At least British newspaper editors believe nation-states are supposed to declare war formally and publicly before breezing into a so-called demilitarized zone (Federally Administered Tribal Areas or FATA; not unlike its meta-linguistic cousin, the convenient geographic designation, "Afpak") to drop 300-pound missiles on designated combatants and their families. In the place of working out a deal with an unstable regime operating in the militarized shell of a former dictatorship-avec-parliament (in reference to General Pervez Musharraf). Doesn't mean David Cameron's government is going to want to help impoverished people living in rural Pakistan.
A caveat: Extraordinary Edition would like to editorially acknowledge Islamabad's politicians ... are politicians. Thusly shall they slither and writhe between their constituents and unimaginable power offered them by their counterparts in stronger states. Guardian article appears below.
US secretly shifts armed drones to fight terrorists in Pakistan
The Pentagon and CIA are stepping up America's secret war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan by secretly diverting aerial drones and missiles from Afghanistan.
By Toby Harnden in Washington
Published: 5:23PM BST 03 Oct 2010
Predator drones are flown over Pakistan and intelligence gained is passed to Islamabad
Predator and Reaper drones have been lent by the US military to the CIA as part of a shift in strategy that underlines the Obama administration's view that Pakistan is unable or unwilling to target Islamist sanctuaries on its own soil.
Tensions between the US and Pakistan have flared after a key route used to supply American troops in Afghanistan was shut after three Pakistani soldiers were killed in an attack by a Nato helicopter gunship.
On Friday, insurgents attacked fuel tankers in Pakistan in another indication of the increasing vulnerability of Western supply routes.
The additional drones enabled the CIA to increase the number of strikes in Pakistan in September, averaging five strikes a week that month, up from an average of two to three per week.
This increase in drone activity was partly aimed at disrupting a suspected terrorist plot to strike in Western Europe. Americans officials believe Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders are behind plots potentially aimed at Britain, France and Germany.
American surveillance drones are flown over Pakistan and intelligence gained passed to Islamabad. But Pakistan has formally banned US military operations on its soil, citing the country's sovereignty.
But the CIA has secretly conducted missile strikes launched from drones with Pakistani complicity. This has allowed Pakistan to condemn the strikes, which are strongly opposed by its predominantly anti-American population.
"You have to deal with the sanctuaries," said John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, told the Wall Street Journal. "I've pushed very, very hard with the Pakistanis regarding that." Mr Kerry discussed the issue with Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pakistan's foreign minister, in Washington last week.
The secret arrangement between the Pentagon and CIA underlines the consensus in the Obama administration that safe havens on Pakistani territory near the Afghan border is the major obstacle to success in the war in Afghanistan.
"When it comes to drones, there's no mission more important right now than hitting targets in the tribal areas, and that's where additional equipment's gone," an American official told the Wall Street Journal.
"It's not the only answer, but it's critical to both homeland security and force protection in Afghanistan."
The proposal for the CIA to use military resources emerged during last year's Afghanistan-Pakistan policy review. There was resistance from some at the Pentagon who argued that the drones were needed against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Since taking command in Afghanistan in July, Gen. Petraeus has placed greater focus on the tribal areas of Pakistan, according to military and other government officials.
Showing posts with label Afghanistan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Afghanistan. Show all posts
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Saturday, October 2, 2010
NATO fuel tankers torched in Pakistan
Related Extraordinary Edition post from May, 2010; a Jeremy Scahill story from his blog atthenation.com
This post created on an alert from AlethoNews, "27 NATO fuel tankers destroyed in Pakistan"
Saturday, October 02, 2010
By Karin Brulliard, The Washington Post
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Armed men torched dozens of NATO fuel tankers in southern Pakistan on Friday, police said, as supply convoys remained blocked at a vital entry point to Afghanistan for a second consecutive day.
Police in the town of Shikarpur said 10 "extremists" shot and set fire to at least 30 NATO trucks stopped at a filling station, destroying the vehicles but injuring no one. Much of the fuel and other supplies bound for coalition forces in Afghanistan arrive at the southern port of Karachi, then are trucked north toward border points at Torkham or Chaman.
In the southeastern province of Baluchistan, a truck driver and his assistant were burned alive in a second attack, which targeted a single tanker in a restaurant parking lot, the Associated Press reported. The agency quoted police officer Mohammad Azam as saying "anti-state elements" were behind the attack. He did not name any particular group.
The Torkham pass, in the northwest, remained closed to NATO trucks Friday, one day after Pakistan blocked their passage in apparent retaliation for recent U.S. air incursions into Pakistan, including an airstrike Thursday that allegedly killed three Pakistani soldiers. The incidents drew a strong rebuke from Pakistan and deepened tensions with the United States, an ally.
Pakistan's ambassador to Belgium lodged a protest over the incursions with NATO on Friday, while Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani told parliament that the government "will consider other options if there is interference in the sovereignty of our country."
Lt. Col. John Dorrian, a NATO spokesman in Afghanistan, said Friday that military officials have not yet confirmed that Pakistani border troops were killed in the NATO airstrike. He said the Pakistani border crossing closure has had minimal impact on NATO operations so far. "We're still bringing in a lot of stuff" via supply routes into the landlocked country from the north and south, he said. "There has not been an immediate impact."
A border security official in Pakistan's northwestern region said passenger vehicles and non-NATO supplies were being allowed to pass at Torkham on Friday. The Chaman border crossing remained open to all vehicles, and Pakistani media reported that the NATO trucks burned in Shikarpur were heading in that direction.
It is not uncommon for Islamist insurgents to attack NATO fuel trucks. But the incidents typically occur in the northwestern mountains, where several militant groups are based and wield influence. In the normally placid Chitral district near the Afghan border Thursday, police officials said 200 militants held a dozen policemen hostage and stole their weapons.
This post created on an alert from AlethoNews, "27 NATO fuel tankers destroyed in Pakistan"
Saturday, October 02, 2010
By Karin Brulliard, The Washington Post
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Armed men torched dozens of NATO fuel tankers in southern Pakistan on Friday, police said, as supply convoys remained blocked at a vital entry point to Afghanistan for a second consecutive day.
Police in the town of Shikarpur said 10 "extremists" shot and set fire to at least 30 NATO trucks stopped at a filling station, destroying the vehicles but injuring no one. Much of the fuel and other supplies bound for coalition forces in Afghanistan arrive at the southern port of Karachi, then are trucked north toward border points at Torkham or Chaman.
In the southeastern province of Baluchistan, a truck driver and his assistant were burned alive in a second attack, which targeted a single tanker in a restaurant parking lot, the Associated Press reported. The agency quoted police officer Mohammad Azam as saying "anti-state elements" were behind the attack. He did not name any particular group.
The Torkham pass, in the northwest, remained closed to NATO trucks Friday, one day after Pakistan blocked their passage in apparent retaliation for recent U.S. air incursions into Pakistan, including an airstrike Thursday that allegedly killed three Pakistani soldiers. The incidents drew a strong rebuke from Pakistan and deepened tensions with the United States, an ally.
Pakistan's ambassador to Belgium lodged a protest over the incursions with NATO on Friday, while Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani told parliament that the government "will consider other options if there is interference in the sovereignty of our country."
Lt. Col. John Dorrian, a NATO spokesman in Afghanistan, said Friday that military officials have not yet confirmed that Pakistani border troops were killed in the NATO airstrike. He said the Pakistani border crossing closure has had minimal impact on NATO operations so far. "We're still bringing in a lot of stuff" via supply routes into the landlocked country from the north and south, he said. "There has not been an immediate impact."
A border security official in Pakistan's northwestern region said passenger vehicles and non-NATO supplies were being allowed to pass at Torkham on Friday. The Chaman border crossing remained open to all vehicles, and Pakistani media reported that the NATO trucks burned in Shikarpur were heading in that direction.
It is not uncommon for Islamist insurgents to attack NATO fuel trucks. But the incidents typically occur in the northwestern mountains, where several militant groups are based and wield influence. In the normally placid Chitral district near the Afghan border Thursday, police officials said 200 militants held a dozen policemen hostage and stole their weapons.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Tom Engelhardt on the Perfect American Weapon
"When we possess such weaponry, it turns out, there’s nothing unnerving or disturbing, apocalyptic or dystopian about it. Today, in the American homeland, not a single smoking drone is in sight."
Tom Engelhardt
Article dates back to June 24, 2010
America Detached from War
Bush’s Pilotless Dream, Smoking Drones, and Other Strange Tales from the Crypt
Available on Tomdispatch.com
Admittedly, before George W. Bush had his fever dream, the U.S. had already put its first unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drone surveillance planes in the skies over Kosovo in the late 1990s. By November 2001, it had armed them with missiles and was flying them over Afghanistan.
In November 2002, a Predator drone would loose a Hellfire missile on a car in Yemen, a country with which we weren’t at war. Six suspected al-Qaeda members, including a suspect in the bombing of the destroyer the USS Cole would be turned into twisted metal and ash -- the first “targeted killings” of the American robotic era.
Just two months earlier, in September 2002, as the Bush administration was “introducing” its campaign to sell an invasion of Iraq to Congress and the American people, CIA Director George Tenet and Vice President Dick Cheney “trooped up to Capitol Hill” to brief four top Senate and House leaders on a hair-raising threat to the country. A “smoking gun” had been uncovered.
According to “new intelligence,” Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had in his possession unmanned aerial vehicles advanced enough to be armed with biological and chemical weaponry. Worse yet, these were capable -- so the CIA director and vice president claimed -- of spraying those weapons of mass destruction over cities on the east coast of the United States. It was just the sort of evil plan you might have expected from a man regularly compared to Adolf Hitler in our media, and the news evidently made an impression in Congress.
Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, for example, said that he voted for the administration's resolution authorizing force in Iraq because "I was told not only that [Saddam had weapons of mass destruction] and that he had the means to deliver them through unmanned aerial vehicles, but that he had the capability of transporting those UAVs outside of Iraq and threatening the homeland here in America, specifically by putting them on ships off the eastern seaboard."
In a speech in October 2002, President Bush then offered a version of this apocalyptic nightmare to the American public. Of course, like Saddam’s supposed ability to produce “mushroom clouds” over American cities, the Iraqi autocrat’s advanced UAVs (along with the ships needed to position them off the U.S. coast) were a feverish fantasy of the Bush era and would soon enough be forgotten. Instead, in the years to come, it would be American pilotless drones that would repeatedly attack Iraqi urban areas with Hellfire missiles and bombs.
In those years, our drones would also strike repeatedly in Afghanistan, and especially in the tribal borderlands of Pakistan, where in an escalating “secret” or “covert” war, which has been no secret to anyone, multiple drone attacks often occur weekly. They are now considered so much the norm that, with humdrum headlines slapped on (“U.S. missile strike kills 12 in NW Pakistan”), they barely make it out of summary articles about war developments in the American press.
And yet those robotic planes, with their young “pilots” (as well as the camera operators and intelligence analysts who make up a drone “crew”) sitting in front of consoles 7,000 miles away from where their missiles and bombs are landing, have become another kind of American fever dream. The drone is our latest wonder weapon and a bragging point in a set of wars where there has been little enough to brag about.
CIA director Leon Panetta has, for instance, called the Agency’s drones flying over Pakistan “the only game in town” when it comes to destroying al-Qaeda; a typically anonymous U.S. official in a Washington Post report claims of drone missile attacks, “We’re talking about precision unsurpassed in the history of warfare”; or as Gordon Johnson of the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command told author Peter Singer, speaking of the glories of drones: “They don't get hungry. They are not afraid. They don't forget their orders. They don't care if the guy next to them has been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes.”
Seven thousand of them, the vast majority surveillance varieties, are reportedly already being operated by the military, and that’s before swarms of “mini-drones” come on line. Our American world is being redefined accordingly.
In February, Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post caught something of this process when he spent time with Colonel Eric Mathewson, perhaps the most experienced Air Force officer in drone operations and on the verge of retirement. Mathewson, reported Jaffe, was trying to come up with an appropriately new definition of battlefield “valor” -- a necessity for most combat award citations -- to fit our latest corps of pilots at their video consoles. “Valor to me is not risking your life," the colonel told the reporter. "Valor is doing what is right. Valor is about your motivations and the ends that you seek. It is doing what is right for the right reasons. That to me is valor."
Smoking Drones
These days, CIA and administration officials troop up to Capitol Hill to offer briefings to Congress on the miraculous value of pilotless drones: in disrupting al-Qaeda, destroying its leadership or driving it “deeper into hiding,” and taking out key figures in the Taliban. Indeed, what started as a 24/7 assassination campaign against al-Qaeda’s top leadership has already widened considerably. The “target set” has by now reportedly expanded to take in ever lower-level militants in the tribal borderlands. In other words, a drone assassination campaign is morphing into the first full-scale drone war (and, as in all wars from the air, civilians are dying in unknown numbers).
If the temperature is again rising in Washington when it comes to these weapons, this time it’s a fever of enthusiasm for the spectacular future of drones (which the Air Force has plotted out to the year 2047), of a time when single pilots should be able to handle multiple drones in operations in the skies over some embattled land, and of a far more distant moment when those drones should be able to handle themselves, flying, fighting, and making key decisions about just who to take out without a human being having to intervene.
When we possess such weaponry, it turns out, there’s nothing unnerving or disturbing, apocalyptic or dystopian about it. Today, in the American homeland, not a single smoking drone is in sight.
Now it's the United States whose UAVs are ever more powerfully weaponized. It's the U.S. which is developing a 22-ton tail-less drone 20 times larger than a Predator that can fly at Mach 7 and (theoretically) land on the pitching deck of an aircraft carrier. It's the Pentagon which is planning to increase the funding of drone development by 700% over the next decade.
Admittedly, there is a modest counter-narrative to all this enthusiasm for our robotic prowess, “precision,” and “valor.” It involves legal types like Philip Alston, the United Nations special representative on extrajudicial executions. He recently issued a 29-page report criticizing Washington’s “ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe.” Unless limits are put on such claims, and especially on the CIA’s drone war over Pakistan, he suggests, soon enough a plethora of states will follow in America’s footprints, attacking people in other lands “labeled as terrorists by one group or another.”
