Revenge of the Drones An Analysis of Drone Strikes in Pakistan
Mike
Revenge of the Drones
An Analysis of Drone Strikes in Pakistan
By Peter Bergen, Katherine Tiedemann, New America Foundation
October 19, 2009
As a result of the unprecedented 41 drone strikes into Pakistan
authorized by the Obama administration, aimed at Taliban and al Qaeda
networks based there, about a half-dozen leaders of militant
organizations have been killed--including two heads of Uzbek terrorist
groups allied with al Qaeda, and Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the
Pakistani Taliban--in addition to hundreds of lower-level militants
and civilians, according to our analysis.[1]
The number of civilian deaths caused by the drones is an important
issue because in the charged political atmosphere of today's Pakistan,
where anti-Americanism is rampant, the drone program is a particular
cause of anger among those who see it as an infringement on Pakistan's
sovereignty. A Gallup poll in August found that only 9 percent of
Pakistanis favored the strikes, while two-thirds opposed them.
An important factor in the controversy over the drones is the
widespread perception that they kill large numbers of Pakistani
civilians. Some commentators have asserted that the overwhelming
majority of casualties are civilians. Amir Mir, a leading Pakistani
journalist, wrote in The News in April that since January 2006,
American drone attacks had killed "687 innocent Pakistani civilians."
A month later, a similar claim was made in the New York Times by
counterinsurgency experts David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum, who wrote
that drone strikes had "killed some 700 civilians. This is 50
civilians for every militant killed, a hit rate of 2 percent." In
other words, in their analysis, 98 percent of those killed in drone
attacks were civilians. Kilcullen and Exum advocated a moratorium on
the strikes because of the "public outrage" they arouse.
A very different picture was presented earlier this month by the Long
War Journal, an American blog that closely tracks terrorist groups, in
particular al Qaeda and the Taliban. Bill Roggio, the editor of Long
War Journal, concluded that according to his close analysis of the
drone strikes, only 10 percent of those killed were civilians.
Our analysis suggests quite different conclusions than those of either
Kilcullen and Exum or the Long War Journal.
But first, a word on our methodology. Our analysis of the drone
campaign is based only on accounts from reliable media organizations
with substantial reporting capabilities in Pakistan. We restricted our
analysis to reports in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall
Street Journal, accounts by major news services and networks--the
Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, CNN, and the BBC--and
reports in the leading English-language newspapers in Pakistan--The
Daily Times, Dawn, and The News--as well as those from Geo TV, the
largest independent Pakistani television network. (Links to all those
individual reports can be found in Appendix 1 of this paper.)
The news organizations we relied upon collectively for our data cover
the drone strikes as accurately and aggressively as possible. And
though we don't pretend that our study is accurate down to the last
civilian death in every drone strike, we posit that our research has
generated some quite reliable data on the number of militant leaders
killed, a fairly good estimate of the number of lower-level militants
killed, and a reliable sense of the real civilian death rate.
Since 2006, our analysis indicates, 82 U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan
have killed between 750 and 1,000 people. Among them were about 20
leaders of al Qaeda, the Taliban, and allied groups, all of whom have
been killed since January 2008. (A list of their names, as well as
links to stories about the drone strikes that targeted them, can be
found in Appendix 1.)
It is not possible to differentiate precisely between militant and
civilian casualties because the militants live among the population
and don't wear uniforms, and because the militants have the incentive
to claim that all the casualties were civilians, while government
sources tend to claim the opposite. However, of those killed in drone
attacks from 2006 through mid-October 2009, between 500 and 700 were
described in reliable press reports as militants, or some 66 to 68
percent.
Based on our count of the estimated number of militants killed, the
real total of civilian deaths since 2006 appears to be in the range of
250 to 320, or between 31 and 33 percent.
