The Least-Bad Option in Pakistan?

Over at the Atlantic, JoshuaFoust takes issue with the new Stanford and NYU report, Living Under Drones, and argues that drone strikes are the least-bad option in Northwest Pakistan.  Says Foust:

In the short run, there aren't better choices than drones. . . .

Drones represent the choice with the smallest set of drawbacks and adverse consequences. Reports like Living Under Drones highlight the need for both more transparency from the US and Pakistani governments, and for drawing attention to the social backlash against their use in Pakistan. But they do not definitively build a case against drones in general. Without a better alternative, drones are here to stay.

But Foust is suffering from at least two ailments common to the debate about drone strikes in Pakistan.  The first is subscribing to the premise that action—specifically U.S. action—is required; the second is lumping all drone strikes against all targets in Northwest Pakistan together.

Under the first ailment, observers and policymakers presuppose that the situation in Northwest Pakistan demands kinetic action.  Across the spectrum of vectors by which to deliver that kinetic action—drone strikes, U.S. military incursions, Pakistani military actions—drones offer the least-bad option because they offer a high degree of precision and the impact from individual strikes is fairly circumscribed.  However, it is not entirely clear that military action is required—and, even if some action is required, it is not clear that the scale of U.S. action in Pakistan is appropriate.  First, Northwest Pakistan is home to a mélange of non-state actors pursuing varied agendas, targeting different populations.  The correct approach to addressing these various actors is almost certainly not uniform.  Instead, responses ought to be highly contextualized—drones, because of their relative ease of use, offer a low-cost alternative to formulating complex policy.  Second, to the extent that Foust is right and all of these actors exist due to “the Pakistani government’s reluctance to grant the FATA the political inclusion necessary for normal governance or to establish an effective police force,” drone strikes offer a solution wholly inapposite to the problem at hand.  Rather than in any way addressing the underlying causes that Foust identifies, drones strikes substitute a tactic for a strategy and act as a mere—if perpetual—stop-gap.

The second ailment that Foust and many others suffer from is lumping the myriad non-state actors in Northwest Pakistan together.  This facet, combined with the penchant for painting the targets of drone strikes with a broad brush, leads to statements like:

The targets of drone strikes in Pakistan sponsor insurgents in the region that kill U.S. soldiers and destabilize the Pakistani state (that is why Pakistani officials demand greater control over targeting). They cannot simply be left alone to continue such violent attacks.

The groups targeted by drone strikes in Pakistan include al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, the Haqqani Network, and many others.  These groups don’t have different names just to confuse the West.  No, they have different names because theyare distinct organizations, with distinct orders of battle, distinct agendas,and different enemies.  The last is perhaps the most important piece.  By treating these groups as an undifferentiated mass, the United States tends to drive them together—making them stronger—where it could potentially (in some cases, easily) drive a wedge between them.

More to the point, however, the targets themselves are not all “sponsor[ing] insurgents.”  The vast majority of the militants killed by drone strikes are not leaders.  The vast majority of those fighters killed are mere foot soldiers.  This fact alone begs the question of why drones are employed so frequently.  It is perhaps an inefficient use of resources to employ a drone—relatively cheap though it may be—to kill a grunt.

Fundamentally, drone strikes are here to stay not because they are the least bad option but because the problems in Northwest Pakistan are complicated and, potentially, intractable.  Addressing those problems is both difficult and not the responsibility of the United States—it is, instead, the responsibility of the Pakistani state.  In so far as those festering problems present an immediate threat to the United States, and the Pakistani state is unwilling to address it, then the United States should—and has every right to—avail itself of self-defense.  However, rightly employed, these invocations would almost certainly occur far less frequently than do drone strikes today.

War in Pakistan, You Say?

Over at Danger Room, Spencer Ackerman blogsthat Defense Secretary Panetta today admitted that the United States isfighting a war in Pakistan. As Ackerman notes, this is hardly revelatory—by 2010, I was arguing that U.S. use of force in Northwest Pakistan rose to thelevel of an armed conflict, at least against Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.

