Over the past decade the use of armed drones has dramatically increased and spread with drone strikes reported to have taken place in up to ten countries. Although the US use of drones in Pakistan and Yemen has been most controversial and received the majority of media coverage, Afghanistan has been the real centre of armed drone use. The first combat drone strike took place in Afghanistan just weeks after 9/11 and the vast majority of drone strikes have taken place there although exact figures remain shrouded in secrecy. It is not surprising therefore that the forthcoming end of NATO combat operations in Afghanistan later this year brings the drone wars to something of a crossroads. Read more
Tag: US Drones
Obama speaks about drone wars
On Thursday (23 Oct) President Obama gave a much-trailed speech on counterterrorism, large parts of which focused on the US use of drones. At the same time a ‘fact sheet’ on US policy on the use of force outside declared wars was published, as was a transcript of a background briefing given by senior US officials to journalists. All of these documents give some insight into the US use of drones.
In the speech President Obama accepted many of the criticisms that we and others have made over the past four years including (as he put it) Read more
Drones Over Africa: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
This week the New York Times reported that the US is planning to establish a new base for its drones in north-west Africa. While the base is to be used initially to fly unarmed surveillance drones, according to the article the US does not rule out the possibility of using the base to launch drone strikes in the future. One day after the NYT piece, Reuters reported the base would be established in Niger. According to “a senior government source” says Reuters, “the U.S. ambassador to Niger, Bisa Williams, made the request at a meeting on Monday with President Mahamadou Issoufou, who immediately accepted it.” Read more
New figures reveal almost 1,500 US/UK drone strikes in Afghanistan since 2009
New information about the number of US drone strikes in Afghanistan has been revealed by DangerRoom, the national security blog at Wired.com. According to official US figures supplied to the website there have been a total of 1,160 US drone strikes in Afghanistan since the beginning of 2009. (Note each ‘weapon released’ is counted by the military as a strike; in press reports often several weapons releases at a single location are counted as a single ‘strike’.) This is not the overall total number of US drone strikes as figures have only been given from the beginning of 2009, while US drones have been operating in Afghanistan for several years before that. Read more
Drone Protests Grow
Public opposition to the growing use of unmanned drones is being made much more visible this week in protests taking place around the world.
The most high-profile event is taking place in Pakistan as Imran Khan leads thousands on a march against US drone strikes. Dozens of non-Pakistanis have also joined the protests in solidarity, including Clive Stafford Smith of the Human Rights group, Reprieve, and members of the US campaign group, CodePink Read more
More on legal action over US drone strikes
On both sides of the Atlantic, legal challenges related to US drone use are about to hit the courts.
Tomorrow the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) will take the CIA to court for refusing to comply with a Freedom of Information request for copies of documents related to the CIA’s drone strike programme.
The CIA has refused to comply with the FoIA request on the grounds that it is forbidden to talk about the secretive programme. The ACLU say that the CIA cannot on the one hand refuse documents on the grounds of secrecy while at the very same time regularly give briefings about its drone strikes. Jameel Jaffer, the deputy legal director of the ACLU told the Guardian: Read more