—Hamood
I wish the drones could pick these guys up so that they could be hanged in public.
—QB 2
Yet another triumph of allied forces in the war on terror. Much of the elite leadership of these terrorists has either been killed or captured as a result of joined efforts by the allied forces.
—Yasir Qadeer
If true, this would be an achievement on the scale of eliminating Baitullah Mehsud. This Qari Mehsud was the “Ustad-e-Fedayeen,” the master trainer of suicide bombers. Unfortunately this cockroach has been reported killed before, most recently in January, only to pop up later in a video and resume his threats and vile ways.
—Bangash
Bravo! Drone attacks will have to continue if we want Pakistan to be free of these monster Jihadis.
— Adam13
The successful drone strike on Qari Hussain took out a key Taliban terrorist whose primary mission was to kill civilians with suicide bombings and is as positive a testimony for the drone campaign as any. The killing of Hussain may have saved the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of Pakistanis. It also reaffirmed the message that the CIA had been sending to the militants: that they had gone from being the hunters to the hunted.
The Israelis, who also have a drone program and a long history of hunting their enemies for assassination, have also found that their killing campaigns have had a profound disruptive effect on terrorist activities. According to Daniel Byman,
Israel’s experience shows that a sustained campaign of targeted killings can disrupt a militant group tremendously, as slain leaders are replaced by less experienced and less skilled colleagues. This can lead the group to make operational and strategic mistakes, and over time, pose less of a danger. Moreover, constant killings can create command rivalries and confusion. Most important, the attacks force an enemy to concentrate on defense rather than offense. To avoid becoming targets, group leaders must minimize communications, avoid large groups, constantly change their locations, disperse their cells, and take other steps that make it far harder for them to do the sustained, systematic planning required to build large organizations and carry out sophisticated attacks.14
Did the drone strikes have this effect on the Taliban and al Qaeda in the FATA? The answer seems to be a resounding yes. Whereas the Taliban previously gathered in large numbers to demonstrate their power, hold rallies, plot, train, equip, administer harsh shariah justice, and publicly enforce their writ in the FATA, they can no longer do so thanks to the threat of drones. One FATA resident said, “The Taliban will never gather in large number in broad daylight to be targeted by the drones.”15 David Rohde, the American journalist held captive by the Haqqani Network in North Waziristan, provided the following eyewitness account of the drones’ disruptive effect on terrorist operations:
During my time in the tribal areas, it was clear that drone strikes disrupted militant operations. Taliban commanders frequently changed vehicles and moved with few bodyguards to mask their identities. Afghan, Pakistani, and foreign Taliban avoided gathering in large numbers. The training of suicide bombers and roadside bomb makers was carried out in small groups to avoid detection. …
The drones were terrifying. From the ground, it is impossible to determine who or what they are tracking as they circle overhead. The buzz of a distant propeller is a constant reminder of imminent death. Drones fire missiles that travel faster than the speed of sound. A drone’s victim never hears the missile that kills him.16
The drones’ potential targets have to operate under the assumption that the unseen killers are watching them at all times with an unblinking eye. A writer for Esquire magazine who was embedded with a drone crew in Afghanistan reported,
The insurgents and terrorists hate the drones; that is certainly true. U.S. soldiers drive around Iraq and Afghanistan always waiting, wondering if this will be the moment they blow up. So it is for insurgents. Missiles launched from UAVs are America’s version of the roadside bomb, infecting insurgents with the same paranoia and fear. “He knows we’re there. And when we’re not there, he thinks we might be there,” Colonel Theodore Osowski, who commanded the unit in Kandahar, told me. “It’s kind of like having God overhead. And lightning comes down in the form of a Hellfire.”17
The mere possibility of a strike helps disrupt or prevent terrorist and insurgent activities. The Taliban and al Qaeda cannot, for example, do simple tasks such as drive in SUV convoys or communicate on cell phones, much less transport weapons and openly train without fear of being tracked and killed by unseen killers in the sky. One Taliban commander provided insight into the considerable lengths the militants in the FATA go to just to avoid being detected and killed by the hovering drones:
■ If a drone is heard, fighters must disperse into small groups of no more than four people.
