Special Report: How the White House learned to love the
drone
(Reuters) - By all appearances, the Obama administration wanted
him alive, not dead. It posted a $5 million reward for information
leading to the "location, arrest, and/or conviction" of Baitullah
Mehsud, the fierce leader of the Pakistani Taliban, in a March 25,
2009 notice.
World
But delivering Mehsud alive for prosecution was never a serious
option for the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. military
Special Operations teams that track such "high-value" targets. He
was killed less than five months later in a CIA-directed drone
strike.
In the rugged mountains of western Pakistan, missiles launched
by unmanned Predator or Reaper drones have become so commonplace
that some U.S. officials liken them to modern-day "cannon fire."
And they are no longer aimed solely at "high-value" targets like
Mehsud, according to U.S. counterterrorism and defense
officials.
Under a secret directive first issued by former President George
W. Bush and continued by Barack Obama, the CIA has broadly expanded
the "target set" for drone strikes. As a result, what is still
officially classified as a covert campaign on Pakistan's side of
the border with Afghanistan has in many ways morphed into a
parallel conventional war, several experts say.
Killing wanted militants is simply "easier" than capturing them,
said an official, who like most interviewed for this story support
the stepped-up program and asked not to be identified. Another
official added: "It is increasingly the preferred option."
An analysis of data provided to Reuters by U.S. government
sources shows that the CIA has killed around 12 times more
low-level fighters than mid-to-high-level al Qaeda and Taliban
leaders since the drone strikes intensified in the summer of
2008.
Reuters has also learned that Pakistan, though officially
opposed to the strikes, is providing more behind-the-scenes
assistance than in the past.
Beyond the human intelligence that the CIA relies on to identify
targets, Pakistani agents are sometimes present at U.S. bases, and
are increasingly involved in target selection and strike
coordination, current and former U.S. officials said.
Back in Washington, the technology is considered such a success
that the U.S. military has been positioning Reaper drones at a base
in the Horn of Africa.
The aircraft can be used against militants in Yemen and Somalia,
and even potentially against pirates who attack commercial ships
traversing the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, officials
said.
"Everyone has fallen in love with them," a former U.S.
intelligence official said of the drone strikes.
NOWHERE TO PUT THEM
By some accounts, the growing reliance on drone strikes is
partly a result of the Obama administration's bid to repair the
damage to America's image abroad in the wake of Bush-era
allegations of torture and secret detentions.
Besides putting an end to harsh interrogation methods, the
president issued executive orders to ban secret CIA detention
centers and close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
Some current and former counterterrorism officials say an
unintended consequence of these decisions may be that capturing
wanted militants has become a less viable option. As one official
said: "There is nowhere to put them."
A former U.S. intelligence official, who was involved in the
process until recently, said: "I got the sense: 'What the hell do
we do with this guy if we get him?' It's not the primary
consideration but it has to be a consideration."
There are other reasons behind the expansion of the drone
program, including improvements in drone technology.
"Many of the highest priority terrorists are in some of the
remotest, most inaccessible, parts of our planet," one U.S.
official said of why targeted killing has gained favor. "Since
they're actively plotting against us and our allies, you've got two
choices -- kill or capture. When these people are where they are,
and are doing what they're doing, it's just not a tough
decision."
The Obama White House chaffs at suggestions its policies could
make it harder to capture wanted militants.
"Any comment along the lines of 'there is nowhere to put
captured militants' would be flat wrong. Over the past 16 months,
the U.S. has worked closely with its counterterrorism partners in
South Asia and around the world to capture, detain, and interrogate
hundreds of militants and terrorists," a senior U.S. official
said.
As the CIA program in Pakistan expands, the Pentagon's own
targeted killing programs, run by secretive Special Ops and
intelligence units, have also been ramped up under Obama.
"There is little to no pushback" from the White House, according
to one defense official who supports the policy. He said that when
it came to adding wanted militants to top secret target lists, the
Pentagon was getting "all the support it could want," though some
insiders think the military isn't updating the lists fast
enough.
