http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21350437
6 February
2013 Last updated at 13:17 GMT
Drones reportedly carry out strikes without
Yemeni government permission
Drone strikes legal case revealed
UN inquiry into drone killings
Viewpoint: Drones, modern war, and the US
The US Central Intelligence Agency has been operating a secret airbase for
unmanned drones in Saudi Arabia for the past two years.
The facility was established to hunt for
members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is based in Yemen.
A drone flown from there was used in September
2011 to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born cleric who was alleged to be AQAP’s
external operations chief.
US media have known of its existence since
then, but have not reported it.
Senior government officials had said they were
concerned that disclosure would undermine operations against AQAP, as well as
potentially damage counter-terrorism collaboration with Saudi Arabia.
The US military pulled out virtually all of
its troops from Saudi Arabia in 2003, having stationed between 5,000 and
10,000 troops in the Gulf kingdom after the 1991 Gulf war. Only personnel
from the United States Military Training Mission (USMTM) officially remain.
‘High-value targets’
The location of the secret drone base was not
revealed in the US reports.
The revelation that US drone strikes against
militants in Yemen have been launched from a secret base inside Saudi Arabia
will be an embarrassment for the government in Riyadh.
King Abdullah has embarked upon a gradual
process of reform in the face of a conservative religious elite who strongly
object to the presence of foreign non-Muslim troops in the country.
Saudi Arabia is home to Islam’s two holiest
sites and the deployment of US forces there in the 1990s was seen as an
historic betrayal. The campaign for their withdrawal became a rallying cry
for al-Qaeda and its late Saudi-born leader, Osama bin Laden.
However, construction was ordered after a
December 2009 cruise missile strike in Yemen, according to the New York
Times.
It was the first strike ordered by the Obama
administration, and ended in disaster, with dozens of civilians, including
women and children, killed.
US officials told the newspaper that the first
time the CIA used the secret facility was to kill Awlaki.
Since then, the CIA has been “given the
mission of hunting and killing ‘high-value targets’ in Yemen” – the
leaders of AQAP who government lawyers had determined posed a direct threat
to the US – the officials added.
Three other Americans, including Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, have also been
killed in US strikes in Yemen, which can reportedly be carried out without
the permission of the country’s government.
Kristian Coates-Ulrichsen, an expert on Gulf
politics at the London School of Economics, told the BBC that Saudi anxieties
about the growing threat of AQAP would have been behind the government’s
decision to allow the US to fly drones from inside the kingdom.
“The Saudis see AQAP as a very real
threat to their domestic security,” he said. “They are worried
about attacks on their energy infrastructure and on the royal family, so it
fit their strategy to allow the drone attacks.”
The existence of the base was likely a
“sensitive issue” for both Washington and Riyadh, Mr Coates-Ulrichsen
added.
A source close to the Saudi Interior Minister,
Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, declined to comment when contacted by the BBC.
The Washington Post reported that President
Barack Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan, a former CIA station
chief in Saudi Arabia, played a key role in negotiations with the government
in Riyadh over building the drone base.
Saudi Arabia is home to some of Islam’s
holiest sites and the deployment of US forces there was seen as a historic
betrayal by many Islamists, notably the late leader of al-Qaeda, Osama Bin
Laden.
It was one of the main reasons given by the Saudi-born militant to justify
violence against the US and its allies.
Leaked memo
The revelation of the drone base came shortly
after the leaking of a US justice department memo detailing the Obama
administration’s case for killing Americans abroad who are accused of being a
“senior, operational leader” of al-Qaeda or its allies.
Anwar al-Awlaki was among three Americans
killed in drone strikes in Yemen in 2011
Lethal force is lawful if they are deemed to
pose an “imminent threat” and their capture is not feasible, the
memo says. The threat does not have to be based on intelligence about a
specific attack, since such actions are being “continually” planned
by al-Qaeda, it adds.
NBC News said it was given to members of the
US Senate intelligence and judiciary committees as a summary of a classified
memo on the targeted killings of US citizens prepared by the justice
department.
The latter memo was written before the drone
strike that killed Awlaki.
Under President Obama, the US has expanded its
use of drones to kill hundreds of al-Qaeda suspects in Pakistan, Afghanistan
and Yemen. It says it is acting in self-defence in accordance with
international law.
Critics argue the drone strikes amount to execution without trial and cause
many civilian casualties.
Senators are expected to ask Mr Brennan about
drone strikes, the memo and the killing of Awlaki on Thursday when he faces a
confirmation hearing on his nomination to become the new CIA director.
—
Now that is a great shock for us outside of
the US.
Beloved.
IZAKOVIC
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