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Washington's Refusal to Talk about Drone Strikes in Pakistan Meets Growing Opposition
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Criticism is mounting over Washington's refusal to say anything about missile strikes against Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in Pakistan's northwest, prompting even supporters to argue the U.S. needs to be more open to counter militant allegations that only innocent civilians are dying.
A US Predator drone flew over the moon above Kandahar Air Field in southern Afghanistan on Sunday. The Pakistani Army said Sunday it was investigating reports that Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud died from injuries sustained in a US drone missile strike in mid-January. Mehsud's death may still be unconfirmed, but the secret nature of and silence surrounding the US drone wars should be cause for serious concern. (Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP) Missiles launched by unmanned drones are the most effective way for the U.S. to go after militants hiding in the lawless border area near Afghanistan because the Pakistani government refuses to allow U.S. troops on its soil and has been reluctant to target many of the fighters itself.
While the government criticizes the strikes as an infringement on national sovereignty, it is widely assumed to privately support the attacks and help provide intelligence.
But the militants are the only ones speaking publicly about people killed in the strikes. Their claims of hundreds of civilian fatalities have made the attacks deeply unpopular in Pakistan, even though they have eliminated hard-line leaders responsible for the deaths of thousands of Pakistanis.
A poll conducted by Gallup Pakistan for Al-Jazeera in July last year found that only 9 per cent of Pakistanis supported the drone strikes. The poll was based on face-to-face interviews with more than 2,500 Pakistanis throughout the country and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 to 3 percentage points.
More information about the CIA-run program could help offset opposition in Pakistan and also assuage concerns that the strikes violate international law.
"The U.S. government doesn't even suggest what the proportion of innocent people to legitimate targets is," said Michael Walzer, a renowned American scholar on the ethics of warfare. "It's a moral mistake, but it's a PR mistake as well."
Several groups in the U.S. have attempted to calculate what percentage of the more than 700 people killed in the drone strikes in Pakistan has been civilians. Without input from Washington, the results have been all over the map, ranging from 98 per cent to 10 per cent.
Residents interviewed by The Associated Press in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area, the site of a majority of the strikes since the program began in 2004, said they believe almost all of the victims are innocent civilians - although it is possible their comments are influenced by fear of the Taliban.
"I have yet to know a terrorist killed in these drone attacks," said Safirullah Khan, a 32 year-old teacher in Mir Ali town. "If someone knows of any, they should tell me and let the world know also."
U.S. officials argue privately that civilian deaths are much lower than are often reported in the press - a tactic that critics say does little to counter the Taliban's claims.
The U.S. silence, which supporters say is driven by operational concerns and the politically sensitive nature of the strikes for Pakistan, has raised questions about whether the program conforms with international law principles governing who can be targeted and what level of collateral damage can be justified.
"I think the main concern for those of us looking at it from the outside is we don't know what the criteria are for the individual decision of whether to pull the trigger or not," said Paul Pillar, a former senior counterterrorism official at the CIA. "Each particular decision is essentially rendering a death sentence on someone and usually more than one someone when you get into the collateral damage."
Several different groups, including the U.N. and the American Civil Liberties Union, have pressed the U.S. to reveal who it is killing in the strikes but have so far been rebuffed.
The U.S. government refuses even to acknowledge the drone program in Pakistan, but intelligence officials occasionally leak the names of high-profile militants killed in the strikes, including Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.
"The CIA may indeed operate as a matter of principle in secrecy, but it cannot legitimately carve itself out as the sole actor which is not subject to any form of accountability when its activities are so well-known and proclaimed with such pride," said Philip Alston, a U.N. investigator of extrajudicial killings.
Concerns about how the CIA picks targets escalated this month following a wave of strikes after a deadly suicide bombing in Afghanistan's Khost province on Dec. 30 killed seven agency employees. Militants in Pakistan are believed to have helped orchestrate the attack.
"As you get the sort of attacks we have seen over the past few days in response to the Khost killings, suspicions start to rise that the standards are dropping and there is a greater willingness to countenance civilian deaths. Some sort of information would be essential to try to provide reassurance," Alston said.
Roger Cressey, a former counterterrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations involved in the initial phases of the drone program, believes concerns about its moral basis are overblown.
"The CIA is not going off like a bunch of trigger happy joystick controllers killing people randomly," he said. "They take a very serious and methodical approach to acting upon intelligence and making the decision."
A former U.S. intelligence official said the CIA requires at least two kinds of intelligence to confirm a target before striking - for instance, imagery from the aircraft combined with a radio intercept.
The former official said that even with confirmation, sometimes the CIA will not carry out a strike if there are indications that civilians are at risk. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the classified program.