Ackerman states this, however:

In case you’re wondering, there aren’t many legal implications or obligations prompted by Panetta’s admission. The 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, the legal wellspring of the war on terrorism, clearly authorizes attacking the perpetrator organization of 9/11 unbounded by geographic limits. Besides that, the short document is vague enough to fly a Predator through. There is little upside and much risk for any politician arguing it’s time to end the 9/11 Era. To paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes, the life of the war has not been law; it has been politics.

His butchering Holmes aside, Ackerman is correct—but not for the reasons he thinks. The fact is, the existence of an armed conflict, irrespective of the AUMF, does have legal implications for the United States. More importantly, whether an armed conflict exists is a question of fact determined by the intensity of hostilities and the degree to which the parties are organized. If the conflagration in question exceeds this so-called Tadic threshold, then an armed conflict exists. And, if an armed conflict exists, then international humanitarian law—otherwise known as the law of armed conflict or the law of war—is triggered, giving rise to very particular legal implications and obligations. Noticeably absent from this analysis is whether a state has declared itself to be at war.

More importantly, Ackerman’s characterization of the AUMF as being territorially boundless is at least controversial. The Bush and Obama administrations have certainly treated the AUMF as such but they’re practice is hardly the final word. IHL clearly recognizes territorial bounds to armed conflict. In inter-state conflict, the geographic limits are defined by the law of neutrality. In intra-state armed conflict, the geographic scope of the armed conflict is limited to the state(s) in which, under Tadic, the armed conflict exists. Thus, an armed conflict in Pakistan is limited to Pakistan, meaning that a member of the TTP—one party to the armed conflict in Pakistan—who happens to be walking around Iran, say, would not be subject to use of force in the same way he would if he were walking around South Waziristan.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Limiting Factors

Slouching Towards Columbia has dedicated a fair amount of space over the last two weeks to unmanned aerial vehicles ("drones")--a topic with which I'm somewhat familiar. One post, "Drones and the False Allure of Impunity," assesses a Zenko piece about the future of drone operations in Afghanistan if Pakistan were to oust our drone bases there. Trombly notes rightly:

The ability of the United States to conduct drone campaigns and other so-called standoff strikes is in fact heavily constrained by geopolitical and logistical considerations. While the drone aircraft may be unmanned, they are just as dependent on bases, ground crews, and a logistical tail as their manned counterparts. So too are they dependent on permissive airspace.

To which I would that drones are also dependent on human-source intelligence and the ability of intelligence agencies to operate in theater. Although the topic of drone reliance on HUMINT has been fairly downplayed, one need only look at the suicide bombing of FOB Chapman to understand it. FOB Chapman was manned by CIA agents who were looking over the border from Afghanistan into Pakistan to support the U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan. One of the sources the CIA was operating, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian doctor, proved to be a triple agent, tasked by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan with attacking FOB Chapman. The TTP targeted that base because of its role in drone operations in Pakistan and because the TTP were one of the primary groups targeted by the drone campaign. 

I would also add that the comparison between CIA operations in Pakistan and JSOC operations in Yemen is not necessarily apt. In none of the reporting I've seen regarding drones in Pakistan has there been anything like Foust's depiction of 300-500 U.S. troops on the ground in Yemen supporting UAV operations. If the CIA is able to operate drones in Pakistan with a lighter footprint--and one that is likely reliant on contractors rather than U.S. military personnel--then there is little reason why the CIA could not do so similarly in Yemen. The choice for JSOC over CIA operations in Yemen--and the attendant larger JSOC footprint--likely has more to do with the legal framework underlying U.S. operations in Yemen. That is, the United States views its operations in Yemen as part of an armed conflict--either with AQ proper or through intervention in Yemen's IAC with AQAP--and, as such, must employ uniformed military personnel. As opposed to the apparent view that of the United States that it is not engaged in an armed conflict in Pakistan -- a point of view with which I disagree, at least with respect to the TTP during 2009-2010.