Such mechanized, long-distance warfare, he also suggests, will breach what respect remains for the laws of war. “Because operators are based thousands of miles away from the battlefield,” he wrote, “and undertake operations entirely through computer screens and remote audio-feed, there is a risk of developing a 'PlayStation' mentality to killing.”
Similarly, the ACLU has filed a freedom of information lawsuit against the U.S. government, demanding that it “disclose the legal basis for its use of unmanned drones to conduct targeted killings overseas, as well as the ground rules regarding when, where, and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, and the number of civilian casualties they have caused.”
But pay no mind to all this. The arguments may be legally compelling, but not in Washington, which has mounted a half-hearted claim of legitimate “self-defense,” but senses that it’s already well past the point where legalities matter. The die is cast, the money committed. The momentum for drone war and yet more drone war is overwhelming.
It’s a done deal. Drone war is, and will be, us.
A Pilotless Military
If there are zeitgeist moments for products, movie stars, and even politicians, then such moments can exist for weaponry as well. The robotic drone is the Lady Gaga of this Pentagon moment.
It’s a moment that could, of course, be presented as an apocalyptic nightmare in the style of the Terminator movies (with the U.S. as the soul-crushing Skynet), or as a remarkable tale of how “networking technology is expanding a homefront that is increasingly relevant to day-to-day warfare” (as Christopher Drew recently put it in the New York Times). It could be described as the arrival of a dystopian fantasy world of one-way slaughter verging on entertainment, or as the coming of a generation of homegrown video warriors who work “in camouflage uniforms, complete with combat boots, on open floors, with four computer monitors on each desk... and coffee and Red Bull help[ing] them get through the 12-hour shifts.” It could be presented as the ultimate in cowardice -- the killing of people in a world you know nothing about from thousands of miles away -- or (as Col. Mathewson would prefer) a new form of valor.
The drones -- their use expanding exponentially, with ever newer generations on the drawing boards, and the planes even heading for “the homeland” -- could certainly be considered a demon spawn of modern warfare, or (as is generally the case in the U.S.) a remarkable example of American technological ingenuity, a problem-solver of the first order at a time when few American problems seem capable of solution. Thanks to our technological prowess, it’s claimed that we can now kill them, wherever they may be lurking, at absolutely no cost to ourselves, other than the odd malfunctioning drone. Not that even all CIA operatives involved in the drone wars agree with that one. Some of them understand perfectly well that there’s a price to be paid.
As it happens, the enthusiasm for drones is as much a fever dream as the one President Bush and his associates offered back in 2002, but it’s also distinctly us. In fact, drone warfare fits the America of 2010 tighter than a glove. With its consoles, chat rooms, and “single shooter” death machines, it certainly fits the skills of a generation raised on the computer, Facebook, and video games. That our valorous warriors, their day of battle done, can increasingly leave war behind and head home to the barbecue (or, given American life, the foreclosure) also fits an American mood of the moment.
The Air Force “detachments” that “manage” the drone war from places like Creech Air Force Base in Nevada are “detached” from war in a way that even an artillery unit significantly behind the battle lines or an American pilot in an F-16 over Afghanistan (who could, at least, experience engine failure) isn’t. If the drone presents the most extreme version thus far of the detachment of human beings from the battlefield (on only one side, of course) and so launches a basic redefinition of what war is all about, it also catches something important about the American way of war.
After all, while this country garrisons the world, invests its wealth in its military, and fights unending, unwinnable frontier wars and skirmishes, most Americans are remarkably detached from all this. If anything, since Vietnam when an increasingly rebellious citizens’ army proved disastrous for Washington’s global aims, such detachment has been the goal of American war-making.
As a start, with no draft and so no citizen’s army, war and the toll it takes is now the professional business of a tiny percentage of Americans (and their families). It occurs thousands of miles away and, in the Bush years, also became a heavily privatized, for-profit activity. As Pratap Chatterjee reported recently, “[E]very US soldier deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq is matched by at least one civilian working for a private company. All told, about 239,451 contractors work for the Pentagon in battle zones around the world.” And a majority of those contractors aren’t even U.S. citizens.
If drones have entered our world as media celebrities, they have done so largely without debate among that detached populace. In a sense, our wars abroad could be thought of as the equivalent of so many drones. We send our troops off and then go home for dinner and put them out of mind. The question is: Have we redefined our detachment as a new version of citizenly valor (and covered it over by a constant drumbeat of “support for our troops”)?
Under these circumstances, it’s hardly surprising that a “pilotless” force should, in turn, develop the sort of contempt for civilians that can be seen in the recent flap over the derogatory comments of Afghan war commander General Stanley McChrystal and his aides about Obama administration officials.
The Globalization of Death
Maybe what we need is the return of George W. Bush’s fever dream from the American oblivion in which it’s now interred. He was beyond wrong, of course, when it came to Saddam Hussein and Iraqi drones, but he wasn’t completely wrong about the dystopian Drone World to come. There are now reportedly more than 40 countries developing versions of those pilot-less planes. Earlier this year, the Iranians announced that they were starting up production lines for both armed and unarmed drones. Hezbollah used them against Israel in the 2006 summer war, years after Israel began pioneering their use in targeted killings of Palestinians.
Right now, in what still remains largely a post-Cold War arms race of one, the U.S. is racing to produce ever more advanced drones to fight our wars, with few competitors in sight. In the process, we’re also obliterating classic ideas of national sovereignty, and of who can be killed by whom under what circumstances. In the process, we may not just be obliterating enemies, but creating them wherever our drones buzz overhead and our missiles strike.
We are also creating the (il)legal framework for future war on a frontier where we won’t long be flying solo. And when the first Iranian, or Russian, or Chinese missile-armed drones start knocking off their chosen sets of "terrorists," we won’t like it one bit. When the first “suicide drones” appear, we’ll like it even less. And if drones with the ability to spray chemical or biological weapons finally do make the scene, we’ll be truly unnerved.
In the 1990s, we were said to be in an era of “globalization” which was widely hailed as good news. Now, the U.S. and its detached populace are pioneering a new era of killing that respects no boundaries, relies on the self-definitions of whoever owns the nearest drone, and establishes planetary free-fire zones. It’s a nasty combination, this globalization of death.
Tom Engelhardt
Article dates back to June 24, 2010
America Detached from War
Bush’s Pilotless Dream, Smoking Drones, and Other Strange Tales from the Crypt
Available on Tomdispatch.com
Admittedly, before George W. Bush had his fever dream, the U.S. had already put its first unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drone surveillance planes in the skies over Kosovo in the late 1990s. By November 2001, it had armed them with missiles and was flying them over Afghanistan.
In November 2002, a Predator drone would loose a Hellfire missile on a car in Yemen, a country with which we weren’t at war. Six suspected al-Qaeda members, including a suspect in the bombing of the destroyer the USS Cole would be turned into twisted metal and ash -- the first “targeted killings” of the American robotic era.
Just two months earlier, in September 2002, as the Bush administration was “introducing” its campaign to sell an invasion of Iraq to Congress and the American people, CIA Director George Tenet and Vice President Dick Cheney “trooped up to Capitol Hill” to brief four top Senate and House leaders on a hair-raising threat to the country. A “smoking gun” had been uncovered.
According to “new intelligence,” Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had in his possession unmanned aerial vehicles advanced enough to be armed with biological and chemical weaponry. Worse yet, these were capable -- so the CIA director and vice president claimed -- of spraying those weapons of mass destruction over cities on the east coast of the United States. It was just the sort of evil plan you might have expected from a man regularly compared to Adolf Hitler in our media, and the news evidently made an impression in Congress.
Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, for example, said that he voted for the administration's resolution authorizing force in Iraq because "I was told not only that [Saddam had weapons of mass destruction] and that he had the means to deliver them through unmanned aerial vehicles, but that he had the capability of transporting those UAVs outside of Iraq and threatening the homeland here in America, specifically by putting them on ships off the eastern seaboard."
In a speech in October 2002, President Bush then offered a version of this apocalyptic nightmare to the American public. Of course, like Saddam’s supposed ability to produce “mushroom clouds” over American cities, the Iraqi autocrat’s advanced UAVs (along with the ships needed to position them off the U.S. coast) were a feverish fantasy of the Bush era and would soon enough be forgotten. Instead, in the years to come, it would be American pilotless drones that would repeatedly attack Iraqi urban areas with Hellfire missiles and bombs.
In those years, our drones would also strike repeatedly in Afghanistan, and especially in the tribal borderlands of Pakistan, where in an escalating “secret” or “covert” war, which has been no secret to anyone, multiple drone attacks often occur weekly. They are now considered so much the norm that, with humdrum headlines slapped on (“U.S. missile strike kills 12 in NW Pakistan”), they barely make it out of summary articles about war developments in the American press.
And yet those robotic planes, with their young “pilots” (as well as the camera operators and intelligence analysts who make up a drone “crew”) sitting in front of consoles 7,000 miles away from where their missiles and bombs are landing, have become another kind of American fever dream. The drone is our latest wonder weapon and a bragging point in a set of wars where there has been little enough to brag about.
CIA director Leon Panetta has, for instance, called the Agency’s drones flying over Pakistan “the only game in town” when it comes to destroying al-Qaeda; a typically anonymous U.S. official in a Washington Post report claims of drone missile attacks, “We’re talking about precision unsurpassed in the history of warfare”; or as Gordon Johnson of the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command told author Peter Singer, speaking of the glories of drones: “They don't get hungry. They are not afraid. They don't forget their orders. They don't care if the guy next to them has been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes.”
Seven thousand of them, the vast majority surveillance varieties, are reportedly already being operated by the military, and that’s before swarms of “mini-drones” come on line. Our American world is being redefined accordingly.
In February, Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post caught something of this process when he spent time with Colonel Eric Mathewson, perhaps the most experienced Air Force officer in drone operations and on the verge of retirement. Mathewson, reported Jaffe, was trying to come up with an appropriately new definition of battlefield “valor” -- a necessity for most combat award citations -- to fit our latest corps of pilots at their video consoles. “Valor to me is not risking your life," the colonel told the reporter. "Valor is doing what is right. Valor is about your motivations and the ends that you seek. It is doing what is right for the right reasons. That to me is valor."
Smoking Drones
These days, CIA and administration officials troop up to Capitol Hill to offer briefings to Congress on the miraculous value of pilotless drones: in disrupting al-Qaeda, destroying its leadership or driving it “deeper into hiding,” and taking out key figures in the Taliban. Indeed, what started as a 24/7 assassination campaign against al-Qaeda’s top leadership has already widened considerably. The “target set” has by now reportedly expanded to take in ever lower-level militants in the tribal borderlands. In other words, a drone assassination campaign is morphing into the first full-scale drone war (and, as in all wars from the air, civilians are dying in unknown numbers).
If the temperature is again rising in Washington when it comes to these weapons, this time it’s a fever of enthusiasm for the spectacular future of drones (which the Air Force has plotted out to the year 2047), of a time when single pilots should be able to handle multiple drones in operations in the skies over some embattled land, and of a far more distant moment when those drones should be able to handle themselves, flying, fighting, and making key decisions about just who to take out without a human being having to intervene.
When we possess such weaponry, it turns out, there’s nothing unnerving or disturbing, apocalyptic or dystopian about it. Today, in the American homeland, not a single smoking drone is in sight.
Now it's the United States whose UAVs are ever more powerfully weaponized. It's the U.S. which is developing a 22-ton tail-less drone 20 times larger than a Predator that can fly at Mach 7 and (theoretically) land on the pitching deck of an aircraft carrier. It's the Pentagon which is planning to increase the funding of drone development by 700% over the next decade.
Admittedly, there is a modest counter-narrative to all this enthusiasm for our robotic prowess, “precision,” and “valor.” It involves legal types like Philip Alston, the United Nations special representative on extrajudicial executions. He recently issued a 29-page report criticizing Washington’s “ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe.” Unless limits are put on such claims, and especially on the CIA’s drone war over Pakistan, he suggests, soon enough a plethora of states will follow in America’s footprints, attacking people in other lands “labeled as terrorists by one group or another.”
Such mechanized, long-distance warfare, he also suggests, will breach what respect remains for the laws of war. “Because operators are based thousands of miles away from the battlefield,” he wrote, “and undertake operations entirely through computer screens and remote audio-feed, there is a risk of developing a 'PlayStation' mentality to killing.”
Similarly, the ACLU has filed a freedom of information lawsuit against the U.S. government, demanding that it “disclose the legal basis for its use of unmanned drones to conduct targeted killings overseas, as well as the ground rules regarding when, where, and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, and the number of civilian casualties they have caused.”
But pay no mind to all this. The arguments may be legally compelling, but not in Washington, which has mounted a half-hearted claim of legitimate “self-defense,” but senses that it’s already well past the point where legalities matter. The die is cast, the money committed. The momentum for drone war and yet more drone war is overwhelming.
It’s a done deal. Drone war is, and will be, us.
A Pilotless Military
If there are zeitgeist moments for products, movie stars, and even politicians, then such moments can exist for weaponry as well. The robotic drone is the Lady Gaga of this Pentagon moment.
It’s a moment that could, of course, be presented as an apocalyptic nightmare in the style of the Terminator movies (with the U.S. as the soul-crushing Skynet), or as a remarkable tale of how “networking technology is expanding a homefront that is increasingly relevant to day-to-day warfare” (as Christopher Drew recently put it in the New York Times). It could be described as the arrival of a dystopian fantasy world of one-way slaughter verging on entertainment, or as the coming of a generation of homegrown video warriors who work “in camouflage uniforms, complete with combat boots, on open floors, with four computer monitors on each desk... and coffee and Red Bull help[ing] them get through the 12-hour shifts.” It could be presented as the ultimate in cowardice -- the killing of people in a world you know nothing about from thousands of miles away -- or (as Col. Mathewson would prefer) a new form of valor.
The drones -- their use expanding exponentially, with ever newer generations on the drawing boards, and the planes even heading for “the homeland” -- could certainly be considered a demon spawn of modern warfare, or (as is generally the case in the U.S.) a remarkable example of American technological ingenuity, a problem-solver of the first order at a time when few American problems seem capable of solution. Thanks to our technological prowess, it’s claimed that we can now kill them, wherever they may be lurking, at absolutely no cost to ourselves, other than the odd malfunctioning drone. Not that even all CIA operatives involved in the drone wars agree with that one. Some of them understand perfectly well that there’s a price to be paid.
