Pakistan – Page 5 – Drone Wars UK

US spy arrest halts drone strikes in Pakistan as Al-Qaeda steal Predator drone

13/02/2011Chris Cole

Activist group 'Pasban Pakistan' protest against American diplomatic Raymond Davis at the Karachi Press Club in Pakistan. Davis, is under investigation for the double murder of two Pakistani motorcyclists in Karachi, Pakistan.

In Pakistan drone strikes seem to have ceased since 23rd January. While there have been pauses in drone strikes in Pakistan before, there has been speculation that this latest pause is connected to diplomatic efforts to secure the release of Raymond Davis a US citizen who shot and killed two Pakistan men in disputed circumstances. It has been alleged that Davis is a US spy – the US say that he is a member of the US Embassy staff and has diplomatic immunity. For background to the case see this Washington Post piece.

Meanwhile AFP has reported the crash of a Predator drone in Yemen this week in which the wreckage, initially collected by the police, was then hijacked and taken away by Al-Qaeda gunman. (Rather strangely StrategyPage.com are recommending that AQAP sell the drone to the Chinese.) Yemen authorities later denied that a Predator had crashed. The Yemen Times rather cleverly reported both the crash and the denial and then reminded its readers that last year a Wikileaks cable revealed that Yemen had deliberately covered up the crash of a US Scan Eagle drone in Yemen.

In the UK, the Highlands and Islands Enterprise agency has proposed that the Hebrides be used as a place for testing unmanned drones. While the agency is headlining the fact that such drones would be used for civilian use, the proposal has presented to Peter Luff, UK defence minister and the testing range is currently being run by arm giant QinetiQ

New Year deaths as US forces addicted to ‘crack-like’ Drones

07/01/2011Chris Cole

2011 started where 2010 left off with continued drone attacks in Pakistan. On 27/28^th December 42 people were killed in drone strikes while 19 people were killed in three separate drone attacks in North Waziristan on New Year’s Day and between 4 and 6 people were killed in an attack on a vehicle near the town of Miranshah in North Waziristan. Most reports labelled all those killed as ‘militants’ but as Jason Ditz of antiwar.com says

“Officials term everyone killed a “suspected militant” but concede that they don’t know any of the identities of the slain and that civilians are almost certain to be amongst the toll. With virtually no media allowed into the region, identifying the victims of US attacks is virtually impossible.”

The New Year also began with a lot of coverage of Gorgon Stare – despite missing its ‘end-of-2010’ deployment deadline – mainly thanks to a large article in the Washington Post. As we have previously reported Gorgon Stare is a new surveillance capability that allows a wide area of ground to be videoed while also enabling individuals to be tracked within that wide area.

The amount of video from drone surveillance is already overwhelming analysts yet the military continues to demands more. The Post article quotes Army Col. Steven A. Beckman, former intelligence chief for coalition forces in Sothern Afghanistan as calling drone video coverage “the crack cocaine of our ground forces.”

Flight international reports that one Gorgon Stare ‘pod’ will be deployed in Afghanistan before April 2011, one in 2012 and one in 2014.

Finally a new year curiosity was the reported shooting down of two ‘western spy drones’ by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the air force wing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards made the claim but gave no further details and there were quick denials from the US that any of its drones had been shot down.

Two More Britons Killed by US Drone Attack in Pakistan

16/12/2010Chris Cole

The Daily Telegraph is reporting that two British citizens have been killed in a US drone attack in North Waziristan. The drone attack took place on Friday December 10^th when local Pakistani media reported that US drones fired four Hellfire missiles at a vehicle and compound near Datta Khel.

If reports are correct – and the British Foreign Office are saying at this stage that they are investigating the reports – it will be the second time in three months that British citizens have been killed in US drone strikes in Pakistan. In October, as we reported at the time, Abdul Jabbar a British citizen reportedly from Birmingham, was killed in Waziristan.

No doubt there will be more on this story soon.

Wikileaks, Cablegate and Drones (the story so far….)

01/12/2010Chris Cole

Although Wikileaks has only released a small amount of US diplomatic cables so far – the full release is expected later this week – there has already been some significant information about the use of armed drones. [Also see list of cables released so far on Guardian website)

US drone strikes in Pakistan

Despite repeatedly denying that it allows the US to carry out drone strikes on its territory many believe that, in private, the Pakistani government and military do in fact allow the attacks. These suspicions appear confirmed by a cable reporting Pakistani PM as saying “I don’t care if they do it as long as they get the right people. We’ll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it.”

Another cable reveals that Pakistan has allowed US special forces to be embedded into the Pakistan military to help direct the CIA’s drone strikes. This will be extremely controversial within Pakistan. While some US forces have been undertaking training work in Pakistan since 2008, this revelation will be extremely embarrassing for the Pakistani military and, as the Guardian reports “permission for the active combat deployment almost certainly came with the personal consent of the army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani.”

