International law also allows states to kill their enemies in a conflict, and to operate in “neutral” countries if the hosts allow bombing on their territory. Pakistan and Yemen have both given their permission to the U.S., albeit quietly. Even if they hadn’t, the U.S. would be justified in attacking enemy sanctuaries there as a matter of self-defense.48
Another Wall Street Journal article, titled “Predators and Civilians: An Intelligence Report Shows How Effective Drone Attacks Are,” similarly makes the case for the drones as the most discriminate and humane way to fight the terrorists:
The argument against drones rests on the belief that the attacks cause wide-scale casualties among noncombatants, thereby embittering local populations and losing hearts and minds. If you glean your information from wire reports—which depend on stringers who are rarely eyewitnesses—the argument seems almost plausible.
Yet anyone familiar with Predator technology knows how misleading those reports can be. Unlike fighter jets or cruise missiles, Predators can loiter over their targets for more than 20 hours, take photos in which men, women and children can be clearly distinguished (burqas can be visible from 20,000 feet) and deliver laser-guided munitions with low explosive yields. This minimizes the risks of the “collateral damage” that often comes from 500-pound bombs. Far from being “beyond the pale,” drones have made war-fighting more humane.49
Dan Goure, vice president of the Lexington Institute, similarly argued that drones are “more precise and careful than other alternatives.” He pointed out that the drones’ capacity to loiter and wait for the right moment to kill their target when there are no civilians around makes them “much more discriminate and therefore moral, ethical, and effective than what we had before.”50 William Saletan made a similar argument in an article titled “In Defense of Drones: They’re the Worst Form of War, Except for All the Others”:
How do drones measure up? Three organizations have tracked their performance in Pakistan. Since 2006, Long War Journal says the drones have killed 150 civilians, compared to some 2,500 members of al-Qaida or the Taliban. That’s a civilian casualty rate of 6 percent. From 2010 to 2012, LWJ counts 48 civilian and about 1,500 Taliban/al-Qaida fatalities. That’s a rate of 3 percent. Drones are like laparoscopic surgery: They minimize the entry wound and the risk of infection. … Over the years, I’ve shared many worries about the rise of drones. But civilian casualties? That’s not an argument against drones. It’s the best thing about them.51
Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein supported this rationale for deploying drones when she said, “What this does is it takes a lot of Americans out of harm’s way … without having to send in a special ops team or drop a 500-pound bomb.”52 Journalist Noah Shachtman similarly argued, “Taken together, it might be the most precise, most sophisticated system for applying lethal force ever developed—the Platonic ideal of how an air war should be run.”53 Georgetown scholar Christine Fair adds,
If we know little about the drone strikes, we know enough about the alternative means of eliminating terrorists in FATA to know that they’re probably worse. Pakistan has no police in FATA to arrest them. The Pakistan army is now in its 13th month of sustained combat in the region, an effort that has flattened communities and displaced millions but done little to chip away at the insurgents’ strength. Drone strikes may not be perfect, but they’re likely the most humane option available.54
Similarly, the Economist opined,
Civil-liberty advocacy groups have raised concerns about targeted killings by drones of suspected terrorists, especially in the case of al-Awlaki, who was an American citizen. But so far, the use of drones has not fundamentally challenged the Geneva Convention–based Law of Armed Conflict. This requires that before an attack, any weapons system (whether manned or unmanned) must be able to verify that targets are legitimate military ones, take all reasonable precautions to minimise civilian harm and avoid disproportionate collateral damage.
As long as a UAS pilot can trust the data from remote sensors and networked information, he or she should be able to make a proper assessment based on the rules of engagement in the same way as the pilot of a manned aircraft. Indeed, because of the unique characteristics of UAS, he may be in a better position to do so. He should have more time to assess the situation accurately, will not be exhausted by the physical battering of flying a jet and will be less affected by the adrenalin rush of combat.55
In other words, drones take away much of the pressure of high-speed combat flying and allow pilots more time to reflect on life-and-death decisions.
