Time to End Drone Warfare

At last, someone is breaking the near-unanimous silence in Washington over the utility of unmanned predator drone strikes on suspected militants in the tribal regions of Pakistan. While international law experts have long cried foul over the legality of America's use of targeted assassinations, Washington insiders and senior members of the Obama administration have continued to maintain that the use of missile strikes from unmanned drone airplanes are not only in compliance with international law, but also indispensable to America's effort to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda in the AfPak region.

That is, until now. The New America Foundation, an influential public policy think-tank based in Washington, D.C. has just released an explosive report that raises critical questions about the effectiveness of U.S. drone attacks. Not only does the report suggest that drone strikes may very well violate the principle of proportionality under international law, but it also questions the efficacy of the attacks as a counter terrorism tool altogether.

According to the report, "the U.S. drone strikes don't seem to have had any great effect on the Taliban's ability to mount operations in Pakistan or Afghanistan or to deter potential Western recruits."

No impact on the Taliban's ability to mount operations in Afghanistan or Pakistan? Isn't that the very underpinning of the Obama administration's argument for the necessity of drone warfare?

While predator strikes have indeed been responsible for the killing of many high-level officers in the Taliban and al Qaeda, including the former chief of the Pakistani Taliban Baitullah Mehsud and al Qaeda's external operations chief Saleh al Somali, they also result in an extraordinary amount of civilian casualties, a troubling reality in America's attempt to win over the hearts and minds of the Afghan and Pakistani people in the fight against terrorism.

The precise numbers are difficult to gather, but the report does a laudable job in trying to sift through government propaganda and conflicting media reports in order to compile more reliable statistics on the strategic and humanitarian impact of the drone attacks. The numbers are not pretty: since 2004, 114 reported drone strikes in northwest Pakistan have killed between 830 and 1,210 individuals, only 550-850 of whom have been confirmed to be "militants" (an imprecise term). That leaves for a civilian fatality rate of over 30 percent.

Of course, the exact civilian causality rate is somewhat irrelevant, given that Taliban leaders regularly distort and elevate the number of civilian deaths as a clever propaganda tactic, in order to rile up the Pakistani people and recruit new members to their cause. The strikes are wildly unpopular with the Pakistani people, who view them as violations of their country's national sovereignty, and they have become an invaluable recruiting tool for extremist groups operating in the country.

But, the fact that one out of every three times, a predator drone attack kills an unarmed civilian is simply inexcusable. A core component of the U.S. military's counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan has been going to great lengths to ensure that civilians are protected. Why this has not also been the case in Pakistan is simply beyond comprehension.

If only the Obama administration were listening. President Obama has expanded the use of drone attacks to unprecedented levels, authorizing 51 different strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas in 2009, compared to only 45 strikes carried out during President Bush's entire presidency. We're on pace to shatter that figure in 2010.

The Obama administration continues to maintain that the drone strikes are the only viable option for the United States in confronting the militants based in Pakistan's tribal regions. But, despite the expanded use of predator attacks in 2009, the year saw record levels of Taliban and other militant violence in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, a fact that should make the president think again about whether or not the program is actually an effective tactic in the fight against terrorism.

The strikes have killed hundreds of innocent civilians, have failed to reduce levels of violence, serve as a recruiting tool for the Taliban and other terrorist groups, and may very well be illegal under international law. What more evidence does Washington need that it is time to end drone warfare.

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