US tightens policy of counterterrorism drone strikes

WASHINGTON: President Biden’s administration has tightened the policy pertaining to counterterrorism drone strikes, US media reports said.

The policy requires President’s approval before a suspected terrorist is added to a list of those who can be targeted in a return to a more centralized control of decisions about targeted killing operations. Trump had given commanders in the field greater authority to decide whom to target.

Biden has signed a classified policy limiting drone strikes outside conventional war zones, tightening rules that former President Donald Trump had loosened, according to officials.

The policy, which the White House sent to the Pentagon and the CIA, institutionalizes a version of temporary limits that Biden’s team put in place as a stopgap for reducing risks to civilians while the administration reviewed the counterterrorism policies it had got from Trump.

A description of the policy, along with a classified new counterterrorism strategy memo President Biden has signed, suggests that the United States intends to launch fewer drone strikes and commando raids away from recognized war zones than it has in the recent past.

The Biden administration’s rules apply to strikes in poorly governed places where militants are active but that the United States does not consider to be “areas of active hostilities.”

Only Iraq and Syria — where U.S. troops and allies are fighting the remnants of the Islamic State — are currently deemed to be conventional war zones where the new rules will not apply and commanders in the field will retain latitude to order counterterrorism airstrikes or raids without seeking White House approval, the official said.

That means the rules will limit such operations in several other countries where the United States has carried out drone strikes in recent years, including Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen, as well as the tribal region of Pakistan, according to analysts.

The number of counterterrorism raids and drone strikes in several of the affected countries had been decreasing in recent years. The last U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen were in 2018 and 2019. This summer, a US drone strike in Afghanistan killed Al Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahri.