US draws guidebook for targeted killings - The Washington Post
US: The administration of President Barack Obama is completing
a counter terrorism manual that will establish clear rules for
targeted-killing operations, The Washington Post reported late Saturday.
But citing unnamed US officials, the newspaper said the guidebook would
contain a major exemption for the CIA's campaign of drone strikes in
Pakistan.
This exemption will allow the Central Intelligence Agency to continue
striking Al-Qaeda and Taliban targets in Pakistan for a year or more
before the agency is forced to comply with more stringent rules spelled
out in the document, the report said.
According to the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
between 2,627 and 3,457 people have been reportedly killed by US drones
in Pakistan since 2004, including between 475 and nearly 900 civilians.
The covert strikes are publicly criticized by the Pakistani
government as a violation of sovereignty but American officials believe
they are a vital weapon in the war against Islamist militants.
Few of the victims are publicly identified. The manual is expected to
be submitted to Obama for final approval within weeks, the paper said.
The Post said the adoption of a formal guide to targeted killing
marks a significant milestone: the institutionalization of a practice
that would have seemed anathema to many before the September 11, 2001
attacks.
The subjects covered in the playbook include the process for adding
names to kill lists, the legal principles that govern when US citizens
can be targeted overseas and the sequence of approvals required when the
CIA or US military conduct drone strikes outside war zones, the paper
said.
According to The Post, the effort to draft the playbook was nearly
derailed late last year by disagreements among the State Department, the
CIA and the Pentagon on the criteria for lethal strikes.
They led to granting the CIA a temporary exemption for its Pakistan
operations as a compromise that allowed officials to move forward with
other parts of the playbook.
AFP |