By Kebour Ghenna
In a remote village, a young girl, Asnaketch, stands barefoot on the edge of her family’s meager farmland. The hum of insects mingles with the faint buzz of a drone overhead. Her small hands clutch a wooden doll carved by her father, now missing since the last raid. Her wide eyes scan the sky, searching for answers in a world where questions are drowned out by the relentless hum of distant machines. This is her reality: a life suspended in fear, where the heavens no longer bring rain, only the shadow of death.
Drones have become the favored tools of war – precise, unrelenting, and emotionally detached. They hover over Gaza, whispering the cries of phantom children to draw families into the open, only to unleash destruction. They circle the skies of Ethiopia, enforcing a grim “kill, not capture” policy against those who dare rebel against the regime. They are not merely weapons; they are harbingers of a world where life is devalued, reduced to pixels on a monitor, extinguished by the press of a button.
For civilians caught in the crossfire, drones are not tools of precision but instruments of indiscriminate terror. Asnaketch has no ties to rebels or soldiers. Yet her life is shaped by decisions made thousands of miles away, by operators reclining in ergonomic chairs, sipping coffee, and debating the ethics of a strike. She is not a target, not even a statistic – she is collateral damage in a game of geopolitical chess.
The psychological toll of drones cannot be measured in casualties alone. Their omnipresent hum erodes the very fabric of human dignity. In Ethiopia, where drones have been deployed against rebel groups, the consequences are particularly stark. Entire communities are paralyzed by the fear of being targeted. Children refuse to play outside. Farmers abandon their fields. The buzzing overhead becomes a constant reminder that their lives are not their own, that survival depends on the whims of unseen forces.
Drones strip humanity from conflict. They make killing antiseptic, devoid of the messy realities of human interaction. There are no soldiers staring into the eyes of their enemies, no moments of hesitation that might birth mercy. Instead, there are algorithms and screens, weapons that do not question orders or consider the morality of their actions.
For Asnaketch, the dehumanization is complete. She is not seen by the drone operator who scans her land for signs of insurgents. She is a blur, a heat signature, a potential threat. Her existence is reduced to data, her humanity invisible to the technology that hovers above her.
The proliferation of drones raises profound ethical questions. Their use blurs the lines between war and assassination, between combatants and civilians. The “kill not capture” doctrine employed in many drone operations reflects a disturbing shift away from justice and accountability. In Ethiopia, as in other conflict zones, this policy has sown seeds of division and hatred that will be hard to uproot.
Reconciliation requires acknowledgment, repentance, and the rebuilding of trust. But how can trust be rebuilt when communities are decimated by strikes that offer no explanation, no apology? How can healing begin when the dead are buried without answers, their lives erased by machines that disappear into the sky?
Once, the sky was a source of wonder and hope. It brought rain to nourish crops, birds to sing at dawn, and stars to guide travelers. Now, it is a source of dread. Drones have replaced the birds, satellites the stars. The sacred green within us – our connection to the earth, to each other – is being paved over by microchips and algorithms.
As Asnaketch lays down to sleep, she does not pray to the gods of her ancestors. She prays for silence, for a night without the hum of drones. She prays to see her father again, to wake to a world where the sky belongs to the living and not to machines.
Drones are not inherently evil, but their use must be restrained by a deep respect for human life. The ease of their deployment and the detachment they afford make it all too tempting to ignore the moral constraints that govern war. But we must resist this temptation. We must demand accountability, transparency, and commitment to minimizing harm.
For the sake of Asnaketch – and for all who live under the shadow of drones – let us stop this senseless violence. Let us heal the wounds of war and rebuild our country with compassion and justice. The drones must be grounded, and the skies must once again belong to life, to hope, and to dreams of a better tomorrow.
Editor’s note : This article appeared first on the personal social media page of Kebour Ghenna.
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