Mischaracterizing the Law of Drones

Adam Entous, Siobhan Gorman, and Julian Barnes’ reporting in the Wall Street Journal indicates that the United States views its covert drone campaign in Pakistan to be an armed conflict, governed by international humanitarian law. As I’ve argued elsewhere, the hostilities between the United States and various organized armed groups operating in Pakistan—and there are many such groups—are sufficiently intense to rise to the level of an armed conflict, triggering international humanitarian law. IHL provides a state with the authority to use force as a first resort against hostile civilians who directly participate in hostilities. The low-level foot soldiers of the various armed groups in Pakistan are such civilians directly participating in hostilities and they are lawful targets for as long as they are directly participating in hostilities.


Thus, Spencer Ackerman’s mischaracterizations aside, the fundamental question of who can be targeted is not one of policy but of law. Limiting drone targeting in Pakistan to high-level leadership was an implicit indication that the United States was invoking a state’s inherit right of self-defense. The expansion in targeting to include low-level fighters indicates a recognition on the part of the United States that it is engaged in one (perhaps several) armed conflicts in Pakistan. It is within the framework of armed conflict that the United States finds the authority to target a broader set of individuals and not just those whose killing is necessary to disrupt an imminent armed attack—the requirements for a state to use force in self-defense. Notably, the refusal to expand the use of drones in Yemen to include low-level fighters may suggest that the United States does not believe it is engaged in an armed conflict in Yemen, a very interesting point unto itself.


Moreover, the criticism that Ackerman levels—“CIA Drones Kill Large Groups Without Knowing Who They Are”—is misplaced and wrongheaded. Under neither self-defense nor the law of armed conflict is it necessary for the CIA to know who it is targeting. Under self-defense it may be useful for a state to know who it is targeting to be assured that it has made out the requirements of self-defense, but it is not required. Under the law of armed conflict, however, this criticism becomes ridiculous. In a non-international armed conflict, one that takes place between a state and a non-state actor, targetability turns on whether the target is directly participating in hostilities. As for the laundryman in Ackerman’s hypothetical, he is collateral damage. Whether his death renders the use of force unlawful depends on whether, from a prospective view, his death (and those like him) is disproportionate to the military advantage gained by killing the target. 


There is plenty to question about the U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan and elsewhere without confusing paradigms or leveling critiques that make no sense. 

Rolling Back the TTP

Sean Mann at FP considers the turning tide in Pakistan's war against Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan -- the unified front of Pakistani militant organizations, separate from (though sometimes aligned with) the Afghan Taliban. 

By mid-2008, the local branches of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) had forced out Pakistani security forces and taken power in large portions of Mohmand and Bajaur, the northernmost of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). For three years the militant group exercised open territorial control, levying taxes and administering its own brand of justice in the mountainous areas along the Afghan border. Pakistani military operations aimed at destroying the TTP insurgency came in regular cycles, yet each declaration of success was followed by the swift resurgence of militant power. Hundreds of thousands of civilians fled the violence to reside in Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps or with family members elsewhere in Pakistan.

Recently, however, the tide in Mohmand and Bajaur has turned decisively in the Pakistani military's favor. For the first time in four years, militants have lost the territory they once openly controlled. Whether the tide turns back, or whether these tribal areas even matter given the larger challenges Pakistan faces, is another question entirely.

The TTP figured prominently in an article I coauthored last year discussing the legal implications of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan.

Pakistan Disintegrating?

Stephen P. Cohen seems to think so, from this interview with the Council on Foreign Relations.  I'm working on a longer article about Pakistan in the wake of Salman Taseer's assassination.

106

With more than a month left in 2010, the United States has already doubled its 2009 tally for drone strikes in Pakistan. The United States launched its 106th strike over the weekend, at a target in North Waziristan. In 2009, the US launched 53 drone strikes in Pakistan compared to 34 strikes in 2008. Both the year-on-year, and the intra-year rate of strikes has increased, with the United States launching 54 attacks in the first 8 months of 2010 and 52 in the following three months.