As it happens, the enthusiasm for drones is as much a fever dream as the one President Bush and his associates offered back in 2002, but it’s also distinctly us. In fact, drone warfare fits the America of 2010 tighter than a glove. With its consoles, chat rooms, and “single shooter” death machines, it certainly fits the skills of a generation raised on the computer, Facebook, and video games. That our valorous warriors, their day of battle done, can increasingly leave war behind and head home to the barbecue (or, given American life, the foreclosure) also fits an American mood of the moment.
The Air Force “detachments” that “manage” the drone war from places like Creech Air Force Base in Nevada are “detached” from war in a way that even an artillery unit significantly behind the battle lines or an American pilot in an F-16 over Afghanistan (who could, at least, experience engine failure) isn’t. If the drone presents the most extreme version thus far of the detachment of human beings from the battlefield (on only one side, of course) and so launches a basic redefinition of what war is all about, it also catches something important about the American way of war.
After all, while this country garrisons the world, invests its wealth in its military, and fights unending, unwinnable frontier wars and skirmishes, most Americans are remarkably detached from all this. If anything, since Vietnam when an increasingly rebellious citizens’ army proved disastrous for Washington’s global aims, such detachment has been the goal of American war-making.
As a start, with no draft and so no citizen’s army, war and the toll it takes is now the professional business of a tiny percentage of Americans (and their families). It occurs thousands of miles away and, in the Bush years, also became a heavily privatized, for-profit activity. As Pratap Chatterjee reported recently, “[E]very US soldier deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq is matched by at least one civilian working for a private company. All told, about 239,451 contractors work for the Pentagon in battle zones around the world.” And a majority of those contractors aren’t even U.S. citizens.
If drones have entered our world as media celebrities, they have done so largely without debate among that detached populace. In a sense, our wars abroad could be thought of as the equivalent of so many drones. We send our troops off and then go home for dinner and put them out of mind. The question is: Have we redefined our detachment as a new version of citizenly valor (and covered it over by a constant drumbeat of “support for our troops”)?
Under these circumstances, it’s hardly surprising that a “pilotless” force should, in turn, develop the sort of contempt for civilians that can be seen in the recent flap over the derogatory comments of Afghan war commander General Stanley McChrystal and his aides about Obama administration officials.
The Globalization of Death
Maybe what we need is the return of George W. Bush’s fever dream from the American oblivion in which it’s now interred. He was beyond wrong, of course, when it came to Saddam Hussein and Iraqi drones, but he wasn’t completely wrong about the dystopian Drone World to come. There are now reportedly more than 40 countries developing versions of those pilot-less planes. Earlier this year, the Iranians announced that they were starting up production lines for both armed and unarmed drones. Hezbollah used them against Israel in the 2006 summer war, years after Israel began pioneering their use in targeted killings of Palestinians.
Right now, in what still remains largely a post-Cold War arms race of one, the U.S. is racing to produce ever more advanced drones to fight our wars, with few competitors in sight. In the process, we’re also obliterating classic ideas of national sovereignty, and of who can be killed by whom under what circumstances. In the process, we may not just be obliterating enemies, but creating them wherever our drones buzz overhead and our missiles strike.
We are also creating the (il)legal framework for future war on a frontier where we won’t long be flying solo. And when the first Iranian, or Russian, or Chinese missile-armed drones start knocking off their chosen sets of "terrorists," we won’t like it one bit. When the first “suicide drones” appear, we’ll like it even less. And if drones with the ability to spray chemical or biological weapons finally do make the scene, we’ll be truly unnerved.
In the 1990s, we were said to be in an era of “globalization” which was widely hailed as good news. Now, the U.S. and its detached populace are pioneering a new era of killing that respects no boundaries, relies on the self-definitions of whoever owns the nearest drone, and establishes planetary free-fire zones. It’s a nasty combination, this globalization of death.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Still Killing Without Regard to Target
Article posted to Counterpunch September 9, 2010
Excerpted below are three reasons to read this article on civilians injured and killed by drones while U.S. military and political policy continues to be an increase in the use of drones and acquiesce to charges of human rights violations.
A Ground Zero Reflection
Indefensible Drones
By KATHY KELLY
"Corporate media does little to help ordinary U.S. people understand that the drones which hover over potential targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen create small 'ground zeroes' in multiple locales on an everyday basis."
"Following an alleged Taliban attack on a nearby police station, NATO forces flew overhead to "engage" the militants. If the engagement includes bombing the area under scrutiny, it would be more apt to say that NATO aimed to puree the militants. But in this case, the bombers mistook the children for militants and killed six of them, aged 6 to 12. Local police said there were no Taliban at the site during the attack, only children."
"General Petraeus assures his superiors that the U.S. is effectively using drone surveillance, sensors and other robotic means of gaining intelligence to assure that they are hunting down the right targets for assassination. But survivors of these attacks insist that civilians are at risk. In Afghanistan, thirty high schools have shut down because the parents say that their children are distracted by the drones flying overhead and that it's unsafe for them to gather in the schools."
Excerpted below are three reasons to read this article on civilians injured and killed by drones while U.S. military and political policy continues to be an increase in the use of drones and acquiesce to charges of human rights violations.
A Ground Zero Reflection
Indefensible Drones
By KATHY KELLY
"Corporate media does little to help ordinary U.S. people understand that the drones which hover over potential targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen create small 'ground zeroes' in multiple locales on an everyday basis."
"Following an alleged Taliban attack on a nearby police station, NATO forces flew overhead to "engage" the militants. If the engagement includes bombing the area under scrutiny, it would be more apt to say that NATO aimed to puree the militants. But in this case, the bombers mistook the children for militants and killed six of them, aged 6 to 12. Local police said there were no Taliban at the site during the attack, only children."
"General Petraeus assures his superiors that the U.S. is effectively using drone surveillance, sensors and other robotic means of gaining intelligence to assure that they are hunting down the right targets for assassination. But survivors of these attacks insist that civilians are at risk. In Afghanistan, thirty high schools have shut down because the parents say that their children are distracted by the drones flying overhead and that it's unsafe for them to gather in the schools."
Monday, August 9, 2010
Bagram AFB not resembling Afghanistan withdrawal so far
Wired.com story posted to Common Dreams Aug. 9 ...
U.S. Supersizes Afghan Mega-Base as Withdrawal Date Looms
by Spencer Ackerman
BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan - Anyone who thinks the United States is really going to withdraw from Afghanistan in July 2011 needs to come to this giant air base an hour away from Kabul. There's construction everywhere. It's exactly what you wouldn't expect from a transient presence.
Perhaps the most conspicuous change of all: fresh concrete T-walls fortifying the northern and southern faces of the base. Step off a C-17 cargo plane, as I did very early Friday morning, and you see a flight line packed with planes. When I was last here two years ago, helicopters crowded the runways and fixed-wing aircraft were -- well, if not rare, still a notable sight. Today you've got C-17s, Predators, F-16s, F-15s, MC-12 passenger planes ... I didn't see any of the C-130 cargo craft, but they're here somewhere.
More notable than the overstuffed runways is the over-driven road. Disney Drive, the main thoroughfare that rings the eight-square-mile base, used to feature pedestrians with reflective sashes over their PT uniforms carrying Styrofoam boxes of leftovers out of the mess halls. And those guys are still there.
But now the western part of Disney is a two-lane parking lot of Humvees, flamboyant cargo big-rigs from Pakistan known as jingle trucks, yellow DHL shipping vans, contractor vehicles and mud-caked flatbeds. If the Navy could figure out a way to bring a littoral-combat ship to a landlocked country, it would idle on Disney.
Expect to wait an eternity if you want to pull out onto the road. Cross the street at your own risk.
Then there are all the new facilities. West Disney has a fresh coat of cement -- something that's easy to come by, now that the Turkish firm Yukcel manufactures cement right inside Bagram's walls.
There on the flightline: the skeletons of new hangars. New towers with particleboard for terraces. A skyline of cranes. The omnipresent plastic banner on a girder-and-cement seedling advertising a new project built by cut-rate labor paid by Inglett and Stubbs International.
I haven't been able to learn yet how much it all cost, but Bagram is starting to feel like a dynamic exurb before the housing bubble burst. There was actually a traffic jam this afternoon on the southern side of the base, owing to construction-imposed bottlenecks, something I didn't think possible in late summer 2008.
Perhaps the most conspicuous change of all: fresh concrete T-walls fortifying the northern and southern faces of the base. Insurgents have launched a number of futile attacks on the base recently, mostly inaccurate small-arms fire and the odd rocket-propelled grenade. They've mostly irritated their targets instead of killing them.
But a definite legacy is the abundance of huge barriers at the most-obvious access points to Bagram. Much of the eastern wing remains surrounded by chicken fencing topped with barbed wire, but the more sensitive points of entry are now hardened.
So, apparently, are the sentiments of local Afghans nearby. Troops here told me of shepherd boys scowling their way around Bagram's outskirts, slingshotting off the occasional rock in hopes of braining an American. Again, something else I wouldn't have believed two years ago.
By next year, the detention facility that's spirited away on a far corner of Bagram is supposed to revert to Afghan control. And maybe someday the Afghan National Army will inherit the entire base.
But two years ago there were about 18,000 troops and contractors living here. Now that figure is north of 30,000, all for a logistics hub and command post that the United States didn't ever imagine possessing before 9/11.
In 2011, the U.S. military probably won't be thinking about turning over the keys to a new, huge base. It'll be thinking about how it can finish up the construction contracts it signed months ago -- if not some it's yet to ink.
U.S. Supersizes Afghan Mega-Base as Withdrawal Date Looms
by Spencer Ackerman
BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan - Anyone who thinks the United States is really going to withdraw from Afghanistan in July 2011 needs to come to this giant air base an hour away from Kabul. There's construction everywhere. It's exactly what you wouldn't expect from a transient presence.
Perhaps the most conspicuous change of all: fresh concrete T-walls fortifying the northern and southern faces of the base. Step off a C-17 cargo plane, as I did very early Friday morning, and you see a flight line packed with planes. When I was last here two years ago, helicopters crowded the runways and fixed-wing aircraft were -- well, if not rare, still a notable sight. Today you've got C-17s, Predators, F-16s, F-15s, MC-12 passenger planes ... I didn't see any of the C-130 cargo craft, but they're here somewhere.
More notable than the overstuffed runways is the over-driven road. Disney Drive, the main thoroughfare that rings the eight-square-mile base, used to feature pedestrians with reflective sashes over their PT uniforms carrying Styrofoam boxes of leftovers out of the mess halls. And those guys are still there.
But now the western part of Disney is a two-lane parking lot of Humvees, flamboyant cargo big-rigs from Pakistan known as jingle trucks, yellow DHL shipping vans, contractor vehicles and mud-caked flatbeds. If the Navy could figure out a way to bring a littoral-combat ship to a landlocked country, it would idle on Disney.
Expect to wait an eternity if you want to pull out onto the road. Cross the street at your own risk.
Then there are all the new facilities. West Disney has a fresh coat of cement -- something that's easy to come by, now that the Turkish firm Yukcel manufactures cement right inside Bagram's walls.
There on the flightline: the skeletons of new hangars. New towers with particleboard for terraces. A skyline of cranes. The omnipresent plastic banner on a girder-and-cement seedling advertising a new project built by cut-rate labor paid by Inglett and Stubbs International.
I haven't been able to learn yet how much it all cost, but Bagram is starting to feel like a dynamic exurb before the housing bubble burst. There was actually a traffic jam this afternoon on the southern side of the base, owing to construction-imposed bottlenecks, something I didn't think possible in late summer 2008.
Perhaps the most conspicuous change of all: fresh concrete T-walls fortifying the northern and southern faces of the base. Insurgents have launched a number of futile attacks on the base recently, mostly inaccurate small-arms fire and the odd rocket-propelled grenade. They've mostly irritated their targets instead of killing them.
But a definite legacy is the abundance of huge barriers at the most-obvious access points to Bagram. Much of the eastern wing remains surrounded by chicken fencing topped with barbed wire, but the more sensitive points of entry are now hardened.
So, apparently, are the sentiments of local Afghans nearby. Troops here told me of shepherd boys scowling their way around Bagram's outskirts, slingshotting off the occasional rock in hopes of braining an American. Again, something else I wouldn't have believed two years ago.
By next year, the detention facility that's spirited away on a far corner of Bagram is supposed to revert to Afghan control. And maybe someday the Afghan National Army will inherit the entire base.
But two years ago there were about 18,000 troops and contractors living here. Now that figure is north of 30,000, all for a logistics hub and command post that the United States didn't ever imagine possessing before 9/11.
In 2011, the U.S. military probably won't be thinking about turning over the keys to a new, huge base. It'll be thinking about how it can finish up the construction contracts it signed months ago -- if not some it's yet to ink.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Back from the Dead: Summer Vacation
Extraordinary Edition had virtually no posts for the month of July. Explanation: summer hiatus.
This was a family affair. Seven people rented this home for four nights. Editor could not afford to rent a closet in a spot like this on his own for half a night.
This was a family affair. Seven people rented this home for four nights. Editor could not afford to rent a closet in a spot like this on his own for half a night.
Monday, July 5, 2010
As US fights, China spends to gain Afghan foothold
AP story, a tip from Afghan Conflict Monitor July 4
By TINI TRAN (AP)
KABUL, Afghanistan — Gul Akbar's tiny store is crammed from floor to ceiling with rolls of electric cables, plugs of all sizes and piles of extension cords. Virtually everything comes from China, as do most of the appliances and electronics being sold in Kabul's busy Nader Pashtun Market.
Not far away, the sparkling 10-story glass-and brick Jamhuriat Hospital rises in the midst of Afghanistan's war-torn capital. Beijing gave $25 million and the Chinese workers to build it.
Every day, Afghans wait in long lines at the Chinese Embassy for visas to let them cross the border to trade.
As the U.S. and its NATO allies fight to stabilize Afghanistan, China has expanded its economic footprint with several high-profile investments and reconstruction projects. In 2007 it became the country's largest foreign investor when it won a $3.5 billion contract to develop copper mines at Aynak, southeast of Kabul.
The U.S. is in favor of the Chinese investment. "It can be a good thing. As a matter of fact, we encourage all of the international community to take an interest in the economic development of Afghanistan," said U.S. State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid.
