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Drone strikes in Pakistan

Between 2004 and 2018, the United States government attacked thousands of targets in northwest Pakistan using unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) operated by the United States Air Force under the operational control of the Central Intelligence Agency's Special Activities Division.[23][24] Most of these attacks were on targets in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (now part of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province) along the Afghan border in northwest Pakistan. These strikes began during the administration of United States President George W. Bush, and increased substantially under his successor Barack Obama.[25] Some in the media referred to the attacks as a "drone war".[26][27] The George W. Bush administration officially denied the extent of its policy; in May 2013, the Obama administration acknowledged for the first time that four US citizens had been killed in the strikes.[28] In December 2013, the National Assembly of Pakistan unanimously approved a resolution against US drone strikes in Pakistan, calling them a violation of "the charter of the United Nations, international laws and humanitarian norms."[29]

Drone strikes in Pakistan
Part of the Insurgency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,
the War in Afghanistan and the War on terror

An MQ-9 Reaper landing in Afghanistan.
Date18 June 2004 – 4 July 2018[1][2][3][4][5]
Location
Result

American operational success[6]

  • Most recent drone strike launched in July 2018.
  • 81 high-level insurgent leaders and thousands of low-level insurgents killed[7]
  • Deaths of Afghan Taliban head Akhtar Mansour, and successive TTP heads Baitullah Mehsud and Hakimullah Mehsud.
  • Deaths of hundreds of Pakistanis civilians.
  • Destruction of numerous insurgent camps and safe havens
  • 5 drone strikes in 2017, followed by one in 2018 and none in 2019[8]
  • Substantial reduction in insurgent activity by 2017.[9]
  • 430 drone strikes confirmed[10]
Belligerents

 United States

Supported by:

Commanders and leaders

Strength
c. 30 UAVs[19] Unknown
Casualties and losses
9 (CIA personnel) c. 2,000–3,500 militants killed[20][21][22]
  • Civilian deaths:
    158–965
  • Long War Journal:
    158 civilians killed
  • New America Foundation:
    245–303 civilians killed
  • Bureau of Investigative Journalism:
    424–969 civilians killed

Pakistan's former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, had repeatedly demanded an end to the strikes, stating: "The use of drones is not only a continual violation of our territorial integrity but also detrimental to our resolve and efforts at eliminating terrorism from our country".[30] However, despite the public opposition of Pakistani officials, multiple former Prime Ministers gave covert permission to the United States to carry out these attacks.[31][32] The Peshawar High Court has ruled that the attacks are illegal, inhumane, violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and constitute a war crime.[33] The Obama administration disagreed, contending that the attacks did not violate international law and that the method of attack was precise and effective.[30][34] Notable targets of the strikes included Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban (killed in a strike in South Waziristan on 5 August 2009), Hakimullah Mehsud, Mehsud's successor (killed in a strike on 1 November 2013), and Akhtar Mansour, leader of the Afghan Taliban (killed in a strike on 21 May 2016 in Ahmad Wal, Pakistan).

The operations in Pakistan were closely tied to a related drone campaign in Afghanistan, along the same border area. These strikes have killed 3,798–5,059 militants and 161–473 civilians. Among the militant deaths are hundreds of high-level leaders of the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban, the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, the Haqqani Network, and other organizations, with 70 Taliban leaders killed in one ten-day period of May 2017 alone.[35]

Overview

Pakistan's government publicly condemned these attacks.[36] However, it also allegedly allowed the drones to operate from Shamsi Airfield in Pakistan until 21 April 2011.[37] According to secret diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks, Pakistan's Army Chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani not only tacitly agreed to the drone flights, but in 2008 requested that Americans increase them.[38] However, Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik said, "drone missiles cause collateral damage. A few militants are killed, but the majority of victims are innocent citizens."[39] The strikes are often linked to anti-American sentiment in Pakistan and the growing questionability of the scope and extent of CIA activities in Pakistan.

Reports of the number of militant versus civilian casualties differ.[40] In general, the CIA and other American agencies have claimed a high rate of militant killings, relying in part on a disputed estimation method that "counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants ... unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent".[41] For instance, the CIA has claimed that strikes conducted between May 2010 and August 2011 killed over 600 militants without any civilian fatalities, a claim that many have disputed.[40] The New America Foundation has estimated that 80 percent of those killed in the attacks were militants.[42] On the other hand, several experts have stated that in reality, far fewer militants and many more civilians have been killed. In a 2009 opinion article, Daniel L. Byman of the Brookings Institution wrote that drone strikes may have killed "10 or so civilians" for every militant that they killed.[43] The Pakistani military has stated that most of those killed were Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.[44] The Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that 423 to 965 civilians were killed out of a total of 2,497 to 3,999 including 172 to 207 children. The Bureau also claimed that since Obama took office at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims and more than 20 civilians have also been attacked in strikes on funerals and mourners, a practice condemned by legal experts.[45][46][47]

Barbara Elias-Sanborn has also claimed that, "as much of the literature on drones suggests, such killings usually harden militants' determination to fight, stalling any potential negotiations and settlement."[48] However, analysis by the RAND Corporation suggests that "drone strikes are associated with decreases in the incidence and lethality of terrorist attacks" in Pakistan.[49]

A motive that the 2010 Times Square car bomber Faisal Shahzad stated was the repeated CIA drone attacks in Pakistan, his native country.[50]

Drone strikes were halted in November 2011 after NATO forces killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in the Salala incident.[51] Shamsi Airfield was evacuated of Americans and taken over by the Pakistanis December 2011.[52] The incident prompted an approximately two-month stop to the drone strikes, which resumed on 10 January 2012.

In March 2013, Ben Emmerson, the United Nations Special Rapporteur, led a U.N. team that looked into civilian casualties from the U.S. drone attacks, and stated that the attacks are a violation of the sovereignty of Pakistan. Emmerson said government officials from the country clearly stated Pakistan does not agree to the drone attacks, which is contradicted by U.S. officials.[53] In October 2013, Amnesty International brought out a detailed study of the impact of drone strikes that strongly condemned the strikes. The report stated that the number of arbitrary civilian deaths, the tactics used (such as follow-up attacks targeting individuals helping the wounded) and the violation of Pakistani sovereignty meant that some of the strikes could be considered as unlawful executions and war crimes.[54]

In May 2014, the targeted killing program was described as "basically over," with no attack having occurred since December 2013. The lull in attacks coincided with a new Obama Administration policy requiring a "near certainty" that civilians would not be harmed, requests from lawmakers that the drone program be brought under operational control of the Department of Defense[55] (for better congressional oversight), a reduced US military and CIA presence in Afghanistan, a reduced al-Qaida presence in Pakistan, and an increased military role (at the expense of the CIA) in the execution of drone strikes.[56][57]

Statistics

U.S. drone strike statistics estimate,
according to the New America Foundation
(as of 1 January 2018):[58]
Year Attacks Casualties
Militants Civilians Unknown Total
2004 1 3 2 2 7
2005 3 5 6 4 15
2006 2 1 93 0 94
2007 4 51 0 12 63
2008 36 223 28 47 298
2009 54 387 70 92 549
2010 122 788 16 45 849
2011 70 415 62 35 512
2012 48 268 5 33 306
2013 26 145 4 4 153
2014 22 145 0 0 145
2015 10 57 0 0 57
2016 3 9 0 0 9
2017 8 36 2 1 39
Total 409 2,533 288 275 3,096

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates the following cumulative statistics about U.S. drone strikes (as of 17 September 2017):[20]

  • Total strikes: 429
  • Total killed: 2,514 – 4,023
  • Civilians killed: 424 – 969
  • Children killed: 172 – 207
  • Injured: 1,162 – 1,749
  • Strikes under the Bush Administration: 51
  • Strikes under the Obama Administration: 373
  • Strikes under the Trump Administration: 5
  • 84 of the 2,379 dead have been identified as members of al-Qaeda[59]

A formerly classified Pakistani government report obtained in July 2013 by the BIJ shows details of 75 drone strikes that occurred between 2006 and 2009. According to the 12-page report, in this period, 176 of the 746 reported dead were civilians.[60] According to the Long War Journal, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and the New America Foundation, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009 had some of the highest civilian casualty ratios of any years.

U.S. viewpoint

U.S. President George W. Bush vastly accelerated the drone strikes during the final year of his presidency.[citation needed] A list of the high-ranking victims of the drones was provided to Pakistan in 2009.[61] Bush's successor, President Obama, broadened attacks to include targets against groups considered to be seeking to destabilize Pakistani civilian government; the attacks of 14 and 16 February 2009 were against training camps run by Baitullah Mehsud.[62] On 25 February 2009 Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, indicated the strikes will continue.[63] On 4 March 2009 The Washington Times reported that the drones were targeting Baitullah Mehsud.[64] Obama was reported in March 2009 as considering expanding these strikes to include Balochistan.[65]

The US government cited the inability of states to control and keep track of terrorist activities as a characteristic of a failed state, represented by the lack of military and governmental control in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and was operating within the states' right of self-defense according to Article 51 in Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. In President Obama's 2013 speech at the National Defense University, he stated "we act against terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people, and when there are no other governments capable of effectively addressing the threat".[66]

On 25 March 2010 US State Department legal advisor Harold Koh stated that the drone strikes were legal because of the right to self-defense. According to Koh, the US is involved in an armed conflict with al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their affiliates and therefore may use force consistent with self-defense under international law.[67]

Former CIA officials state that the agency uses a careful screening process in making decisions on which individuals to kill via drone strikes. The process, carried out at the agency's counterterrorist center, involves up to 10 lawyers who write briefs justifying the targeting of specific individuals. According to the former officials, if a brief's argument is weak, the request to target the individual is denied.[68] Since 2008 the CIA has relied less on its list of individuals and increasingly targeted "signatures," or suspect behavior. This change in tactics has resulted in fewer deaths of high-value targets and in more deaths of lower-level fighters, or "mere foot soldiers" as the one senior Pakistani official told The Washington Post.[69] Signature strikes there must be supported by two sources of corroborating intelligence. Sources of intelligence include information from a communication intercept, a sighting of militant training camps or intelligence from CIA assets on the ground.[70] "Signature targeting" has been the source of controversy. Drone critics argue that regular citizen behaviors can easily be mistaken for militant signatures.

