Acceptable Collateral Damage

By AM Tuesday, December 10, 2013

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Guest writer Dr Martin McCleery with a piece looking at the US use of drone attacks to quell its opponents. He provides some interesting comparisons and insights gleaned from his own research into the effects of British policy in the North. Martin McCleery is a research fellow with the School of Politics Queen's University Belfast.

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Recently thousands of people took to the streets in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore to protest against ongoing US drone strikes. The use of drones has become commonplace under the Obama administration especially on the Afghan/Pakistan border and in Yemen. Indeed the United Nations estimate that 2,200 people have been killed in the last decade by drones, 400 of whom were civilians. Additionally the Pakistan government estimates that a further 200 individuals that have been killed were non-combatants.

The use of drones is the key counter-insurgency strategy being used by the Americans to deal with insurgents who are determined to kill US citizens. They focus on the undoubted successes that they have had against the insurgents, killing 1,600 of them. The logic behind using drones is that their use limits possible casualties to the US military whilst dealing with known terrorists; as a consequence although civilian deaths are regrettable they are a price worth paying for the United States. In their determination to kill their enemies they are conducting such operations without considering the effects on the wider community. To put this another way, the innocent civilians killed are seen as ‘acceptable collateral damage’. However the policy can only be regarded as short-sighted as it does not factor into the situation that this ‘collateral damage’ is the very element which leads to a deterioration of the situation. To the people of these areas the ‘acceptable’ deaths are perceived as an indiscriminate attack on their communities.

It seems as though despite all their counter-terrorism experience and training the western powers have learnt very little about the effects of such a strategy. As a result the loss of innocent lives has only served to increase opposition to the west’s ‘War on Terror’ and to those countries which are active participants. The strategy has also led to an increase in support for such groups as the Taliban and Al- Qaeda. However Obama and his administration did not have to look too far back in history to find a state that made the same type of disastrous miscalculation.

• Armed Resistance→ Counter-Terrorism Measure→ Partially Effective→ Civilian Casualties → Increased Armed Resistance.

August 1971 saw the introduction of internment without trial in Northern Ireland. In response to an ongoing militant campaign the authorities decided that the suspension of civil liberties was a price worth paying in an effort to defeat the IRA. Over the years two main narratives emerged over the use of internment. Firstly that the measure was an indiscriminate attack on the nationalist community and secondly the authorities and many historians maintained that internment was a mistake based on poor intelligence. The implication being that the one-sidedness of the operation was due to the fact that there was no available intelligence on loyalist paramilitaries and also that authorities had little useful intelligence on republican paramilitaries. Now if either of these narratives was correct all the Americans had to do was to make sure that whatever counter-terrorism strategy they adopted was neither indiscriminate nor based on poor intelligence. Unfortunately for them things are rarely quite as simple as they appear.

Both narratives whilst containing some element of truth need to be qualified and a more nuanced examination of the intelligence situation proves to be more revealing. As early as May 1970 the RUC Special Branch was recommending that 62 extreme loyalists should be detained in any future detention operation. However no loyalists were interned until 1973, a move which might have made military sense (no point fighting a war on two fronts) but which made no political sense as it did not take into account the effect this policy would have on the nationalist community.

In addition when the actual arrest figures for the initial arrest operation are examined it is very apparent that there was ample intelligence on republican paramilitaries for a more targeted arrest operation to be undertaken. The list contained 520 names of which approximately 40% were PIRA members and associates and 15% were OIRA members. Indeed the authorities also had the names, addresses, dates of birth, places of work, car make, model and registration of many prominent republicans. Nevertheless although the authorities had intelligence on republican paramilitaries they did not have a full picture and decided to use internment as a chance to improve intelligence by arresting retired republicans, trade unionists and civil rights campaigners. As a result 22% of those on the list were civilians with little or no connection to republican paramilitaries who were released within 48 hours and a further 19% of those on the list were non-paramilitaries who were held for longer. It is true that some of this latter group were interned but it is also true to say that by 1972 hardly any non-combatants remained interned.

So the operation was not as indiscriminate as it has been portrayed in some quarters, nevertheless the damage had already been done. To the British obsessed with curtailing the activities of the IRA these men were the ‘acceptable collateral damage’ but many nationalists perceived internment as nothing less than an indiscriminate attack on their community. Indeed the measure brought about nearly total opposition to the authorities and a huge increase in support for republican paramilitaries.

The acceptance of ‘collateral damage’ in both situations turned out to be a major mistake.

• Armed Resistance→ Counter-Terrorism Measure→ Partially Effective→ Civilian Casualties→ Increased Armed Resistance.

Admittedly despite the undoubted unfairness of the use of internment in Northern Ireland it is difficult to equate it with the killing of innocent civilians by drones in the middle-east and elsewhere. However the principle adopted by the authorities behind both measures remains the same, go after your enemies and if some innocents are hurt in the process well so be it. It is unlikely that drone attacks would have been countenanced in the west in 1971, even if the technology had been available, but this is more because of what Edward Said calls Orientalism. The American attitude is similar to that of the British in colonial days who saw:

the Orient as a geographical - and cultural, political, demographical, sociological, and historical - entity over whose destiny they believe themselves to have traditional entitlement.

Another reason that the use of drones is seen as acceptable.

Other comparisons can also be made between the Northern Ireland conflict and the modern-day ‘War on Terror’. Following the murder of PIRA man Paddy McAdorey in 1971 it has been claimed that members of the army were pictured shaking hands with his dead body in Lagan Bank Mortuary. One thinks about Abu Ghraib. In 2005 in Haditha (Iraq) 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians including seven children, a toddler, three women and a 76-year-old man were shot dead at close range by United States Marines: echoes of Bloody Sunday. The use of sensory deprivation at Guantanamo Bay and the institutional denial of any wrongdoing are all reminiscent of Northern Ireland in the early 1970s.

It is clear that the United States have not and most likely never will learn the lessons of the dangers of pursuing such a policy which views the killings of innocent civilians and human rights abuses as ‘acceptable collateral damage’ in the pursuit of its enemies.