Amid outrage over civilian deaths in Pakistan, CIA turns to smaller missiles
By Joby Warrick and Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, April 26, 2010; A08

The CIA is using new, smaller missiles and advanced surveillance techniques to minimize civilian casualties in its targeted killings of suspected insurgents in Pakistan's tribal areas, according to current and former officials in the United States and Pakistan.

The technological improvements have resulted in more accurate operations that have provoked relatively little public outrage, the officials said. Pakistan's government has tolerated the airstrikes, which have killed hundreds of suspected insurgents since early 2009, but that support has always been fragile and could quickly evaporate, U.S. and Pakistani officials said.

The CIA declines to publicly discuss its clandestine operations in Pakistan, and a spokesman would not comment on the kinds of weapons the agency is using. But two counterterrorism officials said in interviews that evolving technology and tactics have kept the number of civilian deaths extremely low. The officials, along with other U.S. and Pakistani officials interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because the drone campaign is both classified and controversial.

Last month, a small CIA missile, probably no bigger than a violin case and weighing about 35 pounds, tore through the second floor of a house in Miram Shah, a town in the tribal province of South Waziristan. The projectile exploded, killing a top al-Qaeda official and about nine other suspected terrorists.

The mud-brick house collapsed and the roof of a neighboring house was damaged, but no one else in the town of 5,000 was hurt, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed after-action reports.

Urban strikes
The agency, using 100-pound Hellfire missiles fired from remotely controlled Predator aircraft, once targeted militants largely in rural settings, but lighter weapons and miniature spy drones have made killings in urban areas more feasible, officials said.

According to an internal CIA accounting described to The Washington Post, just over 20 civilians are known to have died in missile strikes since January 2009, in a 15-month period that witnessed more than 70 drone attacks that killed 400 suspected terrorists and insurgents. Agency officials said the CIA's figures are based on close surveillance of targeted sites both before and after the missiles hit.

Unofficial tallies based on local news reports are much higher. The New America Foundation puts the civilian death toll at 181 and reports a far higher number of alleged terrorists and insurgents killed -- more than 690.

The drone strikes have been controversial in Pakistan, where many view them as an infringement on national sovereignty. In the past the strikes have spawned protests, as well as angry denunciations in newspaper editorials and in speeches by opposition politicians.

The clamor over the strikes has died down considerably over the past year, however, and Pakistani officials acknowledge that improved accuracy is one of the reasons. Pakistani security officials say that better targeting technology, a deeper pool of spies in the tribal areas, and greater cooperation between the U.S. and Pakistani intelligence services have all led to strikes that cause fewer civilian deaths.

Still, the drone strikes are often cited by Pakistanis as a prime reason for their displeasure with U.S. policy in the region. Pakistan has repeatedly asked for its own armed drones so that it can carry out the strikes -- a move that could help the government with the perception that it has ceded authority to the United States. The United States has agreed to provide Pakistan with surveillance drones but has declined to arm them.

Peter Bergen, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, said the agency's accounting of the effects of the drone campaign can neither be confirmed nor refuted without greater access to the tribal areas for outsiders or independent scrutiny of CIA video of the strikes.

Driving perceptions
Officials say CIA targeteers are increasingly driven to avoid civilian deaths, in part to tamp down any political blowback from Pakistan and from U.S. and international human rights groups. Current and former officials point to the relative absence of complaints from local and regional leaders as evidence of the success of their efforts.

"Where are the photos of atrocities? Where are the protests?" asked one U.S. official who closely monitors the program. "After civilian deaths in Afghanistan, there are always press reports. Why don't you ever see that in Pakistan?"

Peter Warren Singer, director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution, noted that while Americans use words such as "efficient" and "costless" to describe the campaign, some Pakistanis view it as war without honor.

"The civilian-casualties narrative is a misnomer; it's not a driver of perceptions," said Singer, the author of "Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century." He said that in the tribal areas, the technology itself can be seen as evil because it is so alien.

The fear of collateral damage has led to what officials describe as a rigorous process for confirming the identity of terrorism suspects -- a process that includes what one U.S. official described as "advance visual observation" by operatives or surveillance drones. But new tools and weapons are equally important, the officials said.

"We're talking about precision unsurpassed in the history of warfare," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the CIA program is highly classified.

Today, several small missiles are available to the agency, including the 21-inch Small Smart Weapon, created by Lockheed Martin. Weighing 35 pounds and having roughly the diameter of a coffee cup, the Scorpion, as it is now called, was designed to be launched from the Predator. It causes far less destruction than a Hellfire, and it can be fitted with four different guidance systems that allow it to home in on targets as small as a single person, in complete darkness, according to U.S. officials familiar with the missile.