US officials stated in March 2009 that the Predator strikes had killed nine of al Qaeda's 20 top commanders. The officials added that many top Taliban and al Qaeda leaders, as a result of the strikes, had fled to Quetta or even further to Karachi.[71]

Some US politicians and academics have condemned the drone strikes. US Congressman Dennis Kucinich asserted that the United States was violating international law by carrying out strikes against a country that never attacked the United States.[72] Georgetown University professor Gary D. Solis asserts that since the drone operators at the CIA are civilians directly engaged in armed conflict, this makes them "unlawful combatants" and possibly subject to prosecution.[68]

US military reports asserted that al Qaeda is being slowly but systematically routed because of these attacks, and that they have served to sow the seeds of uncertainty and discord among their ranks. They also claimed that the drone attacks have addled and confused the Taliban, and have led them to turn against each other.[73] In July 2009 it was reported that (according to US officials) Osama bin Laden's son Saad bin Laden was believed to have been killed in a drone attack earlier in the year.[74]

During a protest against drone attacks, in an event sponsored by Nevada Desert Experience, Father Louie Vitale, Kathy Kelly, Stephen Kelly (SJ), Eve Tetaz, John Dear, and others were arrested outside Creech Air Force Base on Wednesday 9 April 2009.[75][76]

In May 2009 it was reported that the US was sharing drone intelligence with Pakistan.[77] Leon Panetta reiterated on 19 May 2009 that the US intended to continue the drone attacks.[78]

In December 2009 expansion of the drone attacks was authorized by Barack Obama to parallel the decision to send 30,000 more American troops to Afghanistan.[79] Senior US officials are reportedly pushing for extending the strikes into Quetta in Balochistan against the Quetta Shura.[80] Speaking at a news conference in Islamabad on 7 January 2010 Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman stated the drone attacks were effective and would continue but stated that US would make greater efforts to prevent collateral damage.[81] In an effort to strengthen trust with Pakistan "US sharing drone surveillance data with Pakistan", said Mike Mullen.[82] US defence budget for 2011 asked for a 75% increase in funds to enhance the drone operations.[83]

Compare Mr. Obama's use of drone strikes with that of his predecessor. During the Bush administration, there was an American drone attack in Pakistan every 43 days; during the first two years of the Obama administration, there was a drone strike there every four days.[84]

Peter Bergen, April 2012

The Associated Press (AP) noted that Barack Obama apparently expanded the scope and increased the aggressiveness of the drone campaign against militants in Pakistan after taking office. According to the news agency, the US increased strikes against the Pakistani Taliban, which earned favor from the Pakistani government, resulting in increased cooperation from Pakistani intelligence services. Also, the Obama administration toned down the US government's public rhetoric against Islamic terrorism, garnering better cooperation from other Islamic governments. Furthermore, with the drawdown of the war in Iraq, more drones, support personnel, and intelligence assets became available for the campaigns in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Since Obama took office, according to the AP, the number of drones operated by the CIA over Afghanistan and Pakistan doubled.[85]

According to some current and former counterterrorism officials, the Obama administration's increase in the use of drone strikes is an unintended consequence of the president's executive orders banning secret CIA detention centers and his attempt to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, and capturing prisoners has become a "less viable option".[86] Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia alleged that, "Their policy is to take out high-value targets, versus capturing high-value targets ... They are not going to advertise that, but that's what they are doing." Obama's aides argued that it is often impossible to capture targets in the tribal areas of Pakistan and Yemen, and that other targets are in foreign custody thanks to American tips. Obama's counter-terrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, said that, "The purpose of these actions is to mitigate threats to U.S. persons' lives", and continued, "It is the option of last recourse. So the president, and I think all of us here, don't like the fact that people have to die. And so he wants to make sure that we go through a rigorous checklist: The infeasibility of capture, the certainty of the intelligence base, the imminence of the threat, all of these things." In response to the concerns about the number of killings, Jeh C. Johnson stated, "We have to be vigilant to avoid a no-quarter, or take-no-prisoners policy."[87]

A study called "The Year of the Drone" published in February 2010 by the New America Foundation found that from a total of 114 drone strikes in Pakistan between 2004 and early 2010, between 834 and 1,216 individuals had been killed. About two thirds of these were thought to be militants and one third were civilians.[21]

On 28 April 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama appointed General David Petraeus as director of the CIA overseeing the drone attacks. According to Pakistani and American officials this could further inflame relations between the two nations.[88]

According to The Washington Post, as of September 2011, around 30 Predator and Reaper drones were operating under CIA direction in the Afghanistan/Pakistan area of operations. The drones are flown by United States Air Force pilots located at an unnamed base in the United States. US Department of Defense armed drones, which also sometimes take part in strikes on terrorist targets, are flown by US Air Force pilots located at Creech Air Force Base and Holloman Air Force Base. The CIA drones are operated by an office called the Pakistan-Afghanistan Department, which operates under the CIA's Counterterrorism Center (CTC), based at CIA's headquarters in Langley, Virginia. As of September 2011, the CTC had about 2,000 people on staff.[19][89]

US President Obama affirmed on 30 January 2012 that the US was conducting drone strikes in Pakistan. He stressed that civilian casualties in the strikes were low.[90] In a February 2012 poll of 1,000 US adults, 83% of them (77% of the liberal Democrats) replied they support the drone strikes.[91] The Obama administration offered its first extensive explanation on drone-strike policy in April 2012, concluding that it was "legal, ethical and wise".[92] The CIA's general counsel, Stephen Preston, in a speech entitled "CIA and the Rule of Law" at Harvard Law School on 10 April 2012, claimed the agency was not bound by the laws of war; in response, Human Rights Watch called for the strike program to be brought under the control of the US military.[93] In May, the US began stepping up drone attacks after talks at the NATO summit in Chicago did not lead to the progress it desired regarding Pakistan's continued closure of its Afghan borders to the alliance's supply convoys.[94]

 
Minneapolis anti-war protest: 'Stop Killer Drones', 5 May 2013

In 2013, the sustained and growing criticism of his drone policy forced Obama to announce stricter conditions on executing drone strikes abroad, including an unspoken plan to partly shift the program from the CIA to the ostensibly more accountable Pentagon,[95] In anticipation of his speech, Obama instructed Attorney General Eric Holder to divulge that four U.S. citizens had been killed by drones since 2009, and that only one of those men had been intentionally targeted.[96] Following Obama's announcement, the United Nations' drone investigator, British lawyer Ben Emmerson, made clear his expectation of a "significant reduction" in the number of strikes over the 18 months to follow,[97] although the period immediately after Obama's speech was "business as usual".[98] Six months later, the CIA was still carrying out the "vast majority" of drone strikes.[99] However, no attack has occurred since December 2013, and the drone war was described as "basically over" in May 2014.[56]

At Senator Dianne Feinstein's insistence, beginning in early 2010 staffs of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have begun reviewing each CIA drone strike. The staff members hold monthly meetings with CIA personnel involved with the drone campaign, review videos of each strike, and attempt to confirm that the strike was executed properly.[100]

One of the leading critics of drones in the US Congress is Senator Rand Paul. In 2013, he performed a thirteen-hour filibuster to try to achieve a public admission from U.S. President Obama that he could not kill an American citizen with a drone on American soil, who was not actively engaged in combat. Attorney General Eric Holder responded soon after, confirming that the president had no authority to use drones for this purpose.

, assistant professor of political science at Columbia University, notes that, "the use of drones reflects several on-going historical military developments that, in turn, reflect the culture and values of American society."[101] In this, he alludes to technological idealism (the pursuit of a "decisive" technology to end war) and the need to seize the moral high ground, by delivering more "humane" approaches to warfare. Military support for the drones remains strong for a host of reasons: expansion of battlespace, extension of an individual soldiers capabilities, and a reduction of American casualties.[102] Support has also been noted across the political spectrum as focus in the Middle East shifted from stabilization in Afghanistan to antiterrorist strikes aimed at al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan.[citation needed]

Blanchard also points to a shift in how gender is viewed in terms of warfare with the advent of technology in place of human soldiers. Fighters often represent an idealized masculinity, portraying strength, bravery, and chivalry, but during the Gulf War of 1990–91 the focus had changed. The computer programmers, missile technologists, high-tech pilots, and other servicemen who were centred around technology were now the focal point of news coverage, removing the warrior-soldier from the conversation.[103]

Pakistani position

 
Shamsi airbase in 2006, reported to show three Predator drones[104]

For at least some of the initial drone strikes, in 2004 and 2005, the U.S. operated with the approval and cooperation[105] of Pakistan's ISI. Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf told The New Yorker in 2014 that he allowed the CIA to fly drones within Pakistan and that in exchange the U.S. supplied helicopters and night-vision equipment to the Pakistanis. Musharraf wanted the drones to operate under Pakistani control, but the U.S. wouldn't allow it.[106]

Pakistan has repeatedly protested these attacks as an infringement of its sovereignty and because civilian deaths have also resulted, including women and children, which has further angered the Pakistani government and people.[92][107][108][109] General David Petraeus was told in November 2008 that these strikes were unhelpful.[110] However, on 4 October 2008 The Washington Post reported that there was a secret deal between the U.S. and Pakistan allowing these drone attacks.[111] US Senator Dianne Feinstein said in February 2009: "As I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base."[112] Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi denied that this was true.[113]

The drone attacks continue, despite repeated requests made by ex-Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari through different channels.[114][115] Baitullah Mehsud of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, while claiming responsibility for the 2009 Lahore police academy attacks, stated that they were acting in retaliation for the drone attacks.[116] According to The Daily Telegraph, Pakistani intelligence has agreed to secretly provide information to the United States on Mehsud's and his militants' whereabouts while publicly the Pakistani government will continue to condemn the attacks.[117]

On 28 April 2009 Pakistan's consul general to the US, Aqil Nadeem, asked the US to hand over control of its drones in Pakistan to his government. "Do we want to lose the war on terror or do we want to keep those weapons classified? If the American government insists on our true cooperation, then they should also be helping us in fighting those terrorists", said Said Nadeem.[118] Pakistan President Zardari has also requested that Pakistan be given control over the drones, but this has been rejected by the US who are worried that Pakistanis will leak information about targets to militants.[119] In December 2009 Pakistan's Defence minister Ahmad Mukhtar acknowledged that Americans were using Shamsi Airfield but stated that Pakistan was not satisfied with payments for using the facility.[120]

In December 2010 the CIA's Station Chief in Islamabad operating under the alias Jonathan Banks was hastily pulled from the country.[121][122] Lawsuits filed by families of victims of drone strikes had named Banks as a defendant, he had been receiving death threats, and a Pakistani journalist whose brother and son died in a drone strike called for prosecuting Banks for murder.[123][124]

In March 2011 the General Officer Commanding of 7th division of Pakistani Army, Major General Ghayur Mehmood delivered a briefing "Myths and rumours about US predator strikes" in Miramshah. He said that most of those who were killed by the drone strikes were Al-qaeda and Taliban terrorists. Military's official paper on the attacks till 7 March 2011 said that between 2007 and 2011 about 164 predator strikes had been carried out and over 964 terrorists had been killed. Those killed included 793 locals and 171 foreigners. The foreigners included Arabs, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Chechens, Filipinos and Moroccans.[44] This is disputed. Other sources say that as of July 2011, 250 drone strikes have killed 1500–2300 people, of which only 33 were estimated to be terrorist leaders.[125][126]

On 9 December 2011, Pakistan's Army Chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani issued a directive to shoot down US drones. A senior Pakistani military official said, "Any object entering into our air space, including U.S. drones, will be treated as hostile and be shot down."[127]

The daily Indian newspaper The Hindu reported that Pakistan reached a secret agreement with United States to readmit the attacks of guided airplanes on its soil. According to a high western official linked with the negotiations, the pact was signed by ISI chief Lieutenant General Shuja Ahmad Pasha, and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency general David Petraeus during a meeting in Qatar January 2012. According to The Hindu, Lieutenant General Pasha also agreed to enlarge the CIA presence in Shahbaz air base, near the city of Abbottabad, where Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was killed in May 2011.[128]

According to unnamed US government officials, beginning in early 2011 the US would fax notifications to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) detailing the dates and general areas of future drone attack operations. The ISI would send a return fax acknowledging receipt, but not approving the operation. Nevertheless, it appeared that Pakistan would clear the airspace over the area and on the dates designated in the US fax. After the May 2011 raid that killed bin Laden, the ISI ceased acknowledging the US faxes, but Pakistani authorities have appeared to continue clearing the airspace in the areas where US drones are operating. According to an unnamed Pakistani government official, the Pakistan government believes that the US sends the faxes primarily to support legal justification for the drone attacks.[129]

