Drones and Gunships May Land in South Sudan Soon

As the Security Council sets to renew the mandate of the UN mission in South Sudan later this month, the UN special envoy to South Sudan stated that the United Nations should consider deploying surveillance drones and helicopter gunships to South Sudan because peacekeepers are struggling to protect civilians from violence and rights abuses.

Hilde Johnson while speaking to the UN Security Council said after a UN civilian helicopter was shot down in December, new developments in safety procedures and a lack of military helicopters had slowed the mission's ability to respond. The peacekeepers' arsenal is equipped with just three helicopters in such a precarious terrain.

According to Johnson, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had outlined several options to boost the South Sudan mission in a report to the 15-member Security Council, including surveillance drones, helicopter gunships and more cargo and riverine transport capabilities.

According to Reuters, Johnson said: "I urge the council to take urgent action to support the mission in filling these critical resource and capability gaps," Johnson told the Security Council in a video link briefing. South Sudan will mark two years of its freedom from Sudan on July 9 and Johnson said that while most parts of the country remained stable, fighting between South Sudanese troops and armed groups in the eastern state of Jonglei was of "deep concern."

Tens of thousands of people have fled their homes because of the violence and Johnson said there had been rights violations by both armed groups and national security authorities. On April 9, gunmen ambushed and killed five UN peacekeepers and seven civilian staff in Jonglei. The UN mission has fewer than 6,900 troops to cover a country the size of France that has barely 300 km (200 miles) of paved roads.

Seasonal rains have turned the region into a swamp, severing road access. Johnson said "critical resource and capability gaps" had caused a mobility crisis for the peacekeepers that particularly affected operations in high-risk areas such as Jonglei. "This is having a particularly detrimental effect on the mission's ability to implement its protection of civilians' mandate," she said. "Effective protection is only possible through being present in those communities most at risk."

South Sudan still suffers largely from lack of infrastructure as well as high level of corruption and consistent oil face-off with Sudan. Senior council envoy said that peacekeepers should focus more on protecting civilians "rather than on spreading out across the country and doing infrastructure projects and nation building."

Drones Kill Ten Times more than Conventional Aircraft ~ Expert

An expert on drone casualties has told reporters that the use of unmanned aerial vehicles by American forces has caused 10 times the number of deaths brought on by more conventional aircraft.

Speaking to The Guardian’s Spencer Ackerman, Larry Lewis of the Center for Naval Analyses claimed United States-led drone strikes in Afghanistan are not only more likely to cause civilian casualties than traditionally piloted planes, but the impact of UAVs is 10-fold what would be found by using more antiquated air ships.

Lewis has conducted multiple studies on the use of drones in Afghanistan and made his recent determination after reviewing data pertaining to air strikes that occurred there between mid-2010 and mid-2011, Ackerman reported.

“Lewis told the Guardian he found that the missile strikes conducted by remotely piloted aircraft, commonly known as drones, were 10 times more deadly to Afghan civilians than those performed by fighter jets,” Ackerman wrote.

Lewis said that statistic comes from viewing classified information about the number of civilian casualties, data which he is legally prohibited from sharing. But while his findings in full or only accessible to those with proper standing, an unclassified executive summary of his report offers a mere glimpse into how deadly America’s drone wars really are.

“The US government has described drone airstrikes in operations outside declared theatres of armed conflict as surgical and causing minimal civilian casualties,” the summary begins. “Analysis of air operations in Afghanistan, combined with a review of open-source reports for drone strikes in Pakistan, suggest that these fell short of intended goals.”

Elsewhere, the report acknowledges that the classified nature of these statistics could be preventing Americans from lessening the number of civilian drone deaths in the future.

“While consequence management approaches used in Afghanistan may not translate directly into cases where the US does not want to officially acknowledge its actions, the use of proxies or leveraging relationships with cooperative host-nation governments could provide options during these operations.

