Tag: Pakistan

More Drone Strikes, More Drone Proliferation

Chris Cole
Children in North Waziristan with debris from drone missile. Copyright: CIVIC

Unmanned CIA drones strikes have continued this week in Pakistan with seven people killed in a strike on an Afghan refugee camp in North Waziristan on Sunday (10th Oct) , eight killed in a strike on Wednesday (13th Oct) four of whom were alleged to be from Turkmenistan and early reports suggesting between three and six people killed in a strike today (15th Oct).  Meanwhile a new report this week from American NGO CIVIC (Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict) challenges the official line that civilian casualties from drone attacks are very low.  CIVIC researchers spent a year on the ground interviewing victims of conflict including drone strike victims:

Gul Nawaz, from North Waziristan, was watering his fields when he heard the explosion of drone missiles: “I rushed to my house when I heard the blast. When I arrived I saw my house and my brother’s house completely destroyed and all at home were dead.” Eleven members of Gul Nawaz’s family were killed, including his wife, two sons and two daughters as well as his elder brother, his wife, and his four children. “Yes, the drone strikes hurt the Taliban. Most of the strikes are effective against the Taliban but sometimes innocent people also become the victim of such attacks. Take my case … ” said Gul Nawaz.   “I blame the government of Pakistan and the USA … they are responsible for destroying my family. We were living a happy life and I didn’t have any links with the Taliban. My family members were innocent … I wonder, why was I victimized?”

 As Middle Eastern history Professor  Juan Cole says in a piece this week by Johann Harri of The Independent “When you bomb people and kill their family, it pisses them off. They form lifelong grudges… This is not rocket science. If they were not sympathetic to the Taliban and al-Qa’ida before, after you bomb the shit out of them, they will be.”

There continues to be no information released about the use of armed drones in Afghanistan although it is certain that they are being used with pictures of the newest British Reaper drone arriving at Kandahar appearing today.

Proliferation

Drone proliferation also continues with Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI) signing a $400m deal this week to supply Russian company Oboronprom with drone ‘kits’ for assembly in Russia.

“The main aim of our project is to develop a centre or competence of world-class unmanned vehicle manufacturing in Russia,” says Oboronprom director general Andrey Reus. “In co-operation with IAI we expect to become a major player in the market within the shortest possible time.”

Writing in the Financial Times this week, just two days before suspended from the parliamentary Labour Party over allegations about his expenses, former European Minister Denis MacShane argued that European governments need to combine to build ‘Eurodrone’ to export around the world. 

“The model should be that of a Kalashnikov [machine gun]: a robust, simple to make and easy to use design to which other specifications can be added as needs arise. This will require some surrendering of national military-industrial prerogatives. But just as the Airbus successfully replaced failed national aircraft such as the Comet or Caravelle, a Eurodrone could showcase Europe’s ability to produce a world-class model for worldwide export.”

Hopefully, with MacShane as its advocate, ‘Eurodrone’ will remain stuck on the drawing board.

Unnamed Sources and Drones: A Deadly Combination

Chris Cole

There are a number of deeply disturbing issues about the reports that Abdul Jabbar, a British Citizen killed in US drone strike in North Waziristan was to lead British terrorist cell. Firstly the suggestion that he was in fact to lead a terrorist cell in the UK appears to come from one unnamed “senior Pakistani security source” via a BBC Newsnight report. 

It is of great concern that a single unnamed source who, it could be argued, has a vested interest in justifying the death of Mr Jabbar and raising fears about terrorism has such an influence on the media. Indeed other ‘unnammed sources” are dismissing the story. Sky News for example are reporting that their sources, this time unnamed government officials are saying that the stories are something “to be”rather cautious of”.   And indeed as the Guardian reports one key element of the story is very suspicious – the idea Abdul Jabbar was chosen at a gathering of 300 Taliban and al-Qaida militants in North Waziristan. “It’s unthinkable that 300 people could meet in one location in the tribal belt. Maybe 10 or 20, but 300 is too much. It would be too much of an easy target for the drones,” said Imtiaz Gul, author of a book on militancy in the frontier regions.

 But perhaps even more disturbing about this whole story is the fact that the execution of a British citizen accused of being involved in terrorist activity”at very early stages” without any due legal process seems acceptable to many in the media and beyond – indeed it passes without even comment.

British citizen killed by drone strike as Pakistan opposition to drones increases

Chris Cole

As reports are coming in that a British citizen has been killed by an America drone strike in Pakistan, the New America Foundation and Terror Free Tomorrow have conducted the first comprehensive public opinion survey covering sensitive military and political issues in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. 

