New report shatters legal basis for defending drone strikes
the skeptics of the US-led drone attacks have been provided more ammunition. The gist of an analysis of the drone strikes in FATA proves: innocent people were targeted. This goes against the claims of US President Barack Obama, who in September last year said that, “the goal [of the drone strikes] has been to focus on al Qaeda and to focus narrowly on those who would pose an imminent threat to the United States of America.” The first analysis of drone-strike victims based on top-secret US intelligence reports has pointed out that the Obama administration has not been honest about who has been targeted. Using US government documents, the report shows that the targets go beyond those Al Qaeda officials that “pose a direct threat to the US,” as Obama claimed.
The US intelligence reports which covers the 12-month period ending September 2011, at least 265 of up to 482 people killed by the CIA-led drone attacks were not senior al Qaeda leaders but “assessed” as Afghan, Pakistani and unknown extremists. Only six top al Qaida leaders were killed in those months. Forty three of the 95 drone strikes reviewed for that period hit groups other than al Qaida, including the Haqqani network, several Pakistani Taliban factions and the unidentified individuals described only as “foreign fighters and other militants.” The descriptions of those killed just kept getting vaguer. The evidence belies the legal foundations of the US claim to, what senior US officials have continued to point to, as the UN Charter’s right to self defense as the legal basis for the legitimacy of the drone strikes. However, those following the drones strikes, which began in summer 2008 under the Bush presidency, have known that drones have targeted members of all forms of militant groups in the Northern Regions. The report further suggests that the US was conducting some “side payment strikes” on behalf of Islamabad to eliminate threats to Pakistan, going against the claims of the Pakistan government and military.
On the one hand, the Pakistan government can use the new report to dispute the legal basis of the drone strikes using US documents and take the legal action it has promised against the US for so long. On the other hand, as the Obama administration unveils its promised and overdue targeted-killing reforms in the next few months, one needs to keep in mind the disconnect between who the United States claimed it was killing and who it was actually killing. The drone’s lie has finally been busted. And while the militant threat has not gone, the facts on the ground suggest drones are a failed strategy that incenses populations more than rid them of dangerous terrorists. Will the next Pakistan government take the US to task or tow the line is the question.