Droning on about targeted assassination.
In all the excitement over the decision to bomb Islamic State in Syria, you'd be forgiven for it slipping your mind that we err, already had been. Not only were British pilots embedded with the Americans without parliament needing to be informed, a British citizen no less was also judged to be such an immediate danger to us back here that he needed to be evaporated via drone. Rather than let the Americans do it, as they did our good pal Mohammed Emwazi, on this occasion we did so ourselves. Why? The answer seems to remain along the lines of "because we could" and "fuck you, we'll bomb what we want".
For the decision behind the drone strike on Reyaad Khan (for it was he), Ruhul Amin, the other British jihadi killed in the strike, and an unknown Belgian, remains completely opaque, as evidenced by today's appearance by defence secretary Michael Fallon before the Joint Committee on Human Rights' inquiry into the apparent change in policy. Integral to the government's case that it is entirely legal to kill whoever it feels like so long as they are judged to pose a significant enough threat is Article 51 of the UN Charter. This talks of "armed attacks", and how nothing in the rest of the charter should impair the right of individual or collective self-defence if one occurs.
If you find it dubious that the authors of the UN Charter were thinking of armed attacks by jihadists using improvised explosive devices, or quite possibly even knives when they wrote it, rather than say the actions of another state's military, then you're probably not on the attorney general's Christmas card list. Individual terrorist attacks, the memorandum submitted to the JCHR by the government goes on (PDF), may rise to the level of an "armed attack" if they are of sufficient gravity, as the 9/11 attacks clearly were. In any case, the "scale and effect's of ISIL's campaign" as a whole are judged to reach the level of an armed attack against the UK. Islamic State, you'll note, has not directly attacked the UK, even if it has threatened to do so. Force can also be used where an "armed attack" is "imminent". It's not clear if imminent is the same thing as "highly likely", as in a terrorist attack is highly likely, as judged by the current and all but perpetual overall threat level, but we can take a wild guess and hazard that yes, it is. Fallon for his part told the committee "I don’t think it’s possible to have a hard and fast rule about how you define imminent".
In other words, the government considers it lawful to kill Islamic State cadres full stop. This seemingly applies outside of Iraq and Syria also, or at least that was the impression Fallon gave, as he said there was no overall policy on targeted killing at all. Considering David Cameron had already hinted at the potential for future drone strikes in Libya this isn't surprising, and yet it would all but confirm the wholesale adoption of the US policy on drone strikes, with Fallon refusing to address questions about any substantial difference. This would be the same US policy that has come in for heavy criticism of late, including from no less a figure than the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Quite why we would decide to emulate it at this point isn't clear.
If indeed we have, as it remains an open question of why Khan was targeted, as the memo certainly doesn't explain any further than the government did at the time. Khan the memo argues could have launched an attack at any time, such was the danger he posed; it's extremely odd then that not a single one of the plots it is claimed he directed would it seemed have reached the point of being launched. The memo interestingly notes that "some were foiled", presumably the ones newspapers splashed on, including the one the Sun itself claimed to have averted. What then was the result of the others? Did they just fall apart? Were they abandoned? Did those recruited to carry them out get cold feet? Or were these "plots" of the type like the one the Sun saved us from, of the inspiring and telling sympathisers how to make pressure cooker bombs variety? As there still doesn't seem to have been a single person arrested for terrorism offences linked to Khan, it's worth asking the question. The memo goes on to argue that there was no other way of stopping Khan as he had no intention of leaving Syria, and yet his plots seem to have petered out all by themselves. Of course, there is no guarantee he would have continued to fail, but this rather undermines the claim he could have ordered an attack at any time. Certainly, there has been no evidence presented to substantiate that, or that he had risen to that sort of position in IS.
It's almost as though the fact the newspapers were reporting on these apparent threats to events and people, however lacking in reality they were, was enough on its own for Khan to be put on the "kill list". This might seem all but moot now that we're fully joined up members of the death to IS club, but how can it not be troubling when politicians take the decision to kill one of their own citizens on evidence they refuse to expand upon, beyond vague declarations of the righteousness of doing so? Khan was not Emwazi; his guilt was not and is not obvious. Fallon might have bristled about how the others killed along with Khan were not innocent civilians, which is true; did they deserve to die, however? If the policy is expanded to countries like Libya as suggested, why should we have any confidence based on what we've been told about Khan that others won't be killed alongside the target? At the very, very least there ought to be a genuinely independent investigation and review after the fact, as the JCHR suggested.
