Predator Drones and the International Mafia

by Dr. Reza Pankhurst

July 18, 2011


Arbitrary extrajudicial executions, carried out at the press of a button from CIA locations in California, with no transparency or accountability, are undoubtedly a violation of international law possibly constituting war crimes. And yet in 2009 alone, American predator drone attacks killed a reported 708 people in Pakistan a clear violation of the norms of international sovereignty, especially given the fact that the Pakistani government has spoken out against them (at least in public).
According to the Brooking [COLOR=#009900 !important]Institution more than 90 percent of those killed have been civilians. Noor Behram, who has been documenting the aftermath of drone strikes in Waziristan on-site for the last three years concurs that "for every 10 to 15 people killed, maybe they get one militant".
With more drone strikes carried out in Pakistan during [COLOR=#009900 !important]the first year of President Barack Obama's term in office than were carried out in the whole second term of his predecessor George W. Bush, the number of attacks in 2010 more than double those in 2009, and continued growth in their use in 2011, extra-judicial killing seems to have become the modus operandi of the[COLOR=#009900 !important]Obama administration[/COLOR]. That he feels at such ease with this policy that he is able to joke about it, is testament to just how ill-advised was the decision to award him the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy".
Already used extensively in Pakistan, the Washington Post reported last month how the American government intends to significantly extend the use of Predator drones in Yemen as well. That the country is undergoing a revolution that is likely to end with the overthrow of its current incumbent Ali Abdullah Saleh is of no concern. As we now know courtesy of Wikileaks that this was a man whose government told the Americans to kill whomever they pleased in Yemen with their drones, and that they would tell the people in Parliament that they were the ones who did so.
You would think that the loss of such a servile client might force a change in American policy. It has. The drone program in Yemen will be shifted to CIA control, since as mentioned by the Post "The CIA operates under different legal restrictions, giving the administration a freer hand to carry out strikes even if Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, now receiving medical treatment in Saudi Arabia, reverses his past approval of military strikes or cedes power to a government opposed to them." What the Post fails to [COLOR=#009900 !important]mention[/COLOR], typical of most of the media's shameful silence with respect to many of the transgressions in the so-called "war on terror", is that even if the Yemeni President has given approval for military strikes within the country the use of predator drones is still effectively murder (irrespective of the target).
The fact that a particular government accedes to the US's criminality is perhaps a clue as to why so many of the region's dictators are either overthrown or on the way out. The US has also extended the attacks to Somalia, a country without a fully functioning government, removing the necessity of any façade of seeking approval.
The large number of innocent civilians killed by remote control is surely indisputably criminal along with being morally repugnant, even cowardly. The report in the Guardian that the [COLOR=#009900 !important]US government[/COLOR] has teams of appointed lawyers who decide when the Pentagon has the legal right to murder someone is as ludicrous as it sounds. The last administration has form on this the previous Attorney General legalized torture; doctors work alongside interrogators while the torture was being administered, and so on. This mirage of civilized behavior groups of lawyers lending legitimacy to what is by any standard a straightforward murder, doctors giving aid and health-checks to the enemy while they are being to various forms of torture indicates further moral decline, and again highlights the dirty reality that is normally kept under wraps: that the US government is willing to operate in exactly the same manner as any of the oppressive Arab dictatorships that are currently being overthrown across the Middle East.
The Western public has consistently been informed by media and politicians that the difference between "us" (the civilized West) and "them" (the barbaric terrorists) is adherence to the rule of law. What is clear from practice is that the rule of law is to be applied amongst peers ("us") while others are left to the arbitrary justice of the powerful. Such organized hypocrisy is not limited to politicians, with polling in the United States taken after the news that information from so-called "harsh interrogation" may have yielded information leading to [COLOR=#009900 !important]Bin Laden[/COLOR] confirming steady support for torture of terrorist suspects between approximately 50% to 60% over the last [COLOR=#009900 !important]year[/COLOR], with another previous survey indicating that about a quarter of Americans believe that intentionally killing civilians can at least sometimes be justifiable. Thus, the leadership of the US government has been responsible for encouraging further moral ambivalence amongst its own citizens. By trying to legitimize murder, torture, and other forms of illegal behavior through the use of teams of lawyers and judges, they have shown that their actions are driven solely by the logic of consequences, while they dress their discourse and words according to the logic of appropriateness.
In this respect, an interview in February to Newsweek by John Rizzo, one of the CIA's former lawyers tasked with approving Predator drone strikes back as early as 2001, makes for uncomfortable reading. After CIA lists of targets that were sought to be "neutralized" (a bland word for assassinated), Rizzo was one of those who would sign off on the mission. If it sounds similar to the kind of activity you would expect from organized criminal gangs, Rizzo himself described it as "basically a hit list". Just as any small-time organized crime network has a few paid lawyers to help defend the indefensible, the American administration is acting like an international mafia outfit [COLOR=#009900 !important]complete with[/COLOR]requisite legal team. But being [COLOR=#009900 !important]the most[/COLOR] militarized government in the World by far, they have access to Predator Drones, rather than being compelled to use a paid contract killer. Like Rizzo himself stated "The Predator is the weapon of choice, but it could also be someone putting a bullet in your head".
On the back of such admissions and Rizzo's proud claim when he asked "How many law professors have signed off on a death warrant?" a group of Human Rights lawyers in the UK and Pakistan are now seeking an arrest warrant for him. The fact that the US government is largely oblivious, or simply lack any sense of care or responsibility, to the illegal nature of their activities highlights the most vile kind of exceptionalism that which claims exception from the rule of law to act criminally. It is partly this that has driven the action to seek Rizzo's arrest, with British Human Rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith stating that one of the symbolic purposes is to highlight the illegality of the action since "there is no sense in the United States of how catastrophic this whole process is."
The irony is that through its actions America has shown itself in front of the World to be a reflection of everything that it claimed was evil about those they are against, from the lack of respect for innocent life and the lack of adherence to the rule of law to the use of terror as a political weapon. In reality the war of terror' is a more apt description of their response since 9/11 than the coined war on terror', with the use of Predator drones just another example therein. That it is dressed up as legal by willing accomplices such as Rizzo may appease those few in the domestic audience that care, but strikes many in the rest of the watching World as further evidence of American cynicism, something the United States can ill afford while in its current state of decline.
This is an abridged and updated version of a guest editorial in the academic journal Political Theology entitled "Osama and Obama: Between Predator Drones and the Arab Spring".
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/07/18/predator-drones-and-the-international-mafia/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ForeignPolicyJournal+%28Foreign+Policy+Journal%29
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Quote:Get the data: Twenty-five deadly strikes