"Working with our coalition partners and other interested partners, we are trying to establish a viable market economy in Afghanistan. This is one way to wean people from illicit activities and also to fight the ideology of the terrorists," he said.
For China, the reward is not only expanded trade and access to natural resources, it's also security for its western flank, the vast Xinjiang region that is home to a separatist movement of minority Uighurs, said Liu Xuecheng of the China Institute of International Studies, the Chinese Foreign Ministry's think tank.
"Our interest is clear. We need a peaceful neighbor because we have our own problems in Xinjiang," Liu said. "If we have a friendly country in Afghanistan, they can help us to manage issues on the separatists, security and territorial integrity. We want Afghanistan to be successful."
Though the two countries have always been friendly, the relationship has blossomed in recent years. In March, President Hamid Karzai made his fourth trip to Beijing, bringing back agreements on economic cooperation, technical training and lower tariffs for Afghan goods.
The emerging alliance is giving Kabul an alternative to its sometimes strained ties with the West. The two neighbors share a narrow, mountainous border, the Wakhan Corridor, and links that date back centuries to the caravans of tea, spices and other riches that traveled the Silk Road.
Afghanistan is "well aware that the U.S. is likely to only be a temporary ally so it's looking for a longer-term partner in the region. China would be an obvious choice," said security analyst Christian Le Miere, editor of Jane's Intelligence Review.
China drew worldwide attention with the $3.5 billion winning bid by the state-owned China Metallurgical Group Corp. tap one of the world's largest unexploited copper reserves. That deal — which included commitments to build a power plant, railway, hospital and mosque, and to employ thousands of Afghans as miners — has dwarfed all other countries' foreign investments, including the U.S.
"China is the biggest buyer of raw materials in the world, whether that's in Africa, Asia or any other part of the world. So if China wants to come to Afghanistan, why not?" said Ghullam Mohammad Yalaqi, the Afghan commerce and industry minister. "We just like to do the deal."
The country's untapped minerals, including gold, iron, copper and cobalt, is valued by a U.S. estimate at nearly $1 trillion. Afghan officials say it's triple that amount.
For Yalaqi, who led a group of Afghan government and business leaders to China last month, the Chinese contribution is as important as that of Western troops.
"If we can create jobs, then youths wouldn't turn to the Taliban. A good economy also has the impact of stability," he said.
Trade between the two neighbors has mushroomed over the past decade from $25 million in 2000 to $215 million in 2009, according to Chinese figures. Yalaqi's ministry estimates the actual figure, including unofficial border trade, to be closer to double.
On display in the crowded stalls of Kabul's main electronics market are the fruits of that trade: computers, cell phones, cameras, irons, heaters and washing machines.
Squeezed into a small space is Suliman Electric, the electrical parts business owned by Gul Akbar's family. Akbar and his brother used to travel to Iran and Pakistan to buy merchandise but switched four years ago.
"We started going to China because a socket made in Germany or Iran or the U.S. is more expensive — 200 Afghanis ($4.40). But sockets from China are only one-fifth the price. The quality of Chinese goods is not the best, but it's good enough and the price is the lowest," he said.
"When I started traveling to China, my business increased by 50 percent."
Every four months, he makes the 4,800-kilometer (3,000-mile) flight to eastern China to fill up two 40-foot containers and ship them to Kabul.
"It takes two months to send it to Kabul and then another two months to sell it all. When we finish, I go back to China to buy more," he said. "I pay $50,000 for one container's worth of goods and I sell it for $60,000. I would go more often if I could afford to."
He is one of an estimated 30,000 Afghan traders shuttling between the two countries, said Sultan Baheen, Afghanistan's ambassador to China. Most head to the southern manufacturing hub in Guangzhou province, the far west city of Urumqi in Xinjiang, or the eastern city of Yiwu, home to a massive commodities market, he said.
The need to quickly shuttle goods between countries is huge. On the strength of cargo demand alone, privately owned Safi Airlines plans to launch the first-ever direct passenger and cargo flights between Kabul and Beijing this fall. Currently the only flights are between Kabul and Urumqi.
"What we found out is that the amount of visas being issued from Afghanistan to China, and vice versa, has increased dramatically. This is an indication that there's upcoming traffic, upcoming business," said Werner Borchert, Safi's chief operating officer.
China may be the biggest foreign investor, but its $180 million in development aid over the past eight years lags far behind the U.S.'s $12 billion.
Much of China's aid has gone on projects such as the Parwan irrigation system in the north, a conference hall for Karzai's presidential palace and the Jamhuriat Hospital in Kabul. It has also helped train some civil servants as well as teaching police and army officers in logistics and mine-clearance, said Baheen, the ambassador.
But by focusing on signature construction projects, often built with its own workers, China has made itself visible in a way that the U.S., has not, he said.
"America spends billions and billions of dollars, but they give out projects to contractors from different countries — China, India, Pakistan, etc. because the labor costs are low," Baheen said.
So when the average Afghan looks at an American project, "How does he know this is American money?"
The State Department's Duguid cautioned that while foreign investment is welcome, it should be done "according with Afghan laws and free and fair competition rules that much of the world respects. That would include investment from China."
The Aynak copper mine deal was shadowed by allegations that the Afghan mines minister, who has since been replaced, had collected huge bribes for steering the bid toward China.
China has also benefited by focusing its investments on Afghanistan's relatively safer north, while much of the U.S.-funded effort is in the more violent south and east regions. The Taliban is not known to have made threats against Chinese involved in Afghanistan.
Beijing has reaped admiration for projects such as the 350-bed Jamhuriat Hospital. Inaugurated last summer, it was built in three years by 200 Chinese workers who lived on-site in temporary lodgings, said hospital director Ramazan Karimi. The hospital sits empty, though, because the government hasn't allocated any operating funds, he said.
"The Afghan people prefer this gift from China. The Chinese side has done streets, roads and clinics in Afghanistan," Karimi said. "They didn't bring their troops here."
Liu, the Beijing think tank analyst, said he doubted China would ever send troops. "The war is not China's war," he said. "... But economically and socially, we can try to help."
For Afghans such as Akbar the merchant, China is an example to be emulated.
"When I travel to China, I feel safe. I see good roads and cars," he said. "I don't hear the sound of weapons. I don't worry about someone stealing. I wanted to stay there."
Associated Press writer Matthew Lee in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
By TINI TRAN (AP)
KABUL, Afghanistan — Gul Akbar's tiny store is crammed from floor to ceiling with rolls of electric cables, plugs of all sizes and piles of extension cords. Virtually everything comes from China, as do most of the appliances and electronics being sold in Kabul's busy Nader Pashtun Market.
Not far away, the sparkling 10-story glass-and brick Jamhuriat Hospital rises in the midst of Afghanistan's war-torn capital. Beijing gave $25 million and the Chinese workers to build it.
Every day, Afghans wait in long lines at the Chinese Embassy for visas to let them cross the border to trade.
As the U.S. and its NATO allies fight to stabilize Afghanistan, China has expanded its economic footprint with several high-profile investments and reconstruction projects. In 2007 it became the country's largest foreign investor when it won a $3.5 billion contract to develop copper mines at Aynak, southeast of Kabul.
The U.S. is in favor of the Chinese investment. "It can be a good thing. As a matter of fact, we encourage all of the international community to take an interest in the economic development of Afghanistan," said U.S. State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid.
"Working with our coalition partners and other interested partners, we are trying to establish a viable market economy in Afghanistan. This is one way to wean people from illicit activities and also to fight the ideology of the terrorists," he said.
For China, the reward is not only expanded trade and access to natural resources, it's also security for its western flank, the vast Xinjiang region that is home to a separatist movement of minority Uighurs, said Liu Xuecheng of the China Institute of International Studies, the Chinese Foreign Ministry's think tank.
"Our interest is clear. We need a peaceful neighbor because we have our own problems in Xinjiang," Liu said. "If we have a friendly country in Afghanistan, they can help us to manage issues on the separatists, security and territorial integrity. We want Afghanistan to be successful."
Though the two countries have always been friendly, the relationship has blossomed in recent years. In March, President Hamid Karzai made his fourth trip to Beijing, bringing back agreements on economic cooperation, technical training and lower tariffs for Afghan goods.
The emerging alliance is giving Kabul an alternative to its sometimes strained ties with the West. The two neighbors share a narrow, mountainous border, the Wakhan Corridor, and links that date back centuries to the caravans of tea, spices and other riches that traveled the Silk Road.
Afghanistan is "well aware that the U.S. is likely to only be a temporary ally so it's looking for a longer-term partner in the region. China would be an obvious choice," said security analyst Christian Le Miere, editor of Jane's Intelligence Review.
China drew worldwide attention with the $3.5 billion winning bid by the state-owned China Metallurgical Group Corp. tap one of the world's largest unexploited copper reserves. That deal — which included commitments to build a power plant, railway, hospital and mosque, and to employ thousands of Afghans as miners — has dwarfed all other countries' foreign investments, including the U.S.
"China is the biggest buyer of raw materials in the world, whether that's in Africa, Asia or any other part of the world. So if China wants to come to Afghanistan, why not?" said Ghullam Mohammad Yalaqi, the Afghan commerce and industry minister. "We just like to do the deal."
The country's untapped minerals, including gold, iron, copper and cobalt, is valued by a U.S. estimate at nearly $1 trillion. Afghan officials say it's triple that amount.
For Yalaqi, who led a group of Afghan government and business leaders to China last month, the Chinese contribution is as important as that of Western troops.
"If we can create jobs, then youths wouldn't turn to the Taliban. A good economy also has the impact of stability," he said.
Trade between the two neighbors has mushroomed over the past decade from $25 million in 2000 to $215 million in 2009, according to Chinese figures. Yalaqi's ministry estimates the actual figure, including unofficial border trade, to be closer to double.
On display in the crowded stalls of Kabul's main electronics market are the fruits of that trade: computers, cell phones, cameras, irons, heaters and washing machines.
Squeezed into a small space is Suliman Electric, the electrical parts business owned by Gul Akbar's family. Akbar and his brother used to travel to Iran and Pakistan to buy merchandise but switched four years ago.
"We started going to China because a socket made in Germany or Iran or the U.S. is more expensive — 200 Afghanis ($4.40). But sockets from China are only one-fifth the price. The quality of Chinese goods is not the best, but it's good enough and the price is the lowest," he said.
"When I started traveling to China, my business increased by 50 percent."
Every four months, he makes the 4,800-kilometer (3,000-mile) flight to eastern China to fill up two 40-foot containers and ship them to Kabul.
"It takes two months to send it to Kabul and then another two months to sell it all. When we finish, I go back to China to buy more," he said. "I pay $50,000 for one container's worth of goods and I sell it for $60,000. I would go more often if I could afford to."
He is one of an estimated 30,000 Afghan traders shuttling between the two countries, said Sultan Baheen, Afghanistan's ambassador to China. Most head to the southern manufacturing hub in Guangzhou province, the far west city of Urumqi in Xinjiang, or the eastern city of Yiwu, home to a massive commodities market, he said.
The need to quickly shuttle goods between countries is huge. On the strength of cargo demand alone, privately owned Safi Airlines plans to launch the first-ever direct passenger and cargo flights between Kabul and Beijing this fall. Currently the only flights are between Kabul and Urumqi.
"What we found out is that the amount of visas being issued from Afghanistan to China, and vice versa, has increased dramatically. This is an indication that there's upcoming traffic, upcoming business," said Werner Borchert, Safi's chief operating officer.
China may be the biggest foreign investor, but its $180 million in development aid over the past eight years lags far behind the U.S.'s $12 billion.
Much of China's aid has gone on projects such as the Parwan irrigation system in the north, a conference hall for Karzai's presidential palace and the Jamhuriat Hospital in Kabul. It has also helped train some civil servants as well as teaching police and army officers in logistics and mine-clearance, said Baheen, the ambassador.
But by focusing on signature construction projects, often built with its own workers, China has made itself visible in a way that the U.S., has not, he said.
"America spends billions and billions of dollars, but they give out projects to contractors from different countries — China, India, Pakistan, etc. because the labor costs are low," Baheen said.
So when the average Afghan looks at an American project, "How does he know this is American money?"
The State Department's Duguid cautioned that while foreign investment is welcome, it should be done "according with Afghan laws and free and fair competition rules that much of the world respects. That would include investment from China."
The Aynak copper mine deal was shadowed by allegations that the Afghan mines minister, who has since been replaced, had collected huge bribes for steering the bid toward China.
China has also benefited by focusing its investments on Afghanistan's relatively safer north, while much of the U.S.-funded effort is in the more violent south and east regions. The Taliban is not known to have made threats against Chinese involved in Afghanistan.
Beijing has reaped admiration for projects such as the 350-bed Jamhuriat Hospital. Inaugurated last summer, it was built in three years by 200 Chinese workers who lived on-site in temporary lodgings, said hospital director Ramazan Karimi. The hospital sits empty, though, because the government hasn't allocated any operating funds, he said.
"The Afghan people prefer this gift from China. The Chinese side has done streets, roads and clinics in Afghanistan," Karimi said. "They didn't bring their troops here."
Liu, the Beijing think tank analyst, said he doubted China would ever send troops. "The war is not China's war," he said. "... But economically and socially, we can try to help."
For Afghans such as Akbar the merchant, China is an example to be emulated.
"When I travel to China, I feel safe. I see good roads and cars," he said. "I don't hear the sound of weapons. I don't worry about someone stealing. I wanted to stay there."
Associated Press writer Matthew Lee in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Shrine blast: Pakistan rages against Taliban
Times of India piece by Omer Farooq Kahn July 4, India
Quick acknowledgement: discrepancies in general slant exist between this piece and the AOL News that preceded it. India recently announced a pact with Pakistan on the systematic apprehension and reduction of terrorist attacks. This is the same India who received green lights from former President Bush on its military nuclear program while Iran faces U.N. sanctions on its claimed-to-be-domestic nuclear program. Plus this one is two days behind the story that claims the Pakistani population is largely lashing out at the U.S. presence in the country as a response to the violence.
ISLAMABAD: The Taliban may have overplayed their hand by attacking Lahore's Data Gunj Baksh shrine with thousands of people, including conservative religious groups, taking to Pakistan's streets on Saturday, to denounce terrorist groups for the first time since the near-daily roll call of suicide attacks in the country.