The smart use of drones could be the least worst option when a real, genuine threat cannot be countered in any other way. The government has not even begun to prove that is the policy it has decided on.
For the decision behind the drone strike on Reyaad Khan (for it was he), Ruhul Amin, the other British jihadi killed in the strike, and an unknown Belgian, remains completely opaque, as evidenced by today's appearance by defence secretary Michael Fallon before the Joint Committee on Human Rights' inquiry into the apparent change in policy. Integral to the government's case that it is entirely legal to kill whoever it feels like so long as they are judged to pose a significant enough threat is Article 51 of the UN Charter. This talks of "armed attacks", and how nothing in the rest of the charter should impair the right of individual or collective self-defence if one occurs.
If you find it dubious that the authors of the UN Charter were thinking of armed attacks by jihadists using improvised explosive devices, or quite possibly even knives when they wrote it, rather than say the actions of another state's military, then you're probably not on the attorney general's Christmas card list. Individual terrorist attacks, the memorandum submitted to the JCHR by the government goes on (PDF), may rise to the level of an "armed attack" if they are of sufficient gravity, as the 9/11 attacks clearly were. In any case, the "scale and effect's of ISIL's campaign" as a whole are judged to reach the level of an armed attack against the UK. Islamic State, you'll note, has not directly attacked the UK, even if it has threatened to do so. Force can also be used where an "armed attack" is "imminent". It's not clear if imminent is the same thing as "highly likely", as in a terrorist attack is highly likely, as judged by the current and all but perpetual overall threat level, but we can take a wild guess and hazard that yes, it is. Fallon for his part told the committee "I don’t think it’s possible to have a hard and fast rule about how you define imminent".
In other words, the government considers it lawful to kill Islamic State cadres full stop. This seemingly applies outside of Iraq and Syria also, or at least that was the impression Fallon gave, as he said there was no overall policy on targeted killing at all. Considering David Cameron had already hinted at the potential for future drone strikes in Libya this isn't surprising, and yet it would all but confirm the wholesale adoption of the US policy on drone strikes, with Fallon refusing to address questions about any substantial difference. This would be the same US policy that has come in for heavy criticism of late, including from no less a figure than the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Quite why we would decide to emulate it at this point isn't clear.
If indeed we have, as it remains an open question of why Khan was targeted, as the memo certainly doesn't explain any further than the government did at the time. Khan the memo argues could have launched an attack at any time, such was the danger he posed; it's extremely odd then that not a single one of the plots it is claimed he directed would it seemed have reached the point of being launched. The memo interestingly notes that "some were foiled", presumably the ones newspapers splashed on, including the one the Sun itself claimed to have averted. What then was the result of the others? Did they just fall apart? Were they abandoned? Did those recruited to carry them out get cold feet? Or were these "plots" of the type like the one the Sun saved us from, of the inspiring and telling sympathisers how to make pressure cooker bombs variety? As there still doesn't seem to have been a single person arrested for terrorism offences linked to Khan, it's worth asking the question. The memo goes on to argue that there was no other way of stopping Khan as he had no intention of leaving Syria, and yet his plots seem to have petered out all by themselves. Of course, there is no guarantee he would have continued to fail, but this rather undermines the claim he could have ordered an attack at any time. Certainly, there has been no evidence presented to substantiate that, or that he had risen to that sort of position in IS.
It's almost as though the fact the newspapers were reporting on these apparent threats to events and people, however lacking in reality they were, was enough on its own for Khan to be put on the "kill list". This might seem all but moot now that we're fully joined up members of the death to IS club, but how can it not be troubling when politicians take the decision to kill one of their own citizens on evidence they refuse to expand upon, beyond vague declarations of the righteousness of doing so? Khan was not Emwazi; his guilt was not and is not obvious. Fallon might have bristled about how the others killed along with Khan were not innocent civilians, which is true; did they deserve to die, however? If the policy is expanded to countries like Libya as suggested, why should we have any confidence based on what we've been told about Khan that others won't be killed alongside the target? At the very, very least there ought to be a genuinely independent investigation and review after the fact, as the JCHR suggested.
The smart use of drones could be the least worst option when a real, genuine threat cannot be countered in any other way. The government has not even begun to prove that is the policy it has decided on.
Labels: Conservatives, David Cameron, foreign policy, Islamic State, Michael Fallon, politics, Reyaad Khan, Syria, terrorism
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