Tuesday, 04 August 2015
By Adam Hudson, Truthout
 |
| A
"signature strike" takes place when a drone hits a target based on a
target's patterns of behavior - but without knowing the target's
identity. (Image: Predator drone via Shutterstock) |
Last month, on June 9, the United States launched a drone strike that
killed
Nasir al-Wuhayshi, a high-ranking leader in the Islamic militant group
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). What makes the strike notable
is that it was a coincidence: The CIA - the agency that pulled the
trigger - had no idea al-Wuhayshi was among the group of suspected
militants it targeted. Al-Wuhayshi's death at the hands of a US drone
reveals that the United States continues to fire drone missiles at
people whose identities it does not know.
Government officials confirmed the June 9 strike was a "signature strike"
to The Washington Post.
A signature strike takes place when a drone hits a target based on a
target's patterns of behavior, but without knowing that target's
identity. Thus, a US drone, in a
signature strike,
will target an area the government believes is filled with militant
activity but will not know who exactly they are killing. While signature
strikes have been happening
for a while
in the global war on terror, they signify a serious shift in US
war-making. American warfare is increasingly placing a greater emphasis
on big data, advanced computing, unmanned systems and cyberwarfare.
While this approach may seem "cleaner" and more precise than previous
tactics (particularly in contrast the drawn-out and bloody occupations
of Iraq and Afghanistan), it is not. High-tech militarism is far from
"accurate." Even more importantly, it inflicts serious human suffering
and perpetuates the US permanent-war machine.
Signature Strikes
Signature strikes began during the Bush years, in January 2008, as the US
intensified
drone strikes in Pakistan. When Obama entered office in 2009, his
administration picked up where Bush left off and exponentially increased
the number of drone strikes. During his eight years in office,
Bush launched
51 drone strikes in Pakistan and killed between 410 and 595 people.
Obama, so far, has launched 419 drone strikes in Pakistan, alone, and
killed over 4,500 people in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia since 2009.
When a drone strike takes place, the US government "counts all
military-aged males in a strike zone as combatant" unless posthumous
intelligence proves them innocent,
according to a May 2012 New York Times report. A
White House fact sheet says this is "not the case." However, that contradicts what government officials leaked to the media outlets like
The New York Times and
ProPublica. As the Times
report
notes, "Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of
simple logic: People in an area of known terrorist activity, or found
with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good."
In fact, US drone strikes have killed teenagers in countries like Pakistan and Yemen. One example is 16-year-old US citizen
Abdulrahman al-Awlaki
(son of Islamic militant preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, also a US citizen
killed in a US drone strike) in 2011. Then-Attorney General Eric Holder
said Abdulrahman was not ''specifically targeted.'' Another is Mohammed
Tuaiman, a 13-year-old Yemeni boy who was
killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen last February. Drones had killed his brother and father beforehand.
Some State Department officials complained to the White House that
the CIA's criteria for signature strikes was "too lax," according to The
New York Times report. "The joke was that when the C.I.A. sees 'three
guys doing jumping jacks,' the agency thinks it is a terrorist training
camp, said one senior official. Men loading a truck with fertilizer
could be bomb makers - but they might also be farmers, skeptics argued,"
the report says.
Drone strikes are launched by the CIA and the US military's
Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), an
elite military unit
that carries out specialized, risky missions - or "special operations" -
such as manhunts, "targeted killings" and rescues. Underneath JSOC's
umbrella are special mission units that directly perform the operations.
Those units include the Army's Delta Force, the Air Force's 24th
Special Tactics Squadron and the Navy's SEAL Team Six, which killed
Osama bin Laden in 2011.
The CIA has a similar paramilitary unit, known as the Special
Operations Group (SOG). SOG operates under the CIA's Special Activities
Division - the division that carries out covert operations - and often
selects operatives from JSOC. JSOC's activities are distinct from
conventional troops in the US Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.
The US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) oversees JSOC and all special
operations units within every military branch. JSOC also answers
directly to the executive branch, with little to no oversight from
Congress. Its missions are secret. The CIA is subject to some
congressional oversight but still largely answers to the executive
branch. This means JSOC and the CIA's paramilitary unit are virtually
the president's private armies.
The CIA has no drone bases in Yemen, but flies drones out of bases in Saudi Arabia and Djibouti. Last year, the United States
signed a new, 20-year lease on its military base in Djibouti, Camp Lemonnier, which is a
key hub
in the US's counterterrorism wars in the Horn of Africa. The US flies
surveillance and armed drones out of Camp Lemonnier to spy on and kill
militant groups in Somalia and Yemen. Recently,
Foreign Policy magazine reported that the US has two military
bases
in Somalia, from which JSOC operates. The bases are used to carry out
counterterrorism operations and surveillance, as well as lethal drone
missions.