But not only Westerners support this perspective. The president of Yemen, Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, has compared the advanced drones hunting al Qaeda to his country’s clumsy MiG fighter-bombers. After saying that he personally approves of every U.S. drone strike in his country, he has added, “They pinpoint the target and have zero margin for error,” and their “electronic brain’s precision is unmatched.”56 An article in the Globe and Mail featured an interview with a Pakistani ISI official who also supported the drone strikes on the basis of their precision and ability to avoid the sort of large numbers of dead civilians and destruction that all too often stemmed from full-scale Pakistani military operations and aerial bombardments against the Taliban. The paper reported, “Not everybody worries about the drones. Asad Munir, former station chief in Peshawar for Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s leading spy agency, is among many observers who argue that precision strikes cause vastly less damage than the alternative of sending ground forces into Waziristan. Soldiers kill civilians with stray artillery or bombs, he said, whereas the drones only make mistakes when they’re given the wrong intelligence. ‘They don’t make more enemies,’ he said.”57 A Pakistani civilian agreed: “Drones strike with a lot of precision they mostly kill the terrorists, and we are happy with that. It’s our army that fires indiscriminately.”58
Then there is the problem of population displacement that comes from full-scale antiterrorist operations carried out by the Pakistani military as an alternative to pinpoint drone strikes. As the Taliban execute civilians, terrorize populations, burn schools, enforce shariah law contrary to Pakistani laws, dispatch suicide bombers to kill and maim, and attack Pakistani police and military in their jihad against the Pakistani state, the Pakistani army has to respond. The Pakistani army’s resulting clumsy operations against the Taliban in Swat, Bajaur, South Waziristan, and elsewhere have destroyed houses and whole communities with artillery and aerial bombardments. This has forced millions of Pakistanis to flee these zones for their lives. According to John Schmidt, author of The Unraveling: Pakistan in the Age of Jihad, Pakistani military operations against the Taliban in the appropriately named Operation Earthquake in South Waziristan led to the destruction of four thousand homes and the displacement of 200,000 people. Another five thousand homes were destroyed in military operations in Bajaur that displaced 300,000 people. A further 3 million Pakistanis were made refugees by Pakistani military operations in the Swat Valley.59 A Pakistani author from the FATA region summed up the benefits of the drones compared to these full-scale Pakistani army and air force operations:
The people feel comfortable with the drones because of their precision and targeted strikes. People usually appreciate drone attacks when they compare it with the Pakistan Army’s attacks, which always result in collateral damage. Especially the people of Waziristan have been terrified by the use of long-range artillery and air strikes of the Pakistan Army and Air Force. People complain that not a single TTP or al Qaeda member has been killed so far by the Pakistan Army, whereas a lot of collateral damage has taken place. Thousands of houses have been destroyed and hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed by the Pakistan Army.
