despite all inhibiting circumstances, investigating specific drone strikes is in fact possible.

In the case study presented at White Hole, Forensic Architecture analysed a rare video testimony smuggled out of North Waziristan, in order to reconstruct the space of the drone strike and interrogate the event. The footage shows the ruins of a market in Miranshah hit by a strike on March 30th, 2012. By reconstructing the scene in a 3D digital model, cross-referencing data with satellite imagery, and animating the shadows of that structure, Forensic Architecture was able to establish the precise location of the strike, as well as the time the footage was shot. The video was originally aired by Rachel Maddow on MSNBC on June 22nd, 2012.