Last month, The Intercept uncovered a trove of classified documents relating to
the United States’ drone programs in Yemen and Somalia. Originating from a
study by a Pentagon Task Force on Intelligence, Surveillance, and
Reconnaissance (ISR), these documents shed light on the process by which Joint
Special Operations Command, or JSOC, tracked targets for lethal missions
between January 2011 and summer 2012. The ISR report indicates that there have
been critical shortfalls in the technology and intelligence the U.S. military utilizes
in these “find, fix, finish” operations. Although much has changed in the
United States drone program since 2012, these details demonstrate that the
Obama administration has been acting with less legitimacy than it originally
claimed in public statements about the program.
The first concern relates to the
U.S. military’s inability to conduct full-time surveillance of its targets in
Yemen and the Horn of Africa. Because of a deficit in the number of drones
available, and the unique challenges posed by the distance between U.S. airbases
and targets in Somalia and Yemen, JSOC was unable to maintain constant
surveillance of targets in these regions. In doing so, the United States has run the
risk of violating the principle of distinction. This principle requires international
actors to ensure that civilians are not the object of an attack. Interruptions
in surveillance could cause military actors to misjudge the presence of
individuals within a targeted location, making civilian deaths far more likely.
The deficits in intelligence
gathering were not limited to airborne surveillance. A key component of the
find, fix, finish cycle is the process is the use of materials collected on the
ground and from detainee interrogations. However, there are usually no
operatives on the ground to collect any remaining intelligence after a deadly
strike, which comprise 75% of the operations in Yemen and Somalia. To
compensate, the military has begun to rely heavily on local security forces and
the host governments for support. These entities have a history of
unreliability and are known for misleading the U.S. military into eliminating
political enemies. Even if the U.S. military killed only its targets, these intelligence
issues show that it may be targeting civilians instead of combatants, further
eroding the principle of distinction in the drone program.
The U.S. military’s response to its
limited ability to obtain ground-level intelligence, increasing its reliance on
signals intelligence, further jeopardizes the legitimacy drone strikes. Signals
intelligence, or SIGINT, consists of the monitoring of electronic
communications to discover and locate targets. Documents in the ISR report, however,
state the SIGINT is an inferior form of intelligence, even though it comprises
more than half of the intelligence collected on targets in Somalia and Yemen. Besides
the relative ease with which targets can fool SIGINT, a problem is that the
military lacked the requisite technology to capture SIGINT effectively. Even
though the main components of SIGINT are video footage and cell phone data,
only some of the Reaper drones could record high definition video and
most of the aircraft lacked the ability to collect “dial number recognition”
data. This creates an even more serious problem for the principle of
distinction. These inadequate identification systems may cause the U.S.
military to mistake civilians with similar physical characteristics to combatants
for the combatants themselves. This increases the likelihood of civilian deaths
even more, yet again showing the Obama administration’s disregard for the
principle of distinction.
The Obama
administration has gone to great lengths to justify its increasing reliance on
drone strikes to engage with threats abroad. President Obama and his advisers
have characterized the drone campaign as a precise and effective tool to
protect United States’ national security interests, especially in remote
locations like Somalia and Yemen. However, the revelations in the ISR report
demonstrate that intelligence and technology constraints have prevented the
U.S. military from following through on this promise. International court cases
regarding the principle of distinction have found that the responsibility to
protect civilians lies with the attacking force.
No comments:
Post a Comment