Despite Cressey's confidence in the program, even he is worried about the fact that Washington's silence allows the Taliban to dominate local perceptions about the strikes.
"Nature abhors a vacuum, and if that vacuum is filled by what the Taliban says happens in the drone strikes, then that does influence and impact the population, a population that is incredibly critical to us for our overall success," he said.
Associated Press writers Rasool Dawar in Mir Ali, Riaz Khan in Peshawar and Pamela Hess in Washington contributed to this report.
- Posted in
44 Comments so far
Show AllThe nature of a bomb is to destroy things. There is no such as a "nice" bomb. A smart bomb is an oxy-moron.
I assume a dumb bomb may not actually kill anybody whereas a smart bomb will kill SOMEBODY ?
We have smart bombs, stupid citizens, and corrupt leaders.
you echoed what Reverend martin luther king, jr said:
"WE ARE A NATION OF TECHNOLOGICAL GIANTS AND INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL MIDGETS".
Yes, thank you.
Yes. Very opposed. Watched PBS Digital Revolution on Frontline premiere. Showed Army recruiting kids with technology and operation of drones from our desert station in US. They have to pretend they are there with the forces. I can't imagine the moral confusion they must endure.
Yeah, I'm thinking that whether we are talking about walking drones or flying drones--what again was the honorable cause why we are committing murder from remote places against foreign people? again another lie. This is totally ludicrous--we are the aggressor, we are the main terrorist--just be a good citizen and shut up and go away--oh yeah don't forget to give me my taxes so I can squander it all away on evil foolishness like death, destruction, and eternal war.Wake up people we need to take back the power to decide if we should be compelled to kill people(and anything else in between)--just do it to prove to me that it is not just as I said it was--you can't because this is only a farce of a gov and will shortly disperse.
"The U.S. government doesn't even suggest what the proportion of innocent people to legitimate targets is."
Precisely what ratio would be okay?
The U.S. government offers no suggestion on the subject for the simple reason that it doesn't give a tinker's damn about innocent deaths that result from its imperial activities. Why should it care more about innocent Pakistani or Afghan or Iraqi kids than it does about its own who die by the thousands every year in the pursuit of corporate profits.
Haven't you heard? War budgets and blind ambition leave "no room for any domestic initiatives" (see http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd02022010.html ) let alone obedience to the laws of war that might possibly save some innocent lives elsewhere.
-"But the militants are the only ones speaking publicly about people killed in the strikes."
-"I have yet to know a terrorist killed in these drone attacks," said Safirullah Khan, a 32 year-old teacher in Mir Ali town. "If someone knows of any, they should tell me and let the world know also."
I recall the bombings of entire villages in Vietnam was also a "state secret" in the US for some time. That self-imposed secret came out only after a US reporter bothered to take a look for himself.
But the escalating drone bombings are not really a secret are they? Me thinks, Americans don't WANT to know.
The US government and its CIA act as judge, jury and executioner in these drone attacks. That certainly violates international law.
We invade those countries under fraud and kill their citizens. We have met the enemy and it is us.
"The CIA is not going off like a bunch of trigger happy joystick controllers killing people randomly". Right. They take a very serious and methodical approach to killing people randomly.
This article seems to raise the question for one reason... to win the war.
This article is suggesting that secrecy is making the US lose the propaganda War.
The US does not acknowledge the drone bombings because that would open them up to other questions (war crimes) that they do not want to have to answer.
Open secrets are a denial tool when everyone knows it is a lie but it is accepted because everybody knows that truth is the first casualty in war.
Secrecy is not the problem with unnecessary war, it is the War.
There is no way a joystick operator with a video monitor and radio communication can know how many people are killed when the missile hits a building and if they could give a good estimate, it would be debated and the target country would be enraged... so it would be a loss in the propaganda information war.
Jim Glover: very astute observation about the article being more a discussion of the strategy effects of drones and assassinations rather than the morality of same.
As I read this, I started asking myself "who wrote it?" and finally found my answer at the end: it was written in connection with reporters for the Associated Press. I have long since come to realize that virtually any news that gets printed with AP attribution is going to be more or less an apologia for whatever military operations are engaged in by the Pentagon; it's almost as if the news service's whole journalistic crew were in bed with--I mean embedded with--the U.S. military. This was demonstrated in many ways, for example, in the ludicrous statement that civilian casualties could not be accurately determined because they had the word "only" of Pakistani civilians on the ground without "input from Washington." As AP stenographers for the Pentagon they could not, of course, determine the "true" number of such civilian casualities without this "input" from those oh-so-reliable military "briefings" (calculated lies) about their operations. Maybe some of these reporters could join the equivalent of the Lincoln Group PR people in Iraq and get paid by the U.S. military for writing articles in Iraqi papers about how much Iraqis just love the occupation of their country.