For their part, U.S. officials say the targeted killing programs
have dealt a serious blow to al Qaeda and the Taliban, probably
saving American lives in the process.
But as one former intelligence official, quoting Newton's law of
motion that every action has a reaction, said: there's no way to
know the consequences "upfront."
There are signs that the drone strikes may have become a
rallying cry for many militants and their supporters, including
Faisal Shahzad, the suspect in the attempted car-bombing in New
York's Times Square on May 1. U.S. investigators believe Shahzad
received assistance from the Pakistani Taliban, which had vowed to
avenge the killing of Mehsud.
Likewise, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said its plot to
blow up a U.S. passenger jet on Christmas Day was payback for what
it called U.S. attacks on the group in Yemen.
COMMONPLACE KILLINGS
In a June 2007 debate with his Democratic rivals, then-candidate
Obama spelled out why he believed it would be legal to use a
Hellfire missile to take out Osama bin Laden in Pakistan even if
some innocent civilians would be killed in the process.
"I don't believe in assassinations, but Osama bin Laden has
declared war on us, killed 3,000 people, and under existing law,
including international law, when you've got a military target like
bin Laden, you take him out. And if you have 20 minutes, you do it
swiftly and surely," Obama said.
Obama's saber-rattling about using force in Pakistan was a way
to "demonstrate his national security bona fides" in the middle of
a tough campaign, said Richard Fontaine, a senior fellow at the
Center for a New American Security who served as foreign policy
adviser to Republican Senator John McCain, who lost to Obama in the
2008 election.
Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst, said the Obama
administration ran with the drone program because, when it came to
office, "it found itself with a real al Qaeda threat and one tool
to work with."
"I don't think he (Obama) had really any alternatives. He seized
the tool that was in front of him," said Riedel, who chaired
Obama's strategic review of Afghanistan and Pakistan policy that
was completed in March 2009.
A former U.S. intelligence official said the strategy was
"politically foolproof" because the mainstream candidates on both
sides of the political spectrum "campaigned on who can kill more of
these guys."
Under Obama, the program has grown to such an extent that,
according to a Reuters tally, the nearly 60 missiles fired from the
CIA's drones in Pakistan in the first four months of this year
roughly matched the number fired by all of the drones piloted by
the U.S. military in neighboring Afghanistan -- the recognized war
zone -- during the same time period.
In Pakistan, the pace has jumped to two or three strikes a week,
up roughly fourfold from the Bush years.
Of the 500 militants the agency believes the drones have killed
since the summer of 2008, about 14 are widely considered to be top
tier militant targets, while another 25 are considered
mid-to-high-level organizers.
Independent tallies based on news accounts from the region put
the deathtoll from drones since mid-2008 much higher -- at anywhere
from nearly 700 to around 1,200.
In addition to authorizing the CIA to strike fighters and
leaders linked to Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Pakistani
Taliban, Obama's National Security Council recently took the
program in a new direction by adding an American citizen to the
CIA's hit list -- Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki of Yemen's al Qaeda
in the Arabian Peninsula.
The Obama administration says it has safeguards in place for
identifying what it calls "lawful targets." A U.S. counterterrorism
official said: "Targets are chosen with extreme care... There's no
such thing as a random strike."
But some human rights groups question how robust those
safeguards could be if the CIA is killing hundreds of militants
whose identities are largely unknown. They also worry about
civilians.
A Pakistani intelligence official dealing with South Waziristan
said the vast majority of the deaths were just foot soldiers. "They
hit whoever they get," another intelligence official in North
Waziristan said.
A former U.S. intelligence official said it was unclear what
protocols the CIA was following for targeting foot-soldiers: "If it
becomes a more generalized 'kill anybody' (approach), it degrades
the notion we're going after serious threats to the United States.
It's a slippery slope."