In May 2013, a Pakistani court ruled that CIA drone strikes in Pakistan were illegal. A Peshawar High Court judge said the Pakistani government must end drone strikes, using force if needed.[130] Also at that time, an International Crisis Group report concluded that drone strikes were an "ineffective" way of combating militants in Pakistan.[131] A week later, the Pakistani Taliban withdrew an offer of peace talks after a drone strike killed their deputy leader.[132] The Pakistani Taliban's threat to "teach a lesson" to the US and Pakistan, after the aggressive American rejection of peace talks, resulted in the shooting of 10 foreign mountain climbers,[133] as well as a mis-targeted bomb killing fourteen civilians, including four children, instead of security forces in Peshawar at the end of June 2013.[134] In early June, it was reported that the CIA did not even know who it was killing in some drone strikes.[135] A few days later, the freshly elected Pakistani Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, called for an end to drone strikes in his country.[136] Not long after, a US strike killed another nine people, an act that prompted Sharif to summon the US chargé d'affaires in protest and to demand, again, an "immediate halt" to the Anglo-American drone program.[137]

In July 2013, it was reported that the US had drastically scaled back drone attacks in order to appease the Pakistani military, which was under growing pressure to move to end American "airspace violations". The CIA was instructed to be more "cautious" and limit the drone strikes to high-value targets, to cut down on so-called signature strikes (attacks that target a group of militants based purely on their behavior). Pakistani military officials had earlier stated that these drone attacks cannot continue at the tempo they are going at, and that civilian casualties in these strikes are spawning more militants.[138]

On 1 November 2013, the US killed Hakimullah Mehsud.[139] The expressions of anger in Pakistan about the continuance of drone strikes peaked again at the end of November as a political party announced publicly the alleged name of the CIA's station chief in Islamabad, and called for them and CIA director John Brennan to be tried for murder.[140]

After a six-month break, June 2014 saw a drone strike kill 13 people; the attack was again condemned by Pakistan as a violation of its sovereignty.[141] A month later, in July 2014, a similar attack which killed six militants was again criticized by the Pakistani government, particularly as it had just launched an offensive against militants in the area where the strike occurred.[142]

On 16 July 2014, Pakistan conducted a drone attack in North Waziristan killing militants.[143]

Media reporting from other countries

The British newspaper The Times stated on 18 February 2009 that the CIA was using Pakistan's Shamsi Airfield, 190 miles (310 km) southwest of Quetta and 30 miles (48 km) from the Afghan border, as its base for drone operations. Safar Khan, a journalist based in the area near Shamsi, told the Times, "We can see the planes flying from the base. The area around the base is a high-security zone and no one is allowed there."[144]

Top US officials confirmed to Fox News Channel that Shamsi Airfield had been used by the CIA to launch the drones since 2002.[104]

Al Qaeda response

Messages recovered from Osama bin Laden's home after his death in 2011, including one from then al Qaeda No. 3, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman reportedly, according to the Agence France-Presse and The Washington Post, expressed frustration with the drone strikes in Pakistan. According to an unnamed U.S. government official, in his message al-Rahman complained that drone-launched missiles were killing al Qaeda operatives faster than they could be replaced.[145][146]

In June and July 2011, law enforcement authorities found messages on al Qaeda-linked websites calling for attacks against executives of drone aircraft manufacturer AeroVironment. Law enforcement believed that the messages were in response to calls for action against Americans by Adam Yahiye Gadahn.[147]

United Nations human rights concerns

On 3 June 2009, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) delivered a report sharply critical of US tactics. The report asserted that the US government has failed to keep track of civilian casualties of its military operations, including the drone attacks, and to provide means for citizens of affected nations to obtain information about the casualties and any legal inquests regarding them.[148] Any such information held by the U.S. military is allegedly inaccessible to the public due to the high level of secrecy surrounding the drone attacks program.[149] The US representative at UNHRC has argued that the UN investigator for extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions does not have jurisdiction over US military actions,[148] while another US diplomat claimed that the US military is investigating any wrongdoing and doing all it can to furnish information about the deaths.[150]

On 27 October 2009 UNHRC investigator Philip Alston called on the US to demonstrate that it was not randomly killing people in violation of international law through its use of drones on the Afghan border. Alston criticized the US's refusal to respond to date to the UN's concerns. Said Alston, "Otherwise you have the really problematic bottom line, which is that the Central Intelligence Agency is running a program that is killing significant numbers of people and there is absolutely no accountability in terms of the relevant international laws."[151]

On 2 June 2010 Alston's team released a report on its investigation into the drone strikes, criticizing the United States for being "the most prolific user of targeted killings" in the world. Alston, however, acknowledged that the drone attacks may be justified under the right to self-defense. He called on the US to be more open about the program. Alston's report was submitted to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights the following day.[152]

On 7 June 2012, after a four-day visit to Pakistan, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay called for a new investigation into US drone strikes in Pakistan, repeatedly referring to the attacks as "indiscriminate," and said that the attacks constitute human rights violations.[153] In a report issued on 18 June 2012, Christof Heyns, U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, called on the Obama administration to justify its use of targeted assassinations rather than attempting to capture al Qaeda or Taliban suspects.[154]

Reactions from people in Pakistan

According to a report by researchers at Stanford and New York University law schools in 2012, civilians in Waziristan interviewed for the report believed "that the US actively seeks to kill them simply for being Muslims, viewing the drone campaign as a part of a religious crusade against Islam."[155] Many professionals working in Waziristan believe that drone strikes encourage terrorism.[155] The report notes similar conclusions reached by reporters for Der Spiegel, The New York Times and CNN.[155]

US drone strikes are extremely unpopular in Pakistan. A 2012 poll by the Pew Research Center's Global Attitude project found that only 17% of Pakistanis supported drone strikes. And remarkably, among those who professed to know a lot or a little about drones, 97% considered drone strikes bad policy.[155]

Stanford Law School, September 2012

According to ongoing surveys of public opinion conducted by the New America Foundation, 9 out of 10 of civilians in Waziristan "oppose the U.S. military pursuing al-Qaeda and the Taliban" and nearly 70% "want the Pakistani military alone to fight Taliban and al-Qaeda militants in the tribal areas."[156]

According to a public opinion survey conducted between November 2008 and January 2009 by the Pakistani Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy, approximately half of the respondents considered drone strikes in Federally Administered Tribal Areas accurate and approximately the same number of respondents said that the strikes did not lead to anti-American sentiment and were effective in damaging the militants.[157] The researchers concluded that "the popular notion outside the Pakhtun belt that a large majority of the local population supports the Taliban movement lacks substance."[158] According to Farhat Taj a member of AIRRA the drones have never killed any civilians. Some people in Waziristan compare the drones to Ababils, the holy swallows sent by Allah to avenge Abraha, the invader of the Khana Kaaba.[159] Irfan Husain, writing in Dawn, agreed called for more drone attacks: "We need to wake up to the reality that the enemy has grown very strong in the years we temporized and tried to do deals with them. Clearly, we need allies in this fight. Howling at the moon is not going to get us the cooperation we so desperately need. A solid case can be made for more drone attacks, not less."[160] In October 2013, the Economist found support among locals for the drone attacks as protection against the militants, claiming no civilians were killed this year.[161]

The Los Angeles Times has reported that in North Waziristan a militant group called Khorasan Mujahedin targets people suspected of being informants. According to the report, the group kidnaps people from an area suspected of selling information that led to the strike, tortures and usually kills them, and sells videotapes of killings in street markets as warnings to others.[162]

Imran Khan, chairman Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf political party in Pakistan, announced a Peace March to South Waziristan on 6–7 October 2012 to create global awareness about innocent civilian deaths in US drone attacks. He proposed to take a rally of 100,000 people from Islamabad to South Waziristan. The South Waziristan administration denied the group permission for the rally on the grounds that they can not provide security,[163] but PTI has maintained that they will go ahead with the Peace March. Many International human rights activists and NGOs have shown their support to the Peace March, with former US colonel Ann Wright and British NGO Reprieve joining the Peace March. Pakistani Taliban have agreed to not attack the Peace rally and offered to provide security for the rally.[164]

A 2014 study in Political Science Quarterly and a 2015 study in the Journal of Strategic Studies disputes that drone strikes are a major source of anger for Pakistanis.[165][166]

Aftermath

Results

The strikes led to the deaths of some 2,000 to 3,500 militants from various organizations (Pakistani Taliban, Afghan Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Haqqani Network, etc.), of which at least 75 were high-level leaders. These have included the head (emir) of the Afghan Taliban, multiple heads of the Pakistani Taliban, the deputy commander of the Pakistani Taliban, the top commander of the Haqqani Network, and the deputy commander of al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent.[167]

According to a quantitative analysis on drone strikes in Pakistan conducted by Stanford University postdoctoral fellows Asfandyar Mir and Dylan Moore, "the drone strike program was associated with monthly reductions of around 9–13 insurgent attacks and 51–86 casualties in the area affected by the program. This change was sizable as in the year before the program the affected area experienced around 21 attacks and 100 casualties per month. Additional quantitative and qualitative evidence suggests that this drop is attributable to the drone program." In addition to the actual damage dealt, drone strikes changed "the insurgents' perception of the risk", and caused them "to avoid targeting, severely compromising their movement and communication abilities."[168] Another quantitative study, published in International Studies Quarterly by Stanford fellow Anoop K. Sarbahi, found that "drone strikes are associated with decreases in the incidence and lethality of terrorist attacks, as well as decreases in selective targeting of tribal elders" based on "detailed data on US drone strikes and terrorism in Pakistan from 2007–2011."[169]

However, according to analysis by the Oxford Research Group, although the drone strikes reduced terrorist activity in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas they increased the amount of terrorist attacks in Pakistani cities such as Karachi, where the militant groups relocated to avoid the drones.[170]

The impact of drone strikes on local attitudes has also been studied. Political scientist and Carnegie Endowment fellow Aquil Shah conducted one such study in 2018 for the journal International Security, based on interview and survey data from Pakistan (n=167), which Shah claims provides a more complete and accurate view than opposing points "based primarily on anecdotal evidence, unreliable media reports, and advocacy-driven research." Shah's study found that there was "little or no evidence [in the data] that drone strikes have a significant impact on militant Islamist recruitment either locally or nationally. Rather, the data reveals the importance of factors such as political and economic grievances, the Pakistani state's selective counterterrorism policies, its indiscriminate repression of the local population, and forced recruitment of youth by militant groups." The study also extended to trial testimony and accounts of domestic Islamic terrorists in the United States and Europe. In their case, there was "scant evidence that drone strikes are the main cause of militant Islamism. Instead, factors that matter include a transnational Islamic identity's appeal to young immigrants with conflicted identities, state immigration and integration policies that marginalize Muslim communities, the influence of peers and social networks, and online exposure to violent jihadist ideologies."[171] An earlier survey in 2016 focusing specifically on the North Waziristan region (n=148), the region most affected by the Taliban insurgency, showed similar results. Over 79 percent of those polled supported the U.S. drone strikes, 56 percent believed that "the drones seldom killed non-militants", and more than 66 percent believed "most of the non-militant civilians who die in drone attacks are known militant collaborators who may already be radicalized." Additionally, the majority of respondents agreed that the drone campaign decisively broke the back of the Pakistani Taliban in the region. A student from the town of Mir Ali explained local sentiment: "When the government left us at the mercy of the cruel Taliban, we used to feel utterly helpless and cower in fear. Since nobody seemed concerned with our plight, the drones were the closest thing to getting your prayers answered."[172]

