This post by Oxford Research Group’s Global Security Consultant, Paul Rogers, was originally posted by openSecurity on 3 July, 2014.

An image grab taken from a propaganda video by jihadist group ISIL shows ISIL militants gathering Iraq. Source: Screenshot from World News Online

The recharged war in Iraq that got underway in June 2014 is moving towards its second month. A remarkable feature of this phase is the formation of a largely unacknowledged coalition of four states opposed to the advance of the extremeSunni paramilitaries across much of northwestern Iraq.

Iran’s involvement is clear enough: senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers are active in Baghdad, and Iranian reconnaissance-drones are being used to aid Iraq’s troubled armed forces. Syria too is active, with Bashar al-Assad’s air-force conducting intermittent (and perhaps largely symbolic) strikes against jihadist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) targets inside Iraq.

This reflects a shift in the Assad regime’s position. As long as ISIL could be considered little more than an irritant in Syria (even if occupying substantial ground), the group had a propaganda value for Damascus, which could project an image of being steadfast in the face of radical Islam and even secure tacit acceptance by western governments in the process.

Now that ISIL is getting stronger and more confident – symbolised in itsdeclaration of an “Islamic State” in the territory it controls – the potential challenge to Damascus’s as well as Baghdad’s security is evident. Assad may therefore continue to encourage periodic cross-border air-raids, but he will also work harder to damage ISIL within Syria.

The late shift

The two other states in this extraordinary anti-ISIL confluence are the United States and Russia. United States forces in the region are being steadily expanded, though it remains difficult to discern the full extent of personnel deployment in Iraq. This is partly because several thousand Americans in Iraq were already in Iraq before the new war erupted –  including diplomats, weapons-technicians and private military contractors. It is sure, however, that three further groups of military personnel are now entering Iraq.

The first is composed of security people (probably around 300 in total) assignedto guard diplomats and civilians; the second (at least 100) to safeguard Baghdad airport, among them probably specialist helicopter-crews available to retrieve aircrew (the potential need is highlighted by the US navy’s regular F-18 reconnaissance sorties off the USS George HW Bush carrier in the Persian Gulf). The third group is troops, mostly special-forces personnel, sent to Baghdad and elsewhere to boost Iraqi government forces in their operations. The key point here is that the overall authority, US Central Command, calculates that its operation is unlikely to yield results for several weeks (see Daniel Wasserbly, “US assesses mission in Iraq, considers military options”, Jane’s Defence Weekly, 2 July 2014). US personnel may already be advising Iraqi army troops in their stalled attempt to retake the city of Tikrit, a political necessity for Nouri al-Maliki’s government to demonstrate that it was seen to be doing something to address a military disaster. But the US military is taking a longer-term view of its work in Iraq.

Russia completes this unlikely anti-ISIS coalition. Its main involvement so far is the provision of a number of Su-25 Frogfoot ground-attack aircraft. The Su-25 is a robust if relatively slow-flying aircraft of the 1970s, roughly analogous to the US’s A-10 Warthog (though less heavily armed). It was widely deployed by the Iraqi air-force in the war with Iran (1980-88), and used by the Soviet air-force in the two Chechen wars (1994-96 and 1999-2002). Few if any survived in Iraqi air-force service after the 1991 war; so it is close to a quarter-century since any Iraqi pilots flew this aircraft – which like all ground-attack planes requires particular skills and much practice. The implication is that if Su-25s are used against ISIL and other militias in the coming weeks, it is near-certain that Russian pilots will fly them.

Thus, both US and Russian forces are preparing to aid the Maliki government at a quite significant level, and may even cooperate more closely than either Washington or Moscow will want to acknowledge. Indeed, that may already be happening: the hundred US troops inserted to help protect Baghdad’s airport will be guarding the very same base from which Su-25s are already flying, no doubt with Russian pilots.

The weeks ahead

An image grab taken from a propaganda video by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant shows the group travelling through Iraq. Source: World News Online (Youtube with Creative Commons license)

If the war is creating strange alliances, a question of timescales may also become relevant as events unfold. Neither US and Russian support for Iraq, nor any from Iran, will have much effect on the situation until mid-July. This means that ISIL’s planners have a short window of opportunity to consolidate their recent gains. Several sources indicate that ISIL already has groups in place in western Baghdad to aid any assault on the city (see “The Iraq Crisis [Part 111]: Is Baghdad at Risk?“, 30 June 2014).

