US drone strikes 'raise questions' - UN's Navi Pillay

[fd24]

US military drone attacks in Pakistan raise serious legal questions, the UN's human rights chief has said.
Navi Pillay was speaking at the end of a fact-finding visit to Pakistan.

Drone attacks have become a central part of US counter-terror operations but Ms Pillay said they were legally problematic.

US officials defended the policy after al-Qaeda leader Abu Yahya al-Libi was reportedly killed in a drone strike earlier this week.

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said that the US would "continue to defend [itself]".

On Tuesday the Pakistani foreign ministry summoned the US deputy ambassador in Islamabad to protest at recent drone attacks.

"Drone attacks do raise serious questions about compliance with international law, in particular the principle of distinction and proportionality," Ms Pillay said.

"Ensuring accountability for any failure to comply with international law is also difficult when drone attacks are conducted outside the military chain of command", she added.

Ms Pillay also voiced concerns that the strikes were being conducted "beyond effective and transparent mechanisms of civilian or military control".

Controversial tactic

Ms Pillay said she had called on Pakistan to invite the UN Special Rapporteur on Summary or Arbitrary Executions to investigate some of the incidents.
The US has also carried out drone strikes as part of military operations in Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan.

Although an on-the-ground investigation in Pakistan by the Associated Press this year found that "the drone strikes were killing far fewer civilians than many Pakistanis are led to believe and that a significant majority of the dead were combatants", the policy is still deeply unpopular at local level.

This month, a major US newspaper said that drone strikes had replaced the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay as the prime recruiting sergeant for al-Qaeda's cause.

The policy has also contributed to a recent worsening in relations between the US and Pakistan.

One controversial aspect of drone attacks in Pakistan is that they are not conducted by the US military - which is expected to comply with the laws of armed conflict - but by the Central Intelligence Agency, whose operations are far from transparent, the BBC's defence correspondent Jonathan Marcus reports.

The legality of the operations is also brought into question by the fact that Pakistan, unlike neighbouring Afghanistan, is not a zone of armed conflict, he adds.

BBC News - US drone strikes 'raise questions' - UN's Navi Pillay

 

[newdelhinsa]

Navi Pillay is too good to defend anyone.

 

[Windjammer]

There is no doubt that some of these Drone attacks have taken out some high value targets but at the same time, the American gung ho attitude has created anxiety, discontent leading to more militancy in the effected areas. The irony is, Americans always claim, they have killed so many militants through Drone strikes inside Pakistan, yet no American interests have come under Taliban attacks in the country, but the same alleged militants can travel into the heart of Kabul and attack at will without getting monitored or pre-emptied in their attacks. This incompetent government has a full case in it's hand, it should invite UN and other international observers and lay open records of innocent lives lost through these illegal strikes.

 

[Hafizzz]

There is no doubt that some of these Drone attacks have taken out some high value targets but at the same time, the American gung ho attitude has created anxiety, discontent leading to more militancy in the effected areas. The irony is, Americans always claim, they have killed so many militants through Drone strikes inside Pakistan, yet no American interests have come under Taliban attacks in the country, but the same alleged militants can travel into the heart of Kabul and attack at will without getting monitored or pre-emptied in their attacks. This incompetent government has a full case in it's hand, it should invite UN and other international observers and lay open records of innocent lives lost through these illegal strikes.

I know. Ironic, isn't it !!!

 

[fd24]

The irony is, Americans always claim, they have killed so many militants through Drone strikes inside Pakistan, yet no American interests have come under Taliban attacks in the country, but the same alleged militants can travel into the heart of Kabul and attack at will without getting monitored or pre-emptied in their attacks. This incompetent government has a full case in it's hand, it should invite UN and other international observers and lay open records of innocent lives lost through these illegal strikes.

They keep redefining what constitutes a genuine target to make certain they are able to "keep stats down".
I also agree dude...if they cant stop these bastards attacking Kabul left right and center what chance have they got?