A Lockheed spokesman declined to say whether the CIA is currently using the Scorpion, which, according to a Lockheed brochure, is intended for "precision attack using a small, lethal warhead against targets in areas requiring low collateral damage." The agency is also using a variety of warheads for the Hellfire, one former senior intelligence official said. Among them is a small thermobaric warhead, which detonates a cocktail of explosive powders on impact to create a pressure wave that kills humans but leaves structures relatively intact. The wave reaches around corners and can penetrate the inner recesses of bunkers and caves, according to weapons experts.

The CIA's expanded arsenal also includes surveillance drones that carry no weapons, two former intelligence officials said. These "micro-UAVs" -- unmanned aerial vehicles -- can be roughly the size of a pizza platter and are capable of monitoring potential targets at close range, for hours or days at a stretch. At night, they can be nearly impossible to detect, said one former official who has worked with such aircraft.

"It can be outside your window and you won't hear a whisper," the official said.

Correspondent Griff Witte and staff writer Karen DeYoung in Islamabad and staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.

April 15, 2010

U.N. Report Finds Faults in Pakistani Bhutto Inquiry

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A United Nations investigation into the assassination of the former opposition leader Benazir Bhutto has concluded that the failure of Pakistani authorities to effectively investigate the killing was “deliberate” and had been “severely hampered” by the country’s powerful intelligence agencies.

The 65-page report, issued in New York on Thursday, did not answer the question of who killed Ms. Bhutto, or even give the precise cause of death. It was concerned instead with looking into the facts and circumstances surrounding her death in a suicide bombing and gun attack at a political rally in December 2007.

Its findings underscore the impunity with which political crimes are committed in Pakistan, a country whose short and turbulent history is punctuated by unexplained killings of prominent leaders.

The report cataloged a litany of failings on the part of the authorities before and after the attack that killed Ms. Bhutto, leaving an impression of purposeful obstruction and raising questions of whether the country’s military and intelligence establishment had something to hide.

It was particularly scathing of the role of Saud Aziz, the police chief in Rawalpindi, the city where the assassination took place, who made a series of decisions that denied investigators valuable evidence.

These included orders to hose down the crime scene less than two hours after the attack. Hosting long lunches and serving tea, he then delayed investigators for two full days from reaching the site, where they finally spent seven hours wading through a drainage sewer to retrieve a single bullet casing.

Investigators managed to collect just 23 pieces of evidence in a case that would typically have yielded thousands, the report said.

The decision to hose down the site was made after Mr. Aziz received a call from army headquarters, possibly involving Maj. Gen. Nadeem Ijaz Ahmad, then director general of military intelligence, the report said, citing anonymous sources. It called a later Pakistani inquiry into the decision “a whitewash.”

“Hosing down the crime scene so soon after the blast goes beyond mere incompetence,” the report said. “It is up to the relevant authorities to determine whether this amounts to criminal responsibility.”

The report also criticized Mr. Aziz for deliberately preventing an autopsy, repeatedly denying doctors permission to conduct it, and effectively eliminating another central piece of evidence.

It says he then tried to “cover up” his failure by putting Ms. Bhutto’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, in the position of requesting one as he was presented with his wife’s body in a coffin on an air base outside Rawalpindi, a full seven hours after her death. A request then, the report says, would have been “patently unrealistic.”

The report in large part dismisses allegations that Mr. Zardari, who is now president, had any hand in Ms. Bhutto’s death.

Conspiracy theories involving Mr. Zardari “simply had no basis, no evidence to be treated as credible hypotheses,” said Heraldo Muñoz Valenzuela, a Chilean diplomat who was part of the three-member team that conducted the investigation. He spoke at a news conference at the United Nations that was broadcast live on the Internet.

Instead, the report criticized what it called the pervasive influence of the country’s military and intelligence authorities. The country’s main intelligence agency, know by its initials, the I.S.I., conducted its own parallel investigation even though it does not have a legal mandate to conduct criminal investigations, and selectively withheld information from the police, it said.

“The investigation was severely hampered by intelligence agencies and other government officials,” the reports said, “which impeded an unfettered search for the truth.”

Agents from the I.S.I. were present at crucial points of the police investigation, including during the gathering of evidence at the crime scene and the forensic examination of Ms. Bhutto’s vehicle, “playing a role that the police were reluctant to reveal to the commission,” the report said, referring to the United Nations panel.

An I.S.I. officer was also present at the hospital throughout the evening.

The relationship with the military was a fraught one for Ms. Bhutto, who had raised concerns about Pakistanis she believed were a threat to her security to Pervez Musharraf, a military general who was then the president. They included a former I.S.I. director, Hamid Gul, and a former military intelligence officer, Brigadier Ejaz Shah.

