WASHINGTON – The Biden government has almost completed its policy of regulating drone strikes and commando strikes outside conventional war zones, but the abrupt collapse of the Afghan government and a recent spate of strikes in Somalia have created new problems, according to current and former officials.
The government has hoped to have its playbook ready by the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. It was slated as part of a broader recalibration as President Biden seeks to end the “eternal war” on terrorism and realign national security policy as the world has changed since 2001.
But his team’s ability to meet that deadline is in doubt in the face of rapidly changing events and uncertainties about the future. Many of the same officials who would develop and approve an updated drone plan for Afghanistan are focusing on evacuation operations in the capital, Kabul, officials said.
In January, Mr Biden set out to develop his own overarching policy for drone strikes targeting terrorist threats from countries where the United States does not have troops. His new administration viewed with suspicion how in 2017 President Donald J. Trump relaxed an earlier version of such rules imposed by President Barack Obama in 2013.
The Biden team has spent more than seven months reviewing these two guidelines – including the resulting civilian casualty figures – and assessing the evolution of the global terrorist threat. Their deliberations centered on a hybrid approach that would pick up elements from both the Obama and Trump systems, officials said.
As conceived now, the Biden-era playbook would revert to a centralized cross-agency review of proposed strikes – a hallmark of the Obama approach – in countries where such operations are rare, they said. But for places where strikes are likely to be more routine, like Somalia and Afghanistan, it would remain part of the Trump approach of issuing “country plans” that set policy goals and objectives, and then giving commanders in the field more leeway to make their own decisions to carry out special strikes.
Still, the country plans are more restrictive than the Trump versions, officials said. For example, protections against the death of civilian bystanders under Mr Trump often offered adult men less protection than women and children, but Biden’s future plans would make the protections on par. The Biden rules are also designed to require the military to seek the approval of State Department heads of mission for strikes, they said.
But the recent riots in Afghanistan have made what the Biden team originally envisioned for that country obsolete. Administrative officials now need to develop a new playbook to resolve any future strikes there before Mr Biden can put the general policy in place, officials said.
The future of the attacks in Afghanistan is particularly important as Mr Biden and his team defended his decision to withdraw American ground forces by pledging to maintain a robust ability to combat any new or resurgent terrorist threats emanating from there.
“We are conducting effective counterterrorism missions against terrorist groups in several countries where we do not have a permanent military presence,” Biden said this month. “If necessary, we will do the same in Afghanistan. We have developed counter-terrorism capabilities that enable us to keep a close eye on the direct threats to the United States in the region and to act quickly and decisively when necessary. “
However, their original plan for Afghanistan was based on a scenario in which the United States, with the consent of President Ashraf Ghani, would launch air strikes in support of his administration’s efforts to resist transnational terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State that did Use land as a base of operations. The Taliban would vie separately for control of the country, but would be at least superficially neutral in this conflict category.
Instead, Mr Ghani fled, the Afghan army abdicated abruptly, and the Taliban came to power as the de facto government. In light of the uncertainty about the Taliban’s intentions, including whether they will host terror camps again as they did in the 1990s, a playbook must now be developed for all future counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan, officials said.
The current and former officials who were informed of the deliberations on the drone attack policy spoke of the delicate internal discussions only on condition of anonymity. Asked for comment, the New York Times National Security Council press office retransmitted a statement it had made in March on an article on the policy review, which was at an early stage at the time.
Updated
Aug 28, 2021, 7:25 p.m. ET
The Biden plans make sense to both raise standards for civilian protection and provide greater flexibility for different environments around the world, said Luke Hartig, who is the National Security Council’s chief anti-terrorism director on drone attack policy worked for the Obama administration.
But he added: “Afghanistan will have to be very fluid. I would hate to have to write a guide for Afghanistan now. “
But creating a bureaucratic system and planning drone strikes contradicts Mr Biden’s repeated statements that he wants to end the eternal war, said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor who frequently writes on national security legal policy.
Understanding the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan
Map 1 of 5
Who are the Taliban? The Taliban emerged in 1994 amid the unrest following the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. They used brutal public punishments, including flogging, amputation and mass executions, to enforce their rules. Here is more about their genesis and track record as rulers.
Who are the Taliban leaders? These are the top leaders of the Taliban, men who for years have been on the run, in hiding, in prison and dodging American drones. Little is known about them or how they plan to rule, including whether they will be as tolerant as they say they are.
What is happening to the women of Afghanistan? When the Taliban was last in power, they banned women and girls from most jobs or from going to school. Afghan women have gained a lot since the Taliban was overthrown, but now they fear that they are losing ground. Taliban officials are trying to reassure women that things will be different, but there are indications that they have begun to reintroduce the old order in at least some areas.
“I’m not blaming them because I think real threats remain,” he added. “It’s better to have a system to deal with them than just let the Pentagon do what it wants. But creating a system for drone attacks doesn’t sound like the way to end the eternal war. “
The need for a new Afghanistan playbook has added to another unsolved problem that surfaced late in the deliberations on Biden-era politics: the uncertainty about how much leeway the military should have to launch attacks in defense of partner forces without the usual steps to take review.
This issue came into focus after the military’s Africa command launched three drone strikes against the al-Shabab militant group in Somalia in late July and early August, breaking a lull that had not been there for six months Had carried out more air strikes.
The hiatus followed a policy directive from the President’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, shortly after Mr Biden’s inauguration on January 20. Under the temporary rule, all drone strikes outside the battlefield zones had to be approved by the White House while the new government drafted its policy.
However, the policy included an exception for strikes in self-defense. And when the military resumed attacks against al Shabab, they invoked this exception instead of seeking prior White House approval.
The catch was that those at risk were Somali government forces that had marched out against Al Shabab, not Americans. Instead, the Africa Command described the attacks as “collective self-defense” by a partner force. She said this week that she carried out another such strike in defense of “our Somali partners”.
That the military can routinely bypass normal drone strike procedures by invoking the need to defend partner forces – including some that may be threatened by adversaries who are not part of the US Congress-approved war against al-Qaeda and theirs Descendants are – urged doubting whether the new policy would manage to control air strikes away from conventional battlefields more strictly, officials said.
As a result, the government has begun addressing the issue, including the ability to tighten the standards for when commanders can view a foreign unit as a partner and clean up the list of such groups. (The comprehensive list is classified, officials said.)
That problem was still unresolved, officials said when the case of Afghanistan threw the government’s anti-terrorist strike policy into major turmoil. But the evacuation of the Afghan army has made things easier in one respect: there seem to be no partner forces left to defend in this country.
Eric Schmitt contributed to the reporting.
