When Mohammad Azam started his shift on May 21, it was just another sunny morning in Taftan, a small desert town in Pakistan’s Balochistan Province. Like taxi drivers around the world, he planned to spend this day waiting for customers, and navigating through traffic when he could find a fare. He had no idea it would be his last day alive.
By that evening, Mr. Azam’s body had been found burned to death, barely identifiable. He had the bad luck of picking up the target of an American drone strike: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, who was then leader of the Afghan Taliban.… Seguir leyendo »
President Barack Obama’s plan for closing Guantánamo, delivered to Congress on Tuesday, reaffirms his admirable desire to end before he leaves office one of the most problematic legacies of the US response to September 11. But he has yet to adequately address his own more lasting legacy in the “war on terror”: the secret killing of suspected terrorists with armed drones. On the same day the president issued his Guantánamo plan, a bipartisan task force gave him failing grades on his progress in bringing the drone program under the rule of law.
The Obama administration has made drones the weapon of choice for responding to perceived terrorist threats.… Seguir leyendo »
La reciente y dramática crisis en Yemen ha provocado un debate sobre si la administración del presidente estadounidense Barack Obama cometió un error al declarar que su estrategia de lucha contra el terrorismo en dicho país – centrada en ataques con aviones no tripulados o “drones” – es un éxito. En los hechos, tal como muestra un nuevo informe titulado “Muertes causadas por drones”, incluso si la crisis actual no hubiese entrado en erupción, los daños causados por los ataques con aviones estadounidenses no tripulados a los civiles yemenís deberían ser suficientes como para llevar a EE.UU. a repensar su estrategia.… Seguir leyendo »
The American drone strike that killed the Pakistan Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud last week has apparently caused outrage in Islamabad and threatens a breach in relations between the two countries. It is claimed that this latest exercise of Washington’s military muscle has jeopardised a tentative peace process that Pakistan’s leaders were trying to put in place. But is this really the case? As the wars of Afghanistan and Pakistan begin to fade away, a dangerous delusion is taking their place: that a diplomatic solution acceptable both to the West and the Islamists is achievable.
Mehsud, we should remember, was a brutal and effective guerrilla dedicated to imposing strict Islamic law in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the destruction of Western influence across the region.… Seguir leyendo »
Tiene derecho el presidente de Estados Unidos a asesinar, preventivamente y en territorios extranjeros, a supuestos terroristas sin ajustarse a ningún procedimiento legal? Desde que en el 2004 Washington comenzó una campaña secreta para eliminar a líderes de los talibanes y Al Qaeda en Pakistán la práctica de usar aviones no tripulados (o drones) se ha convertido en forma habitual de guerra que no rinde cuentas a nadie. Todo se decide en secreto, sin dar cuentas al Congreso ni a la sociedad.
Obama denunció en su primera campaña electoral los métodos ilegales que el presidente Bush utilizaba en la guerra contra el terrorismo, entre otros la tortura, el traslado internacional de prisioneros, violar la Convención de Ginebra sobre el tratamiento de prisioneros, la detención indefinida sin respetar procedimientos legales y establecer centros de detención con bajo jurisdicción militar (como la cárcel de Guantánamo).… Seguir leyendo »
En 1936, el poeta estadounidense Carl Sandburg escribió un verso lleno de esperanza: “Algún día declararán una guerra y nadie irá”. Hoy sus palabras parecen más apropiadas que nunca, pero no porque la humanidad se haya vuelto pacifista, sino porque cada vez más la guerra se combate a distancia, enviando aviones no tripulados (drones) a matar al enemigo.
Durante la presidencia de Barack Obama, se ha dado un abrupto aumento de la cantidad de ataques teledirigidos lanzados por Estados Unidos, que según algunos informes ya superan los 300 sólo en Pakistán. En marzo de 2011, la Fuerza Aérea de los Estados Unidos llegó a un punto de inflexión cuando, por primera vez en su historia, entrenó a más pilotos para actuar como controladores de aviones no tripulados que para otras tareas.… Seguir leyendo »
Un episodio y un programa han marcado el contraterrorismo de la presidencia Obama. El episodio no es otro que el abatimiento, en mayo de 2011, de Osama Bin Laden en su escondite paquistaní de Abbottabad. El programa consiste en utilizar de manera sistemática drones o aeronaves sin piloto para lanzar misiles contra miembros de Al Qaeda y otras entidades afines en las zonas tribales al noroeste de Pakistán pero también en Afganistán, Yemen o Somalia. Para el presidente Obama y sus responsables de seguridad nacional, haber terminado con Osama bin Laden es un éxito. Obama había dado prioridad a la decapitación de Al Qaeda.… Seguir leyendo »
Last week, a U.S. drone attack killed 19 suspected Taliban militants at a compound in North Waziristan on the Afghan border, according to Pakistani intelligence officials.
Dawn, a leading English-language Pakistani newspaper, later reported that the drone actually launched two separate strikes, the second of which occurred "when tribesmen were still carrying out rescue work," and killed an additional three people.
It was unclear whether the three were civilians or militants. If they were civilians, the incident would run counter to a marked decline in reports of civilian deaths in Pakistan caused by CIA drone strikes.
The New America Foundation has been collecting data about the drone attacks systematically for the past three years from reputable news sources such as the New York Times and Reuters, as well as Pakistani media outlets such as the Express Tribune and Dawn.… Seguir leyendo »
On Sunday a missile launched from a U.S. drone struck a house in Pakistan's remote tribal agency of North Waziristan, killing eight suspected militants, most of whom were loyal to the Pakistani Taliban commander, Hafiz Gul Bahadur. Bahadur has reportedly overseen multiple attacks against NATO troops in Afghanistan.
While the CIA drone war against al Qaeda in Pakistan is well known and is even, on occasion, publicly acknowledged by senior Obama administration officials, the strike against Bahadur's fighters is part of a lesser-known campaign to target Pakistani militants, who are less able to pose a threat to the U.S. homeland. This represents an expansion of the drone program that was overseen by President Barack Obama's administration.… Seguir leyendo »
I turned 20 years old sitting at a light table in a bright white building at a sprawling U.S. Air Forcebase in Saigon, South Vietnam. I was assigned to a reconnaissance unit, where my job was to select bombing targets in Cambodia. Then, as now, Cambodia did not have much in the way of traditional targets, and as an inexperienced targeteer, even when sober, I really had little idea what I was doing. That didn't slow things down much.
Given the means to attack — B-52s flying miles high above the landscape — and the desire, there was nothing that would stop the air assault.… Seguir leyendo »
“Dear Obama, when a U.S. drone missile kills a child in Yemen, the father will go to war with you, guaranteed. Nothing to do with Al Qaeda,” a Yemeni lawyer warned on Twitter last month. President Obama should keep this message in mind before ordering more drone strikes like Wednesday’s, which local officials say killed 27 people, or the May 15 strike that killed at least eight Yemeni civilians.
Drone strikes are causing more and more Yemenis to hate America and join radical militants; they are not driven by ideology but rather by a sense of revenge and despair. Robert Grenier, the former head of the C.I.A.’s… Seguir leyendo »
The next president of the United States needs to answer this question: When, and under what conditions, will the U.S. government stop using drones to bomb suspected terrorists around the world?
The drone program — assuming the media and think-tank coverage of it is basically true, and this piece should not be construed as confirming the existence of the program — is a tactical and technological innovation that has been invaluable in the war against al-Qaeda. Cost-effective, increasingly precise and surgical, it is almost the archetype of sterile, risk-free, push-button warfare, which the U.S. military has dreamed of for a generation.… Seguir leyendo »
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