Particularly disturbing, the report said, was Mr. Musharraf’s failure to provide Ms. Bhutto, a former prime minister, with the same security that was extended to two other former prime ministers on Oct. 22, 2007, who were his political allies.

It also noted sharply that it was Mr. Musharraf who made the decision to call a news conference the day after the assassination. In it, the government presented evidence of a telephone intercept collected by the I.S.I. linking the attack to the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud.

“It is not clear how or when the intercept from the I.S.I. was recorded,” the report said. “Such a hasty announcement of the perpetrator prejudiced the police investigations which had not yet begun,” it added.

The report made no definitive judgement as to who was behind the plot to kill Ms. Bhutto, nor did it resolve the precise cause of her death, which occurred after a 15-year-old suicide bomber detonated his payload.

But it concluded, “No one believes that this boy acted alone

Gian Micalessin a Radio Radicale parla di "Pakistan, il Santuario di Al Qaida"

Ascolta l'intervista a Gian Micalessin su Radio Radicale

April 11, 2010

Leaders Gather for Nuclear Talks as New Threat Is Seen

By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD

WASHINGTON — Three months ago, American intelligence officials examining satellite photographs of Pakistani nuclear facilities saw the first wisps of steam from the cooling towers of a new nuclear reactor. It was one of three plants being constructed to make fuel for a second generation of nuclear arms.

The message of those photos was clear: While Pakistan struggles to make sure its weapons and nuclear labs are not vulnerable to attack by Al Qaeda, the country is getting ready to greatly expand its production of weapons-grade fuel.

The Pakistanis insist that they have no choice. A nuclear deal that India signed with the United States during the Bush administration ended a long moratorium on providing India with the fuel and technology for desperately needed nuclear power plants.

Now, as critics of the arrangement point out, the agreement frees up older facilities that India can devote to making its own new generation of weapons, escalating one arms race even as President Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia sign accords to shrink arsenals built during the cold war.

Mr. Obama met with the leaders of India and Pakistan on Sunday, a day ahead of a two-day Washington gathering with 47 nations devoted to the question of how to keep nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists. In remarks to reporters about the summit meeting, Mr. Obama called the possibility of a terrorist organization obtaining a nuclear weapon “the single biggest threat to U.S. security, both short-term, medium-term and long-term.”

The summit meeting is the largest gathering of world leaders called by an American president since Franklin D. Roosevelt organized the 1945 meeting in San Francisco that created the United Nations. (He died two weeks before the session opened.) But for all its symbolism and ceremony, this meeting has quite limited goals: seeking ways to better secure existing supplies of bomb-usable plutonium and highly enriched uranium. The problem that India and Pakistan represent, though, is deliberately not on the agenda.

“President Obama is focusing high-level attention on the threat that already exists out there, and that’s tremendously important,” said Sam Nunn, the former Democratic senator from Georgia who has devoted himself to safeguarding global stockpiles of weapons material — enough, by some estimates, to build more than 100,000 atom bombs. “But the fact is that new production adds greatly to the problem.”

Nowhere is that truer than Pakistan, where two Taliban insurgencies and Al Qaeda coexist with the world’s fastest-growing nuclear arsenal. According to a senior American official, Mr. Obama used his private meeting Sunday afternoon with Yousaf Raza Gilani, Pakistan’s newly empowered prime minister, to “express disappointment” that Pakistan is blocking the opening of negotiations on a treaty that would halt production of new nuclear material around the world.

Experts say accelerated production in Pakistan translates into much increased risk.

“The challenges are getting greater — the increasing extremism, the increasing instability, the increasing material,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, who as a C.I.A. officer and then head of the Energy Department’s intelligence unit ran much of the effort to understand Al Qaeda’s nuclear ambitions.

“That’s going to complicate efforts to make sure nothing leaks,” he said. “The trends mean the Pakistani authorities have a greater challenge.”

Few subjects are more delicate in Washington. In an interview last Monday, Mr. Obama avoided a question about his progress in building on a five-year, $100 million Bush administration program to safeguard Pakistan’s arms and materials.

“I feel confident that Pakistan has secured its nuclear weapons,” Mr. Obama said. “I am concerned about nuclear security all around the world, not just in Pakistan but everywhere.” He added, “One of my biggest concerns has to do with the loose nuclear materials that are still floating out there.”

Taking up the Pakistan-India arms race at the summit meeting, administration officials say, would be “too politically divisive.”

“We’re focusing on protecting existing nuclear material, because we think that’s what everyone can agree on,” one senior administration official said in an interview on Friday. To press countries to cut off production of new weapons-grade material, he said, “would take us into questions of proliferation, nuclear-free zones and nuclear disarmament on which there is no agreement.”