The next two weeks, then, are an acutely dangerous period (see Borzou Daragahi, “Iraqi capital nervously awaits Isis attack“, Financial Times, 1 July 2014). The aim of any ISIS attack will not be to take control of the whole city, for Shi’a militias in the eastern Baghdad districts are strong enough to contest that; instead it will be to damage and demoralise the regime to an extent that Baghdad can’t prevent the Islamic State consolidating itself.

That outcome would give ISIS a further lease of life. It would also be welcomed by many in the region, not least Saudi Arabia. But it would also be no more than a temporary gain in a war which may yet have far more dreadful human consequences.

Paul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University and Global Security Consultant at Oxford Research Group.  He is the author of numerous books including Why We’re Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007), and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010). He is on twitter at: @ProfPRogers

by Isabelle Geuskens, Executive Director of Women Peacemakers Program

Almost 15 years after the first resolution to address women, peace and security, the agenda’s implementation is increasingly subverted by the militarised security paradigm. Implementing UNSCR 1325 has been interpreted as being about fitting women into the current peace and security paradigm and system; rather than about assessing and redefining peace and security through a gender lens. As a result, the opportunity to create a new recipe for peace and security, based on taking women’s perspectives into account, is being lost.

North Darfur Committee on Women session on the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security in Dar El Salaam, Darfur, 2011 Source: UNAMID (Flickr)

Next year we will be celebrating the 15th anniversary of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, the first resolution of seven addressing Women, Peace & Security. In 2000, UNSCR provided the world with a groundbreaking message – providing an important recognition of the crucial role that women have to play in processes of conflict prevention, resolution and peacebuilding, as well as the specific impact of war on women’s and girls’ lives.

The years following its adoption have borne witness to an increase in the amount of interest in the Resolution, as well as in the number of activities dedicated to “1325”, both at civil society and governmental level. However, almost 15 years into actual implementation of UNSCR 1325, we are still facing many challenges. Women’s participation in peace negotiations and peace agreements has remained low. Though some progress has been made in the adoption of UNSCR 1325 National Action Plans (NAPs) and in terms of legal and judicial reforms in some countries; implementation of these policies is often not enforced. Conflict related sexual violence as a deliberate weapon of war still occurs on a large scale and with impunity

Peace and security from a holistic gender perspective

Analyzing and addressing these challenges requires us to go back to the bigger picture. Over the years, the women’s peace movement has observed a growing, and worrying, trend. To a large extent, implementing UNSCR 1325 seems to be interpreted as being about fitting women into the current peace and security paradigm and system; rather than about assessing and redefining peace and security through a gender lens. In other words, “Just Add Women and Stir” has become the maxim as the way to move forward, instead of coming up with a new recipe for peace and security altogether, based on taking women’s perspectives into account.

Such a new recipe would not only impact the lives of women, it would also provide important alternatives for men. The dominant peace and security paradigm is heavily militarized, normalizing the use of armed force and violence as a means to address conflict. This process of militarization incorporates specific gender dynamics, among others pushing men to engage in armed and violent action to solve conflict. Redefining this peace & security paradigm from a holistic gender perspective not only brings in women’s perspectives of what makes up real human security, it also addresses the normalization of violence in patriarchal society and prioritizes conflict prevention as well as nonviolent conflict resolution.

Militarization of Women, Peace & Security

Member of a US Marine Female Engagement Team, Ghazni province, Afghanistan. Source: US Department of Defense

UNSCR 1325 is increasingly being used as a tool to support women’s recruitment into militarized institutions and environments. Though some actors in the women’s movement view the increase of women’s participation in the armed forces as a sign of women’s empowerment and emancipation, others see it as a sign of the increased militarization of society. It is not the question whether women are capable of taking up arms and engaging in military action; for many of us, the discussion is about whether the militarization of women’s lives is beneficial for women and society in general.

Often, the call to increase women’s participation in militarized institutions is backed up by essentialist arguments. One of the arguments given is that “adding women” will somehow challenge its hyper-masculine culture and contribute to both a more humane and a more women-friendly environment. The assumption at work here is that women are naturally less violent than men, and hence might have a soothing effect on the inside and the outside. However, using violence against the enemy is part and parcel of every militarist system. Some of the women combatants WPP has spoken to over the years – whether active within state armies or guerrilla movements – indicated that in order to be taken seriously as a woman fighter, they often presented an even tougher front towards the enemy. They made it clear: a woman in the armed forces is, first and foremost, a fighter. Within any military system – state or non-state – unity is key, and many women in armed forces most certainly do not want to be viewed as special category, because they are working hard to be taken seriously in their role of fighters.