In documents captured from Osama bin Laden's compound on Abbottabad, the Al-Qaeda leader talked extensively about American drones (referred to as "spy planes"), citing them as the chief threat to Al-Qaeda and its allies. He stated that "over the last two years, the problem of the spying war and spying aircrafts [sic] benefited the enemy greatly and led to the killing of many jihadi cadres, leaders, and others. This is something that is concerning us and exhausting us." He also advised his men, as well as their affiliates in Somalia, to avoid cars, as American drones had been targeting them, and to "benefit from the art of gathering and dispersion experience, as well as movement, night and day transportation, camouflage, and other techniques related to war tricks."[173]

Paranoia over being targeted by drone strikes has led to wide-scale executions of suspected spies by Taliban agents in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas region, including the creation of a special task force Lashkar al Khorasan for this purpose in North Waziristan. This has extended to the Pakistani Taliban publicly executing dozens of local car mechanics whom they accused of bugging their trucks and cars. Vehicles are particularly preferred as targets by the CIA because the drones could see who entered the vehicles and target them when they were driving in isolated areas.[174]

Civilian casualties

According to unnamed counterterrorism officials, in 2009 or 2010 CIA drones began employing smaller missiles in airstrikes in Pakistan in order to reduce civilian casualties. The new missiles, called the Small Smart Weapon or Scorpion, are reportedly about the size of a violin case (21 inches long) and weigh 16 kg. The missiles are used in combination with new technology intended to increase accuracy and expand surveillance, including the use of small, unarmed surveillance drones to exactly pinpoint the location of targets. These "micro-UAVs" (unmanned aerial vehicles) can be roughly the size of a pizza platter and meant to monitor potential targets at close range, for hours or days at a time. One former U.S. official who worked with micro-UAVs said that they can be almost impossible to detect at night. "It can be outside your window and you won't hear a whisper," the official said.[175] The drone operators also have changed to trying to target insurgents in vehicles rather than residences to reduce the chances of civilian casualties.[42]

An oft-quoted 2010 study by Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann at the New America Foundation went as follows: "Our study shows that the 265 reported drone strikes in Northwest Pakistan, including 52 in 2011, from 2004 to the present, have killed approximately between 1,628 and 2,561 individuals, of whom around 1,335 to 2,090 were described as militants in reliable press accounts. Thus, the true non-militant fatality rate since 2004 according to our analysis is approximately 20 percent. Prior to 2010 it was 5 percent." In a separate report, written by Bergen in 2012, he commented that civilian casualties continued to fall even as drone strikes increased, concluding that "Today, for the first time, the estimated civilian death rate is close to zero."[176]

The New York Times reported in 2013 that the Obama Administration embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties, which in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, giving partial explanation to the official claims of extraordinarily low collateral deaths.[177]

A January 2011 report by Bloomberg stated that civilian casualties in the strikes had apparently decreased. According to the report, the U.S. government believed that 1,300 militants and only 30 civilians had been killed in drone strikes since mid-2008, with no civilians killed since August 2010.[178]

On 14 July 2009, Daniel L. Byman of the Brookings Institution stated that although accurate data on the results of drone strikes is difficult to obtain, it seemed that ten civilians had died in the drone attacks for every militant killed. Byman argues that civilian killings constitute a humanitarian tragedy and create dangerous political problems, including damage to the legitimacy of the Pakistani government and alienation of the Pakistani populace from America. He suggested that the real answer to halting al-Qaeda's activity in Pakistan will be long-term support of Pakistan's counterinsurgency efforts.[43]

United States officials claim that interviews with locals do not provide accurate numbers of civilian casualties because relatives or acquaintances of the dead refuse to state that the victims were involved in militant activities.[179]

The CIA reportedly passed up three chances to kill militant leaders, including Sirajuddin Haqqani, with drone missiles in 2010 because civilians were nearby. The New America Foundation believes that between zero and 18 civilians have been killed in drone strikes since 23 August 2010 and that overall civilian casualties have decreased from 25% of the total in prior years to an estimated of 6% in 2010. The Foundation estimates that between 277 and 435 non-combatants have died since 2004, out of 1,374 to 2,189 total deaths.[179]

According to a report of the Islamabad-based Conflict Monitoring Center (CMC), as of 2011 more than 2000 persons have been killed, and most of those deaths were civilians. The CMC termed the CIA drone strikes as an "assassination campaign turning out to be revenge campaign", and showed that 2010 was the deadliest year so far regarding casualties resulting from drone attacks, with 134 strikes inflicting over 900 deaths.[180]

According to the Long War Journal, as of mid-2011, the drone strikes in Pakistan since 2006 had killed 2,018 militants and 138 civilians.[181] The New America Foundation stated in mid-2011 that from 2004 to 2011, 80% of the 2,551 people killed in the strikes were militants. The Foundation stated that 95% of those killed in 2010 were militants and that, as of 2012, 15% of the total people killed by drone strikes were either civilians or unknown.[42] The foundation also states that in 2012 the rate of civilian and unknown casualties was 2 percent, whereas the Bureau of Investigative Journalism say the rate of civilian casualties for 2012 is 9 percent.[182]

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, based on extensive research in mid-2011, claims that "credible reports" indicate 392 civilians were among the dead, including 175 children, out of the 2,347 people reported killed in US attacks since 2004. In the same article, the BIJ also claimed that "the intended targets – militants in the tribal areas – appear to make up the majority of those killed. There are almost 150 named militants among the dead since 2004, though hundreds are unknown, low-ranking fighters."[47]

The CIA has claimed that the strikes conducted between May 2010 and August 2011 killed over 600 militants and did not result in any civilian fatalities; this assessment has been criticized by Bill Roggio from the Long War Journal and other commentators as being unrealistic. Unnamed American officials who spoke to The New York Times claimed that, as of August 2011, the drone campaign had killed over 2,000 militants and approximately 50 non-combatants.[40]

An independent research site Pakistan Body Count run by Dr. Zeeshan-ul-hassan, a Fulbright scholar keeping track of all the drone attacks, claims that 2179 civilians were among the dead, and 12.4% children and women.[183] A report by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, released 4 February 2012, stated that under the Obama administration (2008–2011) drone strikes killed between 282 and 535 civilians, including 60 children.[184]

The British human rights group Reprieve filed a case with the United Nations Human Rights Council, based on affidavits by 18 family members of civilians killed in the attacks – many of them children. They are calling on the UNHRC "to condemn the attacks as illegal human rights violations."[185]

A February 2012 Associated Press investigation found that militants were the main victims of drone strikes in North Waziristan contrary to the "widespread perception in Pakistan that civilians ... are the principal victims." The AP studied 10 drone strikes. Their reporters spoke to about 80 villagers in North Waziristan, and were told that at least 194 people died in the ten attacks. According to the villagers 56 of those were either civilians or tribal police and 138 were militants. Thirty-eight of the civilians died in a single attack on 17 March 2011. Villagers stated that one way to tell if civilians were killed was to observe how many funerals took place after a strike; the bodies of militants were usually taken elsewhere for burial, while civilians were usually buried immediately and locally.[186]

A September 2012 report by researchers from Stanford University and New York University criticized the drone campaign, stating that it was killing a high number of civilians and turning the Pakistani public against the United States. The report, compiled by interviewing witnesses, drone-attack survivors, and others in Pakistan provided by a Pakistani human rights organization, Foundation for Fundamental Rights, concluded that only 2% of drone strike victims are "high-level" militant leaders. The report's authors did not estimate the numbers of total civilian casualties, but suggested that the February 2012 Bureau of Investigative Journalism report was more accurate than the Long War Journal report (both detailed above) on civilian casualties. The report also opined that the drone attacks were violations of international law, because the US government had not shown that the targets were direct threats to the US.[187] The report further noted the US policy of considering all military-age males in a strike zone as militants following the air strike unless exonerating evidence proves otherwise. Media outlets were also urged to cease using the term "militant" when reporting on drone attacks without further explanation.[188]

In an interview in October 2013, one former drone operator described events suggesting that child casualties may go unrecognized in some mission assessments.[189] A week later, Pakistan's Ministry of Defense stated that 67 civilians had been among the 2,227 people killed in 317 drone strikes since 2008. The Ministry said that the remainder of those killed were Islamic militants.[190] Research published by Reprieve in 2014 suggested that U.S. drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan have had an unknown person to target casualty ratio of 28:1 with one attack in the study having a ratio of 128:1 with 13 children being killed.[191]

US hostage Warren Weinstein and Italian hostage Giovanni Lo Porto were killed in a January 2015 US-led drone strike on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, as announced by U.S. President Barack Obama at a White House press conference on 23 April 2015.[192]

Impact

According to a 2018 study in the journal International Security, there is scant evidence that drone strikes in Pakistan radicalize at the local, national or transnational level.[193]

According to a 2016 study in International Studies Quarterly, drone strikes are an effective counterterrorist tool in Pakistan. The study found that "drone strikes are associated with decreases in the incidence and lethality of terrorist attacks, as well as decreases in selective targeting of tribal elders."[194]

See also

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Further reading

External links

  • . Reprieve. Archived from the original on 8 August 2013. Retrieved 7 February 2012.
  • "Secret War". FRONTLINE. 3 January 2012. Retrieved 4 January 2012.
  • DeYoung, Karen (19 December 2011). "Secrecy defines Obama's drone war". The Washington Post. Retrieved 21 December 2011.
  • Roggio, Bill; Mayer, Alexander (28 October 2011). . Long War Journal. Archived from the original on 16 December 2011. Retrieved 27 December 2011.
  • Bergen, Peter; Tiedemann, Katherine (July–August 2011). . Foreign Affairs. PeterBergen.com. Archived from the original on 15 April 2012. Retrieved 16 December 2011.
  • . New America Foundation. Archived from the original on 30 August 2011.
  • "UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston Responds to US Defense of Drone Attacks' Legality". Democracy Now!. 1 April 2010. Retrieved 26 December 2011.
  • Bergen, Peter; Tiedemann, Katherine (24 February 2010). "The Year of the Drone: An Analysis of U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan, 2004–2010" (PDF). New America Foundation. Retrieved 16 December 2011.
  • . Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Archived from the original on 30 October 2011.
  • Mayer, Jane (26 October 2009). "The Predator War". New Yorker. Retrieved 16 December 2011.
  • Roggio, Bill; Mayer, Alexander (1 October 2009). "Analysis: A look at US Airstrikes In Pakistan through September 2009". Long War Journal. Retrieved 19 December 2011.
  • "Interactive Map: U.S. Airstrikes in Pakistan on the Rise". Center for American Progress. 5 March 2009.
  • Pakistan Body Count (Complete timeline of drone attacks in Pakistan)
  • , 21 May 2013, International Crisis Group
  • BBC NEWS "Trump revokes Obama rule on reporting drone strike deaths" (7 March 2019) Tara McKelvey, BBC News