On Saturday, as thousands demanded a new offensive against the Taliban, shops and businesses were shut in major cities. The protest appeared to reflect Pakistan's deep anger against the second major attack in a month on Pakistan's cultural hub, Lahore and on its famous Sufi shrine.
In one of Lahore's important shopping areas, baton-wielding protesters forced bystanders and passers-by to join in and shops to close . Protests also erupted in Karachi, Rawalpindi, Faislabad, Hyderabad and the northwestern Pashtun-dominated town of Peshawar. Emotions ran high in Karachi.
"We will not end our protest until culprits are punished,'' said Sunni Muslim Council leader Raghib Naeemi. The council was one of the groups which had called for a strike on Saturday. Naeemi urged the government to step up its efforts against extremism.
The council's chief Sahibzada Fazal thanked Pakistanis for holding protests. ''Today's successful strike shows that people behind terrorist acts. People have rejected these hired assassins.''
Authorities also ordered a crackdown on suspects. Police said they had rounded up several suspected militants around Lahore and recovered 20 suicide vests, police uniforms and and large amounts of ammunition on Friday night.
Pakistan prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani visited the scene and vowed to bring the
attackers to justice. ''We've to be united to defeat terrorism and have appealed to the international community to help us,'' he said. This was a rare visit of Pakistan's head of government, who comes from a Sufi family, to a terror attack scene.
The attack on the Lahore shrine has also intensified calls for reigning in extremist seminaries that have mushroomed across Pakistan during the US-backed Jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Quick acknowledgement: discrepancies in general slant exist between this piece and the AOL News that preceded it. India recently announced a pact with Pakistan on the systematic apprehension and reduction of terrorist attacks. This is the same India who received green lights from former President Bush on its military nuclear program while Iran faces U.N. sanctions on its claimed-to-be-domestic nuclear program. Plus this one is two days behind the story that claims the Pakistani population is largely lashing out at the U.S. presence in the country as a response to the violence.
ISLAMABAD: The Taliban may have overplayed their hand by attacking Lahore's Data Gunj Baksh shrine with thousands of people, including conservative religious groups, taking to Pakistan's streets on Saturday, to denounce terrorist groups for the first time since the near-daily roll call of suicide attacks in the country.
On Saturday, as thousands demanded a new offensive against the Taliban, shops and businesses were shut in major cities. The protest appeared to reflect Pakistan's deep anger against the second major attack in a month on Pakistan's cultural hub, Lahore and on its famous Sufi shrine.
In one of Lahore's important shopping areas, baton-wielding protesters forced bystanders and passers-by to join in and shops to close . Protests also erupted in Karachi, Rawalpindi, Faislabad, Hyderabad and the northwestern Pashtun-dominated town of Peshawar. Emotions ran high in Karachi.
"We will not end our protest until culprits are punished,'' said Sunni Muslim Council leader Raghib Naeemi. The council was one of the groups which had called for a strike on Saturday. Naeemi urged the government to step up its efforts against extremism.
The council's chief Sahibzada Fazal thanked Pakistanis for holding protests. ''Today's successful strike shows that people behind terrorist acts. People have rejected these hired assassins.''
Authorities also ordered a crackdown on suspects. Police said they had rounded up several suspected militants around Lahore and recovered 20 suicide vests, police uniforms and and large amounts of ammunition on Friday night.
Pakistan prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani visited the scene and vowed to bring the
attackers to justice. ''We've to be united to defeat terrorism and have appealed to the international community to help us,'' he said. This was a rare visit of Pakistan's head of government, who comes from a Sufi family, to a terror attack scene.
The attack on the Lahore shrine has also intensified calls for reigning in extremist seminaries that have mushroomed across Pakistan during the US-backed Jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Amy Goodman: We Can't Afford War
Truthdig.com piece by Democracy Now's Amy Goodman June 29
The point of this piece, as indicated by the title, is the current economic state of society in America and contradictory eternal strategy in Afghanistan (to put on hold the emerging issue of withdrawal from Iraq).
A separate note by Goodman mid-piece nearly warrants an entirely separate investigation and article. Oftentimes in his work, scholar Noam Chomsky has provided analysis of handling popular opinion when it falls inconsistent with the direction the powerful intend to move in the present. The following excerpt is an example of such late modern propaganda, which some would maintain exists only in the political culture of Soviet Russia or one of its authoritarian leftist side projects ... (excerpt)
The whistle-blower website WikiLeaks.org, which received international attention after releasing leaked video from a U.S. attack helicopter showing the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians and a Reuters cameraman and his driver in Baghdad, has just posted a confidential CIA memo detailing possible public relations strategies to counter waning public support for the Afghan War. The agency memo reads: “If domestic politics forces the Dutch to depart, politicians elsewhere might cite a precedent for ‘listening to the voters.’ French and German leaders have over the past two years taken steps to preempt an upsurge of opposition but their vulnerability may be higher now.”
Goodman's conclusion is a highly rational, morally inexorable argument that perplexes the mind in step with the current official rhetoric ...
(second excerpt)
I just returned from Toronto, covering the G-20 summit and the protests. The gathered leaders pledged, among other things, to reduce government deficits by 50 percent by 2013. In the U.S., that means cutting $800 billion, or about 20 percent of the budget. Two Nobel Prize-winning economists have weighed in with grave predictions. Joseph Stiglitz said, “There are many cases where these kinds of austerity measures have led to ... recessions into depressions.” And Paul Krugman wrote: “Who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.”
In order to make the cuts promised, Obama would have to raise taxes and cut social programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Or he could cut the war budget. I say “war budget” because it is not to be confused with a defense budget. Cities and states across the country are facing devastating budget crises. Pensions are being wiped out. Foreclosures are continuing at record levels. A true defense budget would shore up our schools, our roads, our towns, our social safety net. The U.S. House of Representatives is under pressure to pass a $33 billion Afghan War supplemental this week.
We can’t afford war.
Amy Goodman on Truthdig.com June 29, 2010
The point of this piece, as indicated by the title, is the current economic state of society in America and contradictory eternal strategy in Afghanistan (to put on hold the emerging issue of withdrawal from Iraq).
A separate note by Goodman mid-piece nearly warrants an entirely separate investigation and article. Oftentimes in his work, scholar Noam Chomsky has provided analysis of handling popular opinion when it falls inconsistent with the direction the powerful intend to move in the present. The following excerpt is an example of such late modern propaganda, which some would maintain exists only in the political culture of Soviet Russia or one of its authoritarian leftist side projects ... (excerpt)
The whistle-blower website WikiLeaks.org, which received international attention after releasing leaked video from a U.S. attack helicopter showing the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians and a Reuters cameraman and his driver in Baghdad, has just posted a confidential CIA memo detailing possible public relations strategies to counter waning public support for the Afghan War. The agency memo reads: “If domestic politics forces the Dutch to depart, politicians elsewhere might cite a precedent for ‘listening to the voters.’ French and German leaders have over the past two years taken steps to preempt an upsurge of opposition but their vulnerability may be higher now.”
Goodman's conclusion is a highly rational, morally inexorable argument that perplexes the mind in step with the current official rhetoric ...
(second excerpt)
I just returned from Toronto, covering the G-20 summit and the protests. The gathered leaders pledged, among other things, to reduce government deficits by 50 percent by 2013. In the U.S., that means cutting $800 billion, or about 20 percent of the budget. Two Nobel Prize-winning economists have weighed in with grave predictions. Joseph Stiglitz said, “There are many cases where these kinds of austerity measures have led to ... recessions into depressions.” And Paul Krugman wrote: “Who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.”
In order to make the cuts promised, Obama would have to raise taxes and cut social programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Or he could cut the war budget. I say “war budget” because it is not to be confused with a defense budget. Cities and states across the country are facing devastating budget crises. Pensions are being wiped out. Foreclosures are continuing at record levels. A true defense budget would shore up our schools, our roads, our towns, our social safety net. The U.S. House of Representatives is under pressure to pass a $33 billion Afghan War supplemental this week.
We can’t afford war.
Amy Goodman on Truthdig.com June 29, 2010
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Reconciliation efforts with Afghan militants face major obstacle
LA Times Story by Julian E. Barnes, Laura King and Alex Rodriguez. Rodriguez reported from Islamabad and King reported from Kabul. Times staff writer Julian E. Barnes in Washington contributed to this report.
Excerpt--
Experts say both Pakistan and Afghanistan realize that breaking the Haqqani network's ties with Al Qaeda is a prerequisite to any deal. They question whether it would ever happen.
Amir Rana, one of Pakistan's leading analysts on militant groups, said it's not possible for many militant groups, including the Haqqani network, to completely separate from Al Qaeda.
"What the Haqqani network and the other Taliban groups can offer is a guarantee that they will influence Al Qaeda to not attack U.S. or NATO forces, and a guarantee that their soil would not be used in a terrorist attack against the West," he said. "This is the maximum concession that the Taliban can offer."
Numbering in the thousands of fighters, the Haqqani network has a strong relationship with Pakistan's military and intelligence community that stretches 30 years, back to the time when Pashtun warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani organized mujahedin fighters against Soviet troops in the 1980s. Haqqani has now delegated authority over his network of fighters to his son, Sirajuddin.
The group moves freely between Afghanistan's eastern provinces and its headquarters in North Waziristan, where it has been left untouched by Pakistan's military. Experts believe the Haqqani network continues to provide Al Qaeda leaders and commanders sanctuary there.
U.S. leaders have frequently urged Pakistan to launch an offensive against Haqqani hideouts, recently backing those entreaties with evidence that the network was behind major attacks in Kabul and at Bagram air base, the U.S. facility north of the capital. The government in Islamabad, meanwhile, has brushed aside those demands, arguing that its forces are overstretched by extensive military operations against Taliban strongholds in surrounding tribal areas.
Analysts and former Pakistani military commanders, however, say the real reason that Islamabad has avoided military action against the Haqqani network is that it sees the group and other Afghan Taliban elements as a useful hedge against India's rapidly growing interests in Afghanistan.
Haqqani leaders have yet to signal whether they are interested in starting talks with Karzai's government.
Excerpt--
Experts say both Pakistan and Afghanistan realize that breaking the Haqqani network's ties with Al Qaeda is a prerequisite to any deal. They question whether it would ever happen.
Amir Rana, one of Pakistan's leading analysts on militant groups, said it's not possible for many militant groups, including the Haqqani network, to completely separate from Al Qaeda.
"What the Haqqani network and the other Taliban groups can offer is a guarantee that they will influence Al Qaeda to not attack U.S. or NATO forces, and a guarantee that their soil would not be used in a terrorist attack against the West," he said. "This is the maximum concession that the Taliban can offer."
Numbering in the thousands of fighters, the Haqqani network has a strong relationship with Pakistan's military and intelligence community that stretches 30 years, back to the time when Pashtun warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani organized mujahedin fighters against Soviet troops in the 1980s. Haqqani has now delegated authority over his network of fighters to his son, Sirajuddin.
The group moves freely between Afghanistan's eastern provinces and its headquarters in North Waziristan, where it has been left untouched by Pakistan's military. Experts believe the Haqqani network continues to provide Al Qaeda leaders and commanders sanctuary there.
U.S. leaders have frequently urged Pakistan to launch an offensive against Haqqani hideouts, recently backing those entreaties with evidence that the network was behind major attacks in Kabul and at Bagram air base, the U.S. facility north of the capital. The government in Islamabad, meanwhile, has brushed aside those demands, arguing that its forces are overstretched by extensive military operations against Taliban strongholds in surrounding tribal areas.
Analysts and former Pakistani military commanders, however, say the real reason that Islamabad has avoided military action against the Haqqani network is that it sees the group and other Afghan Taliban elements as a useful hedge against India's rapidly growing interests in Afghanistan.
Haqqani leaders have yet to signal whether they are interested in starting talks with Karzai's government.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Obama Administration Keeping Blackwater Armed and Dangerous in Afghanistan
Nation magazine story Jeremy Scahill dated June 19
An excerpt appears below ...
"Blackwater is up for sale and its shadowy owner, Erik Prince, is rumored to be planning to move to the United Arab Emirates as his top deputies face indictment for a range of alleged crimes, yet the company remains a central part of President Obama's Afghanistan war. Now, Blackwater's role is expanding.
On Friday, the US State Department awarded Blackwater another 'diplomatic security' contract to protect US officials in Afghanistan. CBS News reports that the $120 million deal is for "protective services" at the US consulates in Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif. Blackwater has another security contract in Afghanistan worth $200 million and trains Afghan forces. The company also works for the CIA and the US military and provides bodyguards for US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry as well as US lawmakers and other officials who visit the country. The company has four forward operating bases in Afghanistan and Prince has boasted that Blackwater's counter-narcotics forces have called in NATO airstrikes."
An excerpt appears below ...
"Blackwater is up for sale and its shadowy owner, Erik Prince, is rumored to be planning to move to the United Arab Emirates as his top deputies face indictment for a range of alleged crimes, yet the company remains a central part of President Obama's Afghanistan war. Now, Blackwater's role is expanding.
On Friday, the US State Department awarded Blackwater another 'diplomatic security' contract to protect US officials in Afghanistan. CBS News reports that the $120 million deal is for "protective services" at the US consulates in Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif. Blackwater has another security contract in Afghanistan worth $200 million and trains Afghan forces. The company also works for the CIA and the US military and provides bodyguards for US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry as well as US lawmakers and other officials who visit the country. The company has four forward operating bases in Afghanistan and Prince has boasted that Blackwater's counter-narcotics forces have called in NATO airstrikes."
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
It's not news; it's just astounding: How U.S. Funds Taliban
"US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon's logistics contracts--hundreds of millions of dollars--consists of payments to insurgents."
—Aram Roston, The Nation magazine
This information is from November 9, 2009. I just don't understand why it's outside public consciousness that the United States has been paying its enemy to fight our own people in uniform for years while the popular support of the U.S. war in Afghanistan hangs by a tiny thread of the last half-successful hunt for a terrorist or "high-value target." If citizens of the U.S. were told by CNN, Fox, MSNBC and the rest that the Taliban in Afghanistan was being paid by the U.S. to not attack supply convoys, how would there be support for the war? It's like betting against the champ in a boxing match when you've already heard the champ is going to throw the fight. Which, when all of your social programs have been shut down, unemployment is in double-digits, consumer lending has stalled and twenty percent of homes are worth less than the amount owed to the bank, Afghanistan (not even getting into Iraq and saber-rattling plans to invade Iran) seems like a summer vacation that should have been canceled because this year, kids, we just can't afford it.
