Future of drone wars back in focus after US strike killed Afghan civilians

WASHINGTON (SBG) — The Pentagon's admission Friday that its Aug. 29 drone strike was a "tragic mistake" has renewed scrutiny of America's secretive remote warfare program.

Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, confirmed that the U.S. mistakenly killed 10 Afghan civilians, including seven children, in a strike intended for members of the Afghan branch of the Islamic State, ISIS-K. McKenzie apologized, saying the intelligence at the time left him and others confident that strike would have averted another attack, similar to the deadly suicide bombing that killed 13 American service members and 169 Afghans.

Instead, U.S. forces killed Zemerai Ahmadi, an employee at an American-based humanitarian organization dedicated to combating malnutrition in Afghanistan. According to reports and witness accounts, Ahmadi's car was struck as he pulled up to his home. Several children and Ahmadi's adult nephew were killed as they ran out to greet him.

The Pentagon acknowledged it was under pressure to prevent an imminent terrorist attack against American forces evacuating civilians at the Kabul airport. U.S. forces monitored Ahmadi for eight hours and achieved "reasonable certainty" the target posed a threat before launching the hellfire missile. After an investigation, the Pentagon found no evidence of explosives hidden in the car and no signs Ahmadi's home was being used as a compound to plan another attack against Americans. No enemy combatants were killed in the strike.

"It was a mistake, and I offer my sincere apology," McKenzie said Friday.

The Pentagon is reportedly looking at financial compensation for those affected by the strike. Members of Ahmadi's family are requesting U.S. assistance to leave Afghanistan to resettle in an unspecified third country.

The admission came as the Biden administration announced a further shift to remote capabilities to combat global terrorism. President Joe Biden touted "over-the-horizon" capabilities as the answer to America's withdrawal from Afghanistan. Rather than committing troops to a forever war, the U.S. would increasingly deploy advanced surveillance technologies and unmanned aerial vehicles to strike terrorists, as it has done for over a decade in places like Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia, Biden said. The president even heralded the Aug. 29 strike as an example of America's "targeted, precise strategy" for taking out terrorists without putting American boots on the ground.

Biden has not issued a response to the Pentagon's report of civilian casualties. On Monday, the White House said the president supported the ongoing investigation into the incident and efforts to prevent similar tragedies.

The Pentagon denied the botched attack was indicative of the future of remote warfare. Future attacks would be done under different rules of engagement, likely without the pressure of an imminent attack, McKenzie said. The Defense Department remained dedicated to improving and expanding over-the-horizon capabilities as a core component of its counterterrorism approach. Last week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin affirmed, "There isn't a scrap of Earth that we can’t reach out and touch when we need to."

Yet, Austin and others have acknowledged that America's ability to successfully identify and engage threats in Afghanistan has declined. The United States has more restricted intelligence collection platforms and fewer human sources. It is also reportedly flying fewer drone missions from land bases in the Persian Gulf, at least five hours from the border with Afghanistan. Moreover, the strike outside of Kabul was not the first failure to target an enemy combatant.

Amnesty International issued a statement condemning the Aug. 29 drone strike, arguing the Pentagon was only forced to admit its mistake because the eyes of the world were focused on Afghanistan. "Many similar strikes in Syria, Iraq, and Somalia have happened out of the spotlight, and the U.S. continues to deny responsibility while devastated families suffer in silence," said Brian Castner, senior advisor with the group's Crisis Response Programme. Amnesty has long held that the U.S. drone strikes outside areas of armed conflict violate international law.

The U.S. has relatively strong policies to protect civilians in active conflict areas and account for civilian losses. The Pentagon is required to investigate all incidents involving alleged civilian casualties and must submit an annual report to Congress. Until the Trump administration reversed the policy in 2017, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence had to produce an annual report of civilian casualties from drone strikes. According to the DNI, 117 civilians were killed by U.S. drones in "areas of active hostilities" between 2009 and 2016. Approximately 3,000 enemy combatants were killed during the same period.

Independent estimates suggest the number is significantly higher. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimated that U.S. drone strikes in Afghanistan alone have resulted in up to 900 civilian deaths, including as many as 450 children, since 2015. Drone strikes in Pakistan, that began under the George W. Bush administration, have resulted in up to 2,200 civilian casualties. A joint study by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and The Associated Press found civilians accounted for up to one-third of people killed by drone strikes in Yemen in 2018.

"Drones are seen as this easy and seemingly antiseptic way of showing you're doing something," explained Sarah Kreps, a professor of technology and national security at Cornell University who has written two books on drone warfare. Kreps noted that Biden will likely find these strikes attractive but the program could run into problems if the administration is unable to rebuild strong intelligence assets in the region.

"The only way these strikes can serve the function of minimizing political risk is if you have good intelligence," she continued. "You might be able to get away with the recklessness of one or two strikes that kill civilians but you get too many of those and you will start to see some blowback."

Public opposition to the U.S. drone program grew under former President Barack Obama, who vastly expanded the number and frequency of strikes outside official combat zones. The outcry hit a zenith in 2011 when the U.S. targeted and killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen and suspected al-Qaida terrorist, in Yemen. Under pressure, Obama pledged to increase transparency around the clandestine program. In 2013, he nominally moved authorities for the program from the CIA, which had broad leeway to select targets and conduct attacks, to the Pentagon. At the end of his second term, Obama issued an executive order requiring annual estimates of the number of combatants and noncombatants killed in "areas of active hostilities."

Former President Donald Trump reversed the reporting requirement and restored authority to the CIA to conduct drone strikes outside of warzones in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Trump reportedly lowered the standard for strikes from "near certainty" to "reasonable certainty" civilians would not be harmed. He also enabled military field commanders to make drone targeting decisions unilaterally. U.S. airstrikes and alleged civilian casualties rose in Iraq and Syria during the Trump administration. Drone strikes and reported civilian casualties declined in other parts of the world, including Yemen and Pakistan.

"The fact is, civilians are harmed in these strikes. They have been for several administrations now. It has mostly been a question of how open we are with that fact, with the transparency, the casualties," explained Shaan Shaikh, a research associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "I think that's going to be a big question for the Biden administration."

So far, the Biden administration has been quiet about how it will handle the drone wars it inherited from the past three presidents. Earlier this year, the Pentagon confirmed that President Biden reimposed interim rules reigning in CIA and military authority to unilaterally conduct drone strikes. According to reports, the White House would have to sign off on any strikes against targets outside conventional combat zones of Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan.

It's unclear whether the administration will curtail the authority of the Pentagon or CIA to conduct deadly drone strikes in Afghanistan without White House approval, now that the war has ended.

Biden also appointed one of the key architects of Obama's drone program to be director of national intelligence. Avril Haines helped oversee the CIA's covert drone program when she was deputy director from 2013 to 2015. She later advised Obama on his presidential policy guidance on drone transparency as his principal deputy national security adviser from 2015 until he left office.