According to U.S. intelligence estimates, no more than 30
non-combatants were killed alongside the 500 militants -- the
equivalent of a little more than 5 percent, or about one out of
every 20. These mainly included family members who live and travel
with the CIA's targets.
The CIA won't disclose how it verifies who's who among the
casualties, but former officials say drones will linger overhead,
in some cases for hours after each strike so the CIA can literally
count the bodies.
To determine who is a civilian, the CIA looks at a number of
indicators, including gender. As a general rule, a woman is counted
as a non-combatant, former officials said.
The Pakistani intelligence officer in North Waziristan said 20
percent of total deaths were civilians or non-combatants, or one in
five.
But others put the figure much higher. "The ratio is getting
better but based on my military experience, there's simply no way"
so few civilians have been killed, Jeffrey Addicott, who served as
the senior legal adviser to the U.S. Army Special Forces, the Green
Berets, said of the U.S. tally.
"For one bad guy you kill, you'd expect 1.5 civilian deaths"
because no matter how good the technology, "killing from that high
above, there's always the 'oops' factor," he said.
'KILL THEM WHEN THEY'RE EATING'
To justify its extensive use of drones in targeted killings,
Obama administration lawyers poured over reams of legal opinions
and findings. They pointed to precedents as far back as World War
Two, when a squadron of U.S. fighter planes tracked and shot down
the airplane carrying the architect of Japan's surprise attack on
Pearl Harbor, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.
"In a different time and place, that action might have been seen
as unchivalrous or unsportsmanlike," Conrad Crane, director of the
U.S. Army Military History Institute, said of the 1943 targeted
killing.
Like technology, battlefield norms "change by year, change by
culture," Crane said. "But taking out enemy leaders is an important
part of warfare and has been going on for millennia."
In a recent speech outlining the Obama administration's position
publicly, Harold Hongju Koh, the State Department's legal adviser,
said: "The United States is in an armed conflict with al Qaeda, as
well as the Taliban and associated forces, in response to the
horrific 9/11 attacks, and may use force consistent with its
inherent right to self-defense under international law."
Scholars say Obama's targeted killing doctrine appears to be
little different from Bush's: Once someone has been deemed a lawful
target, the CIA has no obligation to warn or seek to detain that
person before attacking, said Kenneth Anderson, professor of law at
American University.
Other human rights lawyers argue that even in an armed conflict
zone, individuals may be targeted only if they take a direct part
in fighting. Outside armed conflict zones, they say, international
law permits lethal force to be used only as a last resort, and only
to prevent imminent attacks.
The United States officially bans "assassination" under
Executive Order 12333, issued by President Ronald Reagan on
December 4, 1981, but Koh said "the use of lawful weapons systems
... for precision targeting of specific high-level belligerent
leaders when acting in self-defense or during an armed conflict is
not unlawful, and hence does not constitute 'assassination.'"
Mary Ellen O'Connell of the University of Notre Dame Law School
said: "We just don't have the right to bomb people where there's no
armed conflict," drawing a contrast between Pakistan and
Afghanistan, where U.S. forces are waging a nearly nine-year-old
war.
Even if militants use Pakistan as a staging ground for Afghan
attacks, O'Connell said the sovereign boundary between Pakistan and
Afghanistan must be respected.
"The United States is not fighting in self-defense against
Pakistan. We do not hold Pakistan responsible for cross-border
incursions into Afghanistan and may not, lawfully, use military
force in Pakistan in response to those incursions," she said.
Addicott, the former legal adviser to Army Special Forces,
disagrees: "The battlefield in the 'war on terror' is global and
not restricted to a particular nation. As in World War Two, there
are no national limitations or boundaries. This is war and we are
entitled to kill them anywhere we find them."
"We can kill them when they're eating, we can kill them when
they're sleeping. They are enemy combatants, and as long as they're
not surrendering, we can kill them."
