{"id":1338,"date":"2013-04-11T10:53:51","date_gmt":"2013-04-11T16:53:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=1338"},"modified":"2013-04-11T10:53:51","modified_gmt":"2013-04-11T16:53:51","slug":"obamas-drone-war-kills-others-not-just-al-qaida-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/obamas-drone-war-kills-others-not-just-al-qaida-leaders\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama\u2019s drone war kills \u2018others,\u2019 not just al Qaida leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy Newspapers
\nclick here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

WASHINGTON \u2014\u00a0Contrary to assurances it has deployed U.S. drones only against known senior leaders of al Qaida and allied groups, the Obama administration has targeted and killed hundreds of suspected lower-level Afghan, Pakistani and unidentified \u201cother\u201d militants in scores of strikes in Pakistan\u2019s rugged tribal area, classified U.S. intelligence reports show.<\/p>\n

The administration has said that strikes by the CIA\u2019s missile-firing Predator and Reaper drones are authorized only against \u201cspecific senior operational leaders of al Qaida and associated forces\u201d involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks who are plotting \u201cimminent\u201d violent attacks on Americans.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has to be a threat that is serious and not speculative,\u201d President Barack Obama said in a Sept. 6, 2012, interview with CNN. \u201cIt has to be a situation in which we can\u2019t capture the individual before they move forward on some sort of operational plot against the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

Copies of the top-secret U.S. intelligence reports reviewed by McClatchy, however, show that drone strikes in Pakistan over a four-year period didn\u2019t adhere to those standards.<\/p>\n

The intelligence reports list killings of alleged Afghan insurgents whose organization wasn\u2019t on the U.S. list of terrorist groups at the time of the 9\/11 strikes; of suspected members of a Pakistani extremist group that didn\u2019t exist at the time of 9\/11; and of unidentified individuals described as \u201cother militants\u201d and \u201cforeign fighters.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a response to questions from McClatchy, the White House defended its targeting policies, pointing to previous public statements by senior administration officials that the missile strikes are aimed at al Qaida and associated forces.<\/p>\n

Micah Zenko, an expert with the Council on Foreign Relations, a bipartisan foreign policy think tank, who closely follows the target killing program, said McClatchy\u2019s findings indicate that the administration is \u201cmisleading the public about the scope of who can legitimately be targeted.\u201d<\/p>\n

The documents also show that drone operators weren\u2019t always certain who they were killing despite the administration\u2019s guarantees of the accuracy of the CIA\u2019s targeting intelligence and its assertions that civilian casualties have been \u201cexceedingly rare.\u201d<\/p>\n

McClatchy\u2019s review is the first independent evaluation of internal U.S. intelligence accounting of drone attacks since the Bush administration launched America\u2019s secret aerial warfare on Oct. 7, 2001, the day\u00a0<\/strong>a missile-carrying Predator took off for Afghanistan from an airfield in Pakistan on the first operational flight of an armed U.S. drone.<\/p>\n

The analysis takes on additional significance because of the domestic and international debate over the legality of drone strikes in Pakistan amid reports that the administration is planning to broaden its use of targeted killings in Afghanistan and North Africa.<\/p>\n

\"g7aSC.La.91<\/a>The U.S. intelligence reports reviewed by McClatchy covered most \u2013 although not all \u2013 of the drone strikes in 2006-2008 and 2010-2011.\u00a0<\/strong>In that later period, Obama oversaw a surge in drone operations against suspected Islamist sanctuaries on Pakistan\u2019s side of the border that coincided with his buildup of 33,000 additional U.S. troops in southern Afghanistan. Several documents listed casualty estimates as well as the identities of targeted groups.<\/p>\n

McClatchy\u2019s review found that:<\/p>\n

\u2013 At least 265 of up to 482 people who the U.S. intelligence reports estimated the CIA killed during a 12-month period ending in September 2011 were not senior al Qaida leaders but instead were \u201cassessed\u201d as Afghan, Pakistani and unknown extremists. Drones killed only six top al Qaida leaders in those months, according to news media accounts.<\/p>\n

Forty-three of 95 drone strikes reviewed for that period hit groups other than al Qaida, including the Haqqani network, several Pakistani Taliban factions and the unidentified individuals described only as \u201cforeign fighters\u201d and \u201cother militants.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the same period, the reports estimated there was a single civilian casualty, an individual killed in an April 22, 2011, strike in North Waziristan, the main sanctuary for militant groups in Pakistan\u2019s tribal areas.<\/p>\n

\u2013 At other times, the CIA killed people who only were suspected, associated with, or who probably belonged to militant groups.<\/p>\n

