License to Kill: Why the American Drone War on Yemen Violates International Law

[Map of sites of airstrikes in Yemen documented by Alkarama between 2009 and 2013] [Map of sites of airstrikes in Yemen documented by Alkarama between 2009 and 2013]

License to Kill: Why the American Drone War on Yemen Violates International Law

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following report was issued by Alkarama. It is based on field investigations carried out by Alkarama representative in Sanaa throughout 2012 and 2013, which were aimed at gathering witness accounts and victim testimonies about US drone strikes in Yemen. Interviews were also held with government officials and members of the civil society. The report was released prior to the presentation of UN expert Ben Emmerson`s report   on targeted killings before UN General Assembly in New York on 25 October 2013.]

License to Kill: Why the American Drone War on Yemen Violates International Law

Summary

Since 2009, the United States has regularly bombed Yemen. These aerial attacks have occurred in almost every province of the country. In the past two years, the number of drone strikes has multiplied and the infrastructure required for these attacks have been expanded, not only in Yemen, but also in neighboring Saudi Arabia and Djibouti. Since the first strikes in November 2002 and until the writing of this report in July 2013, the United States has carried out between 134 and 234 military operations in Yemen. These include strikes by aircraft and drones as well as missiles launched from warships located in the Gulf of Aden. According to various sources, estimates of the number of people killed range from 1000 to 2000. However, to this day, neither the Yemeni nor the American authorities have put forward official statistics on the number of casualties.

Alkarama carried out a number of field investigations in Yemen throughout 2012 and 2013, in order to gather witness accounts and victim testimonies about these attacks, as well as information from their families and lawyers. Interviews were also held with government officials and members of civil society.

This report presents the results of our research and analysis on the US strategy in its “war on terror” with respect to international law. It also examines the reactions of US as well as Yemeni officials and civil society in light of the serious violations committed. Finally, the report sets out recommendations to the Yemeni and US authorities, as well as to the UN, to address these issues.

Yemen’s current president, Abd al-Rab Mansour al-Hadi, came to power in February 2012 following a mass revolution by the Yemeni population. He replaced Ali Abdallah Saleh who had ruled the country for 33 years. Since then, the country is in transition, with a national dialogue underway since March 2013, encompassing Yemen’s various political groups. It should result in elections in February 2014.

In the meantime, the current president has reinforced Yemen’s ties with the United States, placing large regions of Yemen territory at the disposal of the US and encouraging its military intervention in the country, including by attributing the responsibility of attacks to the United States directly. This has increased tensions within the population which does not support American air strikes.

This way, under the cover of counter-terrorism measures, the American administration has involved itself directly in an multi-dimensional internal conflict taking place between the central Yemeni authorities and multiple opposition movements including armed groups of Jihadist tendency – namely al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Sharia – but also the south separatist movement and different tribes that contest the central government’s authority.

The United States has never declared war on Yemen, and instead refers to the AUMF (Authorization to Use Military Force) resolution of 14 September 2001 to justify their intervention in Yemen, despite the fact that the Yemeni government is considered an ally and does not represent a threat to the US. The AUMF sets out measures to combat those with ties of any kind to the attacks of 11 September 2001.

This has been interpreted to include all those that are considered to be ‘associated forces’ of al-Qaeda, although this phrase does not appear in the resolution itself. This term in fact first appeared in President Obama’s speeches and official White House texts and is used to legitimize combat against groups whose ties with al-Qaeda are not always clearly established.

The question that must be asked is whether the United States are applying the rules of war, or law enforcement? The official argument put forward by American officials plays on the confusion between these two notions to justify targeted assassinations. However, the distinction between the two is important, as if it is the latter, the law of armed conflicts would apply, while in the second case, it would be the laws governing law enforcement that apply, which must comply with international human rights law.

Regardless of the context in which the American intervention in Yemen takes place, the American military and the C.I.A continue to use drones, other types of military aircraft as well as warships to commit targeted assassinations that should be considered, and qualified, as extrajudicial executions.

President Obama himself provided the conditions required for a suspect to be assassinated; namely that the person be designated as being a person of interest under US law, that he or she represent a real, direct and imminent threat to the United States and its interests; that it not be possible to capture the person and that the operation does not target civilians. The administration certifies that only the leaders of al-Qaeda and ‘associated forces’ are targeted, without clarifying the criteria required to place individuals on kill lists. What is certain, however, is that the number of these leaders is very small compared to the hundreds of those who have been killed during these strikes.

In reality, the forces implicated also target unidentified combatants who do not play a leadership role, who are anonymous and do not have charges held against them. Civilians also suffer due to the human and technical errors that American political and military leaders accept as necessary collateral damage in the pursuit of their aims. In fact, Yemen–just like Pakistan– has become a testing ground for revolutionary new methods of warfare, not only technically, but also politically and legally.

[Click here to read the full report.]

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412