Hidden History: America's Secret Drone War in Africa | Danger Room. An MQ-9 Reaper in Iraq in 2008. Photo: Air Force More secret bases. More and better unmanned warplanes. More frequent and deadly robotic attacks. Some five years after a U.S. Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle flew the type’s first mission over lawless Somalia, the shadowy American-led drone campaign in the Horn of Africa is targeting Islamic militants more ruthlessly than ever. Thanks to media accounts, indirect official statements, fragmentary crash reports and one complaint by a U.N. monitoring group, we can finally begin to define — however vaguely — the scope and scale of the secret African drone war.
The details that follow are in part conjecture, albeit informed conjecture. Since 2007, Predator drones and the larger, more powerful Reapers — reinforced by Ravens and Scan Eagle UAVs and Fire Scout robot helicopters plus a small number of huge, high-flying Global Hawks — have hunted Somali jihadists on scores of occasions. Pages: 1 2345View All. How Can Targeted Killings Be Justified? - Room for Debate. Ahmed Jabari, the top military commander of Hamas, was killed on Wednesday in Gaza by an Israeli airstrike on his car.Ali Ali/European Pressphoto On Wednesday, Israel began its broadest attack against Gaza in years with a pinpoint airstrike that killed the military leader of Hamas.
In Pakistan and Yemen, the United States has used drones to kill members of Al Qaeda. The legality and morality of such actions, and whether they constitute government-sponsored murder, have long been questioned. Are targeted killings by governments ever appropriate? Read the Discussion » Special Report: How the White House learned to love the drone. Inside the Killing Machine - Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Secret ‘Kill List’ Tests Obama’s Principles. US Drone Strikes, Cyber Attacks Carried Out Under Cover of the Christmas Holiday.
President Obama and national security staff meet on Nov. 14, 2012 (Flickr Photo by The White House) On Christmas Eve, a US drone attacked a vehicle and killed at least two suspected al Qaeda militants in the southern Bayda province of Yemen. The attack happened in the early evening in the country. It was believed a “mid-level al Qaeda Yemeni operative,” Abdel-Raouf Naseeb, was one of the men killed. It was the first strike in Yemen in 47 days, according to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ). A second US drone strike took place later in the night. Gulf News reported five “unidentified people” were killed in an attack on a motorcycle. There was no ceasefire from the Obama administration during the holiday. The same day of these attacks, Washington Post published a feature story on the drone war in Yemen by Sudarsan Raghavan.
Obama signed secret directive on cybersecurity policy in November that may have addressed some of the key questions Sanger included in his book. A dangerous new world of drones. A U.S. Air Force MQ-1 Predator UAV assigned to the California Air National Guard's 163rd Reconnaissance Wing flies near the Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville, California, on January 7, 2012. A model of of the European "Neuron" UAV at the Paris Air Show in Le Bourget, France in 2005. The UAV is an European Research project led by Dassault Aviation.
An MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aircraft vehicle (UAV) sits in a shelter at Joint Base Balad, Iraq, after a mission on November 10, 2008. According to the U.S. A British MQ-9 Reaper sits on a runway on March 17. U.S. An Iranian-made drone is displayed during the Army Day celebrations in Tehran on April 18, 2010. A model of a surveillance drone built by Dassault Aviation and BAE Systems is displayed at the International Paris Air show in 2011. An Israeli Hermes 500 UAV flies over the Hatzerim air force base near Beersheva, Israel, during an air show at the graduation ceremony of Israeli pilots on June 30, 2011. Military drones. Remote U.S. base at core of secret operations. This is the third of three articles. DJIBOUTI CITY, Djibouti — Around the clock, about 16 times a day, drones take off or land at a U.S. military base here, the combat hub for the Obama administration’s counterterrorism wars in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East. Some of the unmanned aircraft are bound for Somalia, the collapsed state whose border lies just 10 miles to the southeast.
Most of the armed drones, however, veer north across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen, another unstable country where they are being used in an increasingly deadly war with an al-Qaeda franchise that has targeted the United States. Camp Lemonnier, a sun-baked Third World outpost established by the French Foreign Legion, began as a temporary staging ground for U.S. Marines looking for a foothold in the region a decade ago. The Obama administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal the legal and operational details of its targeted-killing program. U.S. drone camp in the heart of Djibouti. Prime location. Drone Documents: Why The Government Won’t Release Them. The government has rebuffed attempts by the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times to obtain documents related to drone strikes and targeted killing.