Ahh yes, AP group of reporters a "War group think" .... Thanks, I missed that.
Jeevee
Why are we so obsessed with "WINNING"? Why are we so obsessed with "WAGING WAR"?
Preventing future terrorism is accomplished by killing innocent people*.
* innocent people - definition
1. people not guilty of anything
2. potential future terrorists
Public Law 107-40 --> 'in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States'
Simple fix.
Have Barack Obabam claim everyone in Pakistan an "Illegal Combatant".
Then under US law they are no longer persons.
Then get back to the business of killing all the not persons.
We don't have to go to those extremes.
We need to try Anonymous Treaties. Peace will break out all over, except we won't know who signed the Anonymous Treaty, so we wont be able to spot where it is peaceful. However that would make us more careful about the bombing, as we surely wouldn't want to bomb some peaceful place.
GW 1:22 It should not be said or written even jokingly.
Whatever the Commander-in-Chief, "the Decider," "Mr. Decency," himself gives the okay for, we "decent" Americans with such wonderful "American Values," should just shut up and trust that we are being protected from the "Terrorists."
Some days I have a harder time not throwing up than others.
The EVIL EMPIRE is us.
/cm
"Roger Cressey ... believes concerns about its moral basis are overblown."
I disagree completely. First he says, "The CIA is not going off like a bunch of trigger happy joystick controllers killing people randomly." He submits that two findings of intelligence are necessary before death rains down on unsuspecting people, and the intelligence provides the justification, with the only bit needing worked out is the ratio of accidental deaths caused by the intended one.
Do let us know when you work this out and publish it: "CIA finds that 20 innocent lives taken is justified to take out one high value target, 30 if it is an extra high value target, and 45 if no children are present, except when a pregnant woman might cause the Super Christian Xe Forces to say that no more than 30% may be female, unless they are sympathizers or carry the prodigy of same....
Shall drones be acceptable in Afghanistan only? Not also Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Gaza? If intelligence drones are okayed for police forces, should they not also be weaponized - oh non-lethal, of course! If a corporation and an agency get together and form XE CIA, do they have sovereignty over the entire planet? Can people anywhere be killed for thought, beliefs or associating with the wrong people? Can XE CIA's budget be cut? Will these anonymous soldiers of the joy stick be screened? What psychological necessity is created by going home to dinner with the wife and kids after you just killed someone else's on a video game? Can the term "mission creep" tell us anything about the thousands of good uses drones can and will be put to?
We haven't even begun to talk about the moral issues - probably because there's no money in it.
South Asia
Feb 3, 2010
TALIBAN TAKE ON THE US'S SURGE
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
ISLAMABAD - At the major international conference on Afghanistan in London last Thursday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on the Taliban to take part in a loya jirga (assembly of elders) - as a start to peace talks.
The Taliban are widely reported as having responded that first they want all of the more than 110,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan to leave the country by 2011.
Asia Times Online, however, has learned from well-connected sources in Afghanistan who have been directly involved in backchannel negotiations with the Taliban that there is an important nuance to the Taliban demand. That is, the United
States must put an immediate halt to its plans to send a further 30,000 troops to Afghanistan before withdrawal begins in 2011.
In return, the Taliban would be prepared to open up a channel of dialogue with the Americans, through Saudi Arabia, while at the same time taking measures to reduce the level of hostilities in the country.
The key issue boils down to one of trust, that is, whether the US would be prepared to only send in replacements for previously deployed troops, given that the surge in forces was meant to be a cornerstone of its counter-insurgency plan as a means of softening up the Taliban before talks could begin in earnest.
"Washington has to focus on out-of-box thinking to resolve this conflict in Afghanistan," a Kabul-based contact told Asia Times Online on the condition of anonymity. "The Americans desperately want an exit strategy but they cannot announce it outright because if they did so, the Taliban would overrun any government they left behind. The Americans aim to invite the Taliban to join the political process, but the bitter fact is that the Taliban do not believe in elections at all. They want the reinstatement of their Islamic Emirate that was dissolved by the Americans in 2001. Despite all the military engagement, the Taliban's strength is growing and the losses of the Western coalition are increasing," the contact said.
This view is reflected among the Western coalition dealing with Afghanistan, in that there is a consensus that the US needs to find an exit strategy that would not leave the Taliban, with or without al-Qaeda, in too strong a position. There is a belief that the Taliban could be controlled through a dispensation operated through Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Pakistan.
