Mission creep? The scope of Obama’s drone war

In a wide-ranging counterterrorism speech in May, President Barack Obama indicated that he would be scaling back the war that the United States has engaged in since 9/11. And he said the targeted killing program that has become a major component of this war is aimed at "al Qaeda and its associated forces," and "specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America," using a legal standard put forth in the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force to justify the strikes.

The President also alluded to the idea that drone strikes in Pakistan can target groups helping the insurgency in Afghanistan, saying that until the 2014 U.S. withdrawal, he would continue to target "forces that are massing to support attacks on coalition forces." But under Obama, the drone program has expanded to target a far greater range of militant groups than his May 23^rd speech would indicate.

An exhaustive review of public data by this author shows that more than two-thirds of the strikes in Pakistan targeted groups whose principal aim was not to kill Americans in the homeland.  And many of the strikes did not even target groups involved in the insurgency in Afghanistan. These findings confirm previous conclusions based on public data on the strikes.

President Obama has authorized six times as many drone strikes as President Bush, but killed half as many Al-Qaeda members.  Many of the strikes have hit the foot-soldiers of the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, while others have targeted groups on behalf of the Pakistani government.  On May 29, the 369th American drone strike in Pakistan killed Wali-ur-Rehman, the second-in-command of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Until the United States began targeting the TTP on behalf of Pakistan in 2008, it arguably posed no threat to the American homeland, and the group was only a minor component of the insurgency in Afghanistan. 

Even the idea that the drone strikes in Pakistan have reduced the threat to Americans in Afghanistan or the homeland is increasingly in jeopardy.

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According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the drone strikes have killed up to 3,540 people in Pakistan since 2004, including at least 411 people described in news reports as "civilians." 

The National Counter-terrorism Center lists hundreds of individuals thought to be senior terrorists, but only 11 of the thousands of militants thought to be killed in drone strikes appear on it. 

Based on news reports, statements from the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and lists compiled by experts at the New America Foundation and the Long War Journal, 97 "high value targets" have been killed in drone strikes in Pakistan, less than 4 percent of the deaths in the entire program.  Just 90 separate strikes appear to have been intended for these high value targets.  And only 52 of the targets were members of al-Qaeda, the principal organization the United States is claiming to target.

It is, of course, possible that the CIA is aware of other senior militants.  One strategy for finding these lesser-known terrorists is to assume that important names should show up in news reports. 

This author’s analysis of thousands of news articles on drone strikes in Pakistan turned up more than five hundred named dead.  After removing women, children, and those clearly described as civilians, 247 names are left, presumably the "senior" terrorists the Obama administration claims to be targeting. 

Twenty seven of these militants were falsely reported killed on multiple occasions, illustrating the difficulty of targeted killing, even with a weapon as sophisticated as a drone.

These names come from 171 strikes, about 46 percent of the total, meaning that in most drone strikes in Pakistan, there are no publicly named militants killed. 

Some Pakistani journalists and analysts say militant groups conceal who is killed in strikes, removing their dead from attack sites before journalists or civilians arrive, in an effort to mask losses of senior leaders. 

Others think the CIA is deliberately targeting unidentified low-ranking militants, a practice made possible through the "signature strikes" that became standard policy in Pakistan soon after President Obama first took office. These are strikes carried out solely on the basis of suspicious behavior, without knowledge of an individual target’s identity. 

This author’s analysis of open source data supports the latter explanation. 

The data shows that after Obama took office, the percentage of mid and senior-level militants being killed plummeted, and new groups began to be targeted.  During the Bush administration, 54 named militants were killed in 29 drone strikes, while under President Obama, 190 were killed in 125 strikes. 

When someone was killed by a drone strike under President Bush, they were nearly twice as likely to be a high value target than under President Obama.  And under President Bush, 88 percent of the high value targets were from Al-Qaeda, but that proportion is only 47 percent under President Obama. 

The drop in the number of named militants, and the broadening of targets beyond Al-Qaeda, provides further evidence for reports that signature strikes account for most attacks under President Obama.

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Not only has the Obama administration lowered the bar of seniority when it selects targets, it has also expanded its program to include groups that were focused primarily on attacking the Pakistani government.  And when it goes after these groups, it seems to allow a far broader definition of proportionality than usual.

Earlier this year, the New York Times‘ Mark Mazzetti reported that the Pakistani government agreed to allow the CIA to begin a targeted killing program in specific areas of Pakistan’s tribal regions in 2004, if the U.S. would first kill militant leader Nek Muhammad, who had been leading an insurgency against the government in South Waziristan. Pervez Musharraf then publicly admitted in an interview with CNN that he had made such an agreement when he was President. In the first review of internal American documents on the targeted killing program, McClatchy’s Jonathan Landay confirmed the CIA had been working closely with Pakistani intelligence through at least June 2010. 