While many scholars and commentators seek to justify US drone strikes in Pakistan under either the rubric of self-defense or by expanding the zone of combat of the war in Afghanistan to include the frontier region of Pakistan, the proliferation of strikes and the fact that armed groups other than Al Qaeda or the Afghan Taliban are targeted leaves these explanations wanting. It is likely that the intensity of US drone strikes and the level of organization of the targeted groups places the United States in an armed conflict in Pakistan, triggering international humanitarian law.

It Feels Smarter

Over the past few days there has been increasing indications that the Pakistani government and the US government working in concert have taken some major strides in disrupting Al Qaeda/Taliban organizations in the tribal areas of Pakistan. The first big story was the capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Barader, now today two news stories come from the region. Two shadow governors for northern Afghan provinces have been captured inside Pakistan. The comes as news of a blast in the Khyber region that reportedly killed a local militant commander (Ben has suggested this could be the start of a Abu Nidal type paranoia). With all the news coming from Pakistan it's important to note the joint Afghan-US offensive moving block by block through Marja attempting to definitively root out this Taliban stronghold.

What does it all mean? It's hard to say, but what it feels like, all these bits of information coming together, it just feels smarter. It feels coordinated. It feels like an overriding strategic goal is shared among the different arms of the US defense apparatus and that goal is being achieved through the disparate, but inter-connected efforts of the US military, the Afghan military, the CIA, and the Pakistani ISI. Progress is slow in engagements such as these, but I am encouraged that it feels smarter. Whether or not it truly is we will only know with time.

You Can’t Win Them All

Since at least Christmas, members of the Republican Party have been advancing a theme that President Barack Obama is Soft on Terrorism. Initially, President Obama was Soft on Terrorism because he did exactly the same thing President Bush had done in the same situation—namely, Mirandizing the Underwear Bomber. In the last week, though, the President has been ridiculed for being Soft on Terrorism by being more aggressive than President Bush.

Last week, as addressed here, Marc Thiessen published a piece in Foreign Policy questioning the Obama administration’s use of targeted killing. Thiessen feigned concern—and his concern was echoed by Karen DeYoung in the Washington Post—that the United States was killing so many members of Al Qaeda, the Afghan or Pakistani Taliban that US national security was being harmed. The use of Predator drones was indicative of a President unwilling to do what is necessary to secure America and unable to men and women in harm’s way. Utter nonsense, of course; this President has been more aggressive than his predecessor in disrupting militants in Pakistan. And, like his predecessor, he has extended US force into lawless portions of Somalia—why, Ms. Young, is it that a helicopter attack on a militant last year is indicative of his being Soft on Terrorism when President Bush’s use of an AC-130 gunship on a militant in 2006 was not?

But now, a fortuitous answer to these critics comes from Karachi, Pakistan:

The [Afghan] Taliban’s top military commander was captured several days ago in Karachi, Pakistan, in a secret joint operation by Pakistani and American intelligence forces, according to American government officials.

Unsurprisingly, this indicates that the President is aggressively continuing the United States’ campaign against the Afghan Taliban. It also indicates that, when the balance of target value and risk is right, he is willing to order the capture of that target. Further, and perhaps most importantly, it may indicate that Pakistan is willing to cooperate with the United States in its campaign against the Afghan Taliban—until now, Pakistan has seemingly been loathe to assist in the anti-Afghan Taliban campaign, preferring to take on what it sees as a greater threat: the Pakistani Taliban.

UPDATE: Two commanders of the Afghan Taliban have confirmed that the Taliban's top military commander, Mullah Baradar, has been captured. These two commanders claim that he was captured in the Marja area of Afghanistan--where the NATO offensive is taking place--rather than in Pakistan. It seems to me that what's important here is the confirmation of Mullah Baradar's capture. Given the Afghan Taliban's consistent claims that its leadership is in Afghanistan, not Pakistan, it is likely these commanders are trying to stave off the demoralizing impact of having to admit its leadership is not in Afghanistan.

