Tag Archives: drone attacks

Intelligence points to “worrisome” al-Qaida movements in Iran

Al-Qaida operatives who had been detained for years in Iran have been making their way quietly out of the country, an Associated Press story printed in The Washington Times on Thursday, May 13, reported.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials, on the condition of anonymity, discussed efforts to review and monitor al-Qaida in Iran in more than a dozen interviews with the AP. One former CIA official told the AP that some who have left Iran are moneymen and planners, “the kind of manpower al-Qaida needs after a series of successful U.S. drone attacks on al-Qaida’s ranks.” A former counterterrorism official told the AP that anyone who has left Iran recently is likely to be lower-level.

However, the AP reported that U.S. officials are concerned the movement foreshadows the release of al-Qaida’s “management council,” including some of al-Qaida’s most dangerous people, currently being held in Iran. These people include Saif al-Adel, who is wanted by the FBI in connection with the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania; Abu Hafs the Mauritanian, a bin Laden adviser who helped form the modern al-Qaida; al-Qaida’s longtime chief financial officer, Abu Saeed al-Masri; and Mustafa Hamid, an al-Qaida trainer with a terrorism pedigree that spans decades.

Further reading: AP story printed in The Washington Times

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U.S. launched drone attacks in North Waziristan region of Pakistan

The U.S. launched a major drone attack Tuesday, May 11, in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan to retaliate against Taliban militants in the area where Faisal Shahzad, accused of the attempted Times Square bombing, is said to have trained, the Financial Times reported.

Two targets were hit: a vehicle driving three militants through a village and a nearby compound used for training recruits, the Financial Times reported.

A Pakistani intelligence official told the newspaper that the attack was “Washington’s payback” because the U.S. claimed Shahzad is connected to Taliban militants and is said to have trained in the region.

CNN reported that local Pakistani officials said the area is controlled by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a “renowned commander and shrewd tactician” who “has been close to al-Qaida and another terror group known as the Haqqani Network.”

In a profile published in April 2010 in Foreign Policy magazine by Mansur Khan Mahsud, research coordinator of the FATA Research Center in Islamabad, Bahadur is described as “a strategic pragmatist, maintaining close relations with a host of militants in North Waziristan while avoiding confrontation with the Pakistani state that might initiate a powerful crackdown.” Mahsud also stated that Bahadur is “the most important Pakistani militant leader in North Waziristan.”

The New York Times reported on Tuesday, May 11, that the attacks “appeared to be a continuation of the air campaign to degrade the capabilities of” al-Qaida, the Pakistani Taliban and the Afghan Taliban in North Waziristan, raising questions about strained relations between the U.S. and Pakistan.

“You can’t bomb a country increasingly and expect cordial relations at the same time,” an unnamed Pakistan foreign ministry official told the Financial Times.

Further reading: Financial Times story, CNN story, Bahadur profile in Foreign Policy magazine, The New York Times story

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CIA approved to launch more drone strikes in Pakistan

The U.S. government gave the CIA approval to launch more drone strikes against Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters in the tribal regions of Pakistan.

Drone strikes, previously limited to top al Qaeda leaders, have expanded to include “low-level fighters whose identities may not be known,” Reuters reported.

CNN reported that “drone-launched missiles are now hitting lower-level al Qaeda and Taliban personnel, camps, training areas, bomb makers, buildings and other targets in the remote region.” It also quotes an unnamed official, who explained that the “expansive target set was originally approved in the final months of the Bush administration in late 2008, but has been stepped up under the Obama White House.” CNN also reports that increased drone strikes are ” seen as a key strategy to help protect the growing number of U.S. forces in neighboring Afghanistan from insurgents operating in Pakistan’s border region.”

The Los Angeles Times reported that the expanded drone strikes rely on what is called  “pattern of life” analysis, which uses evidence collected by surveillance cameras on the unmanned aircraft and from other sources about individuals and locations. The collected information is used to target suspected militants, the Times reported.

“The enemy has lost not just operational leaders and facilitators — people whose names we know — but formations of fighters and other terrorists. We might not always have their names, but … these are people whose actions over time have made it obvious that they are a threat,” a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official told the Times.

The approval for more drone strikes comes at a time when many inside and outside the government question their legality. Wired’s Danger Room reported that “the connection between the robotic strikes over there and [U.S.] safety here appears to be growing. The Pakistani Taliban, who have claimed credit for the botched Times Square bombing, say the car bomb was in retaliation for drone strikes.” It also reported that drones are just one aspect of the war in Pakistan, echoing a statement made to CNN by  Frances Fragos Townsend, a former homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush, and now a CNN intelligence analyst, that drones are just one tool in the larger strategy.

Further reading: Reuters, CNN, LA Times, Wired’s Danger Room

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Hearing on Examining the Legality of Unmanned Targeting

The National Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee recently held a second hearing on drones, this time focusing on the legal implications of unmanned targeting.