 

[Aragorn]

UN official urges Pakistan to query legality of drones

THE United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has advised Pakistan to seek an official UN investigation into whether US drone strikes there are legal.
Navi Pillay told Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani he should invite the UN's special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions to visit the country to examine the legality of missile attacks by remote-controlled aircraft in areas near the Afghan border.
''Drone attacks do raise serious questions about compliance with international law,'' Dr Pillay told a press conference in Islamabad. ''Ensuring accountability for any failure to comply with international law is also difficult when drone attacks are conducted outside the military chain of command and beyond … transparent mechanisms of civilian or military control.''
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This week the US confirmed that one of its planes had killed al-Qaeda's second in command, Abu Yahya al-Libi.
The Obama administration has embraced the program, ordering a sharp increase in strikes against suspected terrorists in Pakistan in recent months. Dr Pillay's intervention comes at a particularly fraught time for relations between Washington and Islamabad.
The Pakistani government has stepped up its denunciations, even calling in a top US diplomat for a dressing-down on Tuesday.
US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta, meanwhile, said Washington was running out of patience over insurgent bases along Pakistan's border.
Despite suspicions that the Pakistan government welcomes the killing of many dangerous militants, officially it has demanded an end to all US strikes. The US government and human rights organisations disagree on how many civilians are killed or hurt by drones.
Dr Pillay said it was vital all civilian casualties were investigated and compensated.
But Pakistan may be reluctant to take up her suggestion of inviting an inquiry by a special rapporteur. Dr Pillay said such an official would investigate not just drones but also ''the spate of killings'' by militants, criminals and state military intelligence agencies.
In a visit to Kabul, Mr Panetta said it was difficult to achieve peace in Afghanistan ''as long as there is safe haven for terrorists'' in Pakistan, singling out the Haqqani network. This is allied to the Taliban and believed to enjoy Pakistani intelligence support.
''We are reaching the limits of our patience here,'' he said. ''For that reason it is extremely important that Pakistan take action to prevent this kind of safe haven from taking place and allowing terrorists to use their country as a safety net in order to conduct their attacks on our forces.
''We have made that very clear time and time again and we will continue to do that.''
Mr Panetta said Haqqani fighters had been seen leaving to attack US forces as recently as June 1, when they detonated a truck bomb and then tried to storm Forward Operating Base Salerno in Afghanistan's Khost province.
The attack was repelled and 14 militants were killed.
Mr Panetta arrived in Afghanistan after a day of violence in which 21 people were killed by Taliban suicide attacks on a bazaar in the southern city of Kandahar, and 18 died in a NATO air strike on a house in eastern Logar province, where members of a wedding party were staying, Afghan officials said.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai cut short a trip to China and issued a statement saying: ''NATO operations that inflict human and material losses to civilians can in no way be justifiable, acceptable and tolerable.''
NATO has said it is looking into reports of civilian deaths. It confirmed that an air strike had been called in during a raid to detain a Taliban commander, but originally said some fighters had been killed and only two women had been wounded.
Villagers displayed the bodies of five women, seven children and six men at the provincial capital after the strike.


UN official urges Pakistan to query legality of drones

 

[Solomon2]

People seem to be reading too much into Pillay's statement, attributing to it meanings that aren't there. Pakistanis are very big on this sort of thing, which I label linguistic tyranny. Pakistanis need to stop re-defining other people's words and phrases.

P.S.: Yes, I know this article is Australian, but it's a composite of Guardian and agency stories, probably written by Pakistani stringers.

 

[Oldman1]

I know. Ironic, isn't it !!!

Should we start posting past attacks on American interests in Pakistan to contradict your claims?

 

[VCheng]

People seem to be reading too much into Pillay's statement, attributing to it meanings that aren't there. Pakistanis are very big on this sort of thing, which I label linguistic tyranny. Pakistanis need to stop re-defining other people's words and phrases.

P.S.: Yes, I know this article is Australian, but it's a composite of Guardian and agency stories, probably written by Pakistani stringers.

Please note that the same lady also said this:

from: UN raises concern about Pakistan rights record | The Nation

UN raises concern about Pakistan rights record
By: AFP | June 07, 2012, 6:48 pm

The United Nations voiced concern Thursday over allegations of "very grave" rights violations and forced disappearances during Pakistani military operations against insurgents and militants. Independent watchdogs have accused Pakistani security forces of mass arrests and extra-judicial killings in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, where a separatist insurgency began in the resource-rich region in 2004.

"I am concerned by allegations of very grave violations in the context of counter-terrorist and counter-insurgency operations," UN human rights chief Navi Pillay told a press conference at the end of a four-day visit to Pakistan. "These include extrajudicial killings, unacknowledged detention and enforced disappearances." She said disappearances in Baluchistan had become "a focus for national debate, international attention and local despair" and urged the government and judiciary to investigate and resolve the cases. She said she regretted not visiting Baluchistan and the southern province Sindh, where hundreds of people have been killed in political and ethnic clashes in Karachi this year, without explaining why she had not gone. "I called for investigations of all this and compensation for victims and of course I am very concerned about what steps can be taken to protect people from these kinds of attacks," she said.