WEIGHING PROS-AND-CONS
Killing senior militants has its drawbacks. Chief among them is
the loss of intelligence that could be gleaned by capturing and
questioning them.
In secret documents from 2007 that were recently made public,
then-CIA director Michael Hayden highlighted the value of capturing
al Qaeda leaders. In an agency document, Hayden details how al
Qaeda lieutenant Abu Zubaydah became "one of our most important
sources of intelligence on al Qaeda" after his March 2002
capture.
Among other things, he helped U.S. authorities identify Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed as the mastermind of the September 11 attacks,
whose interrogation, in turn, led U.S. authorities to other
high-value targets plotting attacks on U.S. soil.
"It is a balance, a difficult balance," a U.S. military official
said. "There's no doubt about it, (targeted killing) impacts your
ability to gather first person intelligence. But it has other
beneficial effects like removing (leadership) capabilities."
Riedel, the former CIA analyst now with the Brookings
Institution, said drone strikes were effective at killing but "the
real homerun is taking a senior leader prisoner who, in the course
of debriefing, leads you to other senior people and opens the door
to a greater insight into the enemy you're facing."
"It's a Catch-22. What do you do with these guys? It's a real
policy dilemma which the Obama administration has yet to address,"
a senior U.S. government official said.
In addition to the closing of Guantanamo, Obama has committed to
transferring responsibility for detention facilities to the Afghan
government.
Another senior U.S. government official cited the arrest in
Pakistan of the Afghan Taliban's top military commander, Mullah
Abdul Ghani Baradar, as an example of the constraints on the CIA
now that its secret "black site" prisons have been closed.
Though Baradar was nabbed in a joint operation with Pakistan's
ISI intelligence service, giving the CIA custody was never an
option. Baradar has started talking but the U.S. government
official said the information flow would be greater were he held in
CIA custody.
U.S. military officials also cite an attack in September 2009 by
helicopter-borne Special Operations Forces on a car in which one of
east Africa's most wanted al Qaeda militants, Kenyan-born Saleh Ali
Saleh Nabhan, was a passenger.
"We may have been able to capture the guy but the decision was
made to kill him," a U.S. defense official said of the Somali
operation. A factor in the decision, the official said, was
uncertainty about "what would we do with him" if he was captured
alive.
In many instances, operations never get off the ground because
of the risks.
A former U.S. intelligence official said there were discussions
late in the Bush administration about the possibility of using
armed drones to help Mexican fight narco-traffickers. But the idea
of "shooting missiles on the outskirts of Mexico City" ran into
opposition, he said.
The Pentagon also considered taking military action in Somalia
as intelligence poured in early last year about pirates
establishing large camps from which they could launch attacks on
commercial ships, counterterrorism and defense officials told
Reuters.
The Navy had gone so far as to draw up plans for "lethal
strikes" on the camps but the idea was nixed in part because of
concerns about civilian casualties and what the U.S. military would
do with those who are injured or captured given the country's
lawless state. Some of the beachfront camps were set up in densely
populated areas.
"The rhetorical question was: Should we go after the base
camps," one official said. "We didn't go to their camps because of
concerns about civilian casualties and about there not being a
government there to turn them over to or to deal with the
aftermath."
NATO's top commander, U.S. Admiral James Stavridis, told Reuters
there were "active discussions" now about "taking actions ashore,"
from promoting development to discourage pirating to "burning
skiffs, taking out camps." He said drones were "part of our
operational footprint wherever we go."
PAKISTAN'S DEEPENING ROLE
An American diplomat tells a story about a meeting he had with
Pakistani parliamentarians that offers a window into the tough
position that nation is in when it comes to the drone attacks.
The message from each lawmaker seemed straightforward: CIA drone
strikes against militants in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan
cause terrible damage and must stop.
Then, in the middle of the session, according to an account
provided to Reuters, one of the parliamentarians slipped the
American guest, who specializes in the region, a handwritten note:
"The people in the tribal areas support the drones. They cause very
little collateral damage. But we cannot say so publicly for reasons
you understand."