July 18th, 2011 | by Chris Woods and Rahimullah Yusufzai |

A team of journalists led by Chris Woods has scrutinised reports and data relating to 116 US drone strikes on Pakistan, as part of an ongoing Bureau investigation into the US covert war on terror. These attacks occurred between August 23 2010 and June 29 2011.

Why these dates?
Anonymous US intelligence sources have been claiming for some time that no civilians have been killed in any Pakistan drone strike since last August. On June 29 President Obama's senior adviser on counter-terrorism, John Brennan, stated that no civilians had been killed for nearly a year. He was the first senior official to go on the record with the claim.

The CIA attacks take place in Waziristan and other semi-autonomous tribal areas of western Pakistan, regions that are notoriously hard to report from. Nevertheless, attacks are covered by local and sometimes international media. Villagers, Pakistani intelligence officers, medical, military and militant sources all provide valuable if sometimes contradictory information.

As well as reviewing all available media reports, the Bureau has worked with lawyers and researchers representing civilians reportedly killed in attacks. And we have employed our own researchers in Waziristan to corroborate evidence relating to particular strikes.

From our investigation we believe that while hundreds of militants and Taliban have been killed in the drone attacks, there are 25 strikes where civilians deaths have or are highly likely to have happened.

It is of course very difficult to get a completely accurate picture about anything happening in Waziristan. Drone strikes, Pakistani military activity and militant attacks make this a dangerous region for journalists to operate in.

But while we cannot always be categorical, in at least 10 of the 25 cases we have identified, we understand that civilians were killed. The evidence shows that at least 45 civilians died in these strikes. Six of them were children under 16 years old.

How are we so sure?
As part of our drone investigation we have read thousands of reports relating to over 280 strikes within Pakistan over seven years. Initial reports of suspected militants' killed might later be modified. The Bureau has tried wherever possible to locate credible reports about particular strikes written days, even months after the original event. In doing so, we and others have sometimes identified casualties that were not immediately notified.

Although there are reports of civilian deaths in up to one in five cases, this may actually be a conservative estimate.

Related article: Precision is relative': an interview with Anatol Lieven

Pakistan expert Professor Anatol Lieven told the Bureau: To be honest with you, I'm surprised it's not higher. These people live in compounds with families. Now it may be that precisely because of the drone strikes the commanders are now actually living separately from the women and children, but the whole point of guerrillas is they live among the population.'

Photographs
We have also been given photographs gathered by human rights lawyers working with Reprieve. These images have been sourced by Pakistani journalist Noor Behram, working in Waziristan. We have included the photos and evidence gathered by him when they back up reports that we had already identified.