Conducting more comprehensive assessments of civilian harm during airstrikes in operations outside declared theatres of armed conflict, followed by effective consequence management efforts, should help to protect the reputation of the US, combat false allegations and mitigate negative second-order effects that can undermine US campaign objectives and freedom of action,” it reads.

Ackerman does not stop short of recalling a speech by President Barack Obama earlier this year at Washington’s National Defense Institute in which he insisted that "conventional airpower or missiles are far less precise than drones, and likely to cause more civilian casualties and local outrage.” On the contrary, however, the unclassified summary notes that drone strike are “an order of magnitude more likely to result in civilian casualties per engagement” than traditional aircraft.

In an earlier address last year, President Obama said drones had "not caused a huge number of civilian casualties” and insisted "this thing is kept on a very tight leash.”

An August 2011 report from the UK’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that US-led drone strikes in Pakistan have caused upwards of 775 civilian deaths, with total casualties being at least 40 percent higher than what the US government previously reported. This past February, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) said the number of total kills attributed to US drones is close to 5,000.

“We’ve killed 4,700,” the senator said at an event in his home state. “Sometimes you hit innocent people, and I hate that, but we’re at war, and we've taken out some very senior members of al-Qaeda.”

Courtesy: Russia Today

United States can Kill US citizens with al-Qaeda Link

The legal basis for using drone strikes to kill US citizens has been disclosed in a leaked Justice Department memo.

US officials can authorise the killing of Americans abroad if they are leaders of al-Qaeda or its allies, according to the document obtained by NBC News.

Lethal force is lawful if they are judged to pose an "imminent threat" and their capture is not feasible, it adds.

US drone strikes against militant suspects in countries such as Yemen and Pakistan are deeply controversial.

Under President Barack Obama the US has expanded its use of drones to kill hundreds of al-Qaeda suspects, arguing that it is acting in self-defence in accordance with international law.

Critics argue the drone strikes amount to execution without trial and cause many civilian casualties.

Legal framework
The undated 16-page Department of Justice white paper published by NBC gives more details of the justification for the use of drones outside recognised war zones.

A US study last year suggested Pakistani civilians were being "terrorised" 24 hours a day by drones
It says sovereignty is not deemed to have been violated if the host nation gives its consent, or is unwilling or unable to suppress the threat posed by the individual targeted.

It also sets out a "legal framework" for the use of lethal force against US citizens in foreign countries.

It concludes that such killings do not violate the US Constitution as long as:

An informed, high-level official of the US government has determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the US

Capture is infeasible and the US continues to monitor whether capture becomes feasible. The operation would be conducted in a manner consistent with applicable law of war principles.

The paper adopts a broad definition of "imminent threat", saying it is not necessary to produce evidence that a specific attack is being planned if the target is generally engaged in plotting against the US.

'Remarkable document'
It also asserts that courts should not play a role in reviewing or controlling such decisions. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said the white paper was a "pretty remarkable document".

Anwar al-Awlaki was among three Americans killed in drone strikes in Yemen in 2011. Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the ACLU, said in a blog post the paper revealed "both the recklessness of the government's central claim and the deficiencies in the government's defense" of its drone strike policy.

"This sweeping authority is said to exist even if the threat presented isn't imminent in any ordinary sense of that word, even if the target has never been charged with a crime or informed of the allegations against him, and even if the target is not located anywhere near an actual battlefield," Mr Jaffer added.

The ACLU has helped the relatives of three Americans who died in drone strikes sue the Pentagon and CIA. Their lawsuit claims the deaths were unconstitutional.

Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaeda suspect born in the US state of New Mexico, was killed by an unmanned plane in September 2011.

Samir Khan, a naturalised US citizen who produced an online magazine promoting al-Qaeda's ideology, died in the same missile strike.

Awlaki's 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, who was born in Colorado, was killed a month later.

The Obama administration has been under growing pressure from politicians in Congress to share more details of its drone strike programme, including secret legal documents.

Last month the UN launched an inquiry into the impact of drone strikes on civilians.