It is also often argued that women’s inclusion will benefit the military mission, as their presence provides access to previously untapped sources of intelligence: women in the community. However, referring to local women in such a manner can be dangerous, as in many situations of conflict, anyone (and in particular women’s groups, whose women’s rights activism might already challenge existing traditional notions around gender) seen interacting closely with (foreign) armed forces is at risk of being labelled a traitor or enemy agent.

A major concern for us is that the above lines of argumentation completely instrumentalize women’s lives and experiences. The arguments also fail to challenge the – patriarchal – status quo by any means: conflict continues to be framed and solved by armed intervention, hence promoting the use of violence to overcome and dominate the enemy “other”.

Missing an opportunity for change

With the 15^th anniversary of UNSCR 1325 around the corner, there are some big questions to be asked. Is the world becoming a safer place if UNSCR 1325 implementation merely focuses on integrating the female half of the population in upholding and promoting militarization? If the focus is narrowed to embedding women firmly within existing systems, are we not missing out on an opportunity for real change? Should UNSCR 1325 not also be about stretching the current peace and security paradigms, about addressing the gendered way that humanity frames and addresses conflict itself, and about investing in disarmament, conflict prevention, human security and alternative conflict resolution mechanisms? As UNSCR 1325 is about gender and peacebuilding, should we not also explore and address men’s gendered experiences of violence and war? Is it not time to  lay bare the connections between war and hyper-masculinity, and thereby show the importance of investing in alternative masculinities to address violent conflict at its roots?

Many women peace activists – some of whom laid the ground work for UNSCR 1325 via the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and their continued mobilizing during the late 90s – have presented us with powerful feminist perspectives on peace and security that challenge current patriarchal paradigms. Their peace work is inextricably linked to calls for disarmament; investment in nonviolent conflict resolution and the prevention of policies of aggression; the need to divert excessive military expenditures to social development, and the promotion of women’s leadership in order to advance a culture of peace.

Now is the time for their claims to be taken serious: violent intervention is not bringing about the desired impact. In their publication “Gender, Conflict and Peace” (2013), Dyan Mazurana and Keith Proctor state: “Contrary to popular belief, the academic literature increasingly argues that a strategy of non-violence is more effective than violence in achieving policy goals. According to data analyzed by Stephan and Chenoweth, between 1900 to 2006 non-violent campaigns were successful in achieving their policy goals 53 percent of the time, whereas violent campaigns only had a success rate of 26 percent.”

Nonviolence provides an important alternative to our current thinking about peace and security. Often also referred to as “people power” or “civil courage”, it recognizes that conflict is a fact of life, and can even provide an important opportunity for positive change. The challenge lies in how to frame and address conflict. Instead of the current “Power Over” security model – which is rooted in the use and legitimacy of armed violence to overcome and eliminate the opponent – nonviolence operates on the principle of “Power With”: empowering the people with the idea that peace and security ultimately has to come from the people, which implies that injustice can be successfully addressed when people organize themselves into a nonviolent collective.

For decades now, women peace activists have presented us with feminist analysis and viable alternatives to secure peace for all, challenging the current patriarchal security and peace paradigm. Despite their efforts, their claims and peace work tend to still be largely overlooked– even after 15 years of USNCR 1325. If we truly want to engender peace, we need to broaden and diversify UNSCR 1325 implementation. For only by going back to the bigger picture and applying a holistic gender analysis to peace and security, can we become successful in securing peace and security for all.

Isabelle Geuskens serves as Executive Director of  Women’s Peacemakers Program, a Dutch NGO that works for the nonviolent resolution of conflict, and the inclusion of women’s voice and leadership in nonviolent conflict resolution processes. From 2002-12, she acted as program Manager of WPP at the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR). Under her leadership, WPP started pioneering a program on engaging men for gender sensitive peacebuilding. Prior to taking up this position, Isabelle was active in peacebuilding initiatives in Belfast and in Srebrenica, where she worked for the Working Group Netherlands-Srebrenica. Isabelle holds a Master of Arts from the University of Maastricht.

Featured Image: Female soldier at a shooting range during IDF training, southern Israel  Source: Wikipedia

This article is part of the Remote Control Warfare series, a collaboration with Remote Control, a project of the Network for Social Change hosted by Oxford Research Group.

