Justified Homicide: Drone Warfare

Drone Attacks in PakistanThe Telegraph published results from a study by the New America Foundation that estimates that 32% of deaths caused by drones attacks in Pakistan since 2004 were civilians.

Their report, The Year of the Drone, studied 114 drone raids in which more than 1200 people were killed. Of those, between 549 and 849 were reliably reported to be militant fighters, while the rest were civilians.

"The true civilian fatality rate since 2004 according to our analysis is approximately 32 per cent," the foundation reported.

The NAF's estimates demonstrates how difficult it is to reliably ascertain who was killed by the attacks, as the confirmed number killed varies from 834 to 1,216.  If just the total casualty count varies by that much it's hard to imagine that knowing who exactly is included in the deaths is all that precise.  Nevertheless, the ratio of combatants to fatalities in either the low (34%) or the high (30%) estimate are close enough that their figure passes the smell test.

I am surprised that the number is that low, to be honest.  According to an October New Yorker article, many dozens of people were killed in the process of trying to kill Baitullah Mehsud, the head of the Pakistani Taliban.  There is no such thing as a "surgical airstrike."  Even if the target is confirmed- and that is a big if- using a massive explosion, with far less accuracy then we like to pretend, to kill someone often, frequently, usually results in "collateral damage."  In English, that's a bunch of dead people who didn't necessarily have anything to do with terrorism or insurgency.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't use them; the report actually concluded that drones would continue to be important to future US military operations:

"Despite the controversy drone strikes are likely to remain a critical tool for the United States to disrupt Al Qaeda and Taliban operations and leadership structures," 

Drones are a formidable weapon, but we have to be honest about what we do in the name of expediency.  The trade off of drones is that we risk nothing in the short term and force enemy leaders to live in perpetual fear, but the civilian population shares that fear by living under the constant threat of a buzzing death by remote control.  In the long run drones will decisively turn local public opinion against us: it's impossible to imagine a populous that would support living under the guillotine forever.  

Drones are the antithesis of population-centric counter-insurgency, which is why we use them in Pakistan and not in Afghanistan.  For now, drones are a necessary tactical reality, but the program deserves more scrutiny than it gets.