■ Satellite or SMS [short message service, a form of text messaging on mobile phones] forms of communication are no longer used. All communications are done orally or by code.
■ Meetings are announced only at the last minute, with nothing planned in advance in order to avoid leaks. Even senior commanders do not know the precise location of regional commanders.
■ Taliban leaders have reduced the size of their security escorts to one or two men “in whom they have complete confidence.”18
Such security precautions certainly curtailed the Taliban and al Qaeda’s ability to function. Maintaining security precautions in and of itself becomes a time-consuming distraction. A Washington Post article based on interviews in the FATA provides further insight into how the drones have terrorized the terrorists: “Militants who once freely roamed markets and helped settle disputes, tribesmen said, have now receded to compounds. Fighters shun funerals and trackable technology. They rely on motorbikes or their feet to move, pro-Taliban tribesmen said. Insurgent leaders, the highest-value drone targets, move ‘three times in a night,’ said Malik, the Pakistan army commander. ‘The militants are desperate,’ said a Miranshah teacher, 38, adding that residents pray that drones hit their targets.”19
One local official said of the Taliban, “Their freedom of movement has been curtailed to a great extent. This has caused demoralization. There is no discrimination while taking out targets, be they Pakistani Taliban or Al Qaeda and their foreign affiliates.”20 A Pashtun tribal elder reported, “I know that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are very much in trouble because of these attacks. These drone attacks really strike fear in them.”21 The Guardian similarly reported, “In Wana, the capital of south Waziristan, foreign fighters are shunning the bazaars and shops, and locals are shunning the fighters. ‘Before, the common people used to sit with the militants,’ said Wazir. ‘Now they are also afraid.’”22
As reports like this indicate, foreign al Qaeda fighters in particular—but also rank-and-file Taliban members—have become magnets for drone strikes, and the locals are less willing to protect them or give them sanctuary in their homes. It is difficult for the Taliban and al Qaeda to plot new terrorist outrages against Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the West when, as former CIA chief Michael Hayden put it, their sanctuary in the FATA is “neither safe nor a haven.”23 An article in the New York Times vividly captured the disruptive impact the drones have had on the militants’ former safe haven:
Tactics used just a year ago to avoid the drones could not be relied on, [a member of the Taliban] said. It is, for instance, no longer feasible to sleep under the trees as a way of avoiding the drones. “We can’t lead a jungle existence for 24 hours every day,” he said.
Militants now sneak into villages two at a time to sleep, he said. Some homeowners were refusing to rent space to Arabs, who are associated with Al Qaeda, for fear of their families’ being killed by the drones, he said. The militants have abandoned all-terrain vehicles in favor of humdrum public transportation, one of the government supporters said.
The Arabs, who have always preferred to keep at a distance from the locals, have now gone further underground, resort
ing to hide-outs in tunnels dug into the mountainside in the Datta Khel area adjacent to Miram Shah, he said.