However, we have been unable to fully corroborate the photos. Dates and times that are usually attached to digital pictures are not present on some of the images we have received and some were taken on a non-digital camera. We include them because, like the reports themselves, they raise questions about the particular strikes that the US administration claims killed only militants.

The Bureau presented a summary of its findings to the White House and to John Brennan's office on Friday July 15, offering them the opportunity to comment. Both declined.

The data
Below are details of 10 strikes that are likely to have killed at least 45 civilians. There are also details of a further 15 strikes that raise significant questions. In these cases at least 65 civilian deaths have also been reported but are contested, or are reported by a single source only.

Quote:Former Intel Chief: Call Off The Drone War (And Maybe the Whole War on Terror)

* By Noah Shachtman Email Author
*
* July 28, 2011 |
* 9:48 pm |
* Categories: Tactics, Strategy and Logistics

ASPEN, Colorado Drop the unilateral U.S. drone war in Pakistan. Rethink the idea of spending billions of dollars to pursue al-Qaida. Forget chasing terrorists in Yemen and Somalia, unless the local governments are willing to join in the hunt.

Those aren't the words of some human rights activist, or some far-left Congressman. They're from retired admiral and former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair the man who was, until recently, nominally in charge of the entire American effort to find, track, and take out terrorists. Now, he's calling for that campaign to be reconsidered, and possibly even junked.

Starting with the drone attacks. Yes, they take out some mid-level terrorists, Blair said. But they're not strategically effective. If the drones stopped flying tomorrow, Blair told the audience at the Aspen Security Forum, "it's not going to lower the threat to the U.S." Al-Qaida and its allies have proven "it can sustain its level of resistance to an air-only campaign," he said.

It's one of many reasons why it's a mistake to "have that campaign dominate our overall relations" with countries like Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. "Because we're alienating the countries concerned, because we're treating countries just as places where we go attack groups that threaten us, we are threatening the prospects of long-term reform," Blair said.

The "unilateral" strikes in Pakistan have to come to an end, he added, and be replaced with operations that had the full cooperation of the government in Islamabad. The effort needed "two hands on the trigger," Blair said. And strikes should be launched only when "we agree with them on what drone attacks" should target.

The statements won't exactly win Blair new friends in the Obama administration, which forced him out of the top intelligence job about a year after he was nominated. Not only has Obama drastically escalated the drone war there've been 50 strikes in the first seven months of this year, almost as many as in all of 2009. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called the remotely-piloted attacks the "only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt the al-Qaida leadership."

Plus, American relations with the Pakistani government are at their lowest point in years. And every time Washington tries to tip off Islamabad to a raid, it seems, the targets of the raid seem to conveniently skip town. No wonder the U.S. kept the mother of all unilateral strikes the mission to kill Osama bin Laden a secret from their erstwhile allies in Pakistan.

But Blair believes the cooperation not only with Pakistan, but also with the government in Yemen and with whatever authorities can be found in Somalia is the only way to bring some measure of peace to the world's ungoverned spaces. "We have to change in those three countries," he told the Forum (Full disclosure: I'm a moderator on one of the panels here.)

The reconsideration of our relationship with these countries is only the start of the overhaul Blair has in mind, however. He noted that the U.S. intelligence and homeland security communities are spending about $80 billion a year, outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Yet al-Qaida and its affiliates only have about 4,000 members worldwide.

"You think woah, $20 million. Is that proportionate?" he asked. "So I think we need to relook at the strategy to get the money in the right places."

Blair mentioned that 17 Americans have been killed on U.S. soil by terrorists since 9/11 14 of them in the Ft. Hood massacre. Meanwhile, auto accidents, murders and rapes combine have killed an estimated 1.5 million people in the past decade. "What is it that justifies this amount of money on this narrow problem?" he asked.

Blair purposely let his own question go unanswered.

• 291 CIA attacks have taken place in Pakistan 8% more than previously reported. Under President Obama alone there have been 236 strikes one every four days.
  
• Between 2,292 and 2,863 people are reported to have died in the attacks most of them militants
  
• The minimum number of reported deaths is far higher than previously believed with 40% more recorded casualties. Most of those killed are likely to be low-ranking militants.
  
• 126 named militants have so far been killed.
  
• The Bureau has collated credible news reports of 385-775 civilians being killed in the attacks.
  
• The Bureau has identified credible reports of 164 children killed in the drone strikes. Under President Bush, one in three of all attacks is reported to have killed a child.
  
• For the first time the Bureau has compiled accurate details of recorded injuries in drone strikes, revealing that at least 1,114 people have been wounded.