That finding tracks with polling by the Aryana Institute for Regional
Research and Advocacy, a think tank that works in the Pakistani tribal
region along the Afghan border where the drone attacks have
consistently taken place. It found that more than half the people
surveyed in the winter of 2008 in this region, which is known as the
Federally Administered Tribal Areas, said the drone strikes were
accurate and were damaging the militant organizations based there.
Under President Obama, the strikes have taken out at most a half-dozen
militant leaders while also killing as many as 530 others. Of those,
around 250 to 400 are reported to have been lower-level militants,
about three quarters, and about a quarter appear to have been
civilians. The strikes appear to have killed a slightly lower
percentage of civilians in the past nine months than during the
earlier years of the American drone campaign in Pakistan.
Obama, far from curtailing the drone program he inherited from
President George W. Bush, has instead dramatically increased the
number of U.S. Predator and Reaper drone strikes. There have been 43
strikes in Pakistan this year (two while Bush was still in office),
compared to 34 in all of 2008. None of the strikes under either Bush
or Obama has targeted Osama bin Laden, who seems to have vanished like
a wraith. U.S. intelligence officials say they have not had a solid
lead on the whereabouts of the al Qaeda leader since the battle of
Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan in December 2001.
The leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, the mastermind
of Benazir Bhutto's December 2007 assassination and many of the
suicide bombings in Afghanistan, was a frequent target of the drone
attacks. Under Obama, according to our analysis, 15 drone strikes
specifically targeted Mehsud.
But he still didn't see it coming. On August 5, Mehsud, a diabetic
former gym instructor, was receiving a leg massage on the roof of a
house in South Waziristan when a drone slammed into his hideout,
killing one of his wives, her father, and the terrorist chief himself.
The Pakistani press was jubilant. "Good Riddance, Killer Baitullah"
was the lead headline in the quality Dawn newspaper. Much of the
previous coverage in Pakistan of U.S. drone strikes in the tribal
region had ranged from critical to downright hostile. But in the case
of Mehsud, U.S. strategic interests and Pakistani interests were
closely aligned because the Pakistani Taliban's victims included not
only Bhutto, the country's most popular politician, but also hundreds
of Pakistani policemen, soldiers, and civilians.
*
By July 2008, Bush administration officials had tired of Pakistan's
unwillingness or inability to capture or kill the ever-expanding
number of militants in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
So they decided to ramp up the CIA's drone program targeting al Qaeda
and Taliban leaders in the tribal regions.
What had particularly alarmed Bush administration officials over the
previous three years was the mounting evidence that al Qaeda and
affiliated groups were using the FATA to train Westerners for attacks
on American and European targets. For instance, the masterminds of the
July 7, 2005, transit system attacks in London, which killed 52
people, had trained in the tribal regions. So too had two Germans and
a Turk who were planning to bomb the U.S. Air Force base in Ramstein,
Germany, in 2007. And, during this period, both Osama bin Laden and
his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who are generally presumed to be
living in or around the FATA, continued to release a stream of audio-
and videotapes demonstrating that al Qaeda's leadership was very much
intact.
Over the summer of 2008, the Bush administration authorized a sharp
increase in the number of drone attacks. In the first six months of
the year there were six such strikes, while in the second half there
were 28.
According to Pakistani and U.S. officials and media accounts, drone
strikes in 2008 killed about a dozen senior or mid-level leaders of al
Qaeda or the Taliban. They included Abu Laith al-Libi, who
orchestrated a 2007 suicide attack at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan
during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney. Al Qaeda's resident
authority on weapons of mass destruction, Abu Khabab al-Masri, was
killed by a strike in South Waziristan in late July, and Abu Haris, al
Qaeda's chief in Pakistan, was felled in September in North
Waziristan.
The drone campaign certainly has hurt al Qaeda's leadership, which
increasingly has had to worry about self-preservation rather than
planning attacks or training recruits. One measure of the pain is the
number of audio- and videotapes that the terrorist group has released
through its propaganda arm, As Sahab ("the clouds" in Arabic). Al
Qaeda takes its propaganda operations seriously and in 2007 As Sahab
had a banner year, releasing almost 100 tapes. But the number dropped
by half in 2008, indicating that the group's leaders were more
concerned with survival than public relations. This year, however, As
Sahab has already released 60 communiqués, according to IntelCenter, a
government contractor that tracks jihadist propaganda, indicating that
al Qaeda's propaganda machine has recovered.
