US Drone Strikes: We Need a Great International Debate on Regulation

There is growing criticism over the United States’ continued use of unmanned drones. According to an October report commissioned from Ben Emmerson (U.K.) and the United Nations Human Rights Council, over 330 drone strikes have been carried out in Pakistan since 2004, with 2,200 deaths. Of these deaths, 400 were civilian. In neighboring Afghanistan, there have been close to 60 civilian deaths from drone strikes. And according to a report from Human Rights Watch released late last month, in Yemen there were 57 civilian deaths resulting from drone strikes between 2009 and this year.

These are numbers that we simply cannot disregard.

Last month on a visit to the U.S., Prime Minister Sharif of Pakistan asked President Obama to halt drone strikes within his borders. Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teen who was a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize this year, has also implored the president to put a stop to the strikes. These demands are well justified: The targets of the drone strikes in Pakistan and Afghanistan are supposed to be al-Qaida terrorists and the Taliban’s militants. That civilians are dying instead is outrageous beyond words; it is not impossible that anti-American sentiments among Pakistanis could fester while they remain caught up in the war. The assassination by drone strike of a lead Taliban official on Nov. 1 was a shock to Pakistan, which had been looking to enter peace talks with the Taliban.

In response to civilian casualties, President Obama announced in May that he was shifting control of drones from the CIA to the military and indicated his plan to place more stress on capturing, or spying on, suspected terrorists than assassinating them. It would seem these plans have yet to be fully implemented.

Unmanned drones have the potential to identify enemy combatants with on-board cameras and radar, and can be piloted remotely from inside the United States. This makes them a priceless commodity for the U.S. by lowering the cost of war in terms of both money and lives. But so long as these strikes are carried out without intelligence received from cooperating sources on the ground (HUMINT), the likelihood of friendly fire or bombing the wrong targets increases, and as the drones are piloted remotely, the pilots themselves are too distant from the killing to fully feel any psychological resistance to the act.

Mr. Emmerson’s group did not go as far as calling the drone strikes illegal, but they did point out that there is currently no clear agreement internationally for when or how drones may be employed. The group appealed to the international community to discuss and establish regulations, and demanded that countries take responsibility in those times when drone strikes result in civilian casualties. Both proposals are justified. Perhaps President Obama could recall his promise from May and lead the charge in opening international talks regarding the establishment of regulations for drone strikes.

In Pakistan and Afghanistan, there are also many cases of manned military aircraft making mistakes. So whether or not there is a pilot physically present, air strikes are nonetheless happening without sufficient intelligence and are resulting in tragedy. It is possible that the United States is growing impatient in the face of the coalition’s planned withdrawal from Afghanistan at the end of next year, but if in doing so it incurs the wrath of the people on the ground, the goal of executing an “honorable withdrawal” will become so distant as to be unattainable.