Mr. Obama said he expected “some very specific commitments” from world leaders.

“Our expectation is not that there’s just some vague, gauzy statement about us not wanting to see loose nuclear materials,” he said. “We anticipate a communiqué that spells out very clearly, here’s how we’re going to achieve locking down all the nuclear materials over the next four years, with very specific steps in order to assure that.”

Those efforts began at the end of the cold war, 20 years ago. Today officials are more sanguine about the former Soviet stockpiles and the focus is now wider. Last month, American experts removed weapons-grade material from earthquake-damaged Chile.

The summit meeting will aim to generate the political will so that other nations and Mr. Obama’s own administration can create a surge of financial and technical support that will bring his four-year plan to fruition.

“It’s doable but hard,” said Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert at Harvard. “It’s not easy to overcome secrecy, complacency, sovereignty and bureaucracy.”

Mr. Obama plans to open the summit meeting with a discussion of the scope of the terrorist threat. The big challenge, Mr. Mowatt-Larssen said, is to get world leaders to understand “that it’s a low-probability, but not a no-probability, event that requires urgent action.”

For instance, in late 2007, four gunmen attacked a South African site that held enough highly enriched uranium for a dozen atomic bombs. The attackers breached a 10,000-volt security fence, knocked out detection systems and broke into the emergency control room before coming under assault. They escaped.

During the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama promised to “increase funding by $1 billion a year to ensure that within four years, the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons are removed from all the world’s most vulnerable sites and effective, lasting security measures are instituted for all remaining sites.”

In Mr. Obama’s first year, though, financing for better nuclear controls fell by $25 million, about 2 percent.

“The Obama administration got off to an unimpressive start,” Mr. Bunn wrote in his most recent update of “Securing the Bomb,” a survey to be published Monday by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit advocacy group that Mr. Nunn helped found in Washington. But he added that its proposed budget for the 2011 fiscal year calls for a 31 percent increase.

The next phase in Mr. Obama’s arms-control plan is to get countries to agree to a treaty that would end the production of new bomb fuel. Pakistan has led the opposition, and it is building two new reactors for making weapons-grade plutonium, and one plant for salvaging plutonium from old reactor fuel.

Last month, the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington, reported that the first reactor was emitting steam. That suggests, said Paul Brannan, a senior institute analyst, that the “reactor is at least at some state of initial operation.”

Asked about the production, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, said, “Pakistan looks forward to working with the international community to find the balance between our national security and our contributions to international nonproliferation efforts.”

In private, Pakistani officials insist that the new plants are needed because India has the power to mount a lightning invasion with conventional forces.

India, too, is making new weapons-grade plutonium, in plants exempted under the agreement with the Bush administration from inspection by theInternational Atomic Energy Agency. (Neither Pakistan nor India has signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.)

The Obama administration has endorsed the Bush-era agreement. Last month, the White House took the next step, approving an accord that allows India to build two new reprocessing plants. While that fuel is for civilian use, critics say it frees older plants to make weapons fuel.

“The Indian relationship is a very important one,” said Mr. Nunn, who influenced Mr. Obama’s decision to endorse a goal of ridding the world of nuclear weapons. But he said that during the Bush years, “I would have insisted that we negotiate to stop their production of weapons fuel. Sometimes in Washington, we have a hard time distinguishing between the important and the vital.”

"Pakistan, il santuario di Al Qaida" su "Il Riformista" di martedì 6 aprile

• APRIL 5, 2010, 8:56 P.M. ET

U.S. Defends Legality of Killing With Drones

By KEITH JOHNSON

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration, facing questions about the legality of its drone program—a key part of U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Pakistan's Afghan-border region—is pushing back with a legal defense of a program it only tacitly acknowledges.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial Executions and some legal scholars have questioned whether it is legal for the U.S. to target and execute individuals in countries the U.S. isn't at war with. Professor Mary Ellen O'Connell of the University of Notre Dame law school has called the drone program "unlawful killing," and says it violates international law.

For the first time, a senior Obama administration official—Harold Koh, the State Department's legal adviser—has publicly articulated the legal basis for targeted killings.

"In this ongoing armed conflict, the United States has the authority under international law, and the responsibility to its citizens, to use force, including lethal force, to defend itself, including by targeting persons such as high-level al Qaeda leaders who are planning attacks," Mr. Koh told an audience of international legal scholars on March 25.

The Central Intelligence Agency has used drones to kill between 400 and 500 suspected militants since January 2009, senior intelligence officials say. The entire program has been expanded notably since Mr. Obama took office. While critics of the program cite collateral civilian deaths, intelligence officials say only about 20 civilians have been killed in that period—a lower estimate than that made by some independent researchers.