UPDATE II: The New York Times reports this morning that Mullah Baradar was not the target of the raid in which he was captured. This, of course, throws cold water on the notion advanced above that his capture is evidence of risk-reward balancing for the employment of particular tactics in the Pakistan theatre. That said, the New York Times also reports that the Pakistani-led raid was instigated at American request, based on American intelligence. Thus, the most important aspect of Baradar's capture, the cooperation between the US and Pakistan against the Afghan Taliban, is preserved. As Kennedy notes above, it just feels smarter.

Wait One Minute

Every now and again, I stumble onto an article or opinion piece that stops me in my proverbial tracks. Marc Thiessen’s piece in Foreign Policy is one such item.

I think somewhere underlying Thiessen’s article is a deep skepticism of the drone campaign. He’s not alone. Jane Mayer put together a wonderful piece in the New Yorker last fall that did a good job of discussing the use of drones in Pakistan and their severe limitations. Notably, Mayer highlighted the high numbers of non-targeted individuals killed for each targeted individual eliminated. Setting aside human rights concerns, I question the efficacy of the drone campaign in light of our broader regional goals. I particularly wonder about the drone campaign encouraging otherwise neutral individuals to take up arms against the Pakistani state or the United States.

Thiessen, though, uses the drone campaign to accuse the President of endangering the United States by depriving the US of “vital intelligence” and of “shying away from the hard decisions needed to protect the United States.”

This is nonsense. Of course it is a truism that dead men tell no tales. But for Thiessen’s thesis to be true, the United States would have to have available to it a capability to capture and question the people targeted by the drones. Now, despite the hypocritical critiques offered by some, the problem with this premise is not the questioning, it’s the capturing.

The vast majority of the individuals being blown up are in the lawless FATA region of Pakistan. Many of the targets are affiliated not with Al-Qaeda or the Afghan Taliban but with the Pakistani Taliban. Whatever the arrangement the United States government currently has with Pakistan, it is clear that Pakistan does not want US soldiers on its territory—judging by the vitriolic reactions last week, American trainers are not even welcome.

Though Thiessen would have you believe that the Obama administration has put the United States in danger by eliminating a proposed CIA program to kill terrorists because it had an ethereal capture component, this is merely a straw man. This capability never existed. The Bush administration proposed these teams in 2002 and never managed to make them operational—in fact, I have questioned what this says about the US paramilitary operations previously. The last time the United States had a capability that resembles what Thiessen puts forward was, according to Steve Coll, under the Clinton administration, when the US put teams in the field to kill Osama bin Laden. Even then, though, the kill order was never given and the teams were never utilized. Thiessen thus presents a false choice between the use of drones, and a non-existent capture ability.

While I think there are legitimate questions to be raised about the use of drones and our strategic objectives, Thiessen’s piece represent an incredible contortion of the Obama-is-Soft-on-Terrorism narrative.

“all those militant groups are cooperating more closely than ever”

In its report that Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi—better known as the suicide bomber who killed 8 people at a CIA base in Afghanistan –appears in a video with Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, the New York Times suggests a “troubling possibility”:

But other militants allied with the Afghan Taliban factions and Al Qaeda claimed responsibility, too, leading to another troubling possibility: that all those militant groups are cooperating more closely than ever.

Cooperation between militant groups is certainly a possibility. Indeed, there are many disparate groups that are embroiled in the AfPak conflict who routinely take on Afghan or NATO forces—the Uzbek Islamist Movement is a good example of a non-Taliban, non-Al-Qaeda organization with its own goals but that cooperates with the Afghan and presumably the Pakistani Taliban.

And, while competing claims of responsibility may indicate cooperation, it seems more likely that the bombing of the CIA’s operating base in Afghanistan—given the coverage it has received and the nature of the target—is high profile success for which ever militant group that can lay claim to it. Such successes would likely raise the standing of the group responsible for it and may improve its ability to recruit fighters and garner support. Thus, the competing claims of responsibility are less indicative of cooperation than of the desirability to have owned the operation in question. Further, the ebullient praise that the suicide bomber levels on Baitullah Mehsud in the video in question buttresses the notion that the Pakistani Taliban is solely responsible for the bombing.