Drone pilots perform function checks after launching an MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicle Aug. 7 at Balad Air Base, Iraq. Source: Wikipedia

Over-burdened in its requests for continuous surveillance of an expanding battlefield, the US military is increasingly turning to private contractors to fill key roles in its drone operations.

In March this year, US Air Force Secretary Deborah James appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee, looking for a $10 billion funding hike. “I can tell you the number one thing that the combatant commanders say they want from our Air Force is more ISR, ISR, ISR,” she told the committee. “That is the number one priority.”

ISR is Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and encompasses a complex array of functions. It includes spyplanes and drones with special sensors and cameras, the satellites which control them, and the analysts who turn this information into “products”.  It also includes the “distributed common ground system”, an unwieldy term for the network of devices which allows personnel to access this information and the “products” derived from it.

The volumes of data being passed back from surveillance flights is now so vast that the military can no longer deal with it in-house. So, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (‘The Bureau’) found in a six-month investigation, the Pentagon has turned to the private sector to plug the gaps, employing contractors as imagery analysts or “screeners”.

Screening

The screener’s task is not a simple one. Like much of military life, it involves long spells of tedium – twelve hour shifts in front of a screen – interspersed with occasional spikes of activity. But it demands high and continuous levels of concentration. As one screener told us: “A misidentification of an enemy combatant with a weapon and a female carrying a broom can have dire consequences.”

Screeners can have an important safety function in reducing collateral damage – the proverbial “busload of nuns” which appears out of nowhere into the field of fire. But their interpretations of video imagery – “calls”, in military parlance – can also influence drone pilots to take shots. As one screener commented, once you’ve influenced the mentality of the pilot by indicating the presence of something hostile, it’s hard to retract it.

In one notorious incident, the crew of a MQ-1 Predator drone flying over Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province in February 2010 ignored ambiguities in their screeners’ assessments as to whether the trucks they were tracking contained combatants. As a result, at least 15 civilians were killed.

“When you mess up,” The Bureau was told, “people die.”

Contractors

The companies being paid to undertake this work range from industry leviathans like BAE to specialist tech firms like Zel Technologies and Advanced Concepts Enterprises.

Finding out who was performing this work was itself an arduous task. The Department of Defense records thousands of procurement transactions most days every year. From 2009 to the end of 2014 there have been over 8 million transactions between the Pentagon and the private sector. The Bureau analysed these transactions through its own specially constructed database, which allowed it to identify activities relating to ISR and then build up profiles of the contracts and companies carrying out those activities.

Table: US Military Imagery Analysis Contracts since 2010 (click to enlarge)

Data in this table is drawn from public sources including the Federal Procurement Data System (fpds.gov), Federal Business Opportunities (fbo.gov) and contractual material released under the Freedom of Information Act. Business information is taken from Bloomberg, Hoovers and Orbis.
Companies named in the reporting but not included in this table are BAE, Booz Allen Hamilton and Advanced Concepts Enterprises. The Bureau has documented evidence of their involvement in ISR from sources other than contracts and transaction records.
Click here for the full dataset

The Bureau identified over $260 million of screening transactions. But this is a niche market compared to the wider outsourced ISR effort. The private sector has been operating smaller surveillance drones over Afghanistan and other countries, managing communications between drones and their bases in the US and elsewhere, maintaining data collection systems and servicing sensors, to name just some functions. Procurement costs for these services run into billions of dollars.

Questions of accountability come to the fore in this type of outsourced warfare. Following considerable pressure, the military now publishes figures of contractors on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. But this transparency does not extend to ISR missions conducted in those countries – or elsewhere – from behind computer screens in Florida and Nevada.

From Screening to Targeting?

Although contractors are so far not supposed to have their fingers on the drones’ triggers, fears have been expressed that this distinction might be harder to maintain in practice. One military outsourcing specialist, Laura Dickinson, told us that if the ratio of contractors to government personnel swells, “oversight could easily break down, and the current prohibition on contractors making targeting decisions could become meaningless.”

Shortly after The Bureau published its investigation in The Guardian, the Pentagon announced that it would ramp up the number of ISR missions with ten new contractor-operated MQ-9 Reaper Combat Air Patrols. This puts contractors into the driving seat of large, combat-capable drones for the first time, although the Pentagon says these will be “ISR only”. The private sector’s involvement in drone warfare, it seems, is just taking off.

