Drone Warfare's Deadly Civilian Toll: A British Drone Pilot Speaks Out

I find myself caught between the need to follow the drone debate and the need to avoid unpleasant memories it stirs. I used drones – unmanned aerial vehicles – during the nadir of my military career that was an operational tour in Afghanistan.

I remember cuing up a US Predator strike before deciding the computer screen wasn't depicting a Taliban insurgent burying an improvised explosive device in the road; rather, a child playing in the dirt.

After returning from Afghanistan at the end of 2009, I left the British army in 2010. I wanted to put as much distance as I could between myself and the UK, leaving to study in America (where I still reside). By doing so, I inadvertently placed myself in the country that is spearheading development in drone technology and use, highlighted by each report of a drone strike and the usual attendant civilian casualties.

Political theorist Hannah Arendt described the history of warfare in the 20th century as the growing incapacity of the army to fulfil its basic function: defending the civilian population. My experiences in Afghanistan brought this issue to a head, leaving me unable to avoid the realization that my role as a soldier had changed, in Arendt's words, from "that of protector into that of a belated and essentially futile avenger". Our collective actions in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11 were, and remain, futile vengeance – with drones the latest technological advance to empower that flawed strategy.

Drones are becoming the preferred instruments of vengeance, and their core purpose is analogous to the changing relationship between civil society and warfare, in which the latter is conducted remotely and at a safe distance so that implementing death and murder becomes increasingly palatable.

Hyperbole? But I was there. I sat in my camouflaged combats and I took the rules of engagement and ethical warfare classes. And frankly, I don't buy much, if any, of it now – especially concerning drones. Their effectiveness is without question, but there's terrible fallout from their rampant use.

Both Pakistan and Yemen are arguably less stable and more hostile to the west as a result of President Obama's increased reliance on drones. When surveying the poisoned legacy left to the Iraqi people, and what will be left to the Afghan people, it's beyond depressing to hear of the hawks circling around other theatres like Pakistan and Yemen, stoking the flames of interventionism.

I fear the folly in which I took part will never end, and society will be irreversibly enmeshed in what George Orwell's 1984 warned of: constant wars against the Other, in order to forge false unity and fealty to the state.

It's very easy to kill if you don't view the target as a person. When I went to Iraq as a tank commander in 2004, the fire orders I gave the gunner acknowledged some legitimacy of personhood: "Coax man, 100 meters front." Five years later in Afghanistan, the linguistic corruption that always attends war meant we'd refer to "hot spots", "multiple pax on the ground" and "prosecuting a target", or "maximising the kill chain".

The Pentagon operates about 7,000 drones and asked Congress for nearly $5bn for drones in the 2012 budget. Before retiring as air force chief of staff, General Norton Schwartz was reported as saying it "was 'conceivable' drone pilots in the air force would outnumber those in cockpits in the foreseeable future". That's not a brave new world, far from it.

The encroachment of drones into the civilian realm is also gaining momentum. President Obama signed a federal law on 14 February 2012, allowing drones for a variety of commercial uses and for police law enforcement. The skies above may never be the same. As with most of America's darker elements, such as its gun culture, there's profit to be made – the market for drones is already valued at $5.9bn and is expected to double in 10 years. More

 

Drone Blowback is Real

A new analysis finds five ways drone strikes in Yemen are hurting American interests.

A U.S. drone killed six people in Yemen earlier today. As Reuters pointed out, “this is the fourth strike in two weeks” in a single province in the country. “Our approach has been to develop operations in each of these areas that will contain al Qaida and go after them so they have no place to escape,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told a Senate committee in June.

A new analysis questions that assumption. Published in the Middle East Policy Journal, the article looks at Yemen and concludes that increased drone strikes “will produce distinct forms of blowback,” the CIA-coined term describing the unintended actions that harm America resulting from U.S. policies. Overall, “this will manifest itself in terms of increased recruitment for al-Qaeda or affiliated groups and a reduction of the Yemeni leadership’s ability to govern, increasing competition from alternative groups.”

Written by three scholars at the University of Arizona, “Drone Warfare in Yemen” finds five distinct forms of blowback:

• Attacks on America targets such as the 2009 Khost bombing of a CIA Camp
• Increased ability of Al Qaeda to recruit new members, particularly those who had loved ones killed in drone attacks
• Decreased U.S. accountability, resulting from control of the drone program oscillating between the CIA and Joint Chiefs of Staff
• Continued destabilization of Yemen
• An increasingly precarious alliance between the American and Yemeni governments

The authors make the compelling points that drone programs rely on the support of the local regime. Whatever benefits this has over the short-term, over the long-term it makes those regimes lose legitimacy in the eyes of their own people. Such a development can be deadly — al-Qaida first declared war on the United States in no small part because it saw Saudi Arabia and Egypt as puppets of the Americans.

It is no coincidence that the increased frequency of drone attacks after 2009 coincided with the domestic unrest in Yemen, the authors say. On June 3, 2011, the leader of Yemen, Ali Abadallah Saleh, who cooperated with the United States even ashe tolerated al-Qaida elements, was injured in attacks on his compound, compelling him to go to Saudi Arabia and New York City for medical treatment. A new government may come to power that is less hospitable to American interests, as was the case in Egypt. The United States should welcome a government beholden to its people — but the result may not always be so benign, as was the case with Iran in 1979 More