Drones and the Theatrics of Power

[marmar]

from Dissent magazine:



Drones and the Theatrics of Power
Rafia Zakaria - May 18, 2012 1:55 pm


Khalil Dale’s body was found wrapped in a plastic bag with his name written on it and tossed into an orchard near Quetta in Baluchistan, Pakistan’s embattled southwestern province. Abducted some months before, he was found with a crudely written note that said he had been killed because his employer, the International Red Cross, had failed to pay the ransom demanded by the captors. When the bag holding his body was opened it was revealed that his throat had been cut by a small sharp knife, his head completely severed off.

There is no immediate connection between the brutal death of Dale, a humanitarian aid worker who had been running a camp in one of the most impoverished parts of Pakistan, and drone attacks. And yet the discussion around drone attacks—their ethics, their necessity, their place within the U.S. arsenal—is incomplete without addressing head-on the context in which they are used. Simply put, the use of drones and the vocabulary by which they are justified, with words like “precision” and “surgical,” center on a tactical and rhetorical contrast to the brute barbarism of terrorist acts—the beheadings and floggings, the unmitigated carnage of suicide bombings. Terror is a problem, and drones are being sold as the neat, sterile solution to all of its bloody ambiguities and sinister secrets.

Less than a week after Dale’s body was discovered, the 270th drone strike ordered by President Obama pounded North Waziristan, the war-torn tribal border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. In the reports provided by U.S officials, a Predator drone fired two missiles on a compound near the Shawal area seventy kilometers west of Miramshah. Ten people, their identities still unknown, died. There are no pictures of the aftermath of the strike, no knowledge about how the target was selected, or which remote assassin pulled the trigger. If the 321 other strikes that have been ordered on Pakistani territory are any clue, the U.S. government will eventually say that those killed were militants, important number twos or threes belonging to al-Qaeda or the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, whose deaths will deal “significant blows” to the capacity of the groups to operate in the region.

On May 1, 2012 Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser John Brennan presented for the first time the administration’s official position on drone attacks. According to Brennan, because the United States has been in armed conflict with al-Qaeda and “associated forces” since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, the United States is legally permitted to use lethal force against any of its operatives “when the country involved is unwilling or unable to take action against the threat.” .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/atw.php?id=764

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1. Du rec. Nt

[RivermanAlex]

2. Response to Miss Zakaria

A couple of points that Rafia Zakaria might have been better served knowing before crowbarring Khalil's name into her piece on drones.

Baluchistan is not an embattled province, rather it has been fighting to regain its Independence since the days of partition.

The ICRC do not pay ransoms for staff who have been abducted, they never have to do so now would make every NGO a target.

Khalil was tortured and shot. The final desecration of removing his head is the act of a psychopath

Khalil was a nurse, he ran a hospital which helped victims of conflict, notably children and young men who had lost their limbs to bomb blasts, gun shot wounds and mines.

The Pakistan government and local police officials were extremely hasty to blame the Taliban for this atrocity carried out on someone who cared for all humanity. There is no evidence of this. Khalil dealt with the Taliban on a daily basis when they brought in young men missing limbs needing surgery and lifetimes of rehabilitation.

The likelihood is that this was a criminal gang, no doubt aided by a corrupt local police force. Who appeared in all their finery, rounded up the local suspects, then did nothing for four months.

The murder of Khalil has profound implications for the poor and ill in Pakistan, Balochistan and Afghanistan. NGO's will no longer be willing to allow their staff to enter these areas. How can you treat a child missing her legs whilst a guard stands over you vigilant to every threat?

If anything Khalil's senseless murder should have the educated people of Pakistan asking themselves what kind of government do they have that leaves the care of its poor, hungry and wounded to outside agencies, whilst they polish their brass buttons and send their children to London and New York?

[bemildred]

3. "Theatrical micro-militarism", it fits perfectly.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/DL04Aa01.html

Once you notice that conventional forces a. don't work, just make a mess, and b. are very, very expensive, this drone and special ops stuff looks like a cheap, effective answer: you still get to instill fear, you don't need to occupy or control territory (much), and it's dirt cheap comparatively speaking.

The problem is that clever technical fixes for essentially stupid policies don't somehow also make them smart policies.