[dehai-news] TheeastAfrican.co.ke: US drone attack warfare plan for East Africa risky

From: Berhane Habtemariam <Berhane.Habtemariam_at_gmx.de_at_dehai.org>
Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2011 22:20:28 +0200

US drone attack warfare plan for East Africa risky

By KEVIN KELLEY, Special Correspondent ( <javascript:void(0);> email the author)

Posted Sunday, October 2 2011 at 16:32

In moving to expand its use of pilotless surveillance and attack aircraft in East Africa, the Obama administration has calculated that the potential military benefits of intensified drone warfare outweigh the political risks of such a strategy.

The Washington Post reported that the US is building bases for drones in Ethiopia and on the Arabian Peninsula while arming Somalia-focused drones launched from the Seychelles.

The US is also continuing to fly drones from its long-established base in Djibouti.

In addition, the Pentagon has supplied Ugandan and Burundian troops in Somalia with at least four hand-launched reconnaissance drones.

These moves reflect the Obama administration's decision to escalate its war on militants in Somalia and Yemen who it identifies as terrorists. Increasing reliance on drones also enables the US to fight this war at a distance that will ensure its own forces do not sustain casualties that would cause political problems at home.

The US will likely be criticised in global forums on the grounds that it is undermining international human rights law by carrying out remote-control killings in countries with which it is not formally at war.

'PlayStation' mentality to killing

Philip Alston, an international law expert employed by the UN to investigate extra-judicial killings, warned earlier this year that because drones "make it easier to kill without risk to a state's forces, policymakers and commanders will be tempted to interpret the legal limitations on who can be killed, and under what circumstances, too expansively."

Alston further cited the "risk of developing a 'PlayStation' mentality to killing." He noted that drones are controlled by technicians thousands of miles away who rely on computer programs and video feeds in carrying out push-button missile launches.

There is also the danger that drone strikes will turn civilian populations in East Africa against the US, as has occurred in Pakistan. Revulsion over this type of warfare stems in part from the collateral destruction that the drones are said to have caused in Pakistan villages.

The Pentagon claims that its drone attacks on targets in Pakistan have killed hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters while sparing civilians.

That assertion of 100 per cent accuracy has been met with scepticism on the part of some investigators.

The British Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports, for example, that the number of Pakistani civilians killed by drone-fired weapons is somewhere between 385 and 775 out of as many as 2863 deaths due to drone attacks.



 

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