WASHINGTON: US military and CIA drone operators generally must obtain advance permission from President Joe Biden to target a suspected militant outside a conventional war zone, and they must have “near certainty” at the moment of any strike that civilians will not be injured, newly declassified rules show.
The 15-page rules, signed by Biden in October, also limit such drone strikes to situations in which the operators deem “infeasible” any option of capturing the targeted person alive in a commando raid. And if national security officials propose targeting any American, it prompts a more extensive review. The rules tightened constraints on drone strikes and commando raids that President Donald Trump had loosened in 2017.
The Biden administration partly declassified and disclosed the document, along with an 18-page national security memo laying out its international counterterrorism strategy, after New York Times filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. A administration official said the government currently considers only two countries – Iraq and Syria, where operations against the remnants of the Islamic State group continue – to be areas of active hostilities, where military operators have greater latitude to order airstrikes.
That means the rules apply everywhere else the US has carried out drone attacks in recent years, including Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and a semi-tribally controlled region of Pakistan.
The 15-page rules, signed by Biden in October, also limit such drone strikes to situations in which the operators deem “infeasible” any option of capturing the targeted person alive in a commando raid. And if national security officials propose targeting any American, it prompts a more extensive review. The rules tightened constraints on drone strikes and commando raids that President Donald Trump had loosened in 2017.
The Biden administration partly declassified and disclosed the document, along with an 18-page national security memo laying out its international counterterrorism strategy, after New York Times filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. A administration official said the government currently considers only two countries – Iraq and Syria, where operations against the remnants of the Islamic State group continue – to be areas of active hostilities, where military operators have greater latitude to order airstrikes.
That means the rules apply everywhere else the US has carried out drone attacks in recent years, including Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and a semi-tribally controlled region of Pakistan.