Witnesses included:

  • Professor Kenneth Anderson, Professor, Washington College of Law, American University
  • Professor Mary Ellen O’Connell, Professor, University of Notre Dame Law School
  • Professor David Glazier, Professor, Loyola Law School Los Angeles
  • Professor William Banks, Professor, Syracuse University College of Law

Anderson testified at the first hearing, held March 23, 2010, and he expanded his testimony to include a response to a speech delivered by Harold Koh, the Legal Advisor to the State Department, defending the lawful use of drones in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Anderson raises the legal issues between “armed conflict” verses “self-defense,” the role of the CIA, targeting of U.S. citizens and ways in which Congress can be more involved, calling for Congress to “specifically name the CIA as under the protection, so to speak, of these legal views on self-defense” and that Congress should reject the argument that the use of drones is “illegitimate, dishonorable, unlawful, or an enabler of the US to let loose its unrestrained propensity to use violence.”

Read Anderson’s complete testimony (PDF).

O’Connell’s testimony states that use of drones outside combat zones is unlawful, citing the  United Nations Basic Principles for the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials as setting the international legal standard by which police force is used outside combat zones. She states that the U.S. has “failed to follow these rules by using combat drones in places where no actual armed conflict was occurring or where the U.S. was not involved in the armed conflict.” She references a series of examples, including a C.I.A. drone strike in Yemen in 2002 and attacks in Somalia in 2006. She also points out that labeling terrorists as “enemy combatants” instead of “criminals” puts them in the “same category as America’s own troops on the battlefield. This move to label terrorists combatants is contrary to strong historic trends.” She concludes by saying that drone attacks in Pakistan are seen as fueling terrorism and that in order to quell it, the U.S. must  distinguish itself “through commitment to the rule of law, especially by strict compliance with the rules governinglethal force.”

Read O’Connell’s complete testimony (PDF).

Testimony from Glazier, a 21-year Navy veteran, outlines rules, treaties and conventions dating back to World War II and states that some, like the “requirement to distinguish between lawful military objects of attack and protected civilian persons and objects, remain fully applicable regardless of changing circumstances and can readily be applied even to technological innovations unforeseeable at the time of the rules’ development.” He goes through a multi-part analysis that evaluates the legality of a weapons system, and points out the legal definitions of a combatant versus a civilian. He says that “failure to clearly classify our adversaries within any recognized law of war categorization” is “tantamount to declaring these adversaries to be civilians” which limits the U.S.’s ability to lawfully conduct drone strikes. He, too, points to the difference between military use of drones and the C.I.A.’s use of drones, stating that “CIA personnel are civilians, not combatants, and do not enjoy any legal right to participate in hostilities on our behalf.” This makes them “liable to prosecution under the law of any jurisdiction where attacks occur for any injuries, deaths, or property damage they cause.” He concludes by saying that even though the technology is new, “it is a mistake to assume that old law is therefore inapplicable” and that “the use of CIA personnel to conduct armed attacks clearly fall outside the scope of permissible conduct and ought to be reconsidered.”

Read Glazier’s complete testimony (PDF).

Banks focused his testimony on U.S. laws that govern C.I.A. involvement in unmanned targeting. He provides an overview of drone attacks since the start of the Afghanistan campaign in October of 2001, focusing on attacks by the C.I.A. He also cites Koh’s speech, and asks what counts as “all applicable law” in using drones for targeted attacks. He says that “where the subject is intentional, premeditated killing by the government, the need for clearly understood legal authority is paramount. After all, legal authority is what distinguishes murder from lawful policy.” He provides a summary of acts, executive orders and presidential findings, and how they pertain to drone attacks. He also discusses the same international laws that pertain to self-defense and armed conflict. He concludes by saying that “contemporary laws have not kept up with changes in the dynamics of military conflicts,” and that “Congress would do all of us an important favor by devoting attention to articulating policy and legal criteria for the use of force against non-state terrorists.”

Read Banks complete testimony (PDF).

Further reading: Complete webcast (Windows Media) of “Rise of the Drones II: Examining the Legality of Unmanned Targeting,” opening statement from Chairman John F. Tienry, Statement for the Record from the ACLU,  previous hearing to air issues on the use of drones.

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The Almanac of Al Qaeda from Foreign Policy Magazine

In its May/June 2010 issue, Foreign Policy Magazine has published The Almanac of Al Qaeda, a definitive guide to what is left of the terrorist group.

The Almanac offers detailed accounts, complete with graphs and charts, on a variety of information directly about or related to Al Qaeda, and traces its strategies, successes and failures over the last ten years, and where it may go in the coming decade. The Almanac states that “what emerges is a picture of a terrorist vanguard that is losing the war of ideas in the Islamic world, even as its violent attacks have grown in frequency” though it also points out a “victory” in the War on Terror is incomplete, emphasizing that “small, determined groups can sustain their bloody work for years with virtually no public support.”

Topics covered include:

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