Drone Watch 2010

A U.S. drone fired three to five missiles at a "militant compound" near the village of Datta Khel in Pakistan's North Waziristan province today, killing at least eight suspected pro-Taliban fighters.

As many as 21 people were killed today by two U.S. drone strikes in North Waziristan's Madakhel tehsil.

There's scant information on the wires this morning, but NBC News and the AP are both reporting that a U.S. drone fired at least two missiles at a house in Miram Shah in Pakistan's North Waziristan province on Monday.

The AP reported three dead and one wounded, while NBC said five were killed and four wounded in the attack. Neither outlet reported their identities, though the Washington Post said that three foreigners were among the dead.

Also in Pakistan today, a car bomb struck a police building in Lahore where security forces interrogate "high-value suspects," killing 13 people and wounding 61, including civilians. The Tehrik-e-Taliban claimed responsibility and said that the attack "was to avenge drone attacks and military operations in the tribal areas.

The New America Foundation's "dronology" tag-team of Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann released a new paper on the U.S. drone campaign in northwest Pakistan last week, and the accompanying Web page devoted to tracking all strikes since 2004 is the most exhaustive open source account of the drone war I've yet seen.

The Google Map documenting six years of strikes, sourced from publicly accessible press accounts, is highly useful, but the news value of the new NAF report is Bergen and Tiedemann's conclusion that the rate of civilian deaths from drone attacks is somewhere around 32 percent.

A drone missile strike in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan on Wednesday killed Mohammed Qari Zafar, a Taliban commander wanted for planning a 2006 bombing at the U.S. consulate in Karachi, which left diplomat David Foy and three Pakistanis dead, according to Pakistani officials.

Zafar was the operational commander of the Fedayeen-e-Islam, "an alliance between the Pakistani Taliban, the anti-Shia Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, and Jaish-e-Mohammed," according to Bill Roggio of the Long War Journal.

Wednesday's strike was the 18th of the year and the 19th since a Dec. 30 suicide bomber struck a CIA team in Khost, Afghanistan, killing seven officers who were involved in planning operations against the Taliban in Pakistan's border regions. The Obama Administration is on pace for around 115 strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan this year.

Last week was a busy one for the U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan, with four strikes in the span of five days, one of which killed the brother of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the high-ranking Taliban commander.

Meanwhile, Israel unveiled the Heron TP, a massive drone the size of a Boeing 737 jetliner that can fly as far as Iran.

A swarm of U.S. unmanned aerial vehicles launched what may have been the heaviest single bombardment in the history of the pilotless drone program today in Pakistan's North Waziristan province.

"Up to eight US drones fired some 18 missiles at multiple militant targets in Datta Khel village," a senior security official told the AFP. The report didn't say if the official was American or Pakistani. The attack "was the heaviest ever in terms of the number of missiles fired," according to Reuters. It left at least 10 suspected militants dead, including three foreigners, though that toll could rise.

Today's attack in Datta Khel, the stronghold of Taliban commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur, is the 13th drone strike in Pakistan or Afghanistan this year and the 14th since a Dec. 30, Taliban-led suicide bombing killed seven CIA agents at a Forward Operating Base in the Afghan town of Khost. So far in 2010, the United States has launched a drone attack around once every two-and-a-half days.

Pakistani tribesmen in Miranshah claimed on Wednesday to have shot down another U.S. drone, according to Press TV and other Web sites. If true, it would be the second such incident in five days: A drone crashed in the same area of North Waziristan on Sunday, and local reports said tribesmen were congratulating each other for shooting it down.

Meanwhile, there have been no reports of drone missile strikes in Afghanistan or Pakistan for a week -- a marked drop-off following an early January blitz. Between Dec. 30, when a suicide bomber struck a CIA base in eastern Afghanistan, and Jan. 19, the date of the most recent drone attack, the United States was launching drone strikes almost every other day.

At least a dozen people -- perhaps as many as 20 -- were killed by a U.S. drone strike in South Waziristan's Shaktoi region, the 10th drone strike of the year.

Pakistani news sources put the death toll at 20, and claim that at least three "foreigners" were among those killed. Wire reports say the target was once again Hakimullah Mehsud, the head of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. U.S. officials thought they killed or injured Mehsud in a drone strike near Razmak last week, but the Taliban chief released a statement yesterday and said he's still alive.

AFP reports that the drone fired at least three missiles at the compound; no word yet on the identities of the people killed, or the nationalities of the "foreigners."

Shaktoi is about 40km southeast of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan.

A U.S. drone aircraft fired multiple missiles into a former religious school in North Waziristan on Thursday, killing a handful of suspected Taliban militants and likely injuring Hakimullah Mehsud, the man who has led the Tehrik-e-Taliban in Pakistan (TTP) for the past five months.

The attack took place near the town of Razmak in North Waziristan, a division of the semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where America is now concentrating its efforts against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. The strike on Mehsud was the eighth of the year in Afghanistan and Pakistan and was preceded by two on Wednesday that killed 13 people in the Helmand province of Afghanistan.

There was also a ninth strike on Friday, again in North Waziristan, killing five suspected militants, according to the AFP. At this rate, the United States is on pace to launch 195 drone strikes in 2010, a vast increase over any previous year.

Correction (1/10/09 5:54 p.m.): I originally wrote that the United States has launched three drone strikes over the weekend. In fact, there were two, making five total since Jan. 1.

Original Post: Heading into 2010, all indications pointed to an increase in the frequency of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal border regions. President Obama and his national security team seem to favor them; there were 56 percent more drone attacks in 2009 than in 2008.

So perhaps it should come as no surprise that America is set to blow the 2009 number out of the water. Granted, it's still early, but with the two strikes since my last post on Jan. 6, we're now at five since the New Year, a pace that if kept would yield around 183 in the next 12 months.

Colin Cookman of the Center for American Progress pointed us via Twitter to 2010's third American drone strike in Pakistan: a two-fisted attack on a Taliban training camp in the Datta Khel region in North Waziristan, according to the Long War Journal.

Correction (1/3/09 10:19 p.m.): I originally wrote that the United States has launched three drone strikes since Jan. 1. In fact, one of those strikes occurred on Dec. 31. America had launched two drone strikes in North Waziristan since the New Year, but three in the past four days.

Original Post: By all accounts, in 2009 the United States greatly increased its use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or "drones," to attack members of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This was particularly true in Pakistan, where both groups operate with relative impunity. Foreign Policy's AfPak Channel counted 53 in 2009 and 34 in 2008, while the Long War Journal counted 52 and 36, respectively. That represents at least a 56 percent increase.

As we enter 2010, a crucial year for American foreign policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, drones will only increase in importance. Already, a suicide bomber killed seven CIA agents and wounded six others in an attack the Taliban claimed was retaliation for drone strikes against its fighters in North Waziristan.

So we here at the Majlis are going to make a formal effort to track as many drone attacks as we can, relying on press accounts and, when possible, public government records. Heck, maybe we'll even develop a few sources along the way. We'll also try to get a map of the attacks posted. To start things off: The United States has conducted two rapid drone strikes in the first three days of 2010, all of them in North Waziristan.