As the drone attacks have put al Qaeda and allied groups under
increased pressure, law enforcement authorities have uncovered few
serious plots against U.S. or European targets that are traceable back
to militants who had trained in Pakistan's tribal regions since the
summer of 2008, when the drone program was first expanded.
A major exception is Najibullah Zazi, a onetime coffee cart operator
on Wall Street who later worked as a shuttle van driver at the Denver
airport. Zazi, an Afghan immigrant, was allegedly planning to launch
this fall what could have been the deadliest terrorist attack in the
United States since 9/11. He had traveled in late August 2008 to
Pakistan, where by his own admission he was trained in explosives by
al Qaeda members in a tribal area along the Afghan border. The FBI
found pages of handwritten notes on Zazi's laptop computer about the
manufacture and initiation of explosives and the components of various
detonators and fusing systems--technical know-how he had picked up at
one of al Qaeda's training facilities between late summer 2008 and
January 2009, a period of intensified drone attacks.
*
Although the drone campaign has certainly killed terrorist leaders, it
also presents a number of tactical and strategic problems that must be
part of the debate about its efficacy.
The first is that the strikes, which almost inevitably kill civilians,
may be on shaky legal ground. Columbia Law School professor Matthew
Waxman points out that this is a tricky judgment call: "The principle
of proportionality says that a military target may not be attacked if
doing so is likely to cause incidental civilian casualties or damage
that would be excessive in relation to the expected military advantage
of the attack.... But there is no consensus on how to calculate these
values (how do you compare the value of civilian lives versus the
value of disrupting high-level terrorist operational planning?) Nor is
there consensus on what imbalance is ‘excessive.' It's very hard to
draw definitive conclusions because it requires assessments about such
things as the expected military gain from neutralizing the target, the
likely civilian harm, and the availability of alternative means of
attacking that could save innocent lives."
Second, conscious that the drone attacks are generally unpopular with
the Pakistani public, militants have used them as an excuse to strike
government targets in the country's Punjabi heartland. The Taliban's
March attack on a Lahore police academy, in which 18 people were
killed, was "in retaliation for the continued drone strikes by the
U.S. in collaboration with Pakistan on our people," Baitullah Mehsud
said at the time. Several weeks later, Hakimullah Mehsud, Baitullah
Mehsud's deputy and now reportedly his successor, told reporters, "We
will continue to launch suicide attacks until U.S. drone attacks are
stopped."
Third, the strikes no longer have the element of surprise. It is
highly unlikely that the drone program will be expanded from FATA into
other, non-tribal regions of Pakistan because of intense Pakistani
opposition to such a move. Understanding that fact, some militants
have undoubtedly moved out of FATA and into safer parts of Pakistan,
potentially further destabilizing the fragile Pakistani state.
Fourth, although drone attacks often kill low-level militants, they
also destroy the computers, cell phones, documents, and "pocket
litter" that can provide myriad other leads to investigators. Dan
Byman of Georgetown University has correctly observed that drone
strikes are a "poor second to arrests [because] dead men tell no
tales."
Fifth, the drone program is a tactic, not a strategy. Bruce Hoffman, a
Georgetown University professor widely regarded as the dean of
terrorism studies, says, "We are deluding ourselves if we think in and
of itself the drone program is going to be the answer." He points out
that the 2006 U.S. airstrike that killed the leader of al Qaeda in
Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, did not exactly shut down the
organization. Following Zarqawi's death, violence in Iraq accelerated.