National security hawks in the legal community as well as among former Obama and Bush administration officials say they worry the legal scrum could limit the government's ability to track down and kill suspects. The arguments against the program echo the legal challenges that helped overturn U.S. policies on the treatment of terrorism detainees.

Mr. Koh's defense in March won agreement from national security experts such as Ken Anderson, of the Washington College of Law at American University in Washington, who has urged the administration to make a legal case to safeguard what has become an important part of the antiterrorism arsenal.

Mr. Koh's speech was also noteworthy because, before joining the State Department, Mr. Koh, a human-rights lawyer, was an outspoken critic of most of the George W. Bush administration's policies regarding the war on terrorism.Legal criticism of the drone program has continued, however. "A number of controversial questions were left unanswered" by Mr. Koh's speech, says Jonathan Manes, a lawyer on the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Project. "The speech did not say where the government draws the line between legitimate targets—combatants and those taking part in hostitilities—and civilians, who cannot be targeted. The speech also did not set out any rules on where drones strikes can be used to target and kill individuals," Mr. Manes says.

The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information suit last month in a bid to force the government to divulge details of the classified program.

Brett McGurk, a former National Security Council official in the Bush and Obama administrations currently at the Council on Foreign Relations, says Mr. Koh sidestepped some of the "thorniest issues" surrounding targeted killing. Mr. McGurk specifically noted questions about "the implications of civilian agencies—the CIA—controlling the kill chain."

The drone program falls into a legal grey area. International Humanitarian Law regulates continuous armed conflict between states, with recognizable combatants—little of which prevails in the U.S. fight against al Qaeda and its allies.

As a civilian agency and a noncombatant under International Humanitarian Law, the CIA isn't governed by the same laws of war that cover U.S. military personnel. The CIA says the program is legal. "Without confirming any specific activity, CIA's counterterrorism operations are lawful and precise," said CIA spokeswoman Marie Harf.

A concern voiced by legal scholars and former and current administration officials is that without an articulated legal basis for the attacks, U.S. officials could in the future be targeted themselves—by crusading judges in other countries who see targeted killings as violations of humanitarian law.

Another potential pitfall: The Obama administration relies on a Bush-era congressional resolution as its main authority to track and kill suspected al Qaeda members. That 2001 resolution authorized the president to "use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons" deemed linked to the September 11, 2001 attacks—a justification that dims as time passes.

Relying on that authorization has its limits, warns Mr. Anderson, the American University professor as the fight widens to include individuals who aren't necessarily part of al Qaeda or armed fighters. That roster could include Anwar al Awlaki, a U.S.-born Muslim cleric believed to be hiding in Yemen, where the U.S. has aided counterterrorism efforts.

"One of these days, a future president will face new threats that don't have anything to do" with al Qaeda or the Taliban—and the 2001 congressional authorization won't serve as a legal basis for targeting those threats, Mr. Anderson says.

• APRIL 5, 2010, 8:56 P.M. ET

U.S. Defends Legality of Killing With Drones

By KEITH JOHNSON

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration, facing questions about the legality of its drone program—a key part of U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Pakistan's Afghan-border region—is pushing back with a legal defense of a program it only tacitly acknowledges.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial Executions and some legal scholars have questioned whether it is legal for the U.S. to target and execute individuals in countries the U.S. isn't at war with. Professor Mary Ellen O'Connell of the University of Notre Dame law school has called the drone program "unlawful killing," and says it violates international law.

For the first time, a senior Obama administration official—Harold Koh, the State Department's legal adviser—has publicly articulated the legal basis for targeted killings.

"In this ongoing armed conflict, the United States has the authority under international law, and the responsibility to its citizens, to use force, including lethal force, to defend itself, including by targeting persons such as high-level al Qaeda leaders who are planning attacks," Mr. Koh told an audience of international legal scholars on March 25.

The Central Intelligence Agency has used drones to kill between 400 and 500 suspected militants since January 2009, senior intelligence officials say. The entire program has been expanded notably since Mr. Obama took office. While critics of the program cite collateral civilian deaths, intelligence officials say only about 20 civilians have been killed in that period—a lower estimate than that made by some independent researchers.

National security hawks in the legal community as well as among former Obama and Bush administration officials say they worry the legal scrum could limit the government's ability to track down and kill suspects. The arguments against the program echo the legal challenges that helped overturn U.S. policies on the treatment of terrorism detainees.

Mr. Koh's defense in March won agreement from national security experts such as Ken Anderson, of the Washington College of Law at American University in Washington, who has urged the administration to make a legal case to safeguard what has become an important part of the antiterrorism arsenal.

