The nominations go to the White House, where by his own insistence and guided by Mr. Brennan [national security adviser], Mr. Obama must approve any name. He signs off on every strike in Yemen and Somalia and also on the more complex and risky strikes in Pakistan—about a third of the total. Aides say Mr. Obama has several reasons for becoming so immersed in lethal counterterrorism operations. A student of writings on war by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, he believes that he should take moral responsibility for such actions. And he knows that bad strikes can tarnish America’s image and derail diplomacy.
DRONES FOIL A MUMBAI-STYLE TERRORIST ATTACK IN EUROPE
For those who support Obama’s withering drone campaign, there is no better proof of drones’ success in foiling terror strikes than their role in killing several German and British Muslims in North Waziristan who were planning a mass-casualty terrorist strike in Europe based on the model of one carried out in Mumbai, India, in November 2008. During the infamous Mumbai attack, members of the Pakistani jihad group Lashkar e Toiba roamed the streets of Mumbai raiding restaurants, hotels, a cinema, a Jewish center, a train station, and a college. In all 168 people were gunned down in cold blood or blown up by hand grenades as the terrorists spread carnage through the heart of India’s largest city.
The Mumbai attack was praised by jihadists and terrorists throughout Pakistan and seemed to serve as inspiration for similar slaughters in Europe, according to Ahmed Siddiqui. Siddiqui was a thirty-six-year-old German of Afghan decent who was arrested in June 2010 as he attempted to fly out of Kabul International Airport to Germany. He was subsequently interrogated by the United States and its Coalition allies at Bagram Air Base. Coalition forces had previously noticed that a group of eleven radicals tied to the Al Quds Mosque in Hamburg, Germany (the same mosque attended by 9/11 suicide team commander Muhammad Atta), had mysteriously left the country in 2009. They then reappeared in training camps in North Waziristan. There the German-Muslim jihadists were filmed training with weapons and making threats against the West.
Initially, the German authorities thought the group of eleven extremists had traveled to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to fight Coalition troops, but Siddiqui dropped a bombshell after his arrest. During interrogation he confessed to being a member of a terrorist team that was planning to attack civilian targets in Germany, France, and Britain. According to one U.S. official, “They were going to attack multiple centers in Europe over a few days. They were going to shoot the hell out of people, terrorize them.”102 Their aim was to punish these NATO countries for their role in the Afghan conflict, much as terrorists had punished the Spanish government for its role in Iraq with the 2004 Madrid bombings.
Bin Laden, Siddiqui claimed, had personally approved the plot.103 British Muslims of Pakistani descent who formed a group known as the Islamic Army of Great Britain would attack the British targets, and German Muslims who were members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan would carry out the attacks in Germany and France. A second German jihadist who was arrested and “other sources” verified Siddiqui’s claims.104
Word of the plot was leaked in September 2010, and the British, German, and French governments went on high alert. Travel advisories were issued to Americans warning them not to travel to those countries. The Eiffel Tower was closed twice because of bomb scares, and even the British royal family was put under special protection.
By this time the CIA had learned that the British terrorists in North Waziristan were being led by a Pakistani-British Muslim named Abdul Jabbar. Jabbar had been selected to lead the Islamic Army of Great Britain in carrying out massacres against “soft targets” in the UK.105 He and his brother had supposedly been chosen to lead the group in a Taliban meeting.106 But before he could carry out his plans, Jabbar and three others were killed in a drone strike on September 8, 2010.107 In fact, that September saw the highest number of drone strikes thus far as the CIA unleashed a barrage of twenty-two strikes trying to disrupt the plot by killing the British and German terrorists. On October 4, 2010, the drones finally caught up with the German terrorists, who were of Pakistani, Turkish, and Arab origin, and killed eight of them in the Mir Ali region of North Waziristan.108
Three months later two more Brits, this time English converts to Islam named Abu Bakr (aka Gerry Smith) and Mansoor Ahmed (known only as Stephen), were killed in a drone strike in the region.109 It later emerged that CIA spies had been tracking the various German and British terrorists for some time, waiting for the chance to kill them and foil their plot. At the time U.S. officials said that they were acting on “precise intelligence.”110 The robust and accurate nature of the CIA’s drone response to these terrorist threats speaks volumes to the level of their infiltration of the FATA and the agency’s ability to quickly target and kill suspected terrorists planning future attacks.
DRONES AND THE KILLING OF OSAMA BIN LADEN
Although drones did not kill bin Laden in May 2011, they did play a key role in his death. Bin Laden had last been seen fleeing from the caves of Tora Bora in Afghanistan into the neighboring FATA region during Operation Enduring Freedom in December 2001. From there his trail ran cold. Many assumed that the terrorist mastermind was hiding in the FATA region because the number two in al Qaeda, Ayman al Zawahiri (who was tracked in the region and almost killed by a drone in Damadola), was filmed walking with him sometime after 2001 in a mountainous setting; both were wearing Pashtun clothes and interacting with people who appeared to be Pashtuns.
But by 2008 the drone war had commenced in the FATA, and many Taliban and al Qaeda leaders had fled this sanctuary for safer grounds in Quetta and elsewhere. Bin Laden himself was too high value a target to move around a region that was filled with CIA spies. He was forced to flee the drones by moving to the neighboring North-West Frontier Province. There he was isolated from the war in Afghanistan in a massive, $1 million, concrete compound built in the Pakistani military-resort town of Abbottabad.
It proved all but impossible to find bin Laden in his hideout because he was so far from the FATA. To compound matters, the terrorist leader had learned to be cautious following the 2004 death of Taliban leader Nek Muhammad, who, as noted previously, was tracked by the CIA while speaking on a cell phone. Instead of phones, bin Laden relied on couriers to communicate. For years bin Laden, occasionally issuing a video statement mocking the Americans, remained hidden in his self-imposed prison on the top floor of his compound.
But the CIA and NSA were persistent and carefully monitored the cell phone communication among all known al Qaeda agents in Pakistan. In August 2010 an al Qaeda agent tripped up and called a mysterious courier who had not previously been tracked named Ahmed al Kuwaiti. After the phone call, the NSA was tasked with following Kuwaiti’s movements. Not realizing he was being traced, Kuwaiti drove to a large compound in Abbottabad that stood out because of its high walls. Curiosity aroused, the CIA began to monitor the mysterious mansion via high-flying spy satellites that used synthetic aperture radar and electro-optical cameras. The grainy pictures these satellites provided were not of sufficient resolution to tell who was living in the house. Although the satellites were good at filming static targets such as buildings, they could not film moving people; only drones could do that. Unfortunately, the Pakistanis did not allow the Americans’ slow-moving propeller-driven Predators and Reapers to operate outside the FATA.