<\/strong>To date, the Obama administration has not disclosed the secret legal opinions and the detailed procedures buttressing drone killings, and it has never acknowledged the use of so-called \u201csignature strikes,\u201d in which unidentified individuals are killed after surveillance shows behavior the U.S. government associates with terrorists, such as visiting compounds linked to al Qaida leaders or carrying weapons. Nor has it disclosed an explicit list of al Qaida\u2019s \u201cassociated forces\u201d beyond the Afghan Taliban.<\/p>\n

The little that is known about the opinions comes from a leaked Justice Department white paper, a half-dozen or so speeches, some public comments by Obama and several top lieutenants, and limited open testimony before Congress.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe United States has gone far beyond what the U.S. public \u2013 and perhaps even Congress \u2013 understands the government has been doing and claiming they have a legal right to do,\u201d said Mary Ellen O\u2019Connell, a Notre Dame Law School professor who contends that CIA drone operations in Pakistan violate international law.<\/p>\n

The documents McClatchy has reviewed do not reflect the entirety of the killings associated with U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan, which independent reports estimate at between 1,990 and 3,581.<\/p>\n

But the classified reports provide a view into how drone strikes were carried out during the most intense\u00a0<\/strong>periods of drone warfare in Pakistan\u2019s remote tribal area bordering Afghanistan. Specifically, the documents reveal estimates of deaths and injuries; locations of militant bases and compounds; the identities of some of those targeted or killed; the movements of targets from village to village or compound to compound; and, to a limited degree, the rationale for unleashing missiles.<\/p>\n

The documents also reveal a breadth of targeting that is complicated by the culture in the restive region of Pakistan where militants and ordinary tribesmen dress the same, and carrying a weapon is part of the centuries-old tradition of the Pashtun ethnic group.<\/p>\n

The Haqqani network, for example, cooperates closely with al Qaida for philosophical and tactical reasons, and it is blamed for some of the bloodiest attacks against civilians and U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan. But the Haqqani network wasn\u2019t on the U.S. list of international terrorist groups at the time of the strikes covered by the U.S. intelligence reports, and it isn\u2019t known to ever have been directly implicated in a plot against the U.S. homeland.<\/p>\n

Other groups the documents said were targeted have parochial objectives: the Pakistani Taliban seeks to topple the Islamabad government; Lashkar i Jhangvi, or Army of Jhangvi, are outlawed Sunni Muslim terrorists who\u2019ve slaughtered scores of Pakistan\u2019s minority Shiites and were blamed for a series of attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan, including a 2006 bombing against the U.S. consulate in Karachi that killed a U.S. diplomat. Both groups are close to al Qaida, but neither is known to have initiated attacks on the U.S. homeland.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have never seen nor am I aware of any rules of engagement that have been made public that govern the conduct of drone operations in Pakistan, or the identification of individuals and groups other than al Qaida and the Afghan Taliban,\u201d said Christopher Swift, a national security law expert who teaches national security affairs at Georgetown University and closely follows the targeted killing issue. \u201cWe are doing this on a case-by-case, ad hoc basis, rather than a systematic or strategic basis.\u201d<\/p>\n

The administration has declined to reveal other details of the program, such as the intelligence used to select targets and how much evidence is required for an individual to be placed on a CIA \u201ckill list.\u201d The administration also hasn\u2019t even acknowledged the existence of so-called signature strikes, let alone discussed the legal and procedural foundations of the attacks.<\/p>\n

Leaders of the Senate and House intelligence committees say they maintain robust oversight over the program. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., disclosed in a Feb. 13 statement that the panel is notified \u201cwith key details . . . shortly after\u201d every drone strike. It also reviews videos of strikes and considers \u201ctheir effectiveness as a counterterrorism tool, verifying the care taken to avoid deaths to non-combatants and understanding the intelligence collection and analysis that underpins these operations.\u201d<\/p>\n

But until last month, Obama had rebuffed lawmakers\u2019 repeated requests to see all of the classified Justice Department legal opinions on the program, giving them access to only two dealing with the president\u2019s powers to order targeted killings. It then allowed the Senate committee access to all opinions pertaining to the killing of U.S. citizens to clear the way for the panel\u2019s March 7 confirmation of John Brennan, the former White House counterterrorism chief and the key architect of the targeted killings program, as the new CIA director. But it continues to deny access to other opinions on the grounds that they are privileged legal advice to the president.<\/p>\n

Moreover, most of the debate in the United States has focused on the deaths of four Americans \u2013 all killed in drone strikes in Yemen, but only one intentionally targeted \u2013 and not the thousands of others who\u2019ve been killed, the majority of whom have been hit in Pakistan.<\/p>\n

Obama and his top aides say the United States is in an \u201carmed conflict\u201d with al Qaida and the Afghan Taliban, and the targeted killing program complies with U.S. and international laws, including an \u201cinherent\u201d right to self-defense and the international laws of war. Obama also derives his authority to order targeted killings from the Constitution and a Sept. 14, 2001, congressional resolution empowering the president to use \u201call necessary and appropriate force\u201d against those who perpetrated 9\/11 and those who aided them, they say.<\/p>\n