Sixth, while there is little doubt that the strikes have disrupted al
Qaeda's operations, the larger question is to what extent they may
have increased the appeal of militant groups and undermined the
Pakistani state. This is ultimately a lot more worrisome than anything
that could happen in Afghanistan, given that Pakistan has dozens of
nuclear weapons and is one of the world's most populous countries.
Drone strikes will remain an important tool to disrupt al Qaeda and
Taliban operations and to kill the leaders of these organizations, but
they also consistently kill Pakistani civilians, angering the
population and prompting violent acts of revenge from the Pakistani
Taliban.
For the time being, however, they appear to be the least bad option
the United States has for reducing the threat from Pakistan's
militants, given that an American ground assault into Pakistan's
tribal regions is out of the question, and that U.S. and Pakistani
strategic interests are more closely aligned today than they have been
in years because of the two countries' shared interest in attacking
the Pakistani Taliban and their al Qaeda allies.
[1] This information is accurate as of October 19, 2009.
Attachment Size
appendix2.pdf 18.28 KB
appendix1.pdf 74.38 KB
Jack Linthicum
All this leads me to wonder if the training camps have a "signature".
One of the ways that the ships bringing missiles into Cuba were
identified was the size of their hatches. If the training area has the
overhead swinging and underfoot tire courses then the nearest building
probably serves as either a study and lecture area or a dormitory.
Throw a few missiles into that building just to pick up the reaction.
The houses are probably identified by informants.
Jim Wilkins
wrote:
> ...
>
> All this leads me to wonder if the training camps have a "signature".
If they do it would be counterproductive to reveal it, of course.
The Soviets concealed a major rocket test facility near Moscow as an
appartment complex, using the "water tower" to cool the exhaust and
moving cars away from it during the day and back at night, then
bringing the workers in by bus. It isn't that difficult to record and
analyze signature patterns and make a large installation that you
can't hide appear to be something else.
Cheap corrugated roofing can block almost any surveillance. Looking at
a satellite photo of the neighborhood, I can see the shingled sheds
and tarps next door clearly but not the dull, weathered metal roofs on
mine.
We can't always tell a wedding from an antiaircraft artillery site.
jsw
Jack Linthicum
Where was that Moscow installation?
Jack Linthicum
I see, Khimki, first overflown by a U-2 on July 4, 1956. VERRRRY
secret.
William Black
> On Nov 25, 9:33 am, Mike <yard22...@yahoo.com> wrote:
<big snip>
>> What had particularly alarmed Bush administration officials over the
>> previous three years was the mounting evidence that al Qaeda and
>> affiliated groups were using the FATA to train Westerners for attacks
>> on American and European targets. For instance, the masterminds of the
>> July 7, 2005, transit system attacks in London, which killed 52
>> people, had trained in the tribal regions.
<big snip>
>
> All this leads me to wonder if the training camps have a "signature".
> One of the ways that the ships bringing missiles into Cuba were
> identified was the size of their hatches. If the training area has the
> overhead swinging and underfoot tire courses then the nearest building
> probably serves as either a study and lecture area or a dormitory.
> Throw a few missiles into that building just to pick up the reaction.
> The houses are probably identified by informants.
It doesn't matter.
The people training terrorists to operate in the West seem to have moved...
The last couple of groups the British locked up, including the bunch
that had suicide bombs that didn't explode, and the group that killed
Daniel Pearl, were trained in Jaish-e-Mohammed camps on the Kashmir
border and seem to be Pakistani government sponsored terrorists targeted
on India who just happen to have a sideline.
Of course the USA doesn't operate drones in that area...
After all, this is an area completely under the control of the
Pakistani government...
--
William Black
"Any number under six"
The answer given by Englishman Richard Peeke when asked by the Duke of
Medina Sidonia how many Spanish sword and buckler men he could beat
single handed with a quarterstaff.