Crofton Black is a researcher, journalist and writer with extensive experience of complex investigations in the field of human rights abuses and counter-terrorism. He is a leading expert on the CIA’s rendition, detention and interrogation programme and a specialist in military and intelligence corporate contracting. He has a PhD in the history of philosophy from the University of London.

Crofton completed a report for the Remote Control Project last year on the use of contractors in US special forces operations.

by Shazad Ali and Chris Abbott

Strikes by unmanned combat air vehicles, or armed drones, have become the tactic of choice in US counterterrorism efforts in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. But lack of transparency, dubious effectiveness, civilian casualties and negative consequences for US national security means that Washington needs to re-evaluate its approach.

It is the controversy over drone strikes in northwest Pakistan that has bought the issue to public attention. Leaving aside the wider issue of the extrajudicial nature of these killings and the questions over the legality of repeatedly breaching Pakistani airspace, it is the level of civilian casualties that is prompting the most concern.

In a 23 May 2013 national security speech, President Barack Obama asserted that only terrorists are targeted by drones and that ‘there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured’ before any strike is taken. However, independent reports contradict his claims.

From 2004 to date, there have been 376 known US drone strikes in Pakistan. According to the UK-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ), 407 to 926 civilians, including 168 to 200 children, have been killed in these strikes. According to a leaked Pakistani government report cited by the BIJ, at least 147 of 746 people killed in the 75 drone strikes in Pakistan between 2006 and 2009 were civilians. Of those killed, about 94 were children.

Controversial tactics

The high level of civilian casualties is attributable to two key elements of the US drone strike programme: double-tap strikes and signature strikes.

Double-tap strikes use follow up strikes to deliberately target rescuers and first responders who are coming to the aid of those injured in an initial strike. The UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Christof Heyns, and the UN special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, Ben Emmerson, have described the use of double-tap strikes as a possible war crime. Ironically, terrorists in Pakistan are now using their own version of the double-tap strike to target law enforcement personnel in cities such as Karachi: an initial low-intensity blast is used to draw in the emergency services, who are then targeted in a second much larger explosion.

Signature strikes target individuals based on predetermined ‘signatures’ of behaviour that US intelligence links to militant activity. In other words, people are targeted merely on the basis of their behaviour patterns. This is different to personality strikes, which use intelligence to target specific terror suspects. In a June 2013 report that cited classified documents, NBC News revealed that one in four people killed in drone strikes in Pakistan between 3 September 2010 and 30 October 2011 were classified as ‘other militants’ by CIA. This means the CIA were unable to determine the affiliation, if any, of those killed.

Intelligence failures

However, even those strikes directed by intelligence are fallible. Such strikes rely on a mixture of signals intelligence and human intelligence from assets on the ground in Pakistan. The local CIA operatives are notoriously unreliable sources of intelligence.

The doubts over the accuracy of US intelligence have some credence, as there are several cases in which a militant was reported killed in a drone strike only to be declared dead again following a later strike.

For example, the alleged al-Qaeda leader in Pakistan, Ilyas Kashmiri, was reportedly killed in a drone strike in January 2009 and then again in September 2009, though he gave an interview to a Pakistani journalist the next month. Civilians are known to have been harmed in these unsuccessful attacks. In the January attack, 14-year-old Fahim Quershi lost an eye and suffered multiple injuries. In the September 2009 attack, 15-year-old Sadaullah Wazir lost his both legs and an eye. Three of his relatives died in the same attack. Kashmiri was again declared dead in July 2011, which is also contested.

The United States has indeed managed to kill many militants in drone strikes in Pakistan, but these have been mostly low-level targets. According to a September 2012 study by Stanford Law School and New York University’s School of Law, only 2% of militant casualties in drone strikes between 2004 and 2012 were high-value targets.

Justification

There is an important question over congressional oversight of US drone strikes. The Obama administration has refused to provide legal justification of drone strikes to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence despite several requests, according to committee chair Senator Dianne Feinstein. This has created an accountability vacuum and is a significant hurdle in congressional debate on the use of drones.

Following the 9/11 attacks, the US Congress gave the president sweeping powers through the Authorisation to Use Military Force (AUMF). It allows the president to:

‘use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organisations, or persons he determines planned, authorised, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harboured such organisations or persons.’

In that context, drone strikes against al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban are authorised under US law. But it is hard to justify under the AUMF attacks in Pakistan against organisations not involved in 9/11, such as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and the Haqqani network – notwithstanding the transnational nature of and blurred boundaries between some of these groups.