Mr. Koh's speech was also noteworthy because, before joining the State Department, Mr. Koh, a human-rights lawyer, was an outspoken critic of most of the George W. Bush administration's policies regarding the war on terrorism.Legal criticism of the drone program has continued, however. "A number of controversial questions were left unanswered" by Mr. Koh's speech, says Jonathan Manes, a lawyer on the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Project. "The speech did not say where the government draws the line between legitimate targets—combatants and those taking part in hostitilities—and civilians, who cannot be targeted. The speech also did not set out any rules on where drones strikes can be used to target and kill individuals," Mr. Manes says.

The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information suit last month in a bid to force the government to divulge details of the classified program.

Brett McGurk, a former National Security Council official in the Bush and Obama administrations currently at the Council on Foreign Relations, says Mr. Koh sidestepped some of the "thorniest issues" surrounding targeted killing. Mr. McGurk specifically noted questions about "the implications of civilian agencies—the CIA—controlling the kill chain."

The drone program falls into a legal grey area. International Humanitarian Law regulates continuous armed conflict between states, with recognizable combatants—little of which prevails in the U.S. fight against al Qaeda and its allies.

As a civilian agency and a noncombatant under International Humanitarian Law, the CIA isn't governed by the same laws of war that cover U.S. military personnel. The CIA says the program is legal. "Without confirming any specific activity, CIA's counterterrorism operations are lawful and precise," said CIA spokeswoman Marie Harf.

A concern voiced by legal scholars and former and current administration officials is that without an articulated legal basis for the attacks, U.S. officials could in the future be targeted themselves—by crusading judges in other countries who see targeted killings as violations of humanitarian law.

Another potential pitfall: The Obama administration relies on a Bush-era congressional resolution as its main authority to track and kill suspected al Qaeda members. That 2001 resolution authorized the president to "use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons" deemed linked to the September 11, 2001 attacks—a justification that dims as time passes.

Relying on that authorization has its limits, warns Mr. Anderson, the American University professor as the fight widens to include individuals who aren't necessarily part of al Qaeda or armed fighters. That roster could include Anwar al Awlaki, a U.S.-born Muslim cleric believed to be hiding in Yemen, where the U.S. has aided counterterrorism efforts.

"One of these days, a future president will face new threats that don't have anything to do" with al Qaeda or the Taliban—and the 2001 congressional authorization won't serve as a legal basis for targeting those threats, Mr. Anderson says.

akistan launches offensive on hiding place of Osama bin Laden

Pakistan has said it has launched an offensive in North Waziristan, believed to be the hiding place of Osama bin Laden.

 

By Javed Siddiq in Islamabad, and Toby Harnden in Washington
Published: 10:23PM BST 02 Apr 2010

The move follows months of American encouragement to take on al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban.

Senior Pakistani military officers told The Daily Telegraph that "probing" operations in the lawless tribal area had already begun and the aim was to clear North Waziristan of al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters by the end of June.

 

Related Articles

• Pakistan launches 'full-scale' offensive on Taliban in Waziristan

• US in new missile attack on Pakistan territory

• Bin Laden thought to be hiding in Pakistani tribal region

• Osama bin Laden is still in Pakistan, says CIA

• Barack Obama vows to 'dismantle' al-Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan

• Taliban documents reveal scale of operations in Pakistan

Confirmation of an imminent full-scale offensive in the tribal areas marks an apparent about turn by Pakistan which will be warmly welcomed in Washington if large-scale operations take place.

An offensive in North Waziristan could provide crucial flanking protection for American and British troops in Afghanistan as well as disrupting the Taliban leadership.

American drone attacks on targets in North Waziristan, carried out with the acquiescence Islamabad, have been taking place with increasing frequency. On Wednesday, three American missiles, killed an estimated six Taliban inside a compound in North Waziristan.

The Pakistani military has previously resisted intense pressure from the United States to target the so-called "Haqqani Network" of Jalaluddin Haqqani, an Afghan Taliban leader, which is one of the most deadly forces in the Afghan insurgency.

Haqqani has long been regarded as a "Pakistani asset" and Islamabad had declined to attack him, claiming that their forces were already overstretched in South Waziristan and the Swat Valley – an explanation that the Obama administration publicly accepted.

North Waziristan is also home to several other senior Taliban leaders who are regarded as "pro-government" and have been helpful to Islamabad during its offensive against rival Taliban factions in neighbouring South Waziristan.

The change in policy was highlighted on Thursday when Major-General Tariq Khan, commander of the Frontier Corps said five of the country's seven tribal areas were now under government control and that operations to retake the remaining two, Orakzai and North Waziristan, would be completed in the next three months.

He told The Daily Telegraph the operations carried out so far, to take out al-Qaeda and Taliban positions, had been kept deliberately low key for maximum impact.

