US War on Terror Feature: "Vast Majority of Those Targeted by Drones Are Not Al Qa'eda" (Zenko)

See also EA Video Analysis: Mr Obama, Why Should We Trust You With Drones?

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Under the Obama administration, officials have argued that the drone strikes are only hitting operational Al Qaeda leaders or people who posed significant and imminent threats to the U.S. homeland. If you actually look at the vast majority of people who have been targeted by the United States, that’s not who they are.

Most of the people who are killed don’t have as their objective to strike the U.S. homeland. Most of the people who are killed by drones want to impose some degree of sharia law where they live, they want to fight a defensive jihad against security service and the central government, or they want to unseat what they perceive as an apostate regime that rules their country.

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US War on Terror Feature: Obama Seeks a "Formal Rule Book" for Drone Attacks

Aftermath of US Drone Strike in AfghanistanFacing the possibility that President Obama might not win a second term, his administration accelerated work in the weeks before the election to develop explicit rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by unmanned drones, so that a new president would inherit clear standards and procedures, according to two administration officials.

The matter may have lost some urgency after Nov. 6. But with more than 300 drone strikes and some 2,500 people killed by the Central Intelligence Agency and the military since Mr. Obama first took office, the administration is still pushing to make the rules formal and resolve internal uncertainty and disagreement about exactly when lethal action is justified.

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EA Video Analysis: A Beginner's Guide to Drone Strikes, "Kill Lists", and Obama's War on Terror

Slate recently published an interactive map of US drone strikes in Pakistan, graphically revealing the scale of this emerging form of warfare. With reports that the CIA is seeking to expand its fletts of drones, coupled with the announcement that a UN team will investigate civilian deaths caused by such attacks, we ask what the effects are of this cheaper form of American warfare and risk consideration of the people who feel the effects of the strikes.

With the expanding use of drone strikes, the Obama Administration --- co-operating with the media to reveal its "secret" programmes --- is promising the American public a war without end should it enjoy a second term. Is this a renewed "War of Terror" with a goal that can be achieved, or does it risks exacerbating the "terrorism" it is supposedly eliminating?

US Feature: A Map of President Obama's 284 Drone Strikes in Pakistan

See also US Feature: Obama's Man Writing the "Playbook" for the "War on Terror"

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Slate presents a map, based on information to June from the New American Foundation and updated with media reports since then, of US drone strikes in Pakistan in the Bush and Obama Administrations.

While striking, the map may be conservative in its presentation. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism found earlier this month that "the Long War Journal and the New America Foundation have been under-recording credible reports of drone civilian casualties in Pakistan by a huge margin".

Pakistan to Yemen to North Africa Feature: The CIA Seeks More Drones

Protest in Pakistan earlier this month against US drone strikes

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The CIA is urging the White House to approve a significant expansion of the agency’s fleet of armed drones, a move that would extend the spy service’s decade-long transformation into a paramilitary force, U.S. officials said.

The proposal by CIA Director David H. Petraeus would bolster the agency’s ability to sustain its campaigns of lethal strikes in Pakistan and Yemen and enable it, if directed, to shift aircraft to emerging al-Qaeda threats in North Africa or other trouble spots, officials said.

If approved, the CIA could add as many as 10 drones, the officials said, to an inventory that has ranged between 30 and 35 over the past few years.

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Pakistan Feature: The Murder of Farida Afridi, Activist for Women's Rights (Crowstaff)

Farida AfridiLast week Farida "Kokikhel" Afridi, director of the Society for Appraisal and Women Empowerment in Rural Areas (SAWERA), a Pakistani non-governmental organisation dedicated to women's and children's rights, was murdered in the Khyber tribal region area as she travelled to her office. Witnesses saying they saw two motorcyclists following Afridi before they opened fire and sped away --- she was shot once in the head and twice in the neck, dying in hospital of her wounds.

The 25-year-old activist co-founded SAWERA with her sister Noorzia in 2004. Despite threats, she criticised the government, the Taliban, and the patriarchal nature of Pakistani society, which she saw as one of the main obstacles to women's empowerment.

The Express Tribune wrote in an editorial of tribute and regret:

Farida Afridi was shot dead in cold blood for the crime of being a decent, caring human being. As the executive director of the human rights NGO, Sawera, Afridi was working in Fata performing the most thankless of jobs: trying to improve the plight of women in an area where many people have never even considered the concept of women’s rights.

Chris Crowstaff of Safe World for Women, a partner of SAWERA, offers further recollections.

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Turkey Live Coverage (23 May): Tough Line on "Counter-Terrorism"...and Israel's Military

1725 GMT: Diyarbakir's Mayor Osman Baydemir hosted the native Indian music group Inca Sol. Baydemir said:

Kurdish people understand you very well. Kurds have experienced the same tragedies your forefathers had faced. We would like you to know that Kurdish people has great respect to your people.

1600 GMT: Interior Minister İdris Naim Şahin accused the Assad regime for allowing PKK members to establish bases in Syrian territory. He claimed that even some PKK gorups were running small towns close to the Turkish border. Şahin continued:

Syria is turning a blind eye to terrorist groupings in areas close to the border to put Turkey in difficulty and perhaps as a way to take revenge on Turkey.

As known, Syria has also been accusing Turkey for training and arming the opposition forces within the turkish territories which is denied by Ankara.

1445 GMT: During his visit to Kazakhstan, Erdogan told his counterpart Karim Mansimov that they were very pleased to have carried the bilateral relations to strategic partnership in 2009. 

After he had stated that the total amount of Turkish business investment in the country reached around $2.5 billion, Erdogan said to Mansimov:

My brother, you know that I want 3 kids from each family in Turkey. You should say here not 3 but 5! Because all financial opportunities along with a vast area over 2 million 700 thousand square meters are fine. 

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Yemen Feature: CIA Seeks Authority to Expand Drone Programme (Miller)

The CIA is seeking authority to expand its covert drone campaign in Yemen by launching strikes against terrorism suspects even when it does not know the identities of those who could be killed, U.S. officials said.

Securing permission to use these “signature strikes” would allow the agency to hit targets based solely on intelligence indicating patterns of suspicious behavior, such as imagery showing militants gathering at known al-Qaeda compounds or unloading explosives.

The practice has been a core element of the CIA’s drone program in Pakistan for several years. CIA Director David H. Petraeus has requested permission to use the tactic against the al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, which has emerged as the most pressing terrorism threat to the United States, officials said.

If approved, the change would probably accelerate a campaign of U.S. airstrikes in Yemen that is already on a record pace, with at least eight attacks in the past four months.

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Iran Snapshot: The Difficulties of Getting Around Sanctions (Zeb Khan)

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad & Pakistan President Asif Ali ZardariSanctions-hit Iran has been offering new trading agreements to countries in an effort to skirt around the restrictions but it may be reluctant to extend the same to Pakistan, according to sources.

“We are ready to export the 200,000 tons of rice that Iran needs but its tariff and non-tariff barriers and unwillingness to agree to a currency swap arrangement stand in the way,” the president of the Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan, Javed Islam Agha, said on Sunday.

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US Opinion: Do Drones Undermine Democracy? (Singer)

In democracies like ours, there have always been deep bonds between the public and its wars. Citizens have historically participated in decisions to take military action, through their elected representatives, helping to ensure broad support for wars and a willingness to share the costs, both human and economic, of enduring them.

In America, our Constitution explicitly divided the president’s role as commander in chief in war from Congress’s role in declaring war. Yet these links and this division of labor are now under siege as a result of a technology that our founding fathers never could have imagined.

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