“Definitely Haqqani is under a lot of pressure,” the militant said. “He has lost commanders, a brother and other family members.”24
According to one source, Haqqani and his followers, the most active terrorists in eastern Afghanistan, can no longer communicate with al Qaeda by cell phone owing to the threat of drone strikes.25 The terrorists, especially the foreign al Qaeda element, also bemoan the local Pashtun unwillingness to associate with militants who have become lightning rods for drone strikes. Local Pashtun tribesmen also stay away from Taliban militants, who are known to be targets for drone strikes, and this has made the Taliban’s sanctuary less secure. A militant claimed that the Taliban were constantly on the alert for the sound of approaching drones and said, “We now often sleep in the river beds or under the eucalyptus trees.”26
One al Qaeda message lamented the impact of the strikes: “The harm is alarming, the matter is very grave. So many brave commanders have been snatched away by the hands of the enemies. So many homes have been leveled with their people inside them by planes that are unheard, unseen and unknown.”27 This war of attrition has hurt al Qaeda’s ability to plot. According to Jane Mayer,
Surviving militants are forced to operate far more cautiously, which diverts their energy from planning new attacks. And there is evidence that the drone strikes, which depend on local informants for targeting information, have caused debilitating suspicion and discord within the ranks. Four Europeans who were captured last December after trying to join Al Qaeda in Pakistan described a life of constant fear and distrust among the militants, whose obsession with drone strikes had led them to communicate only with elaborate secrecy and to leave their squalid hideouts only at night.28
Many Taliban leaders, fearing local spies, have fled from the tribal areas to cities in non-Pashtun urban areas, such as Quetta in Baluchistan or the southern port town of Karachi, seeking a safer sanctuary. This has put them farther from the field of operations in Afghanistan and the FATA.29 A Saudi terrorist named Najam, for example, lost his legs in the June 2012 drone strike that killed Abu Yahya al Libi and fifteen other militants and was forced to flee Pakistan for his native Saudi Arabia to recuperate.30 Al Qaeda members have also attempted to flee FATA for Yemen to escape the drones.
Noticing this trend, a senior American counterterrorism official said, “The enemy is really, really struggling. These attacks have produced the broadest, deepest and most rapid reduction in al-Qaida senior leadership that we’ve seen in several years.”31 Former CIA director Hayden said, “A significant fraction of al-Qaeda senior leadership in the tribal region has been ‘taken off the battlefield.’”32 Former CIA chief Panetta similarly claimed, “These operations are seriously disrupting al Qaeda. … It’s pretty clear from all the intelligence we are getting that they are having a very difficult time putting together any kind of command and control, that they are scrambling and that we really do have them on the run.”33
Some Pakistanis seemed to agree with this assessment, and a senior Pakistani intelligence official estimated, “Some 60 to 70 percent of the core al Qaeda leadership has been eliminated, dealing a serious blow to the network’s capacity to launch any major attacks on the West.”34 Taliban prisoners have told their interrogators that the drone attacks have taken a psychological toll as well. One source has them saying, “Hey, we’re doing all the dying out here. How much longer can we put up with this?”35 In 2011 an al Qaeda leader admitted, “There were many areas where we once had freedom, but now they have been lost. We are the ones that are losing people, we are the ones facing shortages of resources. Our land is shrinking and drones are flying in the sky.”36
As a result of the attacks, insecurity and distrust grew among al Qaeda members. According to a U.S. official, “They have started hunting down people who they think are responsible. People are showing up dead or disappearing.”37 A second counterterrorism official said, “This last year [2008] has been a very hard year for them. They’re losing a bunch of their better leaders. But more importantly, at this point they’re wondering who’s next.”38
The constant threat of attack or surveillance has forced the Taliban and al Qaeda to dismantle their training camps in favor of hidden classrooms or dugouts in the mountains. One Taliban commander said, “Arab nationals and key al-Qaeda members never stayed together and often spent the nights underground or in caves.”39 A Taliban commander in North Waziristan similarly explained, “In the early days of our jihad, our training camps were visible and people would come and go. We were not so concerned about the security of our locations, but that is all changed now. We abandoned all our old camps and re-located to new places.”40 A Taliban militant added, “We don’t even sit together to chat anymore.”41 Al Qaeda members in particular have also given up on using cell phones as a means of communication for fear that they will be tracked and killed, as Nek Muhammad and countless other terrorists were. The same holds true for Yemen. A Yemeni who was opposed to AQAP and related militants said, “Al Qaeda hates the drones, they’re absolutely terrified of the drones … and that’s why we need them.”42
