U.S. DRONE POLICY

The unedifying and continued use of drones has once again brought the issue to the door of the United States.

Nabila Rehman and her brother Zubair, aged 9 and 13 respectively, were picking okra in their garden. They posed no threat to the U.S. or anyone else, but their innocence did not keep them safe. The pair were injured by shrapnel from a drone-missile that killed their grandmother and wounded five other children at the family home in North Waziristan, in Pakistan’s north-western border zone.

Earlier this week, they confronted the U.S. Congress with the ugly and devastating reality of the drone attacks. Under President Obama, use of drones has become an increasingly important weapon in response to dealing with terrorism.

Attack from the air is always terrifying, but unmanned aerial vehicles – controlled and guided by faceless operatives thousands of miles away – are in a definite league of their own. The ethical objections to their use, however, not as battlefield weapons but as tools of assassination with inevitable collateral death and injury to the innocent, have been swept aside by their ostensible military effectiveness.

For both the U.S. and the Pakistani government, which have secretly colluded in the drone strategy, drones may have seemed the perfect answer to liquidating dangerous militants and extremists in Pakistan’s treacherous no-man’s land. North Waziristan is a notoriously difficult region for western intelligence services and monitoring the movements and activities of insurgents always risks others being unwittingly caught up in the crossfire.

But the fury and anger drones provoke, as Nabila and Zubair’s testimony bears out, can make them counter-productive. As President Obama and other western leaders know, far from helping to secure peace in the West, drones frequently embolden its enemies. Indeed, those flocking to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in their droves were done so in seeking refuge and protection from the continued onslaught of U.S. drone attacks.

A RESPONSE TO THE ECONOMIST

On 8th February, 2013, MD responded to an article on The Economist, ‘The debate over drones’. That response is reproduced:

“The Fifth Amendment to the US constitution protects “any person” (not just US citizens) from being “deprived of life . . . without due process of law.”

Until the 9/11 attacks, the legal position was unambiguous: in war, active combatants could kill and be killed, subject to rules governing surrender and the use of banned weapons. But the ‘law of war’ applied only to conflicts between armed forces of opposing states, invoking the right of self-defence. Confrontations with insurgents and terrorists were strictly governed by human rights law, which requires state use of force to be reasonable in the circumstances. This ‘reasonable force’ requirement invokes a necessary and human restraint over soldiers’ actions and, as a direct extension, must surely apply to drone targeters. The rule of war is not being adhered to in places where drones are operating as “suspects” are being killed without much compunction.

The states that deploy drones argue that they are operating under war law, where human rights are less relevant. The US argues that it is in an ‘armed conflict with al-Qaeda . . . and may use force consistent with its inherent right to self-defence . . . including by targeting persons such as high-level al-Qaeda leaders who are planning to attack us.’ However, this statement prompts many questions. For instance, how can you have an ‘armed conflict’ without an enemy state? Or, what criteria is being used for putting names on the secret death list or what is the required degree of proof before suspects are targeted and killed?

There are no accountability mechanisms for the use of drones – no inquests, and often not even a casualty list which is a direct contravention of the normal rules of war and engagement. The US does, though, announce and celebrate when it hits a ‘high-value target’.

In aerial drone warfare, there is no fairness or due process to enable potential victims, their relatives or any outside body to challenge the accuracy of the information on which the targeting decisions have been made.

Some analysts may suggest that drone strikes are an exercise in self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter. But Article 51 applies only to attacks by other states, not by terrorist groups. Yet, what is becoming increasingly of concern is that the record of drone attacks demonstrates that very often individuals are targeted when they constitute no clear or present danger.

Drone killings in tribal areas of Pakistan and Yemen have taken the lives of targets who are armed and who presented a clear danger, but others have merely been attending weddings or funerals or emerging from hospitals or mosques. ‘Decapitation strikes’ in Pakistan have resulted in families being killed by mistake and which have severely damaged US relations with a politically tense and nuclear-armed nation that is not at war with the US.

American officials also say that the Fifth Amendment could not avail a US citizen who joined an enemy force. This is correct as far as it goes, but the Fifth Amendment must entitle a citizen or his family to know whether he is on a death list and to apply to have himself taken off it.

Those who press the Hellfire buttons in Nevada do not pause to consider whether their targets are engaged in combatant missions or not. The criteria for drone use are covert CIA prerogatives, beyond the jurisdiction of the courts or the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act.”

© MarkDowe2013: all rights reserved