ARTICLE CONTINUED
-===========================
"This pattern of thinking actually began in August 2007, when Saudi Arabia decided to tackle the situation from its roots, and that was al-Qaeda," Jamal Ismail, a senior Arab journalist, told Asia Times Online. Ismail is one of the few journalists to have interviewed Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders on several occasions and he has reported on Afghanistan and Pakistan for the past 30 years.
"Prince Bandar bin Sultan [a former Saudi ambassador to the US] quietly came to Pakistan and the then [Pervez] Musharraf administration arranged for him to travel to Miranshah [the tribal headquarters of North Waziristan in Pakistan]. Earlier, a message had been sent that he aimed to see Osama bin Laden or Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri. However, only Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, a middle-ranking al-Qaeda leader, came to see him," Ismail said.
This was not a good beginning, since al-Qaeda had scornfully rejected all proposals of a ceasefire (See Military brains plot Pakistan's downfall Asia Times Online, September 26, 2007.)
Nonetheless, although the US and Saudi Arabia projected that they would not deal with the extremist elements of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, off-the-screen negotiations began with the real players - Taliban leader Mullah Omar and al-Qaeda.
In early 2009, the Americans pushed Saudi Arabia to start negotiations with the Taliban leadership and Saudi intelligence chief Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz al-Saud started speaking to Mullah Omar through the Taliban's supreme commander, Mullah Bradar.
However, after Barack Obama took over the presidency a year ago, Mullah Omar took it as an affront that on the one hand Washington aimed to engage the Taliban through Saudi Arabia for peace, while on the other hand it planned to continue all efforts to defeat the Taliban.
By mid-2009, Prince Muqrin was told point blank that Mullah Omar had decided to discontinue all communication and negotiations. That was a major setback for the Obama administration, which could see the rising tide of the Taliban in Afghanistan and was aiming for a quick political face-saving exit strategy.
ARTICLE CONTINUED
===========================
After the aborted second round of the Afghan presidential elections in November last year that resulted in Karzai being re-elected, the US reopened discussions with the Taliban to get them to stop attacks on government buildings and installations in Kabul. The US wanted to present this at home as a major political victory. The Taliban were discussing the issue when Obama announced the decision to send a further 30,000 troops into Afghanistan.
The Taliban again halted all negotiations and early this year carried out a major attack on government buildings in the heart of Kabul, near the presidential palace.
Asia Times Online contacts claim that in an effort to get the dialogue process back on track, the US is considering the Taliban's demand on stopping the troop surge in Afghanistan, with the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan lined up to work out an arrangement that would keep the Taliban and al-Qaeda under control in any US exit plan.
Should the US agree to the Taliban demands, there is no guarantee that the Taliban would stick to their word. This is the US's dilemma.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Dialogue seeks a middle ground
(Feb2, '10)
Circles within circles around the Taliban (Jan 28, '10)
1. Iran caught up in China-US spat
2. Profits, not principals, move the age
3. Obama losing control of Iran policy
4. China's US spending passes landmark
5. Seven days in January
6. Obama's polemics versus economic facts
7. Dialogue seeks a middle ground
8. Terror comes at night in Afghanistan
9. BOOK REVIEW: The skeleton in the cupboard
10. Grim tales from North Korea's gulags
(24 hours to 11:59pm ET, Feb 1, 2010)
teddy 2:18 This is the "intelligent" Obomber?
He like says like "don't hit me", then Obomber hits the guy.
Then he says again "Don't hit me, then Obomber hits the guy.
The Pentagon defines civilians killed during the course of war as bug splat. That alone speaks volumes about their regards to fellow human beings.
Targeted Killings := Assassinations := Sloppy Premeditated Murders
We have to remember that this Gulag state - pre-emptive strike - mentality originated with the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Gates axis. According to Democracy Now! guest Scott Horton many Obama administration officials are leaving precisely because of this issue. Put 2 and 2 together and you realize who is pushing this Gulag Bush state by who is still occupying key roles in the White House. Emmanual-Clinton-Axelrod-Holder and Obama himself are the core of this continued draconian and illegal agenda. Many of the people that worked for Obama during the campaign have become disilusioned and outright disgusted and have decided to pack their bags. What we have here essentially is Republican Lite type policies and that will not cut it with continued 10% percent unemployment for the next 4 years. But this shows where Obama's priorities really are - all rhetoric to the the contrary. Say goodbye to Obama in 2012.
It is a AP propaganda article, they can not mention Federally Administered Tribal Areas without saying "lawless";I think it is their contract with the CIA.