The deaths of so many high-level al Qaeda leaders has also meant that many mid-level operatives who are inexperienced and lacking direct ties to bin Laden have been elevated to higher positions in the organization. In fact at least three number threes in al Qaeda and three number twos have been killed by drones. Dozens of lower-ranked al Qaeda leaders have also been killed. With each strike their replacements are becoming less skilled and experienced. Intelligence officials report that as a result, the caliber of al Qaeda’s plots has “degraded”; they are now “strikingly amateurish compared with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and other airline plots that followed.”43
According to the Japan Times, the former number three in al Qaeda complained to bin Laden that the drones were killing operatives faster than they could be replaced.44 The Washington Post pointed out that prior to his death, bin Laden had received numerous e-mails from his followers complaining about the toll taken by CIA drones.45 Former White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan summed up his predictions for the drone strikes’ effects on al Qaeda’s ranks saying, “If we hit al-Qaida hard enough and often enough there will come a time when they simply can no longer replenish their ranks with the skilled leaders they need to sustain their operations.”46
In summary, then, perhaps the best argument for the drone strikes is that they work strategically as a means to break down the Taliban and al Qaeda’s ability to kill civilians in the West and in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Drone strikes also act as a critical means of tactical deterrence and have been responsible for killing hundreds, if not thousands, of Taliban and al Qaeda leaders and rank-and-file members. Those who have not been killed have lost their ability to take advantage of their safe haven in the FATA to openly plot and carry out new mass-casualty and insurgent attacks in the region.
The New York Times best summed up the effects of the drone strike on the enemy: “With their ranks thinned by a relentless barrage of drone strikes, some experts believe Al Qaeda’s operatives in Pakistan resemble a driver holding a steering wheel that is no longer attached to a car.”47 The fact that many of the cars that Taliban terrorists drive in Afghanistan and Pakistan are vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs) used to deliberately kill civilians might be the ultimate rationale for continuing the strikes.
DRONES ARE THE SAFEST, MOST HUMANE WAY TO KILL TERRORISTS
Drones are indisputably the most humane, precise, and clean way for the American officials tasked with defending America from al Qaeda terrorists (who have already killed thousands of civilians) to protect the United States, the West, Afghanistan, and Pakistan from future mass-casualty terrorism. This statement is especially true when one considers potential alternative methods, such as arrests (which are not an option because the Pakistanis have forbidden U.S. ground forces on their l
and) or aerial bombardments by clumsy, conventional manned aircraft of the sort used in bombing campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, and Bosnia.
The significant decline in U.S.-Pakistani relations following the September 2009 raid on Musa Nika and the May 2011 Navy SEAL incursion into Pakistan to kill bin Laden also indicate how fraught with political implications unilateral, ground-force operations to kill and capture terrorists are in the sovereign nation of Pakistan. The same certainly holds true for Somalia and Yemen. Even if the Pakistanis allowed U.S. special force raids, the 1993 Black Hawk Down incident in Mogadishu, Somalia, serves as a potent reminder of how disastrous snatch operations can be in human terms. In that incident, eighteen U.S. servicemen were killed and seventy-three wounded while they tried to arrest an enemy warlord in territory held by hostile insurgents.
Remote-control drones, in contrast, do not put our soldiers’ or pilots’ lives at risk, and this is an important distinction given that America has already lost more than six thousand men and women to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In military terms, the drones “project capability without projecting vulnerability.” But most importantly, drones also keep civilian deaths to a minimum, as described in detail in chapter 7. The Wall Street Journal best summed up this argument for relying on the drones:
The case is easy. Not even the critics deny its success against terrorists. Able to go where American soldiers can’t, the Predator and Reaper have since 9/11 killed more than half of the 20 most wanted al Qaeda suspects, the Uzbek, Yemeni and Pakistani heads of allied groups and hundreds of militants. Most of those hits were in the last four years. … The civilian toll is relatively low, especially if compared with previous conflicts. Never before in the history of air warfare have we been able to distinguish as well between combatants and civilians as we can with drones. Even if al Qaeda doesn’t issue uniforms, the remote pilots can carefully identify targets, and then use Hellfire missiles that cause far less damage than older bombs or missiles. Smarter weapons like the Predator make for a more moral campaign. …
Predators Page 22