Gen Khan said: "This will finish in a couple of months. We'll take care of all of them. We're just waiting for the major operations, like Orakzai and North Waziristan, to finish, to spare us the troops to start changing our methodology."

He said that unlike the offensive in South Waziristan, which began last year and involved 25,000 troops, the strategy in North Waziristan would be to carry out a series of smaller actions.

"Instead of kinetic, concentrated operations, we will start search and cordon and sting operations – for which actually you need more boots on the ground

il Giornale venerdì 26 marzo 2010

Riecco Osama: «Uccideremo tutti gli ostaggi americani»

di Gian Micalessin

Lo sceicco del terrore torna a minacciare: «Nessuna pietà se gli Usa giustizieranno Khaled Sheik Mohammed»

L’hanno evocato e rieccolo qua. Smessi gli abiti da ecologista, dimenticate le accuse all’America sull’effetto serra di fine gennaio, riecco l’Osama terrorista di sempre. O almeno il suo inconfondibile “flatus vocis” sempre pronto a promettere sfaceli. Riemerge dalla sorda solitudine del suo rifugio e la resurrezione, seppur solo vocale, sembra la risposta alle richieste dei sempre più spauriti fedeli. «Ritorna, facci sentire la tua voce, dacci delle indicazioni, siamo allo sbando», recitava un messaggio intercettato settimane fa dalla Cia e indirizzato al grande capo da un suo luogotenente annidato nel Nord Waziristan pakistano.
Il comandante in ambasce era uno dei pochi sopravvissuti alla micidiale offensiva dei Predator, gli aerei senza pilota guidati da Langley che stanno decimando i vertici di Al Qaida a colpi di missili. Da quel pizzino emergeva l’immagine di una banda allo sfascio, priva di collegamenti con il boss alla macchia. E così Osama si ritrova costretto a sputar mezzo sussurro che risuona, al primo ascolto, come il mormorio di un capo isolato e sempre più sconnesso dall’attualità. «La Casa Bianca ha dichiarato di voler giustiziare Khaled Sheikh Mohammed. Il giorno in cui gli Usa metteranno in pratica questa decisione – strilla la voce ritrasmessa da Al Jazeera – tutti quelli nelle nostre mani verranno giustiziati». La registrazione continua accusando il presidente Barack Obama di seguire «la stessa politica del suo predecessore», di mantenere una massiccia presenza militare in Afghanistan e di continuare a riservare un ingiusto trattamento «ai nostri prigionieri, primo tra tutti Khaled Sheikh Mohammed».
L’aspetto più interessante e al tempo stesso inquietante dell’appello è, però, la scarsa attinenza con l’attualità. Il numero uno di Al Qaida ha già dimostrato di essere seriamente penalizzato dal suo isolamento e di non riuscire ad intervenire con tempestività su avvenimenti e fatti di cronaca. Nell’ultimo messaggio, diffuso a fine gennaio, rivendicava l’attentato di Natale sul volo per Detroit e discettava sulle accuse all’America rilanciate durante la conferenza sui cambiamenti climatici di metà dicembre. Parlava insomma con un mese di ritardo.
Stavolta il distacco dalla cronaca è ancor più marcato. Il processo a Khaled Sheik Mohammed, il pianificatore degli attacchi dell’11 settembre, e ai suoi complici non è stato ancora nè pianificato, nè programmato. L’amministrazione Obama vorrebbe sottrarlo ai giudici militari e restituirlo alle corti federali. Fin qui nulla è ancora deciso, ma se la Casa Bianca non cambierà idea quel processo si svolgerà a New York, a due passi da Ground Zero, trasformandosi in un evento simbolo e in un ghiotto obbiettivo. Quest’ipotesi fa rabbrividire analisti ed esperti di sicurezza sempre alla ricerca di messaggi in codice. In questo caso il messaggio di Osama potrebbe nascondere l’invito a concentrare le scarse risorse e i pochi militanti ancora a disposizione per colpire quel processo, intimidirne i giudici e condizionarne l’esito con uno spietato utilizzo di ostaggi e plateali esecuzioni.
Nelle parole di Bin Laden si celerebbe dunque l’invito alle varie filiazioni mondiali di Al Qaida a non rilasciare gli ostaggi per utilizzarli al meglio e con il massimo effetto in corrispondenza del processo a Khaled Sheik Mohammed. Lo sceicco del terrore inviterebbe inoltre a preparare attentati esemplari capaci di segnare con il sangue e la paura l’avvio del procedimento. Barack Obama continuando la sua guerra ai tribunali militari, considerati un simbolo dell’era Bush, rischia dunque di offrire un bersaglio facile e succulento ad un Al Qaida che avrebbe, altrimenti, grosse difficoltà a colpire con efficacia.
Ma se l’America si preoccupa neppure l’Italia sorride. Se Al Qaida punta veramente a fare il pieno di ostaggi allora anche le trattativa per la liberazione dell’ostaggio italiano Sergio Cicala e di sua moglie, prigionieri da tre mesi di Al Qaida nel Maghreb, rischiano d’interrompersi drammaticamente. E di non ripartire fino all’eventuale processo di New York.