drone, strikes, pakistan, between, 2004, 2018, united, states, government, attacked, thousands, targets, northwest, pakistan, using, unmanned, aerial, vehicles, drones, operated, united, states, force, under, operational, control, central, intelligence, agency. Between 2004 and 2018 the United States government attacked thousands of targets in northwest Pakistan using unmanned aerial vehicles drones operated by the United States Air Force under the operational control of the Central Intelligence Agency s Special Activities Division 23 24 Most of these attacks were on targets in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas now part of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province along the Afghan border in northwest Pakistan These strikes began during the administration of United States President George W Bush and increased substantially under his successor Barack Obama 25 Some in the media referred to the attacks as a drone war 26 27 The George W Bush administration officially denied the extent of its policy in May 2013 the Obama administration acknowledged for the first time that four US citizens had been killed in the strikes 28 In December 2013 the National Assembly of Pakistan unanimously approved a resolution against US drone strikes in Pakistan calling them a violation of the charter of the United Nations international laws and humanitarian norms 29 Drone strikes in PakistanPart of the Insurgency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa the War in Afghanistan and the War on terrorAn MQ 9 Reaper landing in Afghanistan Date18 June 2004 4 July 2018 1 2 3 4 5 LocationFederal Tribal Areas PakistanResultAmerican operational success 6 Most recent drone strike launched in July 2018 81 high level insurgent leaders and thousands of low level insurgents killed 7 Deaths of Afghan Taliban head Akhtar Mansour and successive TTP heads Baitullah Mehsud and Hakimullah Mehsud Deaths of hundreds of Pakistanis civilians Destruction of numerous insurgent camps and safe havens 5 drone strikes in 2017 followed by one in 2018 and none in 2019 8 Substantial reduction in insurgent activity by 2017 9 430 drone strikes confirmed 10 Belligerents United States USAF CIASupported by United KingdomTalibanTehrik i Taliban PakistanTNSMHaqqani networkal QaedaLashkar e IslamForeign MujahideenUzbek Islamic MovementTurkistan Islamic PartyIslamic State affiliatesCommanders and leadersUnited StatesPresidentDonald Trump 2017 18 Barack Obama 2009 17 George W Bush 2004 09 United KingdomPrime MinisterTheresa May 2016 2019 David Cameron 2010 16 Gordon Brown 2007 10 Tony Blair 2004 07 Tehrik i TalibanMaulana Fazlullah Hakimullah Mehsud Baitullah Mehsud Nek Muhammad Wazir Abdullah Mehsud Hafiz Gul BahadurAdnan RashidNasib Zada 11 Qari Hussain Maulvi Nazir Wali ur Rehman Khan Saeed Mehsud Sajna Mangal Bagh Omar Khalid Khorasani Faqir Mohammed POW 12 Sufi Muhammad POW al QaedaAyman al Zawahiri Osama bin Laden Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwah Abu Laith al Libi Khalid Habib Mohammad Hasan Khalil al Hakim Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan Saad bin Laden Abdullah Said al Libi Saeed al Masri Ahmed Mohammed Hamed Ali Sheikh Fateh 13 Ilyas Kashmiri Atiyah Abd al Rahman Abu Yahya al Libi Hassan Ghul Abu Zaid al Kuwaiti Farman Ali Shinwari Said Bahaji Adnan Gulshair el Shukrijumah 14 Adam Yahiye Gadahn Hamza bin Laden Abu Khalil al Madani Asim Umar Abu Muhsin al Masri ISILAbu Bakr al Baghdadi Hafiz Saeed Khan 15 Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost 2014 2015 16 17 Usman Ghazi 18 IMU GroupUsman Ghazi Abu Usman Adil Tohir Yuldashev Najmiddin Jalolov Strengthc 30 UAVs 19 UnknownCasualties and losses9 CIA personnel c 2 000 3 500 militants killed 20 21 22 Civilian deaths 158 965Long War Journal 158 civilians killedNew America Foundation 245 303 civilians killedBureau of Investigative Journalism 424 969 civilians killed Pakistan s former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had repeatedly demanded an end to the strikes stating The use of drones is not only a continual violation of our territorial integrity but also detrimental to our resolve and efforts at eliminating terrorism from our country 30 However despite the public opposition of Pakistani officials multiple former Prime Ministers gave covert permission to the United States to carry out these attacks 31 32 The Peshawar High Court has ruled that the attacks are illegal inhumane violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and constitute a war crime 33 The Obama administration disagreed contending that the attacks did not violate international law and that the method of attack was precise and effective 30 34 Notable targets of the strikes included Baitullah Mehsud the leader of the Pakistani Taliban killed in a strike in South Waziristan on 5 August 2009 Hakimullah Mehsud Mehsud s successor killed in a strike on 1 November 2013 and Akhtar Mansour leader of the Afghan Taliban killed in a strike on 21 May 2016 in Ahmad Wal Pakistan The operations in Pakistan were closely tied to a related drone campaign in Afghanistan along the same border area These strikes have killed 3 798 5 059 militants and 161 473 civilians Among the militant deaths are hundreds of high level leaders of the Afghan Taliban the Pakistani Taliban the Islamic State Al Qaeda the Haqqani Network and other organizations with 70 Taliban leaders killed in one ten day period of May 2017 alone 35 Contents 1 Overview 2 Statistics 3 U S viewpoint 4 Pakistani position 5 Media reporting from other countries 6 Al Qaeda response 7 United Nations human rights concerns 8 Reactions from people in Pakistan 9 Aftermath 9 1 Results 9 2 Civilian casualties 10 Impact 11 See also 12 References 13 Further reading 14 External linksOverview EditPakistan s government publicly condemned these attacks 36 However it also allegedly allowed the drones to operate from Shamsi Airfield in Pakistan until 21 April 2011 37 According to secret diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks Pakistan s Army Chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani not only tacitly agreed to the drone flights but in 2008 requested that Americans increase them 38 However Pakistan s Interior Minister Rehman Malik said drone missiles cause collateral damage A few militants are killed but the majority of victims are innocent citizens 39 The strikes are often linked to anti American sentiment in Pakistan and the growing questionability of the scope and extent of CIA activities in Pakistan Reports of the number of militant versus civilian casualties differ 40 In general the CIA and other American agencies have claimed a high rate of militant killings relying in part on a disputed estimation method that counts all military age males in a strike zone as combatants unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent 41 For instance the CIA has claimed that strikes conducted between May 2010 and August 2011 killed over 600 militants without any civilian fatalities a claim that many have disputed 40 The New America Foundation has estimated that 80 percent of those killed in the attacks were militants 42 On the other hand several experts have stated that in reality far fewer militants and many more civilians have been killed In a 2009 opinion article Daniel L Byman of the Brookings Institution wrote that drone strikes may have killed 10 or so civilians for every militant that they killed 43 The Pakistani military has stated that most of those killed were Al Qaeda and Taliban militants 44 The Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that 423 to 965 civilians were killed out of a total of 2 497 to 3 999 including 172 to 207 children The Bureau also claimed that since Obama took office at least 50 civilians were killed in follow up strikes when they had gone to help victims and more than 20 civilians have also been attacked in strikes on funerals and mourners a practice condemned by legal experts 45 46 47 Barbara Elias Sanborn has also claimed that as much of the literature on drones suggests such killings usually harden militants determination to fight stalling any potential negotiations and settlement 48 However analysis by the RAND Corporation suggests that drone strikes are associated with decreases in the incidence and lethality of terrorist attacks in Pakistan 49 A motive that the 2010 Times Square car bomber Faisal Shahzad stated was the repeated CIA drone attacks in Pakistan his native country 50 Drone strikes were halted in November 2011 after NATO forces killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in the Salala incident 51 Shamsi Airfield was evacuated of Americans and taken over by the Pakistanis December 2011 52 The incident prompted an approximately two month stop to the drone strikes which resumed on 10 January 2012 In March 2013 Ben Emmerson the United Nations Special Rapporteur led a U N team that looked into civilian casualties from the U S drone attacks and stated that the attacks are a violation of the sovereignty of Pakistan Emmerson said government officials from the country clearly stated Pakistan does not agree to the drone attacks which is contradicted by U S officials 53 In October 2013 Amnesty International brought out a detailed study of the impact of drone strikes that strongly condemned the strikes The report stated that the number of arbitrary civilian deaths the tactics used such as follow up attacks targeting individuals helping the wounded and the violation of Pakistani sovereignty meant that some of the strikes could be considered as unlawful executions and war crimes 54 In May 2014 the targeted killing program was described as basically over with no attack having occurred since December 2013 The lull in attacks coincided with a new Obama Administration policy requiring a near certainty that civilians would not be harmed requests from lawmakers that the drone program be brought under operational control of the Department of Defense 55 for better congressional oversight a reduced US military and CIA presence in Afghanistan a reduced al Qaida presence in Pakistan and an increased military role at the expense of the CIA in the execution of drone strikes 56 57 Statistics EditSee also List of drone strikes in Pakistan and List of Taliban fatality reports in Pakistan U S drone strike statistics estimate according to the New America Foundation as of 1 January 2018 58 Year Attacks CasualtiesMilitants Civilians Unknown Total2004 1 3 2 2 72005 3 5 6 4 152006 2 1 93 0 942007 4 51 0 12 632008 36 223 28 47 2982009 54 387 70 92 5492010 122 788 16 45 8492011 70 415 62 35 5122012 48 268 5 33 3062013 26 145 4 4 1532014 22 145 0 0 1452015 10 57 0 0 572016 3 9 0 0 92017 8 36 2 1 39Total 409 2 533 288 275 3 096The Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates the following cumulative statistics about U S drone strikes as of 17 September 2017 20 Total strikes 429 Total killed 2 514 4 023 Civilians killed 424 969 Children killed 172 207 Injured 1 162 1 749 Strikes under the Bush Administration 51 Strikes under the Obama Administration 373 Strikes under the Trump Administration 5 84 of the 2 379 dead have been identified as members of al Qaeda 59 A formerly classified Pakistani government report obtained in July 2013 by the BIJ shows details of 75 drone strikes that occurred between 2006 and 2009 According to the 12 page report in this period 176 of the 746 reported dead were civilians 60 According to the Long War Journal the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the New America Foundation 2006 2007 2008 and 2009 had some of the highest civilian casualty ratios of any years U S viewpoint EditSee also Targeted killing and Disposition Matrix U S President George W Bush vastly accelerated the drone strikes during the final year of his presidency citation needed A list of the high ranking victims of the drones was provided to Pakistan in 2009 61 Bush s successor President Obama broadened attacks to include targets against groups considered to be seeking to destabilize Pakistani civilian government the attacks of 14 and 16 February 2009 were against training camps run by Baitullah Mehsud 62 On 25 February 2009 Leon Panetta the director of the CIA indicated the strikes will continue 63 On 4 March 2009 The Washington Times reported that the drones were targeting Baitullah Mehsud 64 Obama was reported in March 2009 as considering expanding these strikes to include Balochistan 65 The US government cited the inability of states to control and keep track of terrorist activities as a characteristic of a failed state represented by the lack of military and governmental control in Pakistan s Federally Administered Tribal Areas and was operating within the states right of self defense according to Article 51 in Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter In President Obama s 2013 speech at the National Defense University he stated we act against terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people and when there are no other governments capable of effectively addressing the threat 66 On 25 March 2010 US State Department legal advisor Harold Koh stated that the drone strikes were legal because of the right to self defense According to Koh the US is involved in an armed conflict with al Qaeda the Taliban and their affiliates and therefore may use force consistent with self defense under international law 67 Former CIA officials state that the agency uses a careful screening process in making decisions on which individuals to kill via drone strikes The process carried out at the agency s counterterrorist center involves up to 10 lawyers who write briefs justifying the targeting of specific individuals According to the former officials if a brief s argument is weak the request to target the individual is denied 68 Since 2008 the CIA has relied less on its list of individuals and increasingly targeted signatures or suspect behavior This change in tactics has resulted in fewer deaths of high value targets and in more deaths of lower level fighters or mere foot soldiers as the one senior Pakistani official told The Washington Post 69 Signature strikes there must be supported by two sources of corroborating intelligence Sources of intelligence include information from a communication intercept a sighting of militant training camps or intelligence from CIA assets on the ground 70 Signature targeting has been the source of controversy Drone critics argue that regular citizen behaviors can easily be mistaken for militant signatures US officials stated in March 2009 that the Predator strikes had killed nine of al Qaeda s 20 top commanders The officials added that many top Taliban and al Qaeda leaders as a result of the strikes had fled to Quetta or even further to Karachi 71 Some US politicians