If you follow the link, you'll see the entire (old) story at thenation.com
—Aram Roston, The Nation magazine
This information is from November 9, 2009. I just don't understand why it's outside public consciousness that the United States has been paying its enemy to fight our own people in uniform for years while the popular support of the U.S. war in Afghanistan hangs by a tiny thread of the last half-successful hunt for a terrorist or "high-value target." If citizens of the U.S. were told by CNN, Fox, MSNBC and the rest that the Taliban in Afghanistan was being paid by the U.S. to not attack supply convoys, how would there be support for the war? It's like betting against the champ in a boxing match when you've already heard the champ is going to throw the fight. Which, when all of your social programs have been shut down, unemployment is in double-digits, consumer lending has stalled and twenty percent of homes are worth less than the amount owed to the bank, Afghanistan (not even getting into Iraq and saber-rattling plans to invade Iran) seems like a summer vacation that should have been canceled because this year, kids, we just can't afford it.
If you follow the link, you'll see the entire (old) story at thenation.com
Sunday, June 6, 2010
U.N. Report: U.S. Drones Do More Harm than Good
On a tip from a reader who monitors Newsy.com for multiple reverse angles on the same story appearing in television, print and online news media, this video contributes to opening further the debate on the use of drones in situations listed and described on this site.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Pentagon Seeks Private Contractor to Move Weapons Through Pakistan/Afghanistan
From Jeremy Scahill May 25 Rebel Reports & The Nation magazine online
It is not, of course, a secret supplies must be delivered to forward operating bases in Afghanistan. What's interesting here is areas where the provisions of the contract being offered--work that apparently can't effectively be done by the U.S. military itself--differs from verbiage in the White House strategy for Afghanistan which contains a draw-down and eventual withdrawal in 2011. The notion that Pakistan and Afghanistan are too dangerous for the U.S. military to negotiate supplies into in coming months is a grim outlook. It's just a proposal of a contract for services, but plans indicate intent to some degree, do they not?
Excerpt taken from Scahill's Rebel Reports appears below ...
"[The United States military is in the process of taking bids from private war contractors to secure and ship massive amounts of US military equipment through sensitive areas of Pakistan into Afghanistan where it will then be distributed to various US Forward Operating Bases and other facilities. According to the contract solicitation, “There will be an average of 5000” import shipments “transiting the Afghanistan and Pakistan ground lines of communication (GLOC) per month,” along with 500 export shipments.” The solicitation states that, “This number may increase or decrease due to US military transportation requirements,” adding, “The contractor must maintain a constant capability to surge to any location within Afghanistan or Pakistan” within a 30-day period. Among the duties the contractor will perform is “intelligence, to include threat assessments throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
And while it seems the US is trying to put a Pakistani or Afghan face on the work, the terms of the contract mandate that US personnel will be involved with inherently risky and potentially lethal operations. Among the firms listed by the Department of Defense as “interested vendors” are an Afghan firm tied to a veteran CIA officer and run by the son of Afghan defense minister, Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak, and a Pakistani firm with links to Blackwater.]"
It is not, of course, a secret supplies must be delivered to forward operating bases in Afghanistan. What's interesting here is areas where the provisions of the contract being offered--work that apparently can't effectively be done by the U.S. military itself--differs from verbiage in the White House strategy for Afghanistan which contains a draw-down and eventual withdrawal in 2011. The notion that Pakistan and Afghanistan are too dangerous for the U.S. military to negotiate supplies into in coming months is a grim outlook. It's just a proposal of a contract for services, but plans indicate intent to some degree, do they not?
Excerpt taken from Scahill's Rebel Reports appears below ...
"[The United States military is in the process of taking bids from private war contractors to secure and ship massive amounts of US military equipment through sensitive areas of Pakistan into Afghanistan where it will then be distributed to various US Forward Operating Bases and other facilities. According to the contract solicitation, “There will be an average of 5000” import shipments “transiting the Afghanistan and Pakistan ground lines of communication (GLOC) per month,” along with 500 export shipments.” The solicitation states that, “This number may increase or decrease due to US military transportation requirements,” adding, “The contractor must maintain a constant capability to surge to any location within Afghanistan or Pakistan” within a 30-day period. Among the duties the contractor will perform is “intelligence, to include threat assessments throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
And while it seems the US is trying to put a Pakistani or Afghan face on the work, the terms of the contract mandate that US personnel will be involved with inherently risky and potentially lethal operations. Among the firms listed by the Department of Defense as “interested vendors” are an Afghan firm tied to a veteran CIA officer and run by the son of Afghan defense minister, Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak, and a Pakistani firm with links to Blackwater.]"
Monday, May 24, 2010
Drones and Democracy
Story on Truthout.org Sunday, May 23, 2010 by Kathy Kelly and Joshua Brollier
A particularly brutal excerpt ...
"The social worker recalled arriving at a home that was hit, in Miranshah, at about 9:00 PM, close to one year ago. The house was beside a matchbox factory, near the degree college. The drone strike had killed three people. Their bodies, carbonized, were fully burned. They could only be identified by their legs and hands. One body was still on fire when he reached there. Then he learned that the charred and mutilated corpses were relatives of his who lived in his village, two men and a boy aged seven or eight. They couldn't pick up the charred parts in one piece. Finding scraps of plastic, they transported the body parts away from the site. Three to four others joined in to help cover the bodies in plastic and carry them to the morgue.
But these volunteers and nearby onlookers were attacked by another drone strike, 15 minutes after the initial one. Six more people died. One of them was the brother of the man killed in the initial strike.
The social worker said that people are now afraid to help when a drone strike occurs because they fear a similar fate from a second attack. People will wait several hours after an attack just to be sure. Meanwhile, some lives will be lost that possibly could have been saved."
A particularly brutal excerpt ...
"The social worker recalled arriving at a home that was hit, in Miranshah, at about 9:00 PM, close to one year ago. The house was beside a matchbox factory, near the degree college. The drone strike had killed three people. Their bodies, carbonized, were fully burned. They could only be identified by their legs and hands. One body was still on fire when he reached there. Then he learned that the charred and mutilated corpses were relatives of his who lived in his village, two men and a boy aged seven or eight. They couldn't pick up the charred parts in one piece. Finding scraps of plastic, they transported the body parts away from the site. Three to four others joined in to help cover the bodies in plastic and carry them to the morgue.
But these volunteers and nearby onlookers were attacked by another drone strike, 15 minutes after the initial one. Six more people died. One of them was the brother of the man killed in the initial strike.
The social worker said that people are now afraid to help when a drone strike occurs because they fear a similar fate from a second attack. People will wait several hours after an attack just to be sure. Meanwhile, some lives will be lost that possibly could have been saved."
Sunday, May 23, 2010
UK plans to leave Afghanistan
"We have obligations to deal with poverty and human rights but that is no different in Afghanistan from dozens of other countries."
—British Defense Secretary Liam Fox
From Australian Broadcast (ABC) May 23
"Britain considers policy shift on Afghanistan"
British defence secretary Liam Fox has indicated that the country's new government is reconsidering its approach to the war in Afghanistan.
He is currently on a visit to Kabul, but before he left London, Mr Fox revealed the potential change of policy.
In remarks in a newspaper interview, Mr Fox said Britain should focus less on state-building in Afghanistan and more on speeding up the withdrawal of its troops.
Mr Fox described Afghanistan as a broken 13th century country.
"National security is the focus now. We are not a global policeman," he told The Times.
"We have obligations to deal with poverty and human rights but that is no different in Afghanistan from dozens of other countries.
"We shouldn't deploy British troops unless there are overwhelming humanitarian emergency considerations or a national security imperative."
The comments will dismay those who see the massive expansion of the Afghan education system, funded by donors such as the UK, and the opening of school doors to girls as major successes of the post-Taliban era.
The former head of British forces in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp, warned against any drastic changes in policy.
"The priority, as Liam Fox says, is to deal with the security situation in Afghanistan and to ensure that the streets of the UK and the rest of the world are safe, safer than they are at present," he said.
"But in order to do that we must rebuild and repair the society in Afghanistan and that does include things like education policy, the economy, governance."
Britain's new foreign secretary, William Hague, also sought to assure Kabul of his government's commitment.
Ahead of a visit by three senior ministers, Mr Hague said that the conflict in Afghanistan is his most urgent priority, and Britain cannot set any kind of date for a withdrawal.
"There isn't going to be an arbitrary or artificial timetable. I don't think it's going to work like that," he said.
"As I say, we have to give the situation, the strategy that has been set out the time and the support to succeed.
"That does need, and require, Britain's continued military involvement. There is no doubt about that."
- ABC/BBC
Also,
Press TV Story taken from Aletho News ...
In a U-turn in Britain’s policy regarding the Afghan war, senior government officials say they want UK soldiers to return home as soon as possible.
In an interview with The Times newspaper before arriving in Kabul on Saturday, Defense Secretary Liam Fox described the Afghan war as Britain’s most urgent priority. He said no more troops will be deployed in Afghanistan, adding that he wants to speed up the withdrawal of UK soldiers and training of Afghan forces.
Fox emphasized that the new government in London will put national security issues on top of its priority list.
“National security is the focus now. We are not a global policeman. We are not in Afghanistan for the sake of the education policy in a broken 13th-century country. We are there so the people of Britain and our global interests are not threatened,” Fox said.
Britain is the second-largest contributor of troops to Afghanistan. It has deployed some 10,000 soldiers in the war-torn country. The number of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2001 stands at 286.
—British Defense Secretary Liam Fox
From Australian Broadcast (ABC) May 23
"Britain considers policy shift on Afghanistan"
British defence secretary Liam Fox has indicated that the country's new government is reconsidering its approach to the war in Afghanistan.
He is currently on a visit to Kabul, but before he left London, Mr Fox revealed the potential change of policy.
In remarks in a newspaper interview, Mr Fox said Britain should focus less on state-building in Afghanistan and more on speeding up the withdrawal of its troops.
Mr Fox described Afghanistan as a broken 13th century country.
"National security is the focus now. We are not a global policeman," he told The Times.
"We have obligations to deal with poverty and human rights but that is no different in Afghanistan from dozens of other countries.
"We shouldn't deploy British troops unless there are overwhelming humanitarian emergency considerations or a national security imperative."
The comments will dismay those who see the massive expansion of the Afghan education system, funded by donors such as the UK, and the opening of school doors to girls as major successes of the post-Taliban era.
The former head of British forces in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp, warned against any drastic changes in policy.
"The priority, as Liam Fox says, is to deal with the security situation in Afghanistan and to ensure that the streets of the UK and the rest of the world are safe, safer than they are at present," he said.
"But in order to do that we must rebuild and repair the society in Afghanistan and that does include things like education policy, the economy, governance."
Britain's new foreign secretary, William Hague, also sought to assure Kabul of his government's commitment.
Ahead of a visit by three senior ministers, Mr Hague said that the conflict in Afghanistan is his most urgent priority, and Britain cannot set any kind of date for a withdrawal.
"There isn't going to be an arbitrary or artificial timetable. I don't think it's going to work like that," he said.
"As I say, we have to give the situation, the strategy that has been set out the time and the support to succeed.
"That does need, and require, Britain's continued military involvement. There is no doubt about that."
- ABC/BBC
Also,
Press TV Story taken from Aletho News ...
In a U-turn in Britain’s policy regarding the Afghan war, senior government officials say they want UK soldiers to return home as soon as possible.
In an interview with The Times newspaper before arriving in Kabul on Saturday, Defense Secretary Liam Fox described the Afghan war as Britain’s most urgent priority. He said no more troops will be deployed in Afghanistan, adding that he wants to speed up the withdrawal of UK soldiers and training of Afghan forces.
Fox emphasized that the new government in London will put national security issues on top of its priority list.
“National security is the focus now. We are not a global policeman. We are not in Afghanistan for the sake of the education policy in a broken 13th-century country. We are there so the people of Britain and our global interests are not threatened,” Fox said.
Britain is the second-largest contributor of troops to Afghanistan. It has deployed some 10,000 soldiers in the war-torn country. The number of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2001 stands at 286.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Backyard Predator Drones
"Each Predator and Reaper costs American taxpayers $4 million to $12 million and each Hellfire missile some $70,000, and the drones are causing anti-American sentiment to spread, especially in the Muslim world."
by Chen Weihua
China Daily 05/18/2010
chenweihua@chinadaily.com.cn
I never realized I was so close to the war zone in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border until I went to Syracuse in upstate New York a week ago.
The Hancock Field there has been turned into a base for drones that fly over Pakistan and Afghanistan for bombing missions. This means that someone sitting in the control room is playing a computer game that is killing real people thousands of miles away.
The strikes may have achieved the goals of assassinating some Taliban leaders and militants; yet, high collateral damage has been reported by both Pakistani and US sources. Pakistani authorities reported that in 2009 alone, some 700 civilians died during the drone attacks.
The high casualties - of innocent people - should be a grave concern for "anti-war" President Barack Obama, who authorized more drone strikes in his first year as president than his predecessor George W. Bush did in his last four years in office.
Civilian deaths are clearly a problem. A CNN report last week quoted Tadd Scholtis, spokesman for General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, as saying US and NATO soldiers in Afghanistan could someday win medals for restraint that prevents civilian casualties in combat.
This proposal under consideration simply means that too many innocents are being killed, and that the army has not exercised enough restraint.
Unfortunately, many Americans are unaware of the nature of the drone attacks launched from an air force base near their home, despite numerous protests across the country against the drones.
Just a few days before my trip to Syracuse, peace activists from upstate New York gathered outside the Hancock Air Force base to oppose the unmanned aircraft attacks.
On May 18-19, protesters from across California and some from Nevada will hold a rally in San Diego outside the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, which builds the Predator and Reaper drones.
Cindy Sheehan, who held a prolonged anti-war protest in 2005 outside George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, led a rally near the CIA headquarters in Virginia early this year, calling the CIA-operated drone bombing "immoral" and "terrorism with a big budget."