A third cable quotes a local FATA official as supporting the drones strikes “as they were surgical and clearly hitting high value targets…” and “ “everyone knew that they only hit the house or location of very bad people.” However a recent poll suggests that three-quarters of FATA residents oppose the US drone strikes.

Yemen

A leaked cable has confirmed that it was a US drone strike in south Yemen in December 2009 that killed 41 local residents. Yemen had claimed it was their forces who undertook the attack but as the New York Times reported:

“We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours,” Mr. Saleh said, according to the cable sent by the American ambassador, prompting Yemen’s deputy prime minister to “joke that he had just ‘lied’ by telling Parliament” that Yemen had carried out the strikes.

In a press release Amnesty International has called on the US government to:

Investigate the serious allegations of the use of drones by US forces for targeted killings of individuals in Yemen and clarify the chain of command and rules governing the use of such drones. Ensure that all US military and security support given to Yemen, and all US military and security operations carried out in Yemen, are designed and implemented so as to adhere fully with relevant international human rights law and standards, and that such human rights standards are made fully operational in training programmes and systems of monitoring and accountability.

Drones: Toys for the boys

As Danger Room puts it, armed drones are on every military’s Christmas list at the moment.

Several cables report the growing desire for Predator and Reaper drones. For example Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, after reporting that he was worried about the growing strength of Iran reportedly said “That’s why we need it first…. give me Predator B.”

Turkey too wants the Predator drone with the Chief of the Turkish General Staff, General Ilker Basbug, saying it was urgent that they received the drone to make up for the decreasing US presence in Iraq.

With much less than 1% of the cables so far being releases, we are sure there will be plenty more information about the use of armed drones coming from Wikileaklsover the next few weeks.

Drones: See No Border, Hear No Victims, Speak No Peace

20/11/2010Chris Cole

“You expect us to open the skies for anything that you can fly… in which country can you do that?” Unnamed Pakistani Intelligence Official

The Washington Post reports today (Nov. 20th) that further pressure is being put on the Pakistani government to widen the area that US drones are allowed to strike within Pakistan.

Unsurprisingly, after more than 100 drone strikes this year alone in the area in which they are operating, the Pakistani government has refused the request. This stance has, to put it mildly, annoyed the powers that be with one senior anonymous NATO military official quoted as saying “If they understand our side, they know the patience is running out.”

Also barely reported this week (and anytime it happens) was Israel’s incursion by unmanned drone into Lebanon. The flight, which pass within almost 50 miles of the capital Beirut, was in direct violation of UN resolutions (as Israel regularly is).

While neither the US nor Israel are famed for their respect of international law, there does seem to be something about unmanned drones that appears to mean a decrease in respect for international borders and sovereignty. Perhaps it’s the fact that the drone is unmanned and so ‘no body’ is actually crossing a border makes a difference to the military mind.

With more than forty countries developing unmanned drones these precedents of armed drones crossing international borders seemingly at will makes for a worrying future and suggests that a ban on armed drones is more important than ever.

UK and France Plan Joint Work on “essential” Drones

03/11/2010Chris Cole

UK Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy jointly signed The Declaration on Defence and Security Co-operation yesterday at the 2010 UK-France Summit. The treaty, dubbed by the tabloids as ‘the entente frugale’, contains two paragraphs on drones:

Unmanned Air Systems have become essential to our armed forces. We have agreed to work together on the next generation of Medium Altitude Long Endurance Unmanned Air Surveillance Systems. Co-operation will enable the potential sharing of development, support and training costs, and ensure that our forces can work together. We will launch a jointly funded, competitive assessment phase in 2011, with a view to new equipment delivery between 2015and 2020.

In the longer term, we will jointly assess requirements and options for the next generation of Unmanned Combat Air Systems from 2030 onwards. Building on work already started under the direction of the UK-France High Level Working Group, we will develop over the next two years a joint technological and industrial roadmap. This could lead to a decision in 2012 to launch a joint Technology and Operational Demonstration programme from 2013 to 2018.

Within hours BAE Systems and Dassault Aviation had submitted a joint letter to the two leaders offering to work together to jointly develop drones. As I have previously suggested, (‘SDSR, Drones and Autonomy) FlightGlobal is reporting that this will mean “building on the lessons learned during Europe’s Dassault-led Neuron and BAE Systems’ Taranis technology demonstration programmes”.

BAE Systems told the Financial Times that they welcomed the proposal to develop a joint drone “Not only is this an important milestone in terms of the development of our unmanned aircraft capability, but it represents a significant investment in the future of our UK and French military aerospace capability.”

As I say far too often on this blog, meanwhile US drones strikes continue in North Waziristan with eleven people killed in three separate drones strikes today (3^rd November) and five killed in a drone strike on Monday (1^st) according to the Press Association.