Liberal Anti-Drone-Policy activists ask legal accountability — but Obama and Congress could not care less

Rights Groups, in Letter to Obama, Question Legality and Secrecy of Drone Killings

[Yahya Arhab/European Pressphoto Agency — A drone model burned Friday at a protest in Sana, Yemen. Most American drone attacks have been in Yemen and Pakistan.]

By SCOTT SHANE, New York Times, April 12, 2013

In a letter sent to President Obama this week, the nation’s leading human rights organizations questioned the legal basis for targeted killing and called for an end to the secrecy surrounding the use of drones.

The “statement of shared concern” said the administration should “publicly disclose key targeted killing standards and criteria; ensure that U.S. lethal force operations abroad comply with international law; enable meaningful Congressional oversight and judicial review; and ensure effective investigations, tracking and response to civilian harm.”

The nine-page letter, signed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, the Open Society Foundations and several other groups, is the most significant critique to date by advocacy groups of what has become the centerpiece of the United States’ counterterrorism efforts.

While not directly calling the strikes illegal under international law, the letter lists what it calls troubling reports of the criteria used by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command to select targets and assess results. The reported policies raise “serious questions about whether the U.S. is operating in accordance with international law,” the letter says. It is also signed by the Center for Civilians in Conflict and units of the New York University and Columbia Law Schools.

Afghans say US/NATO forces ‘as bad as the Taliban’

If the US-led Nato counterinsurgency strategy depends on winning civilian ‘hearts and minds’, they’re losing badly

Guardian UK,  12 October 2010

Many Afghan civilian deaths have involved British troops opening fire on unarmed drivers or motorcyclists near convoys. Photograph: Ministry of Defence/AP

Last week marked the ninth anniversary of the United States’s invasion of Afghanistan, and the beginning of the 10th year of the current international engagement there. In the coming months, the US, Nato and its international allies will take a hard look at the current military counterinsurgency strategy, and the prospects for peaceful reconciliation. Both strategies are likely to be challenged by the absence of key ingredient to their success – Afghan trust in international efforts.

My organisation, the Open Society Foundations, recently asked 250 Afghans across Afghanistan who or what they thought was contributing to the escalation of conflict in Afghanistan, and, in particular, whom they blamed for the high civilian casualties and other civilian losses that have been such a flashpoint among the Afghan population.

Despite statistics suggesting insurgents are disproportionately responsible for civilian harm, our analysis found that Afghans blamed international forces as much, if not more, than insurgents. Few spoke warmly about the Taliban. But the vast majority described international forces as equally brutal toward civilians, and equally, if not more responsible for civilian casualties, detention abuses and other concerns.

They said international forces were often indiscriminate, and that many civilian deaths could have been prevented through better targeting, intelligence or coordination. “When an accident happens, or there is an attack against Nato troops, then Nato troops react and start firing on people. They never think about those around them as human. They think every person on the street is their enemy,” said a man from western Herat province.