According to the survey, more than three-quarters of FATA residents oppose American drone strikes. Indeed, only 16 percent think these strikes accurately target militants; 48 percent think they largely kill civilians and another 33 percent feel they kill both civilians and militants.

This latest survey contradicts an earlier survey, reported by the BBC, by the Ariana Institute in Islamabad which suggested that 80% of FATA residents felt that drone strike were accurate.

No doubt we will hear a lot more on these two stories

Justifying the unjustifiable: drones attacks foil “possible” terror plot

Chris Cole

Many news outlets are covering the story that the recent mass drone strikes in Pakistan have foiled a ‘Mumbai-style’ terror attack on UK, France and Germany.  The suggestion that mass drone strikes in Pakistan are justified because of intelligence of a possible terror attack in Europe are simply ludicrous.  Let’s set aside for a moment the notorious unreliability of such ‘intellegence’, particularly the kind that is so crucial that it is leaked to the media in a style reminiscent of the now  notorious ‘Saddam WMD 45 minutes away’ threat.

More importantly Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, has repeatedly made it clear that targeted attacks on individuals outside armed combat may well be unlawful under international and humanitarian law  particularly, as in this case, if the state in which it occurs (Pakistan) objects and, as stated in many of the reports, no plot was in fact imminent.   

The idea that armed drones can be let loose to “‘pre-empt possible terror plots” by unaccountable security and intelligence agencies is extremely worrying, as is the way that much of the mainstream media seems happy to acquiesce with this fallacy.

US Drone Strikes Intensify In Pakistan

Chris Cole

  

Drone Damage in Waziristan

 Over the past ten days or so there have been over a dozen reported drone strikes in Pakistan near the  Afghan border.  Associated Press reports today (15th Sept) that drone strikes “have killed more than 60 people in 13 strikes since Sept. 2 in the Pakistani region of North Waziristan.”   AP based their figures on Pakistani intelligence officials’ reports, other sources put the death toll at 75.     Many of the drone strikes have taken place around Datta Khel, a town of about 40,000 people that sits on a strategically vital road to the Afghan border.   According to The Guardian, this is the most intense and sustained period of US drone strikes in Pakistan since the US began attacks in Pakistan in 2004, while the Christian Science Monitor says that US drone strikes in Pakistan have now reached 70 this year – a new record.  

Many of the news reports on the strikes quote anonymous US intelligence sources saying that the strikes are aimed at the Haqqani Network, a family /tribal network with alleged  links to Al Qaeda.   None of the reports that I have seen so far remind readers that the US has not declared war on Pakistan and so such strikes are unlawful.   In addition such a period of intense bombardment is highly likely to incur civilian casualties and will no doubt lead to further alienation of the Pakistan population.

Drones target Yemen

Chris Cole

The CIA is to redeploy some Predator drones from Pakistan to the arabian peninsula so they can step up the ‘war against terror’ in Yemen and Somalia.   The Wall Street Journal revealed this week that:

 “U.S. military’s Special Operation Forces and the CIA have been positioning surveillance equipment, drones and personnel in Yemen, Djibouti, Kenya and Ethiopia to step up targeting of al Qaeda’s Yemen affiliate, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, known as AQAP, and Somalia’s al Shabaab—Arabic for The Youth.”

Unsuprising, given what the CIA have done in Pakistan in the name of the ‘war on terror’, senior Yemeni officals are clearly against the idea.  According to Associated Press,  Yemen’s ambassador to the United Nations, Abdullah al-Saidi,  said CIA drones would be a “nonstarter,”  adding, “to even posit this theory about U.S. drones only builds support for radicalization.”   

Yemen has already been the target of several US drone strikes.  As noted previously, in May 2010, a Yemeni mediator was killed by  US drone as he  was seeking to persuade al Qaeda members to surrender.     

 Amnesty International this week launched, Yemen: Cracking Down Under Pressure,  a new report on the human rights situation in Yemen.  Amnesty said

“The USA appears to have carried out or collaborated in unlawful killings in Yemen and has closely cooperated with Yemeni security forces in situations that have failed to give due regard for human rights.” Amnesty urged Washington to “investigate the serious allegations of the use of drones by U.S. forces for targeted killings of individuals in Yemen and clarify the chain of command and rules governing the use of such drones”.

Yemen and Amnesty are right to be worried about US drone strikes.  Just this week a  US intellegence official confirmed that a drone strike in Paksitan killed a numer of children earlier this week.   “According to the reports we have received here four men, five women and four children died in the attack. The identities of those killed were not known yet,” the official said.      Wajid Shamsul Hassan, Pakistan’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, was among those who condemned the attack. “Americans are using indiscriminately the drones to hit what they called high-value targets that killed so many people,” Hassan said in an interview with Iranian Press TV.