Trump allegedly gives CIA authority to conduct drone strikes
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NEW YORKMar 15, 2017 - 12:00 am GMT+3
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Mar 15, 2017 12:00 am
American President Donald Trump has given the Central Intelligence Agency new authority to conduct drone attacks against suspected militants and terrorists, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing U.S. officials.
The move would be a change from the policy of former President Barack Obama's administration of limiting the CIA's ‘paramilitary' role, the newspaper reported.
The White House, the U.S. Department of Defense and the CIA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Obama had sought to influence global guidelines for the use of drone strikes as other nations began pursuing their own drone programs.
The United States was the first to use unmanned aircraft fitted with missiles to kill militant suspects in the years after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon respectively.
Strikes by missile-armed Predator and Reaper drones against oversea targets began under former President George W. Bush and were expanded under Obama.
The ramp-up started in 2008, the last year of Bush's term, when there were 35 air strikes in Pakistan, and escalated under Obama to a peak of 117 in 2010, according to The Long War Journal.
That jump in use of armed drones resulted from the authorization to use "signature" strikes, which allowed targeting terrorism suspects based on behavior and other characteristics without knowing their actual identity, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.
Obama, who vastly expanded U.S. drone strikes against terrorism suspects overseas under the cloak of secrecy, was seeking to influence global guidelines for their use as China and other countries pursue their own drone programs.
The ramp-up started in 2008, the last year of Bush's term, when there were 35 air strikes in Pakistan, and escalated under Obama to a peak of 117 in 2010, according to The Long War Journal
China's interest in unmanned aerial vehicles was displayed in November at an air show. According to state-run newspaper Global Times, China had considered conducting its first drone strike to kill a suspect in the 2011 murder of 13 Chinese sailors, but authorities decided they wanted the man alive so they could put him on trial.
Critics of the targeted killing program question whether the strikes create more militants than they kill. They cite the spread of jihadist organizations and militant attacks throughout the world as evidence that targeted killings may be exacerbating the problem even though there is no proven direct correlation between the two.
In July, the U.S. government accepted responsibility for inadvertently killing up to 116 civilians in strikes in countries where America is not at war.
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Research Associate at Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) at Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University
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