Time and again, the administration has defined the drone targets as operational leaders of al Qaida, the Afghan Taliban and associated groups plotting imminent attacks on the American homeland. Occasionally, however, officials have made oblique references to undefined associated forces and threats against unidentified Americans and U.S. facilities.<\/p>\n

On April 30, 2012, Brennan gave the most detailed explanation of Obama\u2019s drone program. He referred to al Qaida 73 times, the Afghan Taliban three times and mentioned no other group by name.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe only authorize a particular operation against a specific individual if we have a high degree of confidence that the individual being targeted is indeed the terrorist we are pursuing,\u201d Brennan said.<\/p>\n

To be sure, America\u2019s drone program has killed militants without risk to the nation\u2019s armed forces.<\/p>\n

The administration argues that drones \u2013 in Brennan\u2019s words \u2013 are a \u201cwise choice\u201d for fighting terrorists. Over the years, the aircraft have battered al Qaida\u2019s Pakistan-based core leadership and crippled its ability to stage complex attacks. And officials note it has been done without sending U.S. troops into hostile territory or causing civilian casualties \u201cexcept in the rarest of circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAny actions we take fully comport to our law and meet the standards that I think . . . the American people expect of us as far as taking actions we need to protect the American people, but at the same time ensuring that we do everything possible before we need to resort to lethal force,\u201d Brennan said at his Feb. 7 Senate Intelligence Committee confirmation hearing.<\/p>\n

Caitlin Hayden, national security spokeswoman for the White House, said late Tuesday that the Brennan speech is broad enough to cover strikes against others who are not al Qaida or the Afghan Taliban. While she did not cite any authority for broader targeting, Hayden said: “You should not assume he is only talking about al Qaida just because he doesn\u2019t say \u2019al Qaida, the Taliban, and associated forces\u2019 at every reference.”<\/p>\n

Some legal scholars and human rights organizations, however, dispute the program\u2019s legality.<\/p>\n

Obama, they think, is misinterpreting international law, including the laws of war, which they say apply only to the uniformed military, not the civilian CIA, and to traditional battlefields like those in Afghanistan, not to Pakistan\u2019s tribal area, even though it may be a sanctuary for al Qaida and other violent groups. They argue that Obama also is strengthening his executive powers with an excessively broad application of the September 2001 use-of-force resolution.<\/p>\n

The administration\u2019s definition of \u201cimminent threat\u201d also is in dispute. The Justice Department\u2019s leaked white paper argues the United States should be able \u201cto act in self-defense in circumstances where there is evidence of further imminent attacks by terrorist groups even if there is no specific evidence of where such an attack will take place or of the precise nature of the attack.\u201d Legal scholars counter that the administration is using an exaggerated definition of imminence that doesn\u2019t exist in international law.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m thankful that my doctors don\u2019t use their (the administration\u2019s) definition of imminence when looking at imminent death. A head cold could be enough to pull the plug on you,\u201d said Morris Davis, a Howard University Law School professor and former Air Force lawyer who served as chief prosecutor of the Guantanamo Bay terrorism trials.<\/p>\n

Since 2004, drone program critics say, the strikes have killed hundreds of civilians, fueling anti-U.S. outrage, boosting extremist recruiting, and helping to destabilize Pakistan\u2019s U.S.-backed government. And some experts warn that the United States may be setting a new standard of international conduct that other countries will grasp to justify their own targeted killings and to evade accountability.<\/p>\n

Other governments \u201cwon\u2019t just emulate U.S. practice but (will adopt) America\u2019s justification for targeted killings,\u201d said Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations. \u201cWhen there is such a disconnect between who the administration says it kills and who it (actually) kills, that hypocrisy itself is a very dangerous precedent that other countries will emulate.\u201d<\/p>\n

A special U.N. human rights panel began a nine-month investigation in January into whether drone strikes, including the CIA operations in Pakistan, violate international law by causing disproportionate numbers of civilian casualties. The panel\u2019s head, British lawyer Ben Emmerson, declared after a March 11-13 visit to Pakistan that the U.S. drone campaign \u201cinvolves the use of force on the territory of another state without its consent and is therefore a violation of Pakistan\u2019s sovereignty.\u201d<\/p>\n

The administration asserts that drones are used to hit specific individuals only after their names are added to a \u201clist of active terrorists,\u201d following a process of \u201cextraordinary care and thoughtfulness\u201d that confirms their identities as members of al Qaida or \u201cassociated forces\u201d and weighs the strategic value of killing each one.<\/p>\n