U.S. officials say they go along with this "game" understanding
that public acknowledgment of any Pakistani role in the U.S.
targeted killings could have major implications for the government
in Islamabad, already struggling in the face of militant
accusations it is an American puppet.
A former U.S. intelligence official said the CIA was conducting
the drone strikes instead of the U.S. military because the covert
nature of the program gives Islamabad the "fig leaf of
deniability."
"They can't stand up to their own people and say they're in
league with the U.S.," the official said.
Anecdotal evidence cited by U.S. officials suggests that
opposition to the drone strikes is stronger in major population
centers, where the Taliban have less of a presence, than in the
tribal areas, where the Taliban hold sway and the missiles rain
down.
Significantly, U.S. and Pakistani officials say, there have been
no major public protests against them, not even among the tribes
being targeted.
Most of these attacks have targeted militant hideouts in remote
mountainous areas, where there are few if any civilians. A tribal
elder from North Waziristan, who declined to be identified, told
Reuters: "People have chosen silence. They want to get rid of the
Taliban and if the (Pakistani) army cannot do it now, then it
(drone attacks) is fine with them."
"As long as things are moving forward, people's minds are
changing. There is no anger against the strikes as long as
civilians are safe. There have been civilian deaths but not in big
numbers," the elder told Reuters.
Another tribesman, who did not want to be named for safety
reasons, said: "We prefer drone strikes than army operations
because in such operations, we also suffer. But drones hit
militants and it is good for us."
Brigadier Asad Munir, a retired ISI officer, said the drone
attacks have become "routine" in the tribal areas. "If they find 10
targets a day, they will do it. It will not spark any fresh anger,"
Munir said. "People have gotten used to it."
BEHIND THE FACADE
The truth is the CIA would not be able to find the militants in
many cases without the help of Pakistan's spies and informants,
officials say.
"You need guys on the ground to tell you who they (the targets)
are and that isn't coming from some white guy running around the
FATA. That's coming from the Pakistanis," a U.S. official said,
referring to the semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal
Areas along the Afghan border.
A Pakistan security expert, Ikram Sehgal, agreed. He said the
intelligence underpinning the drone strikes has improved precisely
because of increased Pakistani cooperation.
"The drone attacks after May last year have been very targeted
and they have done a lot of good in terms of taking out the bad
guys. And I think that has been possible because of the fact of
Pakistan Army officers being in American camps in Afghanistan
giving that actionable intelligence which is required," he
said.
As the raw intelligence from the drones pours in, Pakistani
intelligence liaisons work directly with CIA and military teams in
Pakistan and Afghanistan to avoid miscommunication with agents and
informants in the field. "We have Pakistanis around to help with
coordination," a U.S. military official said.
But tension remains beneath the surface. While their leaders
cooperate, many in the Pakistani military deeply resent the drone
strikes, complicating efforts to bring Pakistan wholeheartedly on
board in the battle against Islamist militants.
"This is a proud military and many hate the drone program
because it is a constant reminder that they're not in control," a
former U.S. intelligence official said.
CAN DRONES WIN THE WAR?
U.S. intelligence officials proudly tout the drone campaign as
the most precise and possibly humane targeted killing program in
the "history of warfare."
The target selection process is a secret but, according to the
former intelligence official, individuals who are nominated to be
"high-value targets" must be vetted by CIA lawyers to determine if
they pose "a continuing and imminent threat."
The agency often uses specially designed missiles that have a
small blast field with minimal shrapnel to limit "collateral
damage", as unwanted casualties are known in military circles.
Targets are often killed by the concussion created by the
explosion.
Recent advances in drone technology also help to reduce civilian
casualties. A U.S. official said: "Weapons can be steered away at
the last moment if there's any possibility whatsoever that a
non-combatant may be at risk. That speaks to the extreme precision
of this system."
