The growing use of unmanned drones in armed conflicts around the world seems set to continue into the future despite calls for restraint and regulation. As legal groups in the US file lawsuits to try to prevent the drone assassination of a US citizen in Yemen, arguing that the US must stick to international law, weapons manufacturers like Raytheon are pressing ahead and designing new lighter weapons specifically for drones use. Robert Francois, vice president of advanced missile systems and unmanned systems at Raytheon told Flight Global, for example, that they are developing three new missiles specifically for drone use:
The Small Tactical Munition is about 10cm (4 inches) in diameter, 61cm long and weighs in at 5.9kg (13lbs) with GPS/inertial navigational system (INS) and a semi-active laser (SAL) seeker for targeting personnel and light vehicles.
The 15kg Griffin is a short-range, air-to-surface missile is tube launched, also featuring GPS/INS and SAL guidance and is smaller and lighter than the Hellfire.
Filling in the 45kg gap is Monsoon, for targeting buildings, trucks and personnel, with GPS/INS, otnal SAL and an 18kg warhead.
Meanwhile at the USAF Academy in Colorado, cadets are also being encouraged to design weapons for future drone wars. Ideas that have been presented to a recent gathering of UAV experts in Denver include drones spraying each other with acid and drones shooting nets to try to capture and down other drones.
But many would argue that the proliferation of drone wars urgently needs to be stopped. A recent article in Foreign Policy Journal makes the interesting point that Mossad (and others of the ilk) cannot have failed to contrast the international furore around the assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel with the virtual silence that surround the US drone assassinations and drawn the conclusion that if the US can do it silently with drones, so can they. The FPJ article goes on to call for a debate on drones that
“should engage authoritative policymakers scholars, legal experts and other people with knowledge and understanding relevant to carry out an informed and beneficial discussion aimed at the introduction of international rules that would identify constraints, introduce a well-thought out supervision, and define sanctions helpful in dealing with uncontrolled proliferation of this new form of warfare.”
The US lawsuit launched yesterday (31st August) in the US by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) argues that the US does not have the authority under international law or the constitution to carry out extrajudicial killings outside declared wars. They also reiterate the well made point that
“targeting individuals for execution by drone who are suspected of terrorism but have not been convicted or even charged – without oversight, judicial process or disclosed standards for placement on kill lists – poses the risk that the government will erroneously target the wrong people. In recent years, the U.S. government has detained many men as terrorists, only for courts or the government itself to discover later that the evidence was wrong or unreliable.”
Current lawsuits not withstanding, it is highly likely that drone wars and drone assassinations will continue until public opposition grows, and they are specifically outlawed. In the recent past anti-personnel landmines and cluster bombs have been outlawed despite the best efforts of, and huge oppostion from, military planners and the defence industry. For campaigners, it’s time to get back in the saddle.
An upcoming trial for activists who illegally entered Creech Air Force Base to protest the government’s use of unmanned aerial vehicles has caught the attention of United Nations officials and could have serious implications for the future of remote-controlled warfare.
In April 2009, 14 activists who had gathered here from across the country illegally entered the base’s gates and refused to leave in protest of Creech’s role as the little-known headquarters for U.S. military operations involving unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, over Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.
Held at gunpoint by Air Force security police until officers from Metro and the Nevada Highway Patrol handcuffed them and took them to the Clark County Detention Center, the activists now face a September trial on misdemeanor trespassing charges.
The activists, whose ranks include members of the local anti-war group the Nevada Desert Experience, had been holding a 10-day peace vigil outside Creech to protest both the use of drones by military and CIA officials and the deaths of hundreds of innocent Iraqi, Afghan and Pakistani civilians they say have been murdered by the unmanned craft.
Activists said they were gladly willing to risk arrest and prosecution — and will continue to do so — in order to alert taxpayers to the U.S. government’s taste for this particularly insidious form of warfare now being waged from just outside Sin City.
“It’s just something that has clearly made killing so much easier,” said Iowa-based activist Brian Terrell, one of the so-called Creech 14 now facing charges. “Removing a combatant from the battlefield has a certain coldness, a weirdness about it. The idea that someone is sitting at a console at Creech and shooting missiles at people half a world away is very spooky.”