It is clear that at certain points in the last four years, the United States went to bat for Pakistan, targeting groups that posed no threat to Americans at the time.  In doing so, it used disproportional force on a number of occasions, and plots against the United States over the past few years indicate that this may have inspired a new generation of global terrorists.

There are many militant outfits operating in Waziristan, which has seen almost all the drone strikes in Pakistan. 

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a federation of dozens of militant groups, was formed in 2007 by Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed in a drone strike two years later. Created primarily in response to a June 2007 Pakistani military operation in Islamabad that killed hundreds of religious students from the Federally Administrered Tribal Areas (FATA), the TTP has carried out a series of indiscriminate, brutal attacks throughout Pakistan, killing thousands of civilians. After the TTP first became the target of drone strikes in 2008, it turned its attention to the West, trying to stage an attack in Barcelona, Spain and another in New York City.

Meanwhile, the Haqqani network and militants loyal to commanders Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Mullah Nazir, support the Taliban insurgencies in Afghanistan.  The Pakistani military has not taken much action against these groups, reportedly because they do not pose a threat to the Pakistani state.

A comprehensive analysis of 222 well-documented drone strikes by this author shows about 26 percent hit members of Al-Qaeda, 22 percent hit members of the TTP, and 39 percent hit the three groups focused on supporting the insurgency in Afghanistan.  The rest could not be reliably linked to any single group. 

Standards of proportionality seemed to fall by the wayside when the CIA targeted TTP members.

"We identified a consistent pattern where the CIA deliberately targeted rescuers," says Chris Woods, from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which tries to document civilian deaths in the drone strikes.  Between May 2009 and June 2011, at least a dozen strikes targeted rescuers responding to other drone strikes, killing up to 95 civilians.  The CIA also targeted at least two massive funerals.  After killing a mid-level TTP militant in June 2009, the CIA struck his funeral, which drew up to 5,000 people, killing 83, including 45 civilians.  They missed their target, Baitullah Mehsud, the TTP’s leader.  It took 18 strikes, killing up to 295 people, including 72 civilians, to find and kill Baitullah Mehsud. 

"Clearly there was a rule change, a change in the permissive environment in that period that allowed for this to happen," says Woods.

The TTP first began to threaten attacks against the United States in 2009, citing drones as its motivation.

In December 2009, a CIA double agent killed seven U.S. intelligence officers and contractors in a suicide bombing at Camp Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan, where CIA targeters were tasked with providing information for drone strikes.  In April 2010, a series of drone strikes targeted Baitullah Mehsud’s successor, killing up to 101, including 9 civilians. The next month, Faisal Shahzad, who reportedly received bomb-making training from the TPP, tried to detonate a car-bomb in Times Square.  Shahzad and the double agent each appear in separate videos released after the attacks.  Seated next to Baitullah Mehsud’s successor, they explain they want to avenge American drone strikes.

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Curtailing the ability of militant groups in the FATA to stage attacks against Americans – in the homeland or in Afghanistan – has been the main selling point of the targeted killing program.  But highly-motivated groups like Al-Qaeda and the TTP have found ways to adapt to the drone strikes, and the insurgency in Afghanistan is stronger than ever.

In 2010, despite a troop surge and record drone strikes in Pakistan, the insurgency in Afghanistan strengthened.  Every year since has been deadlier than the last.  More coalition soldiers were killed in 2010 than in any previous year.  For civilians, 2011 was the deadliest year of the war, with 3,021 deaths in more insurgent attacks than ever before. 

While there is evidence that Osama bin Laden was concerned about the impact of drone strikes, and Taliban fighters have changed their behavior in response to the danger posed by the targeted killing program, the militant groups’ ability to plan and attempt attacks overseas from the FATA has not been diminished.  Since 2004, at least 14 of 32 serious terrorist plots against the West were tied to the FATA.  Crucially, most of the people involved in trying to carry out these attacks were residents of the very countries where the attacks were to take place. 

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Earlier this year, the former head of forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, likened the use of drones by new presidents to a novice golfer who hits a good drive with one club, then insists on always using the same club.  Targeted killings, he said, are a "covert fix for a complex problem."  He joins a growing list of retired generals and CIA directors who are doubtful about the efficacy of drones.

Umar Farooq is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, and The Atlantic. He tweets @UmarFarooq_