An official who has watched several drone strikes recalled the
precision with which a CIA operator focused one of the drone's
cameras on its target, identifying the wanted man by his missing
left arm. A lawyer is always present, he said.
A senior U.S. government official said the strikes themselves
may be more precise than ever, but target selection was only as
good as the underlying intelligence.
While improved, U.S. officials acknowledge their limited ability
to get first-hand intelligence. They rely heavily on satellite and
drone imagery, and cell phone intercepts.
Even the Pakistanis have had difficulties in the past ensuring a
reliable supply of intelligence in a region where people are often
executed as spies.
One intelligence official estimated that as many as 70 Pakistani
agents had been killed in the tribal areas and, at one point, areas
around Miranshah in North Waziristan, the main Taliban and al Qaeda
hub in the area, had become a black hole in terms of intelligence
collection.
For some, however, it's not the technology or intelligence as
much as the strategy that is flawed.
Addicott, the former legal adviser to Army Special Operations
Forces, asks: "Are we creating more enemies than we're killing or
capturing by our activities? Unfortunately, I think the answer is
yes. These families have 10 sons each. You kill one son and you
create 9 more enemies. You're not winning over the population."
"Drones don't impress them," Addicott added. "In the mind of the
radicals we're cowards, we won't fight face-to-face. This is what
they teach in the madrassas."
He is referring to the pro-Taliban religious schools which help
produce many of the movement's anti-American foot-soldiers.
According to Sehgal, who is chairman of Pathfinder G4S,
Pakistan's largest private security firm, these madrassas turn out
between 7,000 and 15,000 "hard-core" students each year, eclipsing
the number being killed by CIA drones and U.S. forces in
Afghanistan.
Within the intelligence community, the verdict is still out on
whether the CIA's targeted killing of Baitullah Mehsud degraded the
Pakistani Taliban's capabilities -- one of the main objectives in
any targeted killing.
Since his death last August, there have been fewer attacks
against civilians in Pakistan -- 1,019 between August 6, 2009 and
April 30, 2010, compared to 1,875 attacks between October 1, 2008
and August 5, 2009, according to a review of the U.S. National
Counterterrorism Center's database.
But a U.S. counterterrorism official familiar with the data said
the change was likely the result of Pakistani military offensives
against militants in the tribal areas, rather than Mehsud's death,
noting a downward trend in attacks prior to the August drone strike
that killed him.
Baitullah's successor, Hakimullah Mehsud, may be even more
ruthless.
"Although the number of attacks is down compared to before his
death, the lethality is higher resulting in more deaths than normal
for that level of attacks. That might indicate the militants are
trying to maximize causalities or have changed tactics," the
counterterrorism official said.
What is clear is that the issue of whether this military
strategy is succeeding or not is not receiving very much attention
in policy circles in Washington.
John Rizzo, who served as the CIA's top lawyer during the Bush
administration, said he found it odd that while Bush-era
interrogation methods like waterboarding came under sharp scrutiny,
"all the while, of course, there were lethal operations going on,
and think about it, there was never, as far as I could discern,
ever, any debate, discussion, questioning ... the United States
targeting and killing terrorists."
American University's Anderson said that could change if human
rights group seize on the issue. "It could be the whole
interrogation and detention thing all over again," he said.
Because of the sensitivities involved, the president himself has
not brought up the drone controversy in public, with the exception
of a joke at a black-tie dinner on May 1 attended by Washington
journalists, politicians and celebrities.
Calling his two young daughters Sasha and Malia "huge fans" of
the Jonas Brothers band, Obama cautioned the young pop stars:
"Boys, don't get any ideas. I have two words for you -- Predator
drones," the president said to laughter.
"You will never see it coming."
(Additional reporting by Zeeshan
Haider and Kamran Haider in Islamabad, Myra
MacDonald in London and Phil
Stewart and Caren
Bohan in Washington; editing by Jim Impoco and
Claudia
Parsons)
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64H5SL20100518