1 out of every 3 killed by U.S. drone in Pakistan is a civilian

   SOURCE: New America Foundation drone strike database

32% of those individuals obliterated in northwestern Pakistan by U.S. drones over the past 6 years have been civilians, according to a recent report by the New America Foundation which compiled and analyzed the results of 114 drone strikes that killed over 1,000 people.

Drone strikes: an unpopular but necessary evil
Contemplating the mind-numbing percentage of civilian casualties, it comes as no shock that these unmanned flying death squads are somewhat unpopular among the Pakistani public, with only 9% approving of the Predator strikes, according to a August 2009 Gallup poll. It is also not surprising that, in the same poll, 59% of participants said they believed the U.S. was the greatest threat to Pakistan’s national security. India placed second with 18% of the vote while the Pakistani Taliban came in third with an 11% tally.

Pakistan's government has opposed the strikes from the outset because, on top of killing a multitude of civilians, they believe the drone program violates Pakistan’s national sovereignty. Pakistan’s support is crucial to U.S. interests because they need Pakistan to root out terrorists within their own borders, thus it is with great risk that the U.S. continues these types of attacks.

So one would think winning the hearts and minds of Pakistan’s populace is just as important as enhancing U.S. public perception in Afghanistan.  In Afghanistan, U.S. General Stanley McChrystal has put strict limits on the use of U.S. air power in order to minimize civilian deaths that could drive the locals to support the Taliban.  Meanwhile, in Pakistan, we let Predators run amok.

Are drone strikes effective?
In 2009 they certainly ran amok. According to the study created by Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann, 2009 was the year of the drone under Obama, as there were 51 reported strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas, compared to a total of 45 during two terms under George W. Bush.

Yet the uptick in drone strikes has not resulted in reduced levels of terrorist violence, In 2009, there were a record 87 suicide attacks in Pakistan, which killed around 1,300 people, up from 63 suicide bombings the previous year and only 9 in 2006. On the Afghan side of the border, 6,000 Afghan civilians were killed or injured in attacks in 2009 according to the UN – the highest number of deaths since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. As Bergen and Tiedemann point out, although the campaign is supposedly killing significant numbers of militant leaders and foot soldiers, these losses are clearly being absorbed.

Legal ramifications
As Barack Obama worries about the Miranda rights of terrorist suspects, he might be committing far worse sins himself by, knowingly or unknowingly, giving orders that are violating international law on a daily basis. The report asserts that drone strikes might be on shaky legal ground, according to Columbia Law School professor Matthew Waxman:

The principle of proportionality says that a military target may not be attacked if doing so is likely to cause incidental civilian casualties or damage that would be excessive in relation to the expected military advantage of the attack....But there is no consensus on how to calculate these values.… Nor is there consensus on what imbalance is ‘excessive.’”

It’s a tactic not a strategy
The study relates that the drone strategy isn’t a strategy at all- but a tactic – and one that backfires:

Third, although the drone strikes have disrupted militant operations, their unpopularity with the Pakistani public and their value as a recruiting tool for extremist groups may have ultimately increased the appeal of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, undermining the Pakistani state. This is more disturbing than almost anything that could happen in Afghanistan, given that Pakistan has dozens of nuclear weapons and about six times the population.”

U.S. is out of options
Pakistani officials have maintained that the resulting political fallout from civilian casualties outweighs the benefits derived from killing key Taliban figures. Yet, with respect to operating in and around Pakistani’s border tribal regions, the U.S. is bereft of any other alternatives because they’ve been handcuffed by none other than Pakistani government officials.

Pakistan has forbidden the U.S. from employing ground forces within the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) - never mind Pakistan proper, and has actually threatened the U.S. directly when American Special Forces troops were found to have crossed the border to chase and kill insurgents. The only thing left for the U.S. to do is conduct drone strikes - but even the drone strikes are being hindered by Pakistan:

Similarly, despite some discussion of the issue in the press, the United States is quite unlikely to use drone strikes in Baluchistan to target the leadership of the Afghan Taliban at its headquarters in and around the provincial capital, Quetta. Baluchistan is part and parcel of the Pakistani state, unlike the northwestern tribal areas, which have their own legal and social codes and have largely been seen as outside of Pakistan proper.

I agree with the assessment that the approach, as is, is not very strategic. Yet, something that could potentially take the program from the realm of the tactical to the strategic, something that would increase the odds of being able to sever the head of our common enemy by killing their most senior level high-value targets, is if Pakistan would allow the U.S. to operate within the region where said targets are actually located.

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