and academics have condemned the drone strikes US Congressman Dennis Kucinich asserted that the United States was violating international law by carrying out strikes against a country that never attacked the United States 72 Georgetown University professor Gary D Solis asserts that since the drone operators at the CIA are civilians directly engaged in armed conflict this makes them unlawful combatants and possibly subject to prosecution 68 US military reports asserted that al Qaeda is being slowly but systematically routed because of these attacks and that they have served to sow the seeds of uncertainty and discord among their ranks They also claimed that the drone attacks have addled and confused the Taliban and have led them to turn against each other 73 In July 2009 it was reported that according to US officials Osama bin Laden s son Saad bin Laden was believed to have been killed in a drone attack earlier in the year 74 During a protest against drone attacks in an event sponsored by Nevada Desert Experience Father Louie Vitale Kathy Kelly Stephen Kelly SJ Eve Tetaz John Dear and others were arrested outside Creech Air Force Base on Wednesday 9 April 2009 75 76 In May 2009 it was reported that the US was sharing drone intelligence with Pakistan 77 Leon Panetta reiterated on 19 May 2009 that the US intended to continue the drone attacks 78 In December 2009 expansion of the drone attacks was authorized by Barack Obama to parallel the decision to send 30 000 more American troops to Afghanistan 79 Senior US officials are reportedly pushing for extending the strikes into Quetta in Balochistan against the Quetta Shura 80 Speaking at a news conference in Islamabad on 7 January 2010 Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman stated the drone attacks were effective and would continue but stated that US would make greater efforts to prevent collateral damage 81 In an effort to strengthen trust with Pakistan US sharing drone surveillance data with Pakistan said Mike Mullen 82 US defence budget for 2011 asked for a 75 increase in funds to enhance the drone operations 83 Compare Mr Obama s use of drone strikes with that of his predecessor During the Bush administration there was an American drone attack in Pakistan every 43 days during the first two years of the Obama administration there was a drone strike there every four days 84 Peter Bergen April 2012 The Associated Press AP noted that Barack Obama apparently expanded the scope and increased the aggressiveness of the drone campaign against militants in Pakistan after taking office According to the news agency the US increased strikes against the Pakistani Taliban which earned favor from the Pakistani government resulting in increased cooperation from Pakistani intelligence services Also the Obama administration toned down the US government s public rhetoric against Islamic terrorism garnering better cooperation from other Islamic governments Furthermore with the drawdown of the war in Iraq more drones support personnel and intelligence assets became available for the campaigns in Afghanistan and Pakistan Since Obama took office according to the AP the number of drones operated by the CIA over Afghanistan and Pakistan doubled 85 According to some current and former counterterrorism officials the Obama administration s increase in the use of drone strikes is an unintended consequence of the president s executive orders banning secret CIA detention centers and his attempt to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and capturing prisoners has become a less viable option 86 Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia alleged that Their policy is to take out high value targets versus capturing high value targets They are not going to advertise that but that s what they are doing Obama s aides argued that it is often impossible to capture targets in the tribal areas of Pakistan and Yemen and that other targets are in foreign custody thanks to American tips Obama s counter terrorism adviser John O Brennan said that The purpose of these actions is to mitigate threats to U S persons lives and continued It is the option of last recourse So the president and I think all of us here don t like the fact that people have to die And so he wants to make sure that we go through a rigorous checklist The infeasibility of capture the certainty of the intelligence base the imminence of the threat all of these things In response to the concerns about the number of killings Jeh C Johnson stated We have to be vigilant to avoid a no quarter or take no prisoners policy 87 A study called The Year of the Drone published in February 2010 by the New America Foundation found that from a total of 114 drone strikes in Pakistan between 2004 and early 2010 between 834 and 1 216 individuals had been killed About two thirds of these were thought to be militants and one third were civilians 21 On 28 April 2011 U S President Barack Obama appointed General David Petraeus as director of the CIA overseeing the drone attacks According to Pakistani and American officials this could further inflame relations between the two nations 88 According to The Washington Post as of September 2011 around 30 Predator and Reaper drones were operating under CIA direction in the Afghanistan Pakistan area of operations The drones are flown by United States Air Force pilots located at an unnamed base in the United States US Department of Defense armed drones which also sometimes take part in strikes on terrorist targets are flown by US Air Force pilots located at Creech Air Force Base and Holloman Air Force Base The CIA drones are operated by an office called the Pakistan Afghanistan Department which operates under the CIA s Counterterrorism Center CTC based at CIA s headquarters in Langley Virginia As of September 2011 the CTC had about 2 000 people on staff 19 89 US President Obama affirmed on 30 January 2012 that the US was conducting drone strikes in Pakistan He stressed that civilian casualties in the strikes were low 90 In a February 2012 poll of 1 000 US adults 83 of them 77 of the liberal Democrats replied they support the drone strikes 91 The Obama administration offered its first extensive explanation on drone strike policy in April 2012 concluding that it was legal ethical and wise 92 The CIA s general counsel Stephen Preston in a speech entitled CIA and the Rule of Law at Harvard Law School on 10 April 2012 claimed the agency was not bound by the laws of war in response Human Rights Watch called for the strike program to be brought under the control of the US military 93 In May the US began stepping up drone attacks after talks at the NATO summit in Chicago did not lead to the progress it desired regarding Pakistan s continued closure of its Afghan borders to the alliance s supply convoys 94 Minneapolis anti war protest Stop Killer Drones 5 May 2013In 2013 the sustained and growing criticism of his drone policy forced Obama to announce stricter conditions on executing drone strikes abroad including an unspoken plan to partly shift the program from the CIA to the ostensibly more accountable Pentagon 95 In anticipation of his speech Obama instructed Attorney General Eric Holder to divulge that four U S citizens had been killed by drones since 2009 and that only one of those men had been intentionally targeted 96 Following Obama s announcement the United Nations drone investigator British lawyer Ben Emmerson made clear his expectation of a significant reduction in the number of strikes over the 18 months to follow 97 although the period immediately after Obama s speech was business as usual 98 Six months later the CIA was still carrying out the vast majority of drone strikes 99 However no attack has occurred since December 2013 and the drone war was described as basically over in May 2014 56 At Senator Dianne Feinstein s insistence beginning in early 2010 staffs of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have begun reviewing each CIA drone strike The staff members hold monthly meetings with CIA personnel involved with the drone campaign review videos of each strike and attempt to confirm that the strike was executed properly 100 One of the leading critics of drones in the US Congress is Senator Rand Paul In 2013 he performed a thirteen hour filibuster to try to achieve a public admission from U S President Obama that he could not kill an American citizen with a drone on American soil who was not actively engaged in combat Attorney General Eric Holder responded soon after confirming that the president had no authority to use drones for this purpose Eric M Blanchard assistant professor of political science at Columbia University notes that the use of drones reflects several on going historical military developments that in turn reflect the culture and values of American society 101 In this he alludes to technological idealism the pursuit of a decisive technology to end war and the need to seize the moral high ground by delivering more humane approaches to warfare Military support for the drones remains strong for a host of reasons expansion of battlespace extension of an individual soldiers capabilities and a reduction of American casualties 102 Support has also been noted across the political spectrum as focus in the Middle East shifted from stabilization in Afghanistan to antiterrorist strikes aimed at al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan citation needed Blanchard also points to a shift in how gender is viewed in terms of warfare with the advent of technology in place of human soldiers Fighters often represent an idealized masculinity portraying strength bravery and chivalry but during the Gulf War of 1990 91 the focus had changed The computer programmers missile technologists high tech pilots and other servicemen who were centred around technology were now the focal point of news coverage removing the warrior soldier from the conversation 103 Pakistani position Edit Shamsi airbase in 2006 reported to show three Predator drones 104 For at least some of the initial drone strikes in 2004 and 2005 the U S operated with the approval and cooperation 105 of Pakistan s ISI Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf told The New Yorker in 2014 that he allowed the CIA to fly drones within Pakistan and that in exchange the U S supplied helicopters and night vision equipment to the Pakistanis Musharraf wanted the drones to operate under Pakistani control but the U S wouldn t allow it 106 Pakistan has repeatedly protested these attacks as an infringement of its sovereignty and because civilian deaths have also resulted including women and children which has further angered the Pakistani government and people 92 107 108 109 General David Petraeus was told in November 2008 that these strikes were unhelpful 110 However on 4 October 2008 The Washington Post reported that there was a secret deal between the U S and Pakistan allowing these drone attacks 111 US Senator Dianne Feinstein said in February 2009 As I understand it these are flown out of a Pakistani base 112 Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi denied that this was true 113 The drone attacks continue despite repeated requests made by ex Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari through different channels 114 115 Baitullah Mehsud of Tehrik i Taliban Pakistan while claiming responsibility for the 2009 Lahore police academy attacks stated that they were acting in retaliation for the drone attacks 116 According to The Daily Telegraph Pakistani intelligence has agreed to secretly provide information to the United States on Mehsud s and his militants whereabouts while publicly the Pakistani government will continue to condemn the attacks 117 On 28 April 2009 Pakistan s consul general to the US Aqil Nadeem asked the US to hand over control of its drones in Pakistan to his government Do we want to lose the war on terror or do we want to keep those weapons classified If the American government insists on our true cooperation then they should also be helping us in fighting those terrorists said Said Nadeem 118 Pakistan President Zardari has also requested that Pakistan be given control over the drones but this has been rejected by the US who are worried that Pakistanis will leak information about targets to militants 119 In December 2009 Pakistan s Defence minister Ahmad Mukhtar acknowledged that Americans were using Shamsi Airfield but stated that Pakistan was not satisfied with payments for using the facility 120 In December 2010 the CIA s Station Chief in Islamabad operating under the alias Jonathan Banks was hastily pulled from the country 121 122 Lawsuits filed by families of victims of drone strikes had named Banks as a defendant he had been receiving death threats and a Pakistani journalist whose brother and son died in a drone strike called for prosecuting Banks for murder 123 124 In March 2011 the General Officer Commanding of 7th division of Pakistani Army Major General Ghayur Mehmood delivered a briefing Myths and rumours about US predator strikes in Miramshah He said that most of those who were killed by the drone strikes were Al qaeda and Taliban terrorists Military s official paper on the attacks till 7 March 2011 said that between 2007 and 2011 about 164 predator strikes had been carried out and over 964 terrorists had been killed Those killed included 793 locals and 171 foreigners The foreigners included Arabs Uzbeks Tajiks Chechens Filipinos and Moroccans 44 This is disputed Other sources say that as of July 2011 250 drone strikes have killed 1500 2300 people of which only 33 were estimated to be terrorist leaders 125 126 On 9 December 2011 Pakistan s Army Chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani issued a directive to shoot down US drones A senior Pakistani military official said Any object entering into our air space including U S drones will be treated as hostile and be shot down 127 The daily Indian newspaper The Hindu reported that Pakistan reached a secret agreement with United States to readmit the attacks of guided airplanes on its soil According to a high western official linked with the negotiations the pact was signed by ISI chief Lieutenant General Shuja Ahmad Pasha and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency general David Petraeus during a meeting in Qatar January 2012 According to The Hindu Lieutenant General Pasha also agreed to enlarge the CIA presence in Shahbaz air base near the city of Abbottabad where Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was killed in May 2011 128 According to unnamed US government officials beginning in early 2011 the US would fax notifications to Pakistan s Inter Services Intelligence agency ISI detailing the dates and general areas of future drone attack