Do U.S. Drone Strikes Cause Blowback? Evidence from Pakistan and Beyond

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (04) ◽  
pp. 47-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aqil Shah
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Local Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Muslim Countries ◽  
The Social ◽  
Drone Strikes ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Muslim Communities

Many analysts argue that U.S. drone strikes generate blowback: by killing innocent civilians, such strikes radicalize Muslim populations at the local, national, and even transnational levels. This claim, however, is based primarily on anecdotal evidence, unreliable media reports, and advocacy-driven research by human rights groups. Interview and survey data from Pakistan, where, since 2004, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has launched more than 430 drone strikes, show little or no evidence that drone strikes have a significant impact on militant Islamist recruitment either locally or nationally. Rather, the data reveal the importance of factors such as political and economic grievances, the Pakistani state's selective counterterrorism policies, its indiscriminate repression of the local population, and forced recruitment of youth by militant groups. Similarly, trial testimony and accounts of terrorists convicted in the United States, as well as the social science scholarship on Muslim radicalization in the United States and Europe, provide scant evidence that drone strikes are the main cause of militant Islamism. Instead, factors that matter include a transnational Islamic identity's appeal to young immigrants with conflicted identities, state immigration and integration policies that marginalize Muslim communities, the influence of peers and social networks, and online exposure to violent jihadist ideologies within the overall context of U.S. military interventions in Muslim countries.

scholarly journals The Combatant’s Privilege in Asymmetric and Covert Conflicts

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens David Ohlin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Military Organization ◽  
Special Operations ◽  
Drone Strikes ◽  
The Government ◽  
Turf Battle

[First introductory paragraph] As the United States has engaged in an unprecedented campaign of targeted killings against members of al-Qaeda and associated forces, various agencies within the government have engaged in increasingly pitched squab-bling regarding their respective control over drone strikes in multiple foreign theaters. Authority and responsibility has vacillated between the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Department’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the former being an intelligence agency tasked with both intelligence and covert operations directives, and the latter a military organization under the direction of the Secretary of Defense. In addition to the inherent policy questions in this turf battle, there are urgent elements of domestic and international law simmering beneath the surface. Some critics have suggested that CIA officers should not be involved in drone operations because CIA officers are non-uniformed individuals that do not meet the international law standards for privileged belligerency. According to this argument, the calculus regarding the appropriate agency for drone operations ought to take into ac-count that international law does not confer the combatant’s privilege on non-uniformed CIA employees.Published: 40 Yale J. Int'l L. 337-93 (2015)

James Angleton and the Church Committee

2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 128-147
Author(s):  
Loch K. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
First Line ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Public Defense ◽  
Intelligence Operations ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Church ◽  
Extreme View

James J. Angleton, who served as chief of counterintelligence for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1954 to 1974, was an important figure in the Cold War and, in a sense, the first line of defense against clandestine Soviet intelligence operations directed against the United States and its allies. In 1975 a U.S. Senate investigative committee—informally known as the Church Committee and led by Senator Frank Church—called Angleton to testify in public on his approach to counterintelligence, especially how he had become involved in illegal domestic operations in the United States. His testimony to committee staff investigators preceding the hearing, along with his public statements to senators during the hearing, displayed an extreme view of the global Communist threat. Amid ongoing revelations in the mid-1970s of illegal CIA actions, Angleton proved unable to mount an effective public defense of his approach.

Congo/Zaire-US Relations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lise Namikas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Democratic Republic Of Congo ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
Plantation Slavery ◽  
The Cold War

At the dawn of the 20th century, the region that would become the Democratic Republic of Congo fell to the brutal colonialism of Belgium’s King Leopold. Except for a brief moment when anti-imperialists decried the crimes of plantation slavery, the United States paid little attention to Congo before 1960. But after winning its independence from Belgium in June 1960, Congo suddenly became engulfed in a crisis of decolonization and the Cold War, a time when the United States and the Soviet Union competed for resources and influence. The confrontation in Congo was kept limited by a United Nations (UN) peacekeeping force, which ended the secession of the province of Katanga in 1964. At the same time, the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) intervened to help create a pro-Western government and eliminate the Congo’s first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. Ironically, the result would be a growing reliance on the dictatorship of Joseph Mobutu throughout the 1980s. In 1997 a rebellion succeeded in toppling Mobutu from power. Since 2001 President Joseph Kabila has ruled Congo. The United States has supported long-term social and economic growth but has kept its distance while watching Kabila fight internal opponents and insurgents in the east. A UN peacekeeping force returned to Congo and helped limit unrest. Despite serving out two full terms that ended in 2016, Kabila was slow to call elections amid rising turmoil.