Demonstrations were also witnessed last year outside the Creech Air Force Base, only 35 miles from Las Vegas, resulting in the arrests of a number of peace activists.
In contrast to the anti-war activists, mainstream US media and scholars have been relatively quiet on the issue. Most have been talking endlessly about Times Square bomb suspect Faisal Shahzad's ties to the Taliban and whether his legal rights and citizenship should be deprived.
They have largely ignored the rising anger among Pakistanis about the drone Hellfire missile attacks. Shahzad also reportedly claimed that his intention was to retaliate for the drones, which he saw in Waziristan, in northwest Pakistan.
A Gallup poll last August showed that only 9 percent of Pakistanis support the drone attacks, while 67 percent oppose them. The majority saw the US as a bigger threat than the Taliban.
A recent Newsweek report quotes local villagers as saying that every family there has one male member in the Taliban force.
In the war on terror, many Americans seem to be worried that criticizing the US government and military would make them look unpatriotic or un-American.
Each Predator and Reaper costs American taxpayers $4 million to $12 million and each Hellfire missile some $70,000, and the drones are causing anti-American sentiment to spread, especially in the Muslim world.
If that money is used to build schools there to reflect the US' soft power, it will win more hearts and minds and make Americans safer.
Stopping the drones launched from American citizens' backyards is no less urgent than finding the true connection of Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad.
by Chen Weihua
China Daily 05/18/2010
chenweihua@chinadaily.com.cn
I never realized I was so close to the war zone in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border until I went to Syracuse in upstate New York a week ago.
The Hancock Field there has been turned into a base for drones that fly over Pakistan and Afghanistan for bombing missions. This means that someone sitting in the control room is playing a computer game that is killing real people thousands of miles away.
The strikes may have achieved the goals of assassinating some Taliban leaders and militants; yet, high collateral damage has been reported by both Pakistani and US sources. Pakistani authorities reported that in 2009 alone, some 700 civilians died during the drone attacks.
The high casualties - of innocent people - should be a grave concern for "anti-war" President Barack Obama, who authorized more drone strikes in his first year as president than his predecessor George W. Bush did in his last four years in office.
Civilian deaths are clearly a problem. A CNN report last week quoted Tadd Scholtis, spokesman for General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, as saying US and NATO soldiers in Afghanistan could someday win medals for restraint that prevents civilian casualties in combat.
This proposal under consideration simply means that too many innocents are being killed, and that the army has not exercised enough restraint.
Unfortunately, many Americans are unaware of the nature of the drone attacks launched from an air force base near their home, despite numerous protests across the country against the drones.
Just a few days before my trip to Syracuse, peace activists from upstate New York gathered outside the Hancock Air Force base to oppose the unmanned aircraft attacks.
On May 18-19, protesters from across California and some from Nevada will hold a rally in San Diego outside the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, which builds the Predator and Reaper drones.
Cindy Sheehan, who held a prolonged anti-war protest in 2005 outside George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, led a rally near the CIA headquarters in Virginia early this year, calling the CIA-operated drone bombing "immoral" and "terrorism with a big budget."
Demonstrations were also witnessed last year outside the Creech Air Force Base, only 35 miles from Las Vegas, resulting in the arrests of a number of peace activists.
In contrast to the anti-war activists, mainstream US media and scholars have been relatively quiet on the issue. Most have been talking endlessly about Times Square bomb suspect Faisal Shahzad's ties to the Taliban and whether his legal rights and citizenship should be deprived.
They have largely ignored the rising anger among Pakistanis about the drone Hellfire missile attacks. Shahzad also reportedly claimed that his intention was to retaliate for the drones, which he saw in Waziristan, in northwest Pakistan.
A Gallup poll last August showed that only 9 percent of Pakistanis support the drone attacks, while 67 percent oppose them. The majority saw the US as a bigger threat than the Taliban.
A recent Newsweek report quotes local villagers as saying that every family there has one male member in the Taliban force.
In the war on terror, many Americans seem to be worried that criticizing the US government and military would make them look unpatriotic or un-American.
Each Predator and Reaper costs American taxpayers $4 million to $12 million and each Hellfire missile some $70,000, and the drones are causing anti-American sentiment to spread, especially in the Muslim world.
If that money is used to build schools there to reflect the US' soft power, it will win more hearts and minds and make Americans safer.
Stopping the drones launched from American citizens' backyards is no less urgent than finding the true connection of Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
Drones and the Ethics of War
This essay, posted Friday, attempts to briefly address the emerging arguments in what appears to be a debate shaping together over the ethics of using armed unmanned aerial vehicles.
President Obama is quoted as saying in a speech, "We have an interest in reducing civilian casualties because I don’t want civilians killed." This sentiment has manifested itself in the contrary strident legal posturing of State Department legal adviser Harold Koh with no signs of halting, reducing or altering the methods of drone attacks, which have increased following the Times Square bombing attempt.
What's missing here is any human rights argument that human beings--combatants, non-combatants in proximity to or whose lives are entwined with those of combatants--have some kind of right to expect not to be hunted by robots with electric eyes being piloted by indoctrinated nationalists who believe what they are doing--no matter what it is--to be benevolent.
Further complicating this aspect of the issue is the tendency of comments to news outlets following various articles on drone attacks to maintain drones have the ability to "kill the bastards" while service men and women risk no physical danger. This line evades the key issue that children, villagers, farmers, unarmed inhabitants in an agrarian culture are not "the bastards," and the warfare of extermination is, on paper, a part of our past and not our future.
Until these discrepancies are addressed no productive debate on the ethics of UAVs and their use to murder civilians in relentless pursuit of "high-value targets" is going to take place. Rhetorically, we are left with the pre-World War II mentality of "might makes right," and nothing more sophisticated or justified.
From the website Pakistan Defense (defence.pk)
May 14th, 2010
Drones and the Ethics of War
by David E. Anderson
According to news reports, Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American charged with trying to use a weapon of mass destruction in the failed Times Square bombing, has told investigators he carried out the attempted bombing to avenge US drone attacks in the North Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan.
Shahzad’s assertion adds more fuel to the simmering controversy over the ethics and effects of increasing reliance by both the CIA and the US military on unmanned drones to launch missile strikes against suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
As David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, asked (“US pressure helps militants overseas focus efforts,” May 7) : “Have the stepped-up attacks in Pakistan—notable the Predator drone strikes—actually made Americans less safe? Have they had the perverse consequence of driving lesser insurgencies to think of targeting Times Square and American airliners, not just Kabul and Islamabad? In short, are they inspiring more attacks on American than they prevent? It is a hard question.”
The Times Square drone connection also follows on last year’s deadly attack on the CIA, when a suicide bomber, a Jordanian doctor linked to al-Qaeda, detonated his explosives at an American base in Khost in eastern Afghanistan, killing himself and seven CIA officers and contractors who were operating at the heart of the covert program overseeing US drone strikes in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal regions.
CIA director Leon Panetta has called lethal drone technology “the only game in town” for going after al-Qaeda, and Obama administration officials have strenuously defended both the legality of the strikes in Pakistan as well as their effectiveness in killing suspected militants. They also deny the drones are responsible for an unacceptable level of civilian deaths.
“In this ongoing armed conflict, the United States has the authority under international law, and the responsibility to its citizens, to use force, including lethal force, to defend itself, including by targeting persons such as high-level al-Qaeda leaders who are planning an attack,’’ Harold Koh, the State Department’s legal adviser, told an audience of international legal scholars on March 25, according to the Wall Street Journal (“US defends legality of killing with drones”).
Since President Obama took office, the CIA has used drones to kill some 400 to 500 suspected militants, according to intelligence officials, the Journal reported. The officials say only some 20 civilians have been killed—a figure critics sharply challenge. In 2009, Pakistani officials said the strikes had killed some 700 civilians and only 14 terrorist leaders, or 50 civilians for every militant. A New America Foundation analysis of reported US drone strikes in northwest Pakistan from 2004 to 2010 says the strikes killed between 830 and 1210 individuals, of whom 550 to 850 were militants, or about two-thirds of the total on average.
More recently, an April 26 story in the Washington Post reported that the CIA has refined its techniques and made technological improvements that are reducing civilian deaths, and this week, in his joint news conference with President Karzai of Afghanistan, President Obama said, “I am ultimately accountable…for somebody who is not on the battlefield who got killed…and so we do not take that lightly. We have an interest in reducing civilian casualties not because it’s a problem for President Karzai; we have an interest in reducing civilian casualties because I don’t want civilians killed.”
Earlier this month, in a May 6 interview on National Public Radio, David Rohde, the New York Times reporter who was held captive for months by the Taliban in northern Pakistan, spoke about the US drone strikes and said, “I saw firsthand in north and south Waziristan that the drone strikes do have a major impact. They generally are accurate. The strikes that went on killed foreign militants or Afghan or Pakistani Taliban that went on around us. There were some civilians killed but generally the Taliban would greatly exaggerate the number of civilians killed. They inhibited their operations. Taliban leaders were very nervous about being tracked by drones. So they are effective in the short-term I would say…I don’t think the answer is, you know, endless drone strikes. The answer is definitely not sending American troops into Pakistan, into the tribal areas. That would just create a tremendous nationalist backlash. It has to be the Pakistanis doing it.”
Ethicists and religious leaders are beginning to challenge the morality of the drone program, arguing it violates international law as well as key precepts of just war theory. The Christian Century, for example, editorialized in mid-May (“Remote-control warfare,” May 18) that while the drone attacks have no doubt killed terrorists and leaders of al-Qaeda, “they raise troubling questions to those committed to the just war principle that civilians should never be targeted.”
Taking aim at one of the aspects of drone warfare that make it so popular with the military and with politicians—that it is a risk-free option for the US military because it avoids American casualties—the Century editors said: “According to the just war principles, it is better to risk the lives of one’s own combatants than the lives of enemy noncombatants.”
The “risk-free” idea is also being challenged. In a recent piece in the Jesuit magazine America (“A troubling disconnection,” March 15), Maryann Cusimano Love, an international relations professor at Catholic University, wrote that military (as opposed to CIA) drone operators suffer post-traumatic stress disorder at higher rates than soldiers in combat zones. “Operators see in detail the destruction and grisly human toll from their work,” she observed, and she quoted an air force commander who said, “There’s no detachment. Those employing the system are very involved at a personal level in combat. You hear the AK-47 going off, the intensity of the voice on the radio calling for help. You’re looking at him, 18 inches away from him, trying everything in your capability to get that person out of trouble.”
The Christian Century editors also noted that drone attacks on civilians have given militants a recruitment tool, citing an opinion piece by counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen and former army officer Andrew McDonald Exum published last year in the New York Times (May 17, 2009). “Every one of these dead noncombatants represents an alienated family, a new desire for revenge, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially even as the drone strikes have increased,” they wrote.
An even more emphatic critic of the use of drones is Mary Ellen O’Connell, an international law professor at the University of Notre Dame. “Neither the Bush administration nor the Obama administration has been persuasive about its legal right to launch attacks in Pakistan,” she wrote in “Flying Blind,” an article also published in America magazine. “Even with the legal right to use military force, drone attacks must also conform to the traditional principles governing the rules of warfare, including those of distinction, necessity, proportion and humanity.’’
O’Connell argues that under the United Nations Charter, resort to military force on the territory of another state, in this case Pakistan, is permitted only when the attacking state is acting in self-defense, acting with U.N. Security Council authorization, or is invited to aid another state in the lawful use of force. “Pakistan did not attack the United States and is not responsible for those who did,” O’Connell wrote. “The United States has no basis, therefore, for attacking in self-defense on Pakistani territory.’’
In addition, she contends that while al-Qaeda is a violent terrorist group, “it should be treated as a criminal organization to which law enforcement rules apply. To do otherwise is violate fundamental human rights principles. Outside of war, the full body of human rights applies, including the prohibition on killing without warning.”
The only basis for the United States to lawfully use force in Pakistan would be if it had the consent of the country’s political leaders. It is not clear whether the US has such a valid invitation, according to O’Connell.
“Pakistan’s president has told US leaders not to attack certain groups that have cooperated with Islamabad,” O’Connell wrote. “The United States has done so anyway, insisting that Pakistan use more military force and threatening to carry out attacks itself if the government refuses. None of this can be squared with international law.”
As recently as May 12, the head of an influential religious party which is a junior partner in Pakistan’s ruling coalition denounced the most recent drone attacks as a violation of Pakistani sovereignty. “The recurring attacks on targets in tribal areas are blatant aggression against Pakistan and the military should shoot down intruding drones,” Maulana Fazlur Rehman, leader of the Jamiat Ulema Islam party told reporters, as reported in the Gulf News.
The case of western Pakistan presents particular challenges, according to O’Connell: “There suspected militant leaders wear civilian clothes, and even the sophisticated cameras of a drone cannot reveal with certainty that a suspect is a militant. In such a situation international humanitarian law gives a presumption to civilian status.”
In an interview, O’Connell suggests that there is confusion about international law versus domestic national security law and that the scarcity of developed ethical analysis and discussion of drone warfare might have to do with the fact that the drone itself is “just a delivery vehicle.” The real ethical issue, she said, is “the greater propensity to kill” made possible by the “video game-like” quality of drone combat.
Gary Simpson, a theology professor at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota and the author of “War, Peace, and God: Rethinking the Just War Tradition” (Augsburg Fortress Press, 2007), acknowledges that although he hasn’t yet thought about ethics and drone warfare, “the ongoing evolution of weaponry always poses new questions. It changes the questions about proportionality”—referring to the just war principle that the benefits of war must be proportionate to the expected harm— “and the protection of one’s own forces over against the vulnerability of civilian populations.”
The House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs held hearings in March and April on the rise of the drones, the legality of unmanned targeting systems, and the future of war, and US Naval Academy ethics professor Edward Barrett testified that while unmanned weapons systems “are consistent with a society’s duty to avoid unnecessary risks to its combatants,” and they can “enhance restraint” on the part of the soldiers engaged in virtual warfare, they also “could encourage unjust wars” and “could facilitate the circumvention of legitimate authority and pursuit of unjust causes.”
It will be interesting to see whether Congress and the White House continue to involve ethicists and religious thinkers in future deliberations on these issues. Last December, just before President Obama gave his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech on themes of just war, the White House gathered religious leaders at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building for what was described as a briefing and discussion of the morality of war, according to the Washington Post. White House staff members took notes for the president.