Yet the U.S. intelligence reports show that 43 out of the 95 strikes recorded in reports for the year ending in September 2011 were launched against groups other than al Qaida. Prominent among them were the Haqqani network and the Taliban Movement of Pakistan.<\/p>\n

The Haqqani network is an Afghan Taliban-allied organization that operates in eastern Afghanistan and whose leaders are based in Pakistan\u2019s adjacent North Waziristan tribal agency. The United States accuses the group of staging some of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Kabul, including on the Indian and U.S. embassies, killing civilians, and attacking U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan. But the Obama administration didn\u2019t officially designate the network as a terrorist group until September 2012.<\/p>\n

Its titular head is Jalaluddin Haqqani, an aging former anti-Soviet guerrilla who served as a minor minister and top military commander in the Taliban regime that sheltered al Qaida until both were driven into Pakistan by the 2001 U.S. intervention in Afghanistan. U.S. officials allege that the group, whose operational chief is Haqqani\u2019s son, Sirajuddin, closely works with al Qaida and is backed by elements of the Pakistani army-led Inter-Services Intelligence spy service, a charge denied by Islamabad.<\/p>\n

At least 15 drone strikes were launched against the Haqqani network or locations where its fighters were present during the one-year period ending in September 2011, according to the U.S. intelligence reports. They estimated that up to 96 people \u2013 or about 20 percent of the total for that period \u2013 were killed.<\/p>\n

One report also makes clear that during the Bush administration, the agency killed Haqqani family women and children.<\/p>\n

According to the report, an undisclosed number of Haqqani subcommanders, unnamed Arabs and unnamed \u201cmembers of the extended Haqqani family\u201d died in a Sept. 8, 2008, strike. News reports on the attack in the North Waziristan village of Dandey Darapakhel said that among as many as 25 dead were an Arab who was chief of al Qaida\u2019s operations in Pakistan, and eight of Jalaluddin Haqqani\u2019s grandchildren, one of his wives, two nieces and a sister.<\/p>\n

The U.S. intelligence reports estimated that as many as 31 people were killed in at least nine strikes on the Pakistani Taliban or on locations that the group shared with others between January 2010 and September 2011. While U.S. officials say the Taliban Movement of Pakistan works closely with al Qaida, its goal is to topple the Pakistani government through suicide bombings, assaults and assassinations, not attacking the United States. The group wasn\u2019t founded until 2007, and some of the strikes in the U.S. intelligence reports occurred before the administration designated it a terrorist organization in September 2010.<\/p>\n

The U.S. intelligence reports estimated that the CIA killed scores of other individuals in 2010 and 2011 in strikes on other non-al Qaida groups categorized as suspected extremists and unidentified \u201cforeign fighters,\u201d or \u201cother militants.\u201d Some died in what appeared to be signature strikes, their vehicles blown to pieces sometimes only a few days after being monitored visiting the sites of earlier drone attacks, or driving between compounds linked to al Qaida or other groups.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first challenge in any war is knowing who you\u2019re fighting, and distinguishing those that pose a credible threat to your interests and security,\u201d said Swift.<\/p>\n

The U.S. intelligence documents also describe a lack of precision when it comes to identifying targets.<\/p>\n

Consider one attack on Feb. 18, 2010.<\/p>\n

Information, according to one U.S. intelligence account, indicated that Badruddin Haqqani, the then-No. 2 leader of the Haqqani network, would be at a relative\u2019s funeral that day in North Waziristan. Watching the video feed from a drone high above the mourners, CIA operators in the United States identified a man they believed could be Badruddin Haqqani from the deference and numerous greetings he received. The man also supervised a private family viewing of the body.<\/p>\n

Yet despite a targeting process that the administration says meets \u201cthe highest possible standards,\u201d it wasn\u2019t Badruddin Haqqani who died when one of the drone\u2019s missiles ripped apart the target\u2019s car after he\u2019d left the funeral.<\/p>\n

It was his younger brother, Mohammad.<\/p>\n

Friends later told reporters that Mohammad Haqqani was a religious student in his 20s uninvolved in terrorism; the U.S. intelligence report called him an active member \u2013 but not a leader \u2013 of the Haqqani network. At least one other unidentified occupant of his vehicle perished, according to the report.<\/p>\n

It took the CIA another 18 months to find and kill Badruddin Haqqani.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy Newspapers click here for original article WASHINGTON \u2014\u00a0Contrary to assurances it has deployed U.S. drones only against known senior leaders of al Qaida and allied groups, the Obama administration has targeted and killed hundreds of suspected lower-level Afghan, Pakistani and unidentified \u201cother\u201d militants in scores of strikes in Pakistan\u2019s rugged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1339,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[168],"class_list":["post-1338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-drones"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/2awCC.WiPh2_.91.jpg?fit=495%2C330&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1338"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1340,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338\/revisions\/1340"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}