Jim Wilkins
wrote:
> On Nov 25, 10:48 am, Jim Wilkins <kb1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The Soviets concealed a major rocket test facility near Moscow as an
>
> Where was that Moscow installation?-
IIRC northeast of Moscow, near the road or railway to St Petersburg. I
read about it in a magazine a few years ago, don't remember which one
and an archive search of my best guess didn't find it.
jsw
Jim Wilkins
wrote:
> On Nov 25, 11:02 am, Jack Linthicum <jacklinthi...@earthlink.net>
> wrote:
> > > The Soviets concealed a major rocket test facility near Moscow as an
> > > appartment complex, >
>
> I see, Khimki, first overflown by a U-2 on July 4, 1956. VERRRRY
> secret.
>
Looks like they photographed the 1942 Khimki engine factory. I haven't
found a construction date for the apartment complex, but the article
was in Popular Science, August 2000:
http://books.google.com/books?id=xA5vzkW8IDsC&pg=PA52&dq=soviet+rocket+apartment#v=onepage&q=soviet%20rocket%20apartment&f=false
http://www.npoenergomash.ru/eng/about/
jsw
Jim Wilkins
> On Nov 25, 11:16 am, Jack Linthicum <jacklinthi...@earthlink.net>
> wrote:
>
> Looks like they photographed the 1942 Khimki engine factory. I haven't
> found a construction date for the apartment complex, but the article
>
> http://www.npoenergomash.ru/eng/about/
>
> jsw
The earliest mention in their timeline of an experimental plant #456
as opposed to the much older factory or design bureau #456 is in Dec
1960. Apparently Factory 456 in Khimki is where they stationed the 23
German V2 (A-4) rocket experts taken from Nordhausen.
jsw
Jack Linthicum
Popular Science. 2000. Khimki. Well known site.
Jack Linthicum
One of the problems of the Soviets, they kept everything so secret
that the NSA expanded to accommodate all the various "fake" addresses
and sites. Khimki was known, believe me. Think of it this way, you
build this super-secret site with the fake apartment buildings and
fake towers that are supposed to fool analysts, and then you send a
series of messages to the management congratulating them on the
completion of their mission. Until U-2 most of U.S. intelligence on
the make up of Soviet management was based on such letters published
in the military press. The place I worked at CIA was called the
Obituary Group.
Jim Wilkins
I can only post what I've seen in print, with attribution. I'm still
working on the 1930's in the Mitrokhin Archive. But I'll gladly listen
to and not reveal private insider details.
jsw
Jack Linthicum
Not from me. There are good open sources, which is what I am talking
about, at
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/index.html
and a discussion of open-source intelligence, about 80% of what is
used,
dott.Piergiorgio
Uhm.... so intelligence Officers and three-star and above Flag/General
Officer should do as the late and lamented Journalist, Indro Montanelli ?
(Montanelli wrote himself his own obituary, if an aspect of OS
intelligence is reading former Officier/Official's obit, should be a
sane custom in military/intelligence community....)
Best regards from Italy,
Dott. Piergiorgio.
dott.Piergiorgio
> I can only post what I've seen in print, with attribution. I'm still
> working on the 1930's in the Mitrokhin Archive. But I'll gladly listen
> to and not reveal private insider details.
<frowning>
AND STAY AWAY OF THE PAPERS INVOLVING ITALY !!!
we have already too many serious troubles caused by political
exploitation of these fucked papers, with lies, liars, forgery, forgers,
smearing, climbing mirrors & glasses, idle speculations, mud-throwing
(and shit-throwing..) &c. around these damned Mithrokhin papers....
best regards from Italy,
Dott. Piergiorgio.
dott.Piergiorgio
well, these studies & discussion has cited the introduction of the
british Naval Review, Year 1913, whose I think was the first (published)
definition of OS intelligence and the best no-nonsense definition of
what should be classified and what not ?
http://www.naval-review.org/pasp/..%5Cissues%5C1913-1.pdf
(the link is rather strange, but actually works, the only issue is that
after the DL in a *nix environment is rather complex the handling of the
file under the shell, and one should rename the file with an X tool or
midnight commander)
Best regards from Italy,
Dott. piergiorigo.