On the other hand, drone attacks have never targeted the civilian population except, they informed, in one case when the funeral procession of Khwazh Wali, a TTP commander, was hit.60
A survey among Pashtuns from the region found that in contrast to Paki
stani army operations, “the drone attacks cause a minimum loss of innocent civilians and their property. The respondents appreciated the precision of such attacks.”61 The BBC similarly reported, “Zahid, from Wana, in South Waziristan, said: ‘I think the drone strikes are good: they target the right people, the terrorists.’ Bahar Wazir, from Shawal, North Waziristan, said: ‘I prefer the drone attacks to army ground operations, because in the operations we get killed and the [Pakistani] army doesn’t respect the honour of our men or women.’”62 Another Pashtun said, “I have heard people particularly appreciating the precision of drone strikes. People say that when a drone would hover over the skies, they wouldn’t be disturbed and would carry on their usual business because they would be sure that it does not target the civilians, but the same people would run for shelter when a Pakistani jet would appear in the skies because of its indiscriminate firing.”63
An article for the Pakistani Daily Times titled “In Favor of Drone Attacks” reported, “According to the Aryana Institute of [sic] Regional Research and Advocacy, 80 percent of tribals think that drones hit exact targets as pointed out on the basis of authentic information. They compare this with military operations that prove more destructive. In military operations, hundreds of homes are demolished, people are compelled to flee and civilian casualties become a natural thing. They also provide the Taliban with anti-army sentiment.”64
Another interview with Pashtuns from the FATA found,
The reasons why people living in the tribal areas might support drone strikes are rarely heard on Pakistani television. But Safi says they include both dislike of militants and fear of what alternative countert-error strategies entail. …
All the [Pakistani army] ground operations have caused massive population displacements as people fled the conflict areas. Many refugees said they not only feared being caught in the crossfire but also becoming targets of retribution killings by either militants or troops as territory changed hands. … Safi says that he and many others in the tribal areas regard the drones as accurate and much less likely to kill civilians than is ground fighting.65
A Pashtun from the region writing for the Daily Times supported the drone strikes: “What is clear enough is that the drone strikes, however unpopular they may be, are likely to be more popular than the realistic alternatives: the Taliban’s violence or the Pakistani army’s operations, which have displaced millions.”66
As for the Pakistani leadership, they reportedly appreciate the drone strikes, for they save them the Pakistani soldiers’ lives that would surely be lost in fighting against the well-armed militants.67 This is of paramount importance to the Pakistanis, who have lost more soldiers fighting the Taliban than the U.S.-led coalition has lost in Afghanistan. The United States has pressured the Pakistani government to invade North Waziristan (the focus of most drone strikes) to fight the Haqqani Network, but the Pakistanis are already stretched thin from fighting in South Waziristan, Swat Valley, and Bajaur. The drone campaign provides pinpoint killing of terrorists in North Waziristan and saves the Pakistanis from having to launch a full-scale, bloody invasion of this territory, which they consider to be controlled by “good Taliban” (i.e., Taliban fighters who are not at war with the Pakistani state). For that the region’s inhabitants are undoubtedly grateful.
DRONES DON’T VIOLATE PAKISTANI SOVEREIGNTY; AL QAEDA AND THE TALIBAN DO
In October 2011 Pakistani writer Sayeda Asrar Bukhari summed up the feelings of many Pakistanis when he wrote, “Every time America launches a drone attack on our soil, it violates our sovereignty. By using its fight against terrorism as an excuse, America has killed thousands of our innocent citizens in the tribal areas.”68 Many average Pakistanis similarly speak in almost reflexive fashion about drones violating their sovereignty. But, as has been demonstrated in the previous chapters, both their elected leaders (Musharraf, Zardari, and Gilani) and their military leaders have actively supported the drone campaign—so much so that they have allowed the CIA to run drone strikes on the Taliban and al Qaeda from the Shamsi Air Base in Pakistan. If the United States is, or was, allowed to operate on Pakistani soil with Pakistani troops guarding the drone base at Shamsi, their operations cannot be termed a violation of sovereignty. The same certainly cannot be said for al Qaeda or the Taliban, which have openly declared a bloody war on Pakistan and have carved off much of the tribal lands from that state.
Yet many Pakistanis seem to be in a state of denial; they do not want to recognize that the Taliban or foreign al Qaeda fighters are a threat to their nation’s ability to rule its own territory. They see Taliban militants as misunderstood fellow Pakistani Muslims who have been scapegoated by the “imperialist American infidels.” They believe that the drones, not the terrorists, cause the terrorism. The truth, however, is that terrorism and militancy in Pakistan long predated the drone war of 2008. As the 2007 Lal Masjid incident, in which militants tried to take the capital hostage and enforce strict shariah law nationally, clearly demonstrated, the Taliban are very much the enemy of the Pakistani state. More than anything else, the bloody Lal Masjid episode drove the Pakistani Taliban to break its temporary and advantageous “truce” with the Pakistani government and declare a secessionist-terrorist jihad against it. Since then the Taliban and its al Qaeda allies have commenced a suicide bombing war/insurgency on Pakistan that has led to thousands of deaths and have conquered territory within a hundred miles of the Pakistani capital. The Taliban have also enforced its will in places as far away as relatively cosmopolitan Lahore, in the eastern Pakistani province of Punjab, where they forced vendors to burn DVDs and music and demanded the closure of an ancient red light district. These terrorist efforts have nothing to do with the drones or the CIA.
John Schmidt masterfully captured the urgency of the Taliban threat to Pakistan in his recent book:
As the Taliban began to draw nearer to Punjab ordinary Pakistanis began to feel threatened. What had been a distant abstraction now loomed on the horizon as something very real. That was not the way most Pakistanis, the majority of them Barelvi followers of [moderate] Sufi Islam wished to be governed. The Pakistani Taliban were a threat to their way of life. …
The barbarians were literally at the gates. The Pakistani political establishment, civilians and military, had been humiliated. Their policy of concession had been shown to be bankrupt. It suddenly seemed possible that the Pakistani Taliban would bring all the Pashtun lands west of the Indus under their sway.69
In the face of such onslaughts, Pakistani prime minister Yousuf Gilani told reporters in Lahore, “Pakistan is not fighting the war of any other country. The war on terror is in our own interests.”70 Noting this trend, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius wrote,
The Pakistanis have their own heavy score to settle with the Taliban, whose bomb attacks have stretched from Peshawar to Lahore. The Pakistani spy service, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, has been a special target, with attacks on some of its senior officers and regional headquarters. That’s one reason Pakistanis have been cooperative; they’re angry and they want revenge.
“It became personal for the ISI,” said the senior administration official. Enraged by attacks on their colleagues, Pakistani officers have worked closely with the CIA to gather intelligence in tribal areas. The Predator assault “has given the Pakistanis some breathing room,” the administration official said.71
As the internal Taliban menace has become officially recognized by the Pakistani government and military, some in Pakistan have stopped their “violations of sovereignty” boilerplate rhetoric and begun to criticize the Taliban and al Qaeda for threatening their country’s sovereignty. These voices in support of the drone strikes complain that the foreign fighters (Central Asian Uzbeks, Arabs, North Africans, Europeans, etc.) and Taliban militants (including Taliban fighters from Afghanistan) represent the greatest threat to Pakistan’s sovereignty, not their U.S. allies. For example, Syed Alam Meshud, a Peshawar-based political activist who is from Wazi
ristan, said, “To those people sitting in the drawing rooms of Islamabad talking about the sovereignty of Pakistan, we say, ‘What about when Arabs or Uzbeks occupy your village? What about sovereignty then? We compare the drones with Ababeel’—the swallows tasked by God in the Koran to smite an army with rocks. Any weapon which kills these people who damaged my sovereignty is in fact helping the sovereignty of my region.”72 In the same vein, Bashir Ahmad Gwakh, writing for Radio Free Europe, opined,
The fact that Al-Qaeda leaders (including Osama bin Laden, who was living in the garrison city of Abbottabad just a couple of hours’ drive from Islamabad), foreign fighters, and Haqqani-led Afghan Taliban all live in Pakistan damages Pakistani credibility when it asks that drone attacks be stopped in respect of the country’s sovereignty. If American drone strikes violate Pakistani sovereignty, what about all of the foreign militants who not only launch attacks across the border into Afghanistan but are also a huge security threat to the people of Pakistan?73
One Pakistani writing for the Daily Times gave the same argument:
Sovereignty is the complete power to govern a country. … Whatever little control Pakistan’s establishment had there [FATA] is now being put an end to by the TTP, al Qaeda and its offshoots. The Taliban are openly roaming around in FATA, alleged criminals are publicly executed in shariah courts, people are amputated and frequent attacks are being carried out against our army. The demolition of schools has become an old story. … The drones are targeting all those people who are bent upon the real violation of our sovereignty and who are busy in a declared war against our army and state machinery.74
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