operations The ISI would send a return fax acknowledging receipt but not approving the operation Nevertheless it appeared that Pakistan would clear the airspace over the area and on the dates designated in the US fax After the May 2011 raid that killed bin Laden the ISI ceased acknowledging the US faxes but Pakistani authorities have appeared to continue clearing the airspace in the areas where US drones are operating According to an unnamed Pakistani government official the Pakistan government believes that the US sends the faxes primarily to support legal justification for the drone attacks 129 In May 2013 a Pakistani court ruled that CIA drone strikes in Pakistan were illegal A Peshawar High Court judge said the Pakistani government must end drone strikes using force if needed 130 Also at that time an International Crisis Group report concluded that drone strikes were an ineffective way of combating militants in Pakistan 131 A week later the Pakistani Taliban withdrew an offer of peace talks after a drone strike killed their deputy leader 132 The Pakistani Taliban s threat to teach a lesson to the US and Pakistan after the aggressive American rejection of peace talks resulted in the shooting of 10 foreign mountain climbers 133 as well as a mis targeted bomb killing fourteen civilians including four children instead of security forces in Peshawar at the end of June 2013 134 In early June it was reported that the CIA did not even know who it was killing in some drone strikes 135 A few days later the freshly elected Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called for an end to drone strikes in his country 136 Not long after a US strike killed another nine people an act that prompted Sharif to summon the US charge d affaires in protest and to demand again an immediate halt to the Anglo American drone program 137 In July 2013 it was reported that the US had drastically scaled back drone attacks in order to appease the Pakistani military which was under growing pressure to move to end American airspace violations The CIA was instructed to be more cautious and limit the drone strikes to high value targets to cut down on so called signature strikes attacks that target a group of militants based purely on their behavior Pakistani military officials had earlier stated that these drone attacks cannot continue at the tempo they are going at and that civilian casualties in these strikes are spawning more militants 138 On 1 November 2013 the US killed Hakimullah Mehsud 139 The expressions of anger in Pakistan about the continuance of drone strikes peaked again at the end of November as a political party announced publicly the alleged name of the CIA s station chief in Islamabad and called for them and CIA director John Brennan to be tried for murder 140 After a six month break June 2014 saw a drone strike kill 13 people the attack was again condemned by Pakistan as a violation of its sovereignty 141 A month later in July 2014 a similar attack which killed six militants was again criticized by the Pakistani government particularly as it had just launched an offensive against militants in the area where the strike occurred 142 On 16 July 2014 Pakistan conducted a drone attack in North Waziristan killing militants 143 Media reporting from other countries EditThe British newspaper The Times stated on 18 February 2009 that the CIA was using Pakistan s Shamsi Airfield 190 miles 310 km southwest of Quetta and 30 miles 48 km from the Afghan border as its base for drone operations Safar Khan a journalist based in the area near Shamsi told the Times We can see the planes flying from the base The area around the base is a high security zone and no one is allowed there 144 Top US officials confirmed to Fox News Channel that Shamsi Airfield had been used by the CIA to launch the drones since 2002 104 Al Qaeda response EditMessages recovered from Osama bin Laden s home after his death in 2011 including one from then al Qaeda No 3 Atiyah Abd al Rahman reportedly according to the Agence France Presse and The Washington Post expressed frustration with the drone strikes in Pakistan According to an unnamed U S government official in his message al Rahman complained that drone launched missiles were killing al Qaeda operatives faster than they could be replaced 145 146 In June and July 2011 law enforcement authorities found messages on al Qaeda linked websites calling for attacks against executives of drone aircraft manufacturer AeroVironment Law enforcement believed that the messages were in response to calls for action against Americans by Adam Yahiye Gadahn 147 United Nations human rights concerns EditOn 3 June 2009 the United Nations Human Rights Council UNHRC delivered a report sharply critical of US tactics The report asserted that the US government has failed to keep track of civilian casualties of its military operations including the drone attacks and to provide means for citizens of affected nations to obtain information about the casualties and any legal inquests regarding them 148 Any such information held by the U S military is allegedly inaccessible to the public due to the high level of secrecy surrounding the drone attacks program 149 The US representative at UNHRC has argued that the UN investigator for extrajudicial summary or arbitrary executions does not have jurisdiction over US military actions 148 while another US diplomat claimed that the US military is investigating any wrongdoing and doing all it can to furnish information about the deaths 150 On 27 October 2009 UNHRC investigator Philip Alston called on the US to demonstrate that it was not randomly killing people in violation of international law through its use of drones on the Afghan border Alston criticized the US s refusal to respond to date to the UN s concerns Said Alston Otherwise you have the really problematic bottom line which is that the Central Intelligence Agency is running a program that is killing significant numbers of people and there is absolutely no accountability in terms of the relevant international laws 151 On 2 June 2010 Alston s team released a report on its investigation into the drone strikes criticizing the United States for being the most prolific user of targeted killings in the world Alston however acknowledged that the drone attacks may be justified under the right to self defense He called on the US to be more open about the program Alston s report was submitted to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights the following day 152 On 7 June 2012 after a four day visit to Pakistan UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay called for a new investigation into US drone strikes in Pakistan repeatedly referring to the attacks as indiscriminate and said that the attacks constitute human rights violations 153 In a report issued on 18 June 2012 Christof Heyns U N special rapporteur on extrajudicial summary or arbitrary executions called on the Obama administration to justify its use of targeted assassinations rather than attempting to capture al Qaeda or Taliban suspects 154 Reactions from people in Pakistan EditAccording to a report by researchers at Stanford and New York University law schools in 2012 civilians in Waziristan interviewed for the report believed that the US actively seeks to kill them simply for being Muslims viewing the drone campaign as a part of a religious crusade against Islam 155 Many professionals working in Waziristan believe that drone strikes encourage terrorism 155 The report notes similar conclusions reached by reporters for Der Spiegel The New York Times and CNN 155 US drone strikes are extremely unpopular in Pakistan A 2012 poll by the Pew Research Center s Global Attitude project found that only 17 of Pakistanis supported drone strikes And remarkably among those who professed to know a lot or a little about drones 97 considered drone strikes bad policy 155 Stanford Law School September 2012 According to ongoing surveys of public opinion conducted by the New America Foundation 9 out of 10 of civilians in Waziristan oppose the U S military pursuing al Qaeda and the Taliban and nearly 70 want the Pakistani military alone to fight Taliban and al Qaeda militants in the tribal areas 156 According to a public opinion survey conducted between November 2008 and January 2009 by the Pakistani Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy approximately half of the respondents considered drone strikes in Federally Administered Tribal Areas accurate and approximately the same number of respondents said that the strikes did not lead to anti American sentiment and were effective in damaging the militants 157 The researchers concluded that the popular notion outside the Pakhtun belt that a large majority of the local population supports the Taliban movement lacks substance 158 According to Farhat Taj a member of AIRRA the drones have never killed any civilians Some people in Waziristan compare the drones to Ababils the holy swallows sent by Allah to avenge Abraha the invader of the Khana Kaaba 159 Irfan Husain writing in Dawn agreed called for more drone attacks We need to wake up to the reality that the enemy has grown very strong in the years we temporized and tried to do deals with them Clearly we need allies in this fight Howling at the moon is not going to get us the cooperation we so desperately need A solid case can be made for more drone attacks not less 160 In October 2013 the Economist found support among locals for the drone attacks as protection against the militants claiming no civilians were killed this year 161 The Los Angeles Times has reported that in North Waziristan a militant group called Khorasan Mujahedin targets people suspected of being informants According to the report the group kidnaps people from an area suspected of selling information that led to the strike tortures and usually kills them and sells videotapes of killings in street markets as warnings to others 162 Imran Khan chairman Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf political party in Pakistan announced a Peace March to South Waziristan on 6 7 October 2012 to create global awareness about innocent civilian deaths in US drone attacks He proposed to take a rally of 100 000 people from Islamabad to South Waziristan The South Waziristan administration denied the group permission for the rally on the grounds that they can not provide security 163 but PTI has maintained that they will go ahead with the Peace March Many International human rights activists and NGOs have shown their support to the Peace March with former US colonel Ann Wright and British NGO Reprieve joining the Peace March Pakistani Taliban have agreed to not attack the Peace rally and offered to provide security for the rally 164 A 2014 study in Political Science Quarterly and a 2015 study in the Journal of Strategic Studies disputes that drone strikes are a major source of anger for Pakistanis 165 166 Aftermath EditResults Edit The strikes led to the deaths of some 2 000 to 3 500 militants from various organizations Pakistani Taliban Afghan Taliban Al Qaeda Haqqani Network etc of which at least 75 were high level leaders These have included the head emir of the Afghan Taliban multiple heads of the Pakistani Taliban the deputy commander of the Pakistani Taliban the top commander of the Haqqani Network and the deputy commander of al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent 167 According to a quantitative analysis on drone strikes in Pakistan conducted by Stanford University postdoctoral fellows Asfandyar Mir and Dylan Moore the drone strike program was associated with monthly reductions of around 9 13 insurgent attacks and 51 86 casualties in the area affected by the program This change was sizable as in the year before the program the affected area experienced around 21 attacks and 100 casualties per month Additional quantitative and qualitative evidence suggests that this drop is attributable to the drone program In addition to the actual damage dealt drone strikes changed the insurgents perception of the risk and caused them to avoid targeting severely compromising their movement and communication abilities 168 Another quantitative study published in International Studies Quarterly by Stanford fellow Anoop K Sarbahi found that drone strikes are associated with decreases in the incidence and lethality of terrorist attacks as well as decreases in selective targeting of tribal elders based on detailed data on US drone strikes and terrorism in Pakistan from 2007 2011 169 However according to analysis by the Oxford Research Group although the drone strikes reduced terrorist activity in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas they increased the amount of terrorist attacks in Pakistani cities such as Karachi where the militant groups relocated to avoid the drones 170 The impact of drone strikes on local attitudes has also been studied Political scientist and Carnegie Endowment fellow Aquil Shah conducted one such study in 2018 for the journal International Security based on interview and survey data from Pakistan n 167 which Shah claims provides a more complete and accurate view than opposing points based primarily on anecdotal evidence unreliable media reports and advocacy driven research Shah s study found that there was little or no evidence in the data that drone strikes have a significant impact on militant Islamist recruitment either locally or nationally Rather the data reveals the importance of factors such as political and economic grievances the Pakistani state s selective counterterrorism policies its indiscriminate repression of the local population and forced recruitment of youth by militant groups The study also extended to trial testimony and accounts of domestic Islamic terrorists in the United States and Europe In their case there was scant evidence that drone strikes are the main cause of militant Islamism Instead factors that matter include a transnational Islamic identity s appeal to young immigrants with conflicted identities state immigration and integration policies that marginalize Muslim communities the influence of peers and social networks and online exposure to violent jihadist ideologies 171 An earlier survey in 2016 focusing specifically on the North Waziristan region n 148 the region most affected by the Taliban insurgency showed similar results Over 79 percent of those polled supported the U S drone strikes 56 percent believed that the drones seldom killed non militants and more than 66 percent believed most of the non militant civilians who die in drone attacks are known militant collaborators who may already be radicalized Additionally the majority of respondents agreed that the drone campaign decisively broke the back of the Pakistani Taliban in the region