The drone attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities last weekend prompted US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to accuse Iran of perpetrating an “act of war” and they have pushed the Middle East to the brink of a regional conflict. CNN reports that the missiles used were “re-tooled versions of a Russian design from the 1970s” which means that even though the weaponry cost “not even millions – let alone billions – of dollars” their impact decreased Saudi Arabia’s output by an estimated 5.7 million barrels, approximately five percent of the global oil supply.
President Trump, conducting foreign policy with his usual finesse, tweeted that the US was “locked and loaded”. He indicated that a military strike against Iran (the “ultimate option”) was in play. Trump’s later conceded that he was reluctant to entangle America in a foreign war, but then added “there’s plenty of time to do some dastardly things. It’s very easy to start.”
The truth behind such glibness ought to be well understood by Trump’s predecessor. President Obama launched his first drone strike in January 2009, three days into his presidency. It missed the intended targets and killed civilians instead. Faheem Qureshi, was 14 when he survived the attack. According to the Guardian, he needed 40 days of treatment in “a series of hospitals … [s]hrapnel had punctured his stomach and [l]acerations covered much of his upper body. Doctors operated on the entire left side of his body, which had sustained burns, and used laser surgery to repair his right eye. They could not save his left.” Two of Qureshi’s uncles and his 21-year-old cousin were killed, 14 of his relatives were left fatherless.
Such carnage only worsened as the Obama administration pursued its drone programme with questionable legal authority and a secret review process. Subsequent outsourcing of the work did not improve its quality. Just two days ago at least 30 civilians were killed 40 others injured by an US-backed airstrike in eastern Afghanistan. Three Afghan government officials told Reuters the attack in Nangarhar province, which was carried out by Afghan security forces, was “aimed at destroying a hideout used by ISIS militants [but] accidentally targeted farmers near a field…”
Since the September 2001 attacks the US has carried out drone strikes in Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which parses publicly available data, there have been at least 6,786 confirmed US drone strikes, costing between 8,459-12,105 lives, including 769-1,725 civilians and at least 253 children.
Importantly, the most recent UN reports show that the number of civilians harmed or killed by US air strikes in Afghanistan nearly tripled in recent months, rising from 158 in the first half of 2018 to 430 in the same period in 2019. Such data likely discounts the true cost of drone warfare for, as The Intercept reported in 2015, “In the complex world of remote killing in remote locations, labeling the dead as ‘enemies’ until proven otherwise is commonplace.”
Six years ago, Micah Zenko a member of the US Council on Foreign Relations told the National Journal that America’s use of drones set a dangerous precedent for future extraterritorial violence. “When other states have this technology, if they follow U.S. practice, it will lower the threshold for their uses of lethal force outside their borders. So they will be more likely to conduct targeted killings than they have in the past.”
The strikes on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities demonstrate how easily such violence can trigger a regional conflict. The revolution in military affairs which has ushered in this new age of killing has been used with impunity for at least a decade, with the United States playing a leading role in its development. So while it is to be hoped that further “acts of war” do not further escalate the considerable political tensions in the region, the many acts of aggression which have preceded this latest strike should not be forgotten either.