We lay out their argument. A crew chief with the 432d Aircraft Maintenance Squadron performs a pre-flight inspection on an MQ-9 Reaper at Creech Air Force Base in June 2008. (Steve Huckvale/U.S. Air Force) The covert U.S. effort to strike terrorist leaders using drones has moved further out of the shadows this year — targeted killing has been mentioned [1] by President Obama and defended in speeches by Attorney General Eric Holder [2] and Obama counterterrorism adviser John Brennan [3].
But for all the talk, the administration says it hasn't officially confirmed particular strikes or the CIA's involvement. So both the Times and the ACLU sued, claiming that there is widespread acknowledgement by government officials of drones and targeted killing, as well as the CIA's involvement. How the Gov’t Talks About a Drone Program it Won’t Acknowledge Exists. The Obama administration still doesn’t officially acknowledge the CIA’s drone program, a stance that helps shield it from discussing the program’s most controversial elements.
An armed MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aircraft sits in a shelter Oct. 15 at Joint Base Balad, Iraq, before a mission. (U.S. Air Force photo/Tech. Sgt. Erik Gudmundson) Related Interactive: Stacking Up the Administration's Drone Claims [1] Drones have become the go-to weapon of the U.S.’s counter-terrorism strategy, with strikes in Yemen [2] in particular increasing steadily. Administration officials regularly celebrate the drone war’s apparent successes— often avoiding details or staying anonymous, but claiming tacit credit for the U.S. In June, a day after Abu Yahya Al-Libi was killed in Pakistan, White House spokesman Jay Carney trumpeted [4] the death of “Al Qaeda’s Number-Two.” But when it comes to details of that process, the administration clams up. The Targeted-Killing Czar's Powerful Case Against the Drone War - Conor Friedersdorf. John Brennan has more control over who appears on the kill lists than anyone save President Obama.
And even he thinks the CIA can't be trusted. In Djibouti, a small East African country on the Gulf of Aden, the United States launches killer drones that strike in Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere. Last spring, as one of the drones sat on a runway, it suddenly came alive "without any human direction, even though the ignition had been turned off and the fuel lines closed," the Washington Post reports. "Technicians concluded that a software bug had infected the 'brains' of the drone, but never pinpointed the problem. " It's an anecdote that underscores how easily things can go wrong as America rapidly expands drone fleets and missions.
It isn't just that drones are frequently crashing, sometimes on urban neighborhoods in the part of the world where John Brennan, the top counterterrorism adviser to President Obama, says that he's been most successful controlling the unmanned program. Wrong. Obama 'drone-warfare rulebook' condemned by human rights groups | World news. President Barack Obama's administration is in the process of drawing up a formal rulebook that will set out the circumstances in which targeted assassination by unmanned drones is justified, according to reports.
The New York Times, citing two unnamed sources, said explicit guidelines were being drawn up amid disagreement between the CIA and the departments of defense, justice and state over when lethal action is acceptable. Human-rights groups and peace groups opposed to the CIA-operated targeted-killing programme, which remains officially classified, said the administration had already rejected international law in pursuing its drone operations.
"To say they are rewriting the rulebook implies that there isn't already a rulebook" said Jameel Jaffer, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Center for Democracy. "But what they are already doing is rejecting a rulebook – of international law – that has been in place since [the second world war]. " Plan for hunting terrorists signals U.S. intends to keep adding names to kill lists. Although the matrix is a work in progress, the effort to create it reflects a reality setting in among the nation’s counterterrorism ranks: The United States’ conventional wars are winding down, but the government expects to continue adding names to kill or capture lists for years. Among senior Obama administration officials, there is a broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade.
Given the way al-Qaeda continues to metastasize, some officials said no clear end is in sight. “We can’t possibly kill everyone who wants to harm us,” a senior administration official said. “It’s a necessary part of what we do. . . . We’re not going to wind up in 10 years in a world of everybody holding hands and saying, ‘We love America.’ ” That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism.