In order to know where to launch a drone strike or other lethal
operation, the US needs intelligence. For drone strikes, the main source
for that intelligence is electronic - it's known as "signals
intelligence," as it is the result of monitoring anything with an
electronic signal. Targeting for US drone strikes and other
extrajudicial operations is based on a complex analysis of metadata and
tracking of cellphone SIM cards.
Metadata is
data about data
- such as who called whom at what time, what day, and for how long -
rather than the data's actual content. Analyzing electronic intelligence
can help analysts connect the dots and map a person's activity, though
often not the purpose or substance of that activity. In an earlier email
interview, former CIA case officer Robert Steele
explained,
"Signals intelligence has always relied primarily on seeing the dots
and connecting the dots, not on knowing what the dots are saying. When
combined with a history of the dots, and particularly the dots coming
together in meetings, or a black (anonymous) cellphone residing next to a
white (known) cellphone, such that the black acquires the white
identity by extension, it becomes possible to 'map' human activity in
relation to weapons caches, mosques, meetings, etcetera."
According to
The Intercept,
"Rather than confirming a target's identity with operatives or
informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a
strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person
is believed to be using." The NSA will typically pinpoint the location
of a suspected terrorist's cellphone or handset SIM card and
feed
that information to the CIA or JSOC, which will either launch a lethal
drone strike or conduct a raid. JSOC used a similar approach when it
conducted raids in Iraq and Afghanistan. To capture or kill militants in
Iraq and Afghanistan, JSOC
analyzed insurgent networks through surveillance drone imagery and the tracking of cellphone numbers.
However, that approach often leads to killing the wrong people.
Because the US government is targeting cellphone SIM cards that are
supposedly linked to individuals, rather than the individuals
themselves, innocent people are regularly killed. Sometimes Taliban
leaders in Pakistan - aware of the US government's tracking methods -
will randomly distribute SIM cards among their fighters to confuse
trackers. People who are unaware their phones are being tracked will
often "lend their phone, with the SIM card in it, to friends, children,
spouses and family members," according to The Intercept.
Lethal Impacts
The use of signature strikes poses serious legal, strategic and moral
questions. The recent Houthi rebellion in Yemen overthrew the US-backed
Yemeni government, which the United States relied on to help wage its
covert counterterrorism war in the country. As a result, the US has
fewer operatives and on-the-ground intelligence sources in Yemen.
According to
Reuters,
the US "will now be forced to rely more on surveillance drones, spy
satellites and electronic eavesdropping, as well as their own 'human
intelligence' sources on the ground." Thus, the government will defend
drone strikes and signature strikes on the basis of convenience and
efficacy. The Washington Post
reported
that "CIA officials have staunchly defended the targeting approach [of
signature strikes], saying that analysts poring over drone footage and
other surveillance have become adept at detecting patterns - such as the
composition and movement of a security detail - associated with senior
al-Qaeda operatives." The government also claims that signature strikes
have killed many high-value al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan.
So far this year, there have been between 14 to 15 confirmed US
drone strikes in Yemen, which have killed 46 to 69 people, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's (TBIJ) figures. In 2014,
there were
13 to 15 confirmed US drone strikes in the country, killing between 82
to 118 people, along with 3 additional US attacks that killed 21 to 22
people. TBIJ's figures don't differentiate between who was and was not a
"militant," however; that is hard to determine since many drone strike
victims are unknown people. The US government largely does not know who
it is killing in drone strikes.
Overall, US drone strikes and other counterterrorism operations have,
so far, killed between 3,155 and 5,285 people, including around 563 to
1,213 civilians, in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia,
according to TBIJ's numbers. A report by the human rights organization Reprieve
found that US drone strikes kill 28 unknown people for each intended target. Only
2 percent of those killed by drone strikes in Pakistan are top-level
al-Qaeda leaders. The rest of those
killed
are either lower-level fighters who pose little existential threat to
the US, or else they are simply civilians or other unknown individuals.
There's more...read the whole original
article here at Truth-out.org
Adam Hudson
Adam Hudson is a reporting fellow at Truthout. He typically
covers national security issues, Guantánamo, human rights,
gentrification and policing. For fun, he likes to play drums in a Bay
Area alternative rock band called Sunata. Follow him on Twitter @adamhudson5.