Spooky, and very possibly illegal, particularly in the cases of hundreds of innocent civilians who’ve been killed by drones, according to a growing number of international observers.
Sister Megan Rice of the Nevada Desert Experience is one of 14 activists awaiting trial for trespassing.
“These issues raise questions about the law of war and whether you can target nonmilitary personnel who are not engaged in actual combat,” said Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international affairs and politics at Princeton University and the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine.
Falk said he hopes to testify at the Creech 14 trial in September on potential legal problems with the use of drones. He said his work, which has also focused heavily on similar, so-called targeted killings of Palestinian militants by Israeli officials, has convinced him that drone strikes also raise serious questions of potential war crimes by U.S. military personnel.
“There are two fundamental concerns. One is embarking on this sort of automated warfare in ways that further dehumanize the process of armed conflict in ways that I think have disturbing implications for the future,” Falk said. “Related to that are the concerns I’ve had recently with my preoccupation with the occupation of Gaza of a one-sided warfare where the high-tech side decides how to inflict pain and suffering on the other side that is, essentially, helpless.”
While few, including activists, would accuse al-Qaida militants of being helpless, critics have charged those who suffer most from American drone strikes are the Iraqi, Afghan and Pakistani peasants unlucky enough to live across an entire region now considered a war zone by leaders in Washington, D.C.
Since the United States first used drone strikes in November 2002 to kill an al-Qaida leader allegedly responsible for the 2000 U.S.S. Cole bombing, both the military and the CIA have spent billions acquiring squadrons of the craft to target alleged terrorists and insurgents overseas.
Press reports and independent human rights groups estimate American drones have killed hundreds of Afghan and Pakistani nationals since then, souring relations with those two nations. A July 2009 report from the Brookings Institution found that for every supposed terrorist killed by a drone strike, more than 10 Afghan or Pakistani civilians have been killed, a figure that topped 600 at last count.
Activists agreed with Falk that drones dehumanize killing and said that sense of removal will only ensure future abuses by the U.S. military. That’s why they came to Creech to protest, activists said.
“They’re not only flying drones in Iraq and Afghanistan from Creech, but they’re also training people there to fly them. When you stand outside the gates you can see drones taking off all the time there. No one except the military is really sure where all this is leading,” Terrell said.
For years, Creech has been ground zero for the government’s rapidly expanding use of the unmanned vehicles.
There, amid the high, craggy desert plateaus, pilots with the Air Force’s 432nd Wing continuously fly a fleet of more than 100 drones over large swaths of Southwest Asia and beyond — all from a fleet of nondescript, air-conditioned trailers on this quiet military outpost. Exact details are classified, but base insiders say, at any given time, Creech pilots fly at least 36 unmanned Predators and their beefed-up cousins, Reapers. Cutting-edge satellite technology enables Creech pilots to drop the thousands of pounds of bombs many of their drones carry with barely a two-second delay — all with the twist of a joystick and the push of a button.
Perhaps if military officials were more careful to avoid killing civilians with drones, activists wouldn’t be so quick to sound the alarm, many of them said.
But activists also reserved some of their complaints for Clark County District Attorney David Roger. They said Roger’s decision to prosecute them, while not dissuading hardcore protesters from demonstrating in the future, could have a chilling effect on average citizens who decide to demonstrate against this new type of warfare being waged in their name, with their tax dollars.
It’s a charge Roger strongly denies.
“We don’t have any particular animus toward these protesters, but these citations were submitted to our office, and we felt we could prove [the case] beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said.
Activists, however, contend Roger’s decision to prosecute the Creech 14 represents a larger pattern at work. Across the country, they said, prosecutors and judges are doing all they can to throw activists in jail in an effort to tamp down a growing domestic anger at the warlike policies of both the Bush and Obama administrations.
Court documents from across the country, and press reports from organizations such as Democracy Now and the Tucson, Ariz.-based Nuclear Resister, do show an increase in the number of protesters now facing charges for anti-war activities. While official figures from the FBI for 2010 aren’t yet available, court documents from Fort Benning, Ga., to Lancaster, Penn., show rising numbers of anti-war demonstrators either face charges or are already behind bars for trespassing onto U.S. bases or staging sit-ins at military recruiting stations.