The United States and the Soviet-Afghan War, 1979–1989

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Conor Tobin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Islamic Fundamentalism ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Post Cold War

In December 1979, Soviet troops entered the small, poor, landlocked, Islamic nation of Afghanistan, assassinated the communist president, Hafizullah Amin, and installed a more compliant Afghan leader. For almost ten years, Soviet troops remained entrenched in Afghanistan before finally withdrawing in February 1989. During this period, the United States undertook a covert program to assist the anti-communist Afghan insurgents—the mujahideen—to resist the Soviet occupation. Beginning with President Jimmy Carter’s small-scale authorization in July 1979, the secret war became the largest in history under President Ronald Reagan, running up to $700 million per year. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) acted as the war’s quartermaster, arranging supplies of weapons for the mujahideen, which were funneled through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), in coordination with Saudi Arabia, China, Egypt, and others. No Americans were directly involved in the fighting, and the overall cost to the American taxpayer was in the region of $2 billion. The Afghan cost was much higher. Over a million Afghans were killed, a further two million wounded, and over six million refugees fled to neighboring Pakistan and Iran. For the Soviet Union, the ten-year war constituted its largest military action in the postwar era, and the long and protracted nature of the conflict and the failure of the Red Army to subdue the Afghans is partially responsible for the internal turmoil that contributed to the eventual breakup of the Soviet empire at the end of the 1980s. The defeat of the Soviet 40th Army in Afghanistan proved to be the final major superpower battle of the Cold War, but it also marked the beginning of a new era. The devastation and radicalization of Afghan society resulted in the subsequent decades of continued conflict and warfare and the rise of militant Islamic fundamentalism that has shaped the post-Cold War world.

The Rising Clamor

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David P. Hadley
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Elite Education ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence System ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

This work examines the relationships that developed between the domestic U.S. press and the Central Intelligence Agency, from the foundation of the agency in 1947 to the first major congressional investigation of the U.S. intelligence system in 1975–1976. The press environment in which the CIA developed had important consequences for the types of activities the agency undertook, and after some initial difficulties the CIA enjoyed a highly favorable press environment in its early years. The CIA did, on occasion, attempt to use reporters operationally and spread propaganda around the world. This work argues, however, that a more important factor in the generally positive press environment that the early CIA enjoyed was the social relationships that developed between members of the press, especially management, and members of the agency. Common ties of elite education, wartime service, and a shared view of the danger of communism allowed the agency both to conduct a variety of activities without exposure in the United States, and to protect itself from oversight and establish its place in the U.S. national security bureaucracy. Even during the height of cooperative ties, however, there were those in the press critical of the CIA and others who, even if cooperating, were wary of agency activities. Over time, these countertrends increased as the Cold War consensus frayed, and press attention led to sustained investigation of the Central Intelligence Agency in the infamous Year of Intelligence, 1975–1976.

scholarly journals Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan in the Documents of J. Carter Administration

2020 ◽  
pp. 88-100
Author(s):  
Olexandr Koval ́kov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Carter Administration ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
The U.S

The article examines the documents of Jimmy Carter Administration (1977-1981) published in «Foreign Relations of the United States» series that represent the U.S. position on the Soviet intervention in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in December 1979. The author argues that the growing Soviet presence and finally a military intervention in Afghanistan was taken seriously in the United States and made Washington watch the developments in this country closely. The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan became one of the major themes in the U.S. foreign policy. It was presented in a large array of documents of various origins, such as the Department of State correspondence with the U.S. Embassies in Afghanistan and the Soviet Union; analytical reports of the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, and Bureau of Intelligence and Research; exchanges of memorandums between National Security Council officers and other officials; memos from National Security Adviser Z. Brzezinski to J. Carter, and others. They represented the preconditions, preparations and implementation of Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. The authors of the documents discussed in details the possible motives of the Soviet leaders, and predicted the short-term consequences of the USSR’s intervention for the region and the whole world. Due to the clear understanding of the developments in Afghanistan in December 1979 by the J. Carter administration, it completely rejected the Soviet official version of them that adversely affected the bilateral Soviet-U.S. relations and international relations in general. Due to the lack of accessible Soviet sources on the USSR’s intervention in Afghanistan, the documents of Jimmy Carter’s administration fill this gap and constitute a valuable source for a researcher.

The Strategy of Muslim Communities in Encountering Islamophobia in The United States

Afkaruna ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hasbi Aswar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Muslim Countries ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Legal Advocacy ◽  
American Society ◽  
Muslim Communities

The number of Muslims in the United States is increasing from year to year as a result of the increasing number of immigrants from Muslim countries who come to work and continue their education as well as the increasing number of Muslims. One of the problems faced by the Muslim community in America today is Islamophobia such as bad narratives, discrimination, and violence against Muslims and their property. This study will examine the role of the Muslim community in America in dealing with the phenomenon of Islamophobia by explaining its strategy through the concept of Non-Governmental Organizations. The data used in this study is literature collected online from websites of Islamic groups in the United States. The results of this study showed that Islamic groups have taken many ways to deal with Islamophobia in this country, namely through political and legal advocacy, media relations, education, and campaigns to garner support and introduce Islam in American society.

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