It is also difficult to justify such attacks under the right to self-defence, which cannot be applied prospectively without limit. Nor does it warrant the repeated violations of Pakistan’s airspace, as Pakistan has not been shown to be responsible for any attacks against US interests. According to a leaked US diplomatic cable, Pakistan had, at one point, consented to drone strikes but it is not known whether Washington continues the strikes with Islamabad’s tacit agreement. Publicly, the Pakistani government has denounced the drone strikes, saying they are illegal and a violation of their country’s sovereignty. In September 2013, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told the UN General Assembly that US drone strikes violated his country’s borders and were detrimental to Pakistani counterterrorism efforts. But, in reality, Pakistan has at times been deliberately ambiguous on the issue and the complex nature of civil-military relations in Pakistan and the known links between the ISI and various militant networks make things more complicated.

Unintended consequences

Whatever the legal status of the US drone strike programme in Pakistan, it is clear that it risks several unintended consequences. The United States might have made a prudent military choice in using armed drones rather the special forces for counterterrorism strikes in Pakistan. But the use of drones has backfired in a strategic sense and resulted in serious ‘blowback’.

Chief among these is the radicalising impact US drone strikes are having in Pakistan. Repeated strikes are stoking anti-American sentiments and are a propaganda and recruitment gift to the extremist groups. Pakistan is being destabilised, as the strikes are undermining chances of peace talks between the state and Taliban groups. There are now increasing numbers of terrorist attacks against the Pakistani government by Taliban militants who believe Islamabad has failed to maintain the country’s sovereignty. Furthermore, the United States may be risking further attacks in its own backyard along the lines of the failed 2010 Times Square attack by Pakistani-born US citizen Faisal Shahzad.

Drone strikes in Pakistan may also be complicating the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, as they have resulted in attacks on US forces. The 2009 Camp Chapman attack is a case in point. The al-Qaeda and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan suicide attack used a double agent to target CIA personnel and contractors inside Forward Operating Base Chapman who were responsible for providing intelligence for drone strikes against targets in Pakistan. The attack on the base in Khost province was in revenge for the deaths of three al-Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban leaders who were killed in US drone strikes.

The use of drones by the US has increased the danger of proliferation. Seventy six countries are known to have unmanned aerial vehicles, with approximately 20 countries possessing armed drones (though estimates vary widely). The United States has lowered the threshold for the use of lethal force and pushed back the limits of counterterrorism efforts to include the targeted killing of its enemies abroad. In doing so, they have set a dangerous precedent – one that could easily be followed by other countries. In a September 2013 study, Open Briefing identified 29 different models of armed drone in use with China, India, Iran, Israel, Russia and Turkey – each of which have external security concerns that could justify drones strikes under doctrine modelled on the US approach.

Time for change

The use of double-tap and signature strikes must be ended, as they result in unjustifiably high numbers of civilian casualties. They are the most controversial elements within the already controversial US drone strike. Beyond that, it is time to begin winding in Washington’s unchecked ability to target individuals around the world without due process. Central to this is the revocation of the post-9/11 Authorisation to Use Military Force. For 12 years this has allowed the spread of US military and intelligence operations around the world without accountability and transparency. These operations are increasingly straying from targeting those who ‘planned, authorised, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001’ to simply targeting suspected militants, regardless of their links to al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

Washington can address the democratic deficit inherent in its drone programme by moving responsibility for it from the CIA to the usual chain of command within the US Department of Defense. There must also be proper congressional and judicial oversight of the drone programme, with monitoring by Congress’s intelligence and armed services select committees, in order to remove absolute executive power for the targeted killings.

For its part, Pakistan can retract any tacit approval of US drone strikes and be unequivocal in its opposition to further strikes. This will allow the United Nations and key US allies to use whatever influence they have to press the United States to enact the much needed changes to its drone programme.

Shazad Ali is a contributing analyst at Open Briefing. He is a journalist in Pakistan and pursuing a PhD in European Studies at the University of Karachi. He has been the assistant editor of the Vienna-based journal Perspectives on Terrorism and now serves as a member of its editorial board.

Chris Abbott is the founder and executive director of Open Briefing. He is an Honorary Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Social and International Studies at the University of Bradford and the former deputy director of Oxford Research Group. http://www.openbriefing.org

Featured image: MQ-1 Predator on patrol  Source: Air Force Reserve Command

Image: An MQ-9 Reaper takes off on a mission from Afghanistan. Source: Wikimedia