Of course the article fails to Quote the USA Army general who said the Drones had a 80% to 90% civilian kill rate ( "Bug Splats" in USA military parlance).
Initial attack phases in Iraq allowed for 100 yes! 100 Bug Splats during each attack.
Since then in Afghanistan it has been scaled back to 30 Bug Splats per conventional attack.
This propaganda artical claims "USA Officials argue privately" the civlian kill rate is lower than press reports, if this were true they would publicly proclaim it.
Some Pakistanis believe the Mosques bombings are USA operations.
The Blowing up of the Golden Mosque of Sammarra, by a swat like team all in black, kickstarting the Iraqi civil war is internationally believed to have been a USA operation.
Is "Civil War" a weapon in USA's arsenal?
80% civilian kill rate by drones, thus no due diligence to prevent civilian rates positively makes Obomber a War Criminal.
Get this AP propaganda trash off of CD!
We already know it took 16 Drone attacks to hit Meshud.
And as Glenn Greenwald wrote, the Imperialists almost always initially claim a tageted person kill and then recant later, only to Drone on.
And Schahill or Hersch told us that the Base in Baluchistan is maintained, including arming the Drones by the War Criminal Corporation Blackwater.
I wonder how outraged American citizens would be if, say, China was launching daily predator drone attacks on American soil, "accidentally" killing hundreds of their neighbors, friends, and family members in the streets of America.
I'm sure they wouldn't be in the least upset by it. Collateral damage, after all.
Right?
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross."
Sinclair Lewis, "It Cant Happen Here", 1935
Exactly>
remember what EVO MORALES said - when the USA protested about Bolivia not renewing the American military bases on Bolivia?
"Maybe if the USA would let Bolivia put a military base in Florida...we can talk"....touche, indeed.
i am SURE americans of all stripes would protest if JAPAN were to announce:
"since we are highly technological and even create many of the most advanced SYSTEMS for the USA army...we are capable of offering PROTECTION for the USA by letting us put 30,ooo of our soldiers plus some REALLY modern ships in San Diego or outside San Francisco...but maybe,,,PEARL HARBOR will be OK TOO".....
boy - americans would cry "SOVEREIGNTY, SOVEREIGNTY...JAPS OUT OF AMERICA"!!!
forgetting of course that HAWAIIAN sovereignty was long ago thrown to pieces BY america and admiral Perry....
Yeah, you should read "It can't Happen Here" in its entirety and also London's "The Iron Heel," which may be a little closer to what we have in store for us as more people are thrown into the street to starve, sicken and die, with the faint possibility of an uprising.
There are thousands of professional "Good Germans" like this Roger Cressey "expert".
These are the reprehensible time-servers who invent euphemisms like "surgical strike" and "collateral damage".
They are the fat and happy body lice on the Frankenstein monster of totalitarian imperialist governments.
· Yr Obd't Servant
I went to Canada.com and was unable to source this piece. I had a similar problem with a piece claiming to originate at Reuters. I really don't want to see this wonderful website getting into difficulties by making false claims - can somebody please get the word up to Editorial about this?
The piece is from Canadian Press, which is Canada's national news agency:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress
/article/ALeqM5gbSQdDzSoptuqG_OIWoYhNP9qoZw
The Huffinton Post and Move-on still supporting Obomber and the CIA DRONES in the Killings of the Innocents in Pakistan?
Some history for them. After the invasion of Cuba by the CIA,
JFK, said he wanted to break up the CIA in a million Pieces.
Naturally they did away with him in November, 1963.
It has now been documented that George H W Bush was in Dallas
when JFK was assasinated. Get with it Arriana and Move-on..
What gets me is that we are killing more "terrorists" than there are terrorist attacks, which tells me that the people we are assasinating are guilty of nothing more than association, if that. And the innocent people are being killed due to association with suspected associates.
The joystick operator is one part of a judge/jury/assasination process that is broken into numerous roles so no one person has full responsibility for the assasinations.
It is a terrible thing to say but I wish that someone would taker a picture of half a child left that way when a drone bomb killed her/him and that the picture would be given to the president's daughters. I want the truth out of the mouth of chidren to bring him up short. Maybe if his crying daughters asked him point blank why he was killing little children in some foreign country he might start considering what in the world he is doing.
As you say: maybe.
But there's probably something already stored on Obama's Teleprompter that covers this.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Just dealing with the overpopulation problem, right Henry?
so who are the terrorists again?
Drones = high tech state terrorism
Obomba: " I want to look forward". Obomba wants to look forward because to look at the past would incriminate him!
Those who commit crimes usually do not want to discuss them.