For now, the Obama administration insists the use of drones in Pakistan is imperative in the fight against terrorism, and Amitai Etzioni, an international relations professor at George Washington University, writing recently in the Joint Force Quarterly (“Unmanned Aircraft Systems: The Moral and Legal Case”), has enumerated many of the reasons and offered multiple lines of supporting argument: “The United States and its allies can make a strong case that the main source of the problem is those who abuse their civilian status to attack truly innocent civilians and to prevent our military and other security forces from discharging their duties,” he says, and “we must make it much clearer that those who abuse their civilian status are a main reason for the use of UAS [unmanned aircraft systems] and targeted killing against them.”
But others, such as Kilcullen and Exum, argue drone combat exacerbates the problem of terrorism and contributes to the instability of Pakistan. “Having Osama bin Laden in one’s sights is one thing,” write Kilcullen and Exum. “Devoting precious resources to his capture or death, rather than focusing on protecting the Afghan and Pakistani populations, is another. The goal should be to isolate extremists from the communities in which they live.”
Missile strikes launched from the comfort of Langley, Virginia, a half a world away from Waziristan, are unlikely to do that and thus, to critics, remain morally problematic.
David E. Anderson, senior editor for Religion News Service, has also written for Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly on Afghanistan (“The Right War Gone Wrong”) and nuclear disarmament (“Trimming the Nuclear Arsenals”).
President Obama is quoted as saying in a speech, "We have an interest in reducing civilian casualties because I don’t want civilians killed." This sentiment has manifested itself in the contrary strident legal posturing of State Department legal adviser Harold Koh with no signs of halting, reducing or altering the methods of drone attacks, which have increased following the Times Square bombing attempt.
What's missing here is any human rights argument that human beings--combatants, non-combatants in proximity to or whose lives are entwined with those of combatants--have some kind of right to expect not to be hunted by robots with electric eyes being piloted by indoctrinated nationalists who believe what they are doing--no matter what it is--to be benevolent.
Further complicating this aspect of the issue is the tendency of comments to news outlets following various articles on drone attacks to maintain drones have the ability to "kill the bastards" while service men and women risk no physical danger. This line evades the key issue that children, villagers, farmers, unarmed inhabitants in an agrarian culture are not "the bastards," and the warfare of extermination is, on paper, a part of our past and not our future.
Until these discrepancies are addressed no productive debate on the ethics of UAVs and their use to murder civilians in relentless pursuit of "high-value targets" is going to take place. Rhetorically, we are left with the pre-World War II mentality of "might makes right," and nothing more sophisticated or justified.
From the website Pakistan Defense (defence.pk)
May 14th, 2010
Drones and the Ethics of War
by David E. Anderson
According to news reports, Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American charged with trying to use a weapon of mass destruction in the failed Times Square bombing, has told investigators he carried out the attempted bombing to avenge US drone attacks in the North Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan.
Shahzad’s assertion adds more fuel to the simmering controversy over the ethics and effects of increasing reliance by both the CIA and the US military on unmanned drones to launch missile strikes against suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
As David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, asked (“US pressure helps militants overseas focus efforts,” May 7) : “Have the stepped-up attacks in Pakistan—notable the Predator drone strikes—actually made Americans less safe? Have they had the perverse consequence of driving lesser insurgencies to think of targeting Times Square and American airliners, not just Kabul and Islamabad? In short, are they inspiring more attacks on American than they prevent? It is a hard question.”
The Times Square drone connection also follows on last year’s deadly attack on the CIA, when a suicide bomber, a Jordanian doctor linked to al-Qaeda, detonated his explosives at an American base in Khost in eastern Afghanistan, killing himself and seven CIA officers and contractors who were operating at the heart of the covert program overseeing US drone strikes in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal regions.
CIA director Leon Panetta has called lethal drone technology “the only game in town” for going after al-Qaeda, and Obama administration officials have strenuously defended both the legality of the strikes in Pakistan as well as their effectiveness in killing suspected militants. They also deny the drones are responsible for an unacceptable level of civilian deaths.
“In this ongoing armed conflict, the United States has the authority under international law, and the responsibility to its citizens, to use force, including lethal force, to defend itself, including by targeting persons such as high-level al-Qaeda leaders who are planning an attack,’’ Harold Koh, the State Department’s legal adviser, told an audience of international legal scholars on March 25, according to the Wall Street Journal (“US defends legality of killing with drones”).
Since President Obama took office, the CIA has used drones to kill some 400 to 500 suspected militants, according to intelligence officials, the Journal reported. The officials say only some 20 civilians have been killed—a figure critics sharply challenge. In 2009, Pakistani officials said the strikes had killed some 700 civilians and only 14 terrorist leaders, or 50 civilians for every militant. A New America Foundation analysis of reported US drone strikes in northwest Pakistan from 2004 to 2010 says the strikes killed between 830 and 1210 individuals, of whom 550 to 850 were militants, or about two-thirds of the total on average.
More recently, an April 26 story in the Washington Post reported that the CIA has refined its techniques and made technological improvements that are reducing civilian deaths, and this week, in his joint news conference with President Karzai of Afghanistan, President Obama said, “I am ultimately accountable…for somebody who is not on the battlefield who got killed…and so we do not take that lightly. We have an interest in reducing civilian casualties not because it’s a problem for President Karzai; we have an interest in reducing civilian casualties because I don’t want civilians killed.”
Earlier this month, in a May 6 interview on National Public Radio, David Rohde, the New York Times reporter who was held captive for months by the Taliban in northern Pakistan, spoke about the US drone strikes and said, “I saw firsthand in north and south Waziristan that the drone strikes do have a major impact. They generally are accurate. The strikes that went on killed foreign militants or Afghan or Pakistani Taliban that went on around us. There were some civilians killed but generally the Taliban would greatly exaggerate the number of civilians killed. They inhibited their operations. Taliban leaders were very nervous about being tracked by drones. So they are effective in the short-term I would say…I don’t think the answer is, you know, endless drone strikes. The answer is definitely not sending American troops into Pakistan, into the tribal areas. That would just create a tremendous nationalist backlash. It has to be the Pakistanis doing it.”
Ethicists and religious leaders are beginning to challenge the morality of the drone program, arguing it violates international law as well as key precepts of just war theory. The Christian Century, for example, editorialized in mid-May (“Remote-control warfare,” May 18) that while the drone attacks have no doubt killed terrorists and leaders of al-Qaeda, “they raise troubling questions to those committed to the just war principle that civilians should never be targeted.”
Taking aim at one of the aspects of drone warfare that make it so popular with the military and with politicians—that it is a risk-free option for the US military because it avoids American casualties—the Century editors said: “According to the just war principles, it is better to risk the lives of one’s own combatants than the lives of enemy noncombatants.”
The “risk-free” idea is also being challenged. In a recent piece in the Jesuit magazine America (“A troubling disconnection,” March 15), Maryann Cusimano Love, an international relations professor at Catholic University, wrote that military (as opposed to CIA) drone operators suffer post-traumatic stress disorder at higher rates than soldiers in combat zones. “Operators see in detail the destruction and grisly human toll from their work,” she observed, and she quoted an air force commander who said, “There’s no detachment. Those employing the system are very involved at a personal level in combat. You hear the AK-47 going off, the intensity of the voice on the radio calling for help. You’re looking at him, 18 inches away from him, trying everything in your capability to get that person out of trouble.”
The Christian Century editors also noted that drone attacks on civilians have given militants a recruitment tool, citing an opinion piece by counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen and former army officer Andrew McDonald Exum published last year in the New York Times (May 17, 2009). “Every one of these dead noncombatants represents an alienated family, a new desire for revenge, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially even as the drone strikes have increased,” they wrote.
An even more emphatic critic of the use of drones is Mary Ellen O’Connell, an international law professor at the University of Notre Dame. “Neither the Bush administration nor the Obama administration has been persuasive about its legal right to launch attacks in Pakistan,” she wrote in “Flying Blind,” an article also published in America magazine. “Even with the legal right to use military force, drone attacks must also conform to the traditional principles governing the rules of warfare, including those of distinction, necessity, proportion and humanity.’’
O’Connell argues that under the United Nations Charter, resort to military force on the territory of another state, in this case Pakistan, is permitted only when the attacking state is acting in self-defense, acting with U.N. Security Council authorization, or is invited to aid another state in the lawful use of force. “Pakistan did not attack the United States and is not responsible for those who did,” O’Connell wrote. “The United States has no basis, therefore, for attacking in self-defense on Pakistani territory.’’
In addition, she contends that while al-Qaeda is a violent terrorist group, “it should be treated as a criminal organization to which law enforcement rules apply. To do otherwise is violate fundamental human rights principles. Outside of war, the full body of human rights applies, including the prohibition on killing without warning.”
The only basis for the United States to lawfully use force in Pakistan would be if it had the consent of the country’s political leaders. It is not clear whether the US has such a valid invitation, according to O’Connell.
“Pakistan’s president has told US leaders not to attack certain groups that have cooperated with Islamabad,” O’Connell wrote. “The United States has done so anyway, insisting that Pakistan use more military force and threatening to carry out attacks itself if the government refuses. None of this can be squared with international law.”
As recently as May 12, the head of an influential religious party which is a junior partner in Pakistan’s ruling coalition denounced the most recent drone attacks as a violation of Pakistani sovereignty. “The recurring attacks on targets in tribal areas are blatant aggression against Pakistan and the military should shoot down intruding drones,” Maulana Fazlur Rehman, leader of the Jamiat Ulema Islam party told reporters, as reported in the Gulf News.
The case of western Pakistan presents particular challenges, according to O’Connell: “There suspected militant leaders wear civilian clothes, and even the sophisticated cameras of a drone cannot reveal with certainty that a suspect is a militant. In such a situation international humanitarian law gives a presumption to civilian status.”
In an interview, O’Connell suggests that there is confusion about international law versus domestic national security law and that the scarcity of developed ethical analysis and discussion of drone warfare might have to do with the fact that the drone itself is “just a delivery vehicle.” The real ethical issue, she said, is “the greater propensity to kill” made possible by the “video game-like” quality of drone combat.
Gary Simpson, a theology professor at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota and the author of “War, Peace, and God: Rethinking the Just War Tradition” (Augsburg Fortress Press, 2007), acknowledges that although he hasn’t yet thought about ethics and drone warfare, “the ongoing evolution of weaponry always poses new questions. It changes the questions about proportionality”—referring to the just war principle that the benefits of war must be proportionate to the expected harm— “and the protection of one’s own forces over against the vulnerability of civilian populations.”
The House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs held hearings in March and April on the rise of the drones, the legality of unmanned targeting systems, and the future of war, and US Naval Academy ethics professor Edward Barrett testified that while unmanned weapons systems “are consistent with a society’s duty to avoid unnecessary risks to its combatants,” and they can “enhance restraint” on the part of the soldiers engaged in virtual warfare, they also “could encourage unjust wars” and “could facilitate the circumvention of legitimate authority and pursuit of unjust causes.”
It will be interesting to see whether Congress and the White House continue to involve ethicists and religious thinkers in future deliberations on these issues. Last December, just before President Obama gave his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech on themes of just war, the White House gathered religious leaders at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building for what was described as a briefing and discussion of the morality of war, according to the Washington Post. White House staff members took notes for the president.
For now, the Obama administration insists the use of drones in Pakistan is imperative in the fight against terrorism, and Amitai Etzioni, an international relations professor at George Washington University, writing recently in the Joint Force Quarterly (“Unmanned Aircraft Systems: The Moral and Legal Case”), has enumerated many of the reasons and offered multiple lines of supporting argument: “The United States and its allies can make a strong case that the main source of the problem is those who abuse their civilian status to attack truly innocent civilians and to prevent our military and other security forces from discharging their duties,” he says, and “we must make it much clearer that those who abuse their civilian status are a main reason for the use of UAS [unmanned aircraft systems] and targeted killing against them.”
But others, such as Kilcullen and Exum, argue drone combat exacerbates the problem of terrorism and contributes to the instability of Pakistan. “Having Osama bin Laden in one’s sights is one thing,” write Kilcullen and Exum. “Devoting precious resources to his capture or death, rather than focusing on protecting the Afghan and Pakistani populations, is another. The goal should be to isolate extremists from the communities in which they live.”
Missile strikes launched from the comfort of Langley, Virginia, a half a world away from Waziristan, are unlikely to do that and thus, to critics, remain morally problematic.
David E. Anderson, senior editor for Religion News Service, has also written for Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly on Afghanistan (“The Right War Gone Wrong”) and nuclear disarmament (“Trimming the Nuclear Arsenals”).
Sunday, May 16, 2010
US Predators carry out first strike in Khyber
From The Long War Journal, by Bill Roggio May 15, 2010 12:14 PM
Excerpted material of particular note:
"Both the Taliban and the Lashkar-e-Islam are known to operate bases and training camps in the Tirah Valley, as well as in Bara and Jamrud in Khyber. These safe havens enable these terror groups to launch attacks inside Pakistan as well across the border in Nangarhar province in Afghanistan. In November 2008, the US military attacked Taliban forces in the Tirah Valley after they retreated across the border from Nangarhar in Afghanistan. US strike aircraft and artillery killed seven Taliban fighters during the hot pursuit."
"The Khyber Pass is NATO's main conduit for supplies into Afghanistan; an estimated 70 percent of NATO's supplies move through this strategic crossing point. The Taliban forced the Khyber Pass to be shut down seven times between September 2007 and April 2008 due to attacks."
Excerpted material of particular note:
"Both the Taliban and the Lashkar-e-Islam are known to operate bases and training camps in the Tirah Valley, as well as in Bara and Jamrud in Khyber. These safe havens enable these terror groups to launch attacks inside Pakistan as well across the border in Nangarhar province in Afghanistan. In November 2008, the US military attacked Taliban forces in the Tirah Valley after they retreated across the border from Nangarhar in Afghanistan. US strike aircraft and artillery killed seven Taliban fighters during the hot pursuit."
"The Khyber Pass is NATO's main conduit for supplies into Afghanistan; an estimated 70 percent of NATO's supplies move through this strategic crossing point. The Taliban forced the Khyber Pass to be shut down seven times between September 2007 and April 2008 due to attacks."
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