White House counterterrorism adviser John O. CIA Director David H. The U.S. An evolving database. John O. Brennan on Use of Military Force Against Al Qaeda. Who will drones target? Who in the US will decide? WASHINGTON (AP) — White House counterterror chief John Brennan has seized the lead in guiding the debate on which terror leaders will be targeted for drone attacks or raids, establishing a new procedure to vet both military and CIA targets.
The move concentrates power over the use of lethal U.S. force outside war zones at the White House. The process, which is about a month old, means Brennan's staff consults the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies as to who should go on the list, making a previous military-run review process in place since 2009 less relevant, according to two current and three former U.S. officials aware of the evolution in how the government targets terrorists. In describing Brennan's arrangement to The Associated Press, the officials provided the first detailed description of the military's previous review process that set a schedule for killing or capturing terror leaders around the Arab world and beyond. The new Joint Chiefs chairman, Gen. White House Presses for Drone Rule Book.
U.S. Tightens Drone Rules for Its Pakistan Attacks. Jeremy Scahill and Dennis Kucinich: In Obama’s 2nd Term, Will Dems Challenge U.S. Drones, Killings? Dissecting Obama’s Standard on Drone Strike Deaths. What do we know about how the administration counts killings by drones? A U.S. Predator unmanned drone armed with a missile sets off from its hangar at Bagram air base in 2009. (Bonny Schoonakker/AFP/Getty Images) In a lengthy front-page story [1] last week exploring President Obama's use of drone strikes in countries including Pakistan and Yemen, the New York Times reported that the president had "embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. " Citing "several administration officials," the Times reported that this method "in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants ... unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.
" Human rights groups and others have expressed outrage at the reported counting method. We wanted to lay out exactly what's known (not much) about the apparent policy, what's not (a lot), and what the White House is saying in response to the Times report. Covering Obama’s Secret War. Five Reasons Drone Assassinations are Illegal. US civilian and military employees regularly target and fire lethal unmanned drone guided missiles at people across the world. Thousands of people have been assassinated. Hundreds of those killed were civilians. Some of those killed were rescuers and mourners.
These killings would be criminal acts if they occurred inside the US. Does it make legal sense that these killings would be legal outside the US? Some Facts About Drone Assassinations The US has used drones to kill thousands of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. In Pakistan alone, the New America Foundation reports US forces have launched 297 drone strikes killing at least 1800 people, three to four hundred of whom were not even combatants. Very few of these drone strikes kill high level leaders of terror groups. An investigation by the Wall Street Journal in November 2011 revealed that most of the time the US did not even know the identities of the people being killed by drones in Pakistan.
One. In 1976 U.S. John Brennan Delivers Speech On Drone Ethics. Copyright © 2012 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required. In the first formal acknowledgement of what's been an open secret up till now, White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan publicly stated yesterday that the United States conducts drone strikes targeted on al-Qaida. He did address four issues at the center of the debate over the strikes: ethics, wisdom, the standards use for approval. JOHN BRENNAN: As a matter of international law, the United States is in an armed conflict with al-Qaida, the Taliban and associated forces, in response to the 9/11 attacks, and we may also use force consistent with our inherent right of national self-defense. Second, targeted strikes are ethical. Targeted strikes conform to the principle of necessity, the requirement that the target have definite military value. Targeted strikes are wise.
This reflects his approach to broader questions regarding the use of force. The Efficacy and Ethics of U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy - John Brennan. How Obama’s drone war is backfiring | David Rohde. This essay was originally published in the March/April issue of Foreign Policy. When Barack Obama took the oath of office three years ago, no one associated the phrase “targeted killing” with his optimistic young presidency. In his inaugural address, the 47-year-old former constitutional law professor uttered the word “terror” only once. Instead, he promised to use technology to “harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.” Oddly, technology has enabled Obama to become something few expected: a president who has dramatically expanded the executive branch’s ability to wage high-tech clandestine war. With a determination that has surprised many, Obama has embraced the CIA, expanded its powers and approved more targeted killings than any modern president.
Over the last three years, the Obama administration has carried out at least 239 covert drone strikes, more than five times the 44 approved under George W. Bush. In 2008, I saw this firsthand.