Category Archives: United States

Foreign Affairs, Government, Russia, Science, Society, Technology, United States

India’s space probe and a need for celebration…

Indian Space Research Organisation

Critics of India’s launch of a space probe this week destined for Mars are not short of reasons for downing this project. Inimical for them is the growing hostility of why Britain is contributing heavily to India in foreign and international aid when budgets are being savaged at home. There is then the reason that such sceptics will ridicule this project because there is no reason for them to glorify in the achievement of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Yet, if all goes well, the IRSO will become only the fourth space agency after Russia, the U.S. and Europe to conduct a successful mission to the Red Planet. Instead, the cynics talk dejectedly of how hundreds of millions of Indians are barely able to scratch a living.

It is certainly true that India labours under crippling poverty. Much of the country’s rural infrastructure is dilapidated and investment is urgently needed. More than a third of the world’s poorest people live in India and not far off half the country’s children are undernourished. The rural hinterland lacks even the most basic of foundations.

Meanwhile, distortions of economic growth are driving a widening gap of disparity in the country as Indian society has become ever more unequal. Corruption is rife, and healthcare is also shamefully poor. Against such a troubled backdrop, a space programme of this magnitude is bound to reflect upon the naysayers as an uncomfortable and clumsy attempt at distraction.

For some people, though, India’s blast-off will be welcomed, as it should. For why should it be disparaged? Consider, for example, the cost. The $72m budget of the Mangalyaan probe is hardly sufficient, even if channelled elsewhere, to solve India’s innumerable and complex problems.

An evaluation of the immediate benefits must also be given. Not only does the programme command vast support and interest across the country, but the implications for further education and further skills development is immense. The benefits that trickle down from such high-end scientific research are also far from negligible.

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Government, Middle East, National Security, Pakistan, Society, United States

Drone strike against the Taliban chief in Pakistan is a questionable victory…

U.S. DRONE STRIKE

Following last Friday’s US drone missile attack that killed the leader of the Pakistan Taliban, many ordinary people in Pakistan remain incredulous over US aims and objectives.

The assassination which came a day before a government delegation from Pakistan was due to meet him, leaves the government of Nawaz Sharif looking unreasonably irrational in the eyes of its own population. Worse still, the temper of anti-Americanism in Pakistan is likely to be exacerbated given the probable complicity in US violations of its sovereignty.

Hakimullah Mehsud was a repellent individual. Under his auspices, the Pakistan Taliban (the TPP), have killed thousands of people in sectarian driven attacks.

Western policy makers, however, should pause before rejoicing in the death of a reprehensible Islamist. The question is not whether Mehsud had a redeeming side, but crucially whether America’s drone missiles and the tactics being deployed are making a dangerous situation on the Pakistan-Afghan border even worse.

The evidence clearly suggests the situation has become worse. One only needed to have noted the furious reactions to Friday’s strike from prominent politicians in Pakistan such as Imran Khan and Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Pakistan’s Interior Minister. Both indict the Americans with sabotaging the chances of peace talks between the Taliban and the government. Whether the CIA set out to deliberately derail the talks, or refused to be side-lined over its strike plans, the decapitation strike and timing of Mehsud’s killing was terribly misplaced to say the least. The very prospect of a negotiated end to the Taliban’s reign of terror was not mere idle fantasy on the part of the Islamabad government. Only two weeks ago, Mehsud told British journalists that he felt open to the idea of a peace pact.

Negotiations are now off the table. As normal with high-profile capitulations, the CIA will congratulate itself on having knocked out a long-standing target. Mehsud was on the agency’s most wanted terrorist list for a 2009 bombing in Afghanistan that claimed the lives of seven CIA operatives. Yet, after a successor emerges, Mehsud will quickly be forgotten. Meantime, the 30 or so Islamic militant groups loosely affiliated to the TPP will be off the leash, competing for the honour of how best to exact revenge on the U.S. or their perceived stooges.

It will be a surprise to no one that people in Pakistan have become weary of the war that America is conducting on their soil against militant Islamists. The recent visit to Washington by President Sharif in urging Barack Obama to stop the drone strikes came to nothing. This has only reinforced the feeling that, in the context of the alliance, Pakistan’s own wishes count for little.

The United States should listen to the concerns being expressed by their ally on drone strikes, but in all likelihood seems unlikely to. Instead, as we witness, Mr Obama has increased using them. A war without borders looks set to splutter on, while Pakistan continues picking up the pieces.

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Foreign Affairs, Government, Intelligence, Military, United States

Drones and the unproven efficacy of these weapons…

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

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