White House counterterror Chief

[Ahmad Abdullah Ravian]

WASHINGTON (Agencies) -
The US will keep targeting Al-Qaeda anywhere in the world, including in countries unable or unwilling to do it themselves, the top US counterterror official said Friday.
White House counterterror chief John Brennan laid out what could be called the Osama bin Laden raid doctrine, in remarks at Harvard Law School. He said under international law, the US can protect itself with pre-emptive action against suspects the US believes present an imminent threat, wherever they are. That amounts to a legal defence of the unilateral Navy SEAL raid into Pakistan that killed Al-Qaeda mastermind bin Laden in May, angering Pakistan. It also explains the thinking behind other covert counterterrorist action, like the CIA’s armed drone campaign that only this week killed a top Al-Qaeda operative in Pakistan’s tribal areas. The Obama administration has quadrupled drone strikes against Al-Qaeda targets since taking office. The Obama administration has more recently expanded drone strikes and the occasional special-operations raid into areas like Somalia, where the government may be willing to fight Al-Qaeda, but lacks the resources. Navy SEALs targeted Al-Qaeda operative Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in Somalia in 2009, by helicopter. The SEALs then landed to pick up his body and bury it at sea, just as bin Laden was later interred.
“We reserve the right to take unilateral action if or when other governments are unwilling or unable to take the necessary actions themselves,” Brennan said.
Yet Brennan followed that by saying that does not mean the US can use military force ‘whenever we want, wherever we want. International legal principles, including respect for a state’s sovereignty and the laws of war, impose important constraints on our ability to act unilaterally’.
Brennan did not explain how that constraint applied, when the US Navy SEALs entered Pakistani territory to go after Bin Laden, without Pakistani government knowledge or permission. He said the US prefers to work with countries where the targets hide, as it does in Yemen.

 

[Ahmad Abdullah Ravian]

Some of the the strikes, carried out by the military’s Joint Special Operations Command, have been focused in the southern part of the country, where insurgent forces have for the first time conquered and held territory, the paper said.
Unlike in Pakistan, where the CIA has presidential authorization to launch drone strikes at will, each US attack in Yemen and nearby Somalia requires White House approval, The Post said.
In his speech, Brennan also took issue with administration critics on Capitol Hill who are seeking to mandate that all terror suspects are treated as enemy combatants and held in military custody rather than in the civilian court system.
“I am deeply concerned that the alternative approach to counterterrorism being advocated in some quarters would represent a drastic departure from our values and the body of laws and principles that have always made this country a force for positive change in the world,” Brennan said.
“Such a departure would not only risk rejection by our courts and the American public, it would undermine the international cooperation that has been critical to the national security gains we have made.
“Our counterterrorism professionals — regardless of the administration in power — need the flexibility to make well-informed decisions about where to prosecute terrorist suspects.”