A student from the town of Mir Ali explained local sentiment When the government left us at the mercy of the cruel Taliban we used to feel utterly helpless and cower in fear Since nobody seemed concerned with our plight the drones were the closest thing to getting your prayers answered 172 In documents captured from Osama bin Laden s compound on Abbottabad the Al Qaeda leader talked extensively about American drones referred to as spy planes citing them as the chief threat to Al Qaeda and its allies He stated that over the last two years the problem of the spying war and spying aircrafts sic benefited the enemy greatly and led to the killing of many jihadi cadres leaders and others This is something that is concerning us and exhausting us He also advised his men as well as their affiliates in Somalia to avoid cars as American drones had been targeting them and to benefit from the art of gathering and dispersion experience as well as movement night and day transportation camouflage and other techniques related to war tricks 173 Paranoia over being targeted by drone strikes has led to wide scale executions of suspected spies by Taliban agents in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas region including the creation of a special task force Lashkar al Khorasan for this purpose in North Waziristan This has extended to the Pakistani Taliban publicly executing dozens of local car mechanics whom they accused of bugging their trucks and cars Vehicles are particularly preferred as targets by the CIA because the drones could see who entered the vehicles and target them when they were driving in isolated areas 174 Civilian casualties Edit See also Civilian casualties from US drone strikes According to unnamed counterterrorism officials in 2009 or 2010 CIA drones began employing smaller missiles in airstrikes in Pakistan in order to reduce civilian casualties The new missiles called the Small Smart Weapon or Scorpion are reportedly about the size of a violin case 21 inches long and weigh 16 kg The missiles are used in combination with new technology intended to increase accuracy and expand surveillance including the use of small unarmed surveillance drones to exactly pinpoint the location of targets These micro UAVs unmanned aerial vehicles can be roughly the size of a pizza platter and meant to monitor potential targets at close range for hours or days at a time One former U S official who worked with micro UAVs said that they can be almost impossible to detect at night It can be outside your window and you won t hear a whisper the official said 175 The drone operators also have changed to trying to target insurgents in vehicles rather than residences to reduce the chances of civilian casualties 42 An oft quoted 2010 study by Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann at the New America Foundation went as follows Our study shows that the 265 reported drone strikes in Northwest Pakistan including 52 in 2011 from 2004 to the present have killed approximately between 1 628 and 2 561 individuals of whom around 1 335 to 2 090 were described as militants in reliable press accounts Thus the true non militant fatality rate since 2004 according to our analysis is approximately 20 percent Prior to 2010 it was 5 percent In a separate report written by Bergen in 2012 he commented that civilian casualties continued to fall even as drone strikes increased concluding that Today for the first time the estimated civilian death rate is close to zero 176 The New York Times reported in 2013 that the Obama Administration embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties which in effect counts all military age males in a strike zone as combatants giving partial explanation to the official claims of extraordinarily low collateral deaths 177 A January 2011 report by Bloomberg stated that civilian casualties in the strikes had apparently decreased According to the report the U S government believed that 1 300 militants and only 30 civilians had been killed in drone strikes since mid 2008 with no civilians killed since August 2010 178 On 14 July 2009 Daniel L Byman of the Brookings Institution stated that although accurate data on the results of drone strikes is difficult to obtain it seemed that ten civilians had died in the drone attacks for every militant killed Byman argues that civilian killings constitute a humanitarian tragedy and create dangerous political problems including damage to the legitimacy of the Pakistani government and alienation of the Pakistani populace from America He suggested that the real answer to halting al Qaeda s activity in Pakistan will be long term support of Pakistan s counterinsurgency efforts 43 United States officials claim that interviews with locals do not provide accurate numbers of civilian casualties because relatives or acquaintances of the dead refuse to state that the victims were involved in militant activities 179 The CIA reportedly passed up three chances to kill militant leaders including Sirajuddin Haqqani with drone missiles in 2010 because civilians were nearby The New America Foundation believes that between zero and 18 civilians have been killed in drone strikes since 23 August 2010 and that overall civilian casualties have decreased from 25 of the total in prior years to an estimated of 6 in 2010 The Foundation estimates that between 277 and 435 non combatants have died since 2004 out of 1 374 to 2 189 total deaths 179 According to a report of the Islamabad based Conflict Monitoring Center CMC as of 2011 more than 2000 persons have been killed and most of those deaths were civilians The CMC termed the CIA drone strikes as an assassination campaign turning out to be revenge campaign and showed that 2010 was the deadliest year so far regarding casualties resulting from drone attacks with 134 strikes inflicting over 900 deaths 180 According to the Long War Journal as of mid 2011 the drone strikes in Pakistan since 2006 had killed 2 018 militants and 138 civilians 181 The New America Foundation stated in mid 2011 that from 2004 to 2011 80 of the 2 551 people killed in the strikes were militants The Foundation stated that 95 of those killed in 2010 were militants and that as of 2012 15 of the total people killed by drone strikes were either civilians or unknown 42 The foundation also states that in 2012 the rate of civilian and unknown casualties was 2 percent whereas the Bureau of Investigative Journalism say the rate of civilian casualties for 2012 is 9 percent 182 The Bureau of Investigative Journalism based on extensive research in mid 2011 claims that credible reports indicate 392 civilians were among the dead including 175 children out of the 2 347 people reported killed in US attacks since 2004 In the same article the BIJ also claimed that the intended targets militants in the tribal areas appear to make up the majority of those killed There are almost 150 named militants among the dead since 2004 though hundreds are unknown low ranking fighters 47 The CIA has claimed that the strikes conducted between May 2010 and August 2011 killed over 600 militants and did not result in any civilian fatalities this assessment has been criticized by Bill Roggio from the Long War Journal and other commentators as being unrealistic Unnamed American officials who spoke to The New York Times claimed that as of August 2011 the drone campaign had killed over 2 000 militants and approximately 50 non combatants 40 An independent research site Pakistan Body Count run by Dr Zeeshan ul hassan a Fulbright scholar keeping track of all the drone attacks claims that 2179 civilians were among the dead and 12 4 children and women 183 A report by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism released 4 February 2012 stated that under the Obama administration 2008 2011 drone strikes killed between 282 and 535 civilians including 60 children 184 The British human rights group Reprieve filed a case with the United Nations Human Rights Council based on affidavits by 18 family members of civilians killed in the attacks many of them children They are calling on the UNHRC to condemn the attacks as illegal human rights violations 185 A February 2012 Associated Press investigation found that militants were the main victims of drone strikes in North Waziristan contrary to the widespread perception in Pakistan that civilians are the principal victims The AP studied 10 drone strikes Their reporters spoke to about 80 villagers in North Waziristan and were told that at least 194 people died in the ten attacks According to the villagers 56 of those were either civilians or tribal police and 138 were militants Thirty eight of the civilians died in a single attack on 17 March 2011 Villagers stated that one way to tell if civilians were killed was to observe how many funerals took place after a strike the bodies of militants were usually taken elsewhere for burial while civilians were usually buried immediately and locally 186 A September 2012 report by researchers from Stanford University and New York University criticized the drone campaign stating that it was killing a high number of civilians and turning the Pakistani public against the United States The report compiled by interviewing witnesses drone attack survivors and others in Pakistan provided by a Pakistani human rights organization Foundation for Fundamental Rights concluded that only 2 of drone strike victims are high level militant leaders The report s authors did not estimate the numbers of total civilian casualties but suggested that the February 2012 Bureau of Investigative Journalism report was more accurate than the Long War Journal report both detailed above on civilian casualties The report also opined that the drone attacks were violations of international law because the US government had not shown that the targets were direct threats to the US 187 The report further noted the US policy of considering all military age males in a strike zone as militants following the air strike unless exonerating evidence proves otherwise Media outlets were also urged to cease using the term militant when reporting on drone attacks without further explanation 188 In an interview in October 2013 one former drone operator described events suggesting that child casualties may go unrecognized in some mission assessments 189 A week later Pakistan s Ministry of Defense stated that 67 civilians had been among the 2 227 people killed in 317 drone strikes since 2008 The Ministry said that the remainder of those killed were Islamic militants 190 Research published by Reprieve in 2014 suggested that U S drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan have had an unknown person to target casualty ratio of 28 1 with one attack in the study having a ratio of 128 1 with 13 children being killed 191 US hostage Warren Weinstein and Italian hostage Giovanni Lo Porto were killed in a January 2015 US led drone strike on the Afghanistan Pakistan border as announced by U S President Barack Obama at a White House press conference on 23 April 2015 192 Impact EditAccording to a 2018 study in the journal International Security there is scant evidence that drone strikes in Pakistan radicalize at the local national or transnational level 193 According to a 2016 study in International Studies Quarterly drone strikes are an effective counterterrorist tool in Pakistan The study found that drone strikes are associated with decreases in the incidence and lethality of terrorist attacks as well as decreases in selective targeting of tribal elders 194 See also Edit Pakistan portalDrone strikes in Yemen Afghanistan Libya and Somalia Pakistan United States military relations Saheb al Amiri Disposition Matrix database of US capture kill list List of terrorist incidents in Pakistan since 2001 Terrorism in Pakistan Violence in Pakistan 2006 09 Unmanned America s Drone Wars 2013 documentary film Good Kill 2014 film References Edit Drone strike in North 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Pakistan and Beyond International Security 42 4 47 84 doi 10 1162 isec a 00312 ISSN 0162 2889 S2CID 57571553 Johnston Patrick B Sarbahi Anoop K 4 January 2016 The Impact of US Drone Strikes on Terrorism in Pakistan International Studies Quarterly 60 2 203 219 doi 10 1093 isq sqv004 ISSN 0020 8833 Further reading EditBashir Shahzad Crews Robert D eds 2012 Under the Drones Modern Lives in the Afghanistan Pakistan Borderlands Cambridge MA Harvard University Press ISBN 978 0 674 06561 1 External links EditThis article s use of external links may not follow Wikipedia s policies or guidelines Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references December 2017 Learn how and when to remove this template message Project Bugsplat Reprieve Archived from the original on 8 August 2013 Retrieved 7 February 2012 Secret War FRONTLINE 3 January 2012 Retrieved 4 January 2012 DeYoung Karen 19 December 2011 Secrecy defines Obama s drone war The Washington Post Retrieved 21 December 2011 Roggio Bill Mayer Alexander 28 October 2011 Senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders killed in US airstrikes in Pakistan 2004 2011 Long War Journal Archived from the original on 16 December 2011 Retrieved 27 December 2011 Bergen Peter Tiedemann Katherine July August 2011 Washington s Phantom War The Effects of the U S Drone Program in Pakistan Foreign Affairs PeterBergen com Archived from the original on 15 April 2012 Retrieved 16 December 2011 The Year of the Drone Data and Interactive Map New America Foundation Archived from the original on 30 August 2011 UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston Responds to US Defense of Drone Attacks Legality Democracy Now 1 April 2010 Retrieved 26 December 2011 Bergen Peter Tiedemann Katherine 24 February 2010 The Year of the Drone An Analysis of U S Drone Strikes in Pakistan 2004 2010 PDF New America Foundation Retrieved 16 December 2011 Covert Drone War the Data Bureau of Investigative Journalism Archived from the original on 30 October 2011 Mayer Jane 26 October 2009 The Predator War New Yorker Retrieved 16 December 2011 Roggio Bill Mayer Alexander 1 October 2009 Analysis A look at US Airstrikes In Pakistan through September 2009 Long War Journal Retrieved 19 December 2011 Interactive Map U S Airstrikes in Pakistan on the Rise Center for American Progress 5 March 2009 Pakistan Body Count Complete timeline of drone attacks in Pakistan Drones Myths And Reality In Pakistan 21 May 2013 International Crisis Group BBC NEWS Trump revokes Obama rule on reporting drone strike deaths 7 March 2019 Tara McKelvey BBC News Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Drone strikes in Pakistan amp oldid 1157806343, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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