Another problem with the way Roger’s office handled the case, activists said, is they almost didn’t find out about their upcoming trial at all. They never received a letter or a phone call from anyone at the DA’s office alerting them that they were, in fact, being charged.
This problem of gaps in defendant notification has long been reported by defense attorneys across Southern Nevada. It’s a problem Roger said has now been corrected.
“We have suffered cutbacks; right now, we have lost about 60 positions, and some of those positions were in our case assessment unit (the office that notifies defendants of pending charges) … we mail them to defendants at their last known address, but if they’ve moved, our only alternative is to seek a bench warrant,” he said.
Trial or no trial, demonstrators said, neither prosecutors nor drones will dissuade them from staging future protests at Creech.
“People who perform arrest actions or risk prosecution are counseled or coached to be ready for the worst-case scenario,” said Jim Haber, coordinator for the Nevada Desert Experience. “But prosecutions like this do reduce the number of people willing to risk it.”
And that’s a shame, according to scholars like Falk and others. He said protesters like the Creech 14 can have an impact on U.S. foreign policies, particularly in legally and morally nebulous situations like the American drone fleet and the rising number of innocent civilian deaths that result from its use.
“I’ve analogized [the use of drones] to torture, where the victims have no retaliatory capability. It’s why people view torture with a certain moral abhorrence. And while [potential war crimes by the U.S. military] isn’t new, as one moves further and further into this domain of one-sided warfare, it’s really better understood by the terminology of massacre.”
Amnesty International USA have published a new report, As if Hell Fell on Me’: The Human Rights Crisis in Northwest Pakistan, looking at the impact on civilians of the onging conflict in Northwest Pakistan. Describing the area as a “human rights free zone”, the report says that civilians are facing the triple threat of the Taleban, the Pakistan army and US drone attacks.
A short chapter in the report – mostly reproduced on the web here – focuses on the CIA’s drone attacks in the area. The following, looking at the legal situation, is excerted from the report:
In March 2010, Harold Koh, Legal Adviser to the United States Department of State, set out for the first time a brief explanation of the Obama administration’s claimed basis in international law for the drone attacks.
He asserted that “as a matter of international law, the United States is in an armed conflict with al-Qa’ida, as well as the Taleban and associated forces, in response to the horrific 9/11 attacks” adding that the USA “may use force consistent with its inherent right to self-defense under international law”. Harold Koh argued that this included “authority under international law … to use force, including lethal force, to defend itself, including by targeting persons such as high-level al-Qa’ida leaders who are planning attacks.“ He further stated that “whether a particular individual will be targeted in a particular location will depend upon considerations specific to each case, including those related to the imminence of the threat, the sovereignty of the other states involved, and the willingness and ability of those states to suppress the threat the target poses”, adding that the principles of distinction and proportionality under international law were adhered to in both planning and execution of all attacks.
This explanation leaves many questions unanswered. Even after Koh’s statement, the USA has not officially acknowledged that it carries out drone attacks in Pakistan (Koh speaks only generally, of “lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles”) and refuses to provide any official information on these attacks, which is crucial to assess their legitimacy under international law and standards. These include who the targets were, what justification there was for using lethal force against them, whether non-letha alternatives were tried or even considered, what safeguards were put in place to ensure that civilians not endangered, who was killed or injured, what investigations took place in cases where violations of international legal rules are suspected and more. Nor was such information forthcoming from the Pakistani authorities. In addition, the attacks have taken place in remote areas to which access is difficult. For these reasons, Amnesty International could not independently investigate conditions surrounding the planning, conduct, or consequences of drone attacks in Pakistan. The organization calls upon the governments concerned – the USA and Pakistan—to ensure that all their actions are in strict accordance with relevant rules of international law, and that sufficient information is made available to the public to ensure accountability.
The much-anticipated report from Philip Alston, the UN’s special representative on extrajudicial execution on the use of armed drones for targeted killings is now available. Philip Alston’s report to the UN Human Rights Council will undoubtably cause much controversy over the coming days and weeks. Alston is a known critic of the use of drone to kill alleged terrorists, particularly the use of by the CIA of drones in Pakistan. While this report will no doubt focus on the American use of drones, the release of information on the British use of drones following an FoI request by the Fellowship of Reconciliation caused Alston to call on the UK government to abide by international law. No doubt there will be more on this report over the next few days.