Enduring army role in Swat spurs questions about Pakistan's civilian government
By Karin Brulliard
Friday, April 2, 2010; A08 

MINGORA, PAKISTAN -- Officially, the military operation to purge the Taliban from Pakistan's Swat Valley ended last summer. But even as life in the lush region returns to normal, the army's footprint is everywhere.
The military is rebuilding roads, schools and libraries. It is buying computers for women's vocational institutes and solar-powered streetlights for villages. It is planting a million trees. The work has made soldiers hugely popular, but some wonder why the civilian government is not doing it.
"The mandate of the army was to clear the area and to hold the area for peace. To build should be done by the civilians," said Zia ud-Din, an educator and spokesman for the Swat National Committee, a civil society group. "How long will we depend on them?"
There are competing explanations for why the military remains in the lead. Some U.S. and Pakistani military officials say Pakistan's anemic civilian government is too corrupt and bureaucratic to build on military progress by improving services and quality of life. Others say the military is too accustomed to control and too enthralled with its popularity to cede any power.
Pakistani officials say their objective is to prevent the rebels from regaining a foothold. Pakistan's successes over the past year in battling Islamist fighters in Swat and in the remote tribal area of South Waziristan have won the country high praise from U.S. officials. But at the same time, some American and Pakistani experts say the enduring military presence carries worrying implications, because it ties down forces needed to battle militants elsewhere and raises awkward questions about the country's efforts to emerge from a decade of military rule.
"They are carrying guns at the same time they are carrying shovels. It's sending the wrong signals," said Rifaat Hussain, a defense and security studies professor in Islamabad. "The civilians are completely dependent on the army."
To be sure, government offices in Swat are open, and they have reclaimed their chaotic bustle. Naeem Akhtar, a top civilian administrator, said officials have reduced a large backlog of court cases, surveyed 10,000 destroyed houses and shops, and plan to distribute $1 million in total compensation to families of victims or survivors of terrorist attacks.
"In the entire district, every nook and corner, the government is functioning," Akhtar said.
But security analysts say that keeping insurgents at bay requires the government not just to resume its functions but to improve them -- and that is the worry.
Outside the government complex on a recent day, Ehsan Ullah paced with a folder full of documents. He was injured in a bombing in February 2009, he said, and had spent months submitting paperwork for compensation, only to be shuffled from one office to another.
"Corruption, corruption, corruption, corruption, corruption," fumed the young man, waving a cellphone that he said he planned to sell that day to feed his family.
Usurping authority?
Of 401 schools bombed by militants or left dilapidated, half have been rebuilt. But it was the military, not the government, that rebuilt them while also providing temporary tents for other schools. By some estimates, the army has carried out 90 percent of the building and rebuilding projects -- a list so long that it took 20 minutes for Lt. Col. Akhtar Abbas, an army spokesman in the region, to recite.
The army has also set up mobile clinics in rural areas that have no government hospitals. At the occasional checkpoints in the valley, soldiers stand alongside police officers, and the army is working to enroll and train police recruits. With 50,000 soldiers in Swat, the military presence there is now larger than it was during the offensive.
The military says it will leave Swat when the provincial government asks. Ud-Din, the activist, said the continuing troop presence has created tensions, with provincial workers complaining privately that the army has usurped authority by "putting their noses into everything," in an effort to create dependency.
In South Waziristan, officials say they are prioritizing a rapid buildup of civilian institutions. Tariq Hayat Khan, the law and order secretary for the tribal areas, said the federal government had pledged -- though not yet fully delivered -- millions of dollars for a post-operation plan to prevent residents from "being mercenaries for the miscreants." It includes vocational schools, a buildup of community police and road construction.
But in both Swat and South Waziristan, there also appears to be widely felt apprehension about too quick a military drawdown. In the hectic city of Mingora, civil officials say the army is providing much-needed security and carrying out reconstruction projects that could not otherwise be funded. A senior Pakistani military official, for his part, was disparaging about his civilian partners. "Whenever we give them the job, they're not capable of doing it because of corruption," he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter frankly.
"They completed this in two months," Mohammed Saeed, a principal in the village of Shamozai, said of the military's reconstruction of his school and renovation of its furniture. "I think if it had been done by the government, it would have taken 10 years.