The “grievance criticism” of targeted killings reared its head again yesterday in Ibrahim Mothana’s OpEd for the New York Times. I call it the grievance criticism because it is, logically speaking, quite simple – kill a member of someone’s family and they will bear a grudge against you. Ibrahim quotes a pretty snappy tweet by Hakyal Bafana to kick off his piece - “Dear Obama, when a U.S. drone missile kills a child in Yemen, the father will go to war with you, guaranteed. Nothing to do with Al Qaeda.” David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum pointed out something similar back in 2009 (they probably weren’t the first to make the point) and it is now one of the key arguments against the use of targeted killings – kill kids, get radicals. Yesterday also saw the release of the Pew Poll of global opinion towards Barack Obama. Oddly enough, Pakistan’s residents apparently thought better of America with President George W. Bush at the helm rather than the current incumbent. That fact may or may not have something to do with the vast expansion of targeted killings under Obama’s leadership, as documented by the BIJ and others. Still, maybe Obama can take comfort in the fact that Pakistan’s population has more confidence in him than Angela Merkel or Vladimir Putin. I mention the Pew poll because opinions matter, especially to people arguing that America should discontinue targeted killings of people they believe to be related to al Qaeda on the basis of opinion.
The “grievance criticism” is, I think, important, but it is also hamstrung by a couple of problems. The first is causal – we know that targeted killings kill civilians (only an idiot would believe that they don’t in the face of contrary evidence), and these civilians leave behind numerous grieving family members likely to bear a grudge. Interestingly, the actual status of a person killed by an American strike is non-discriminatory in this regard – militants and terrorists leave behind upset family as well. The problem, as I see it, is the lack of evidence for a causal link between (rightly) upset family members and actions that are counter to US interests. I am not a Yemen expert, nor am I an expert on Pakistan, but I’ve read enough on both countries to think that a simplistic causal equation of “grievance = more violence towards USA” or towards the relevant state authorities in all likelihood vastly understates the social mechanisms at work. The problem with the grievance criticism is that this link is somewhat assumed: “Nevertheless, every one of these dead noncombatants represents an alienated family, a new desire for revenge, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially even as drone strikes have increased.” – If not stating it directly, Kilcullen and Exum certainly implied a direct link between targeted killings and the growth of an insurgent movement, which ignores other factors such as the government, previous wars and social structures. That isn’t to say that targeted killings don’t inflame popular opinion, or that people haven’t been radicalised by them, but a single (lethal) policy tool can’t explain everything that is going on. This is elaborated in Mothana’s OpEd, on one hand “mounting grievances since the 1994 civil war have driven a strong secessionist movement” and “Unlike Al Qaeda in Iraq, A.Q.A.P. has worked on gaining the support of local communities by compromising on some of their strict religious laws and offering basic services, electricity and gas to villagers in the areas they control. Furthermore, Iran has seized this chance to gain more influence among the disgruntled population in Yemen’s south.” But these factors aren’t apparently the issue, because the article blames targeted killings for creating “A new generation of leaders is spontaneously emerging in furious retaliation to attacks on their territories and tribes” which “is why A.Q.A.P. is much stronger in Yemen today than it was a few years ago. In 2009, A.Q.A.P. had only a few hundred members and controlled no territory; today it has, along with Ansar al-Sharia, at least 1,000 members and controls substantial amounts of territory.” With so much anger and instability washing around, it would take a fool to claim that targeted killings weren’t angering people, but it seems to me that it is similarly foolish to singularly blame the growth of insurgent movements and AQAP on targeted killings.
This leads me to the second problem of the grievance criticism: the straw-man argument of utopian tautological solutions. As Mohana puts it: “Only a long-term approach based on building relations with local communities, dealing with the economic and social drivers of extremism, and cooperating with tribes and Yemen’s army will eradicate the threat of Islamic radicalism.” I totally agree with the above. If America and Yemen can indeed build relations with local communities, raise the standard of living and so on, people living in Yemen will likely be less pissed off at both the Yemeni government and America. The problem is that such a solution doesn’t exist. It’s a mirage. It’s what the West said it was going to do in Afghanistan, it’s how they said that Iraq was going to go (once they figured out the war didn’t end with the fall of Baghdad) and so on. This second part of the grievance criticism goes: you don’t have to kill people and piss off their families, you can make everyone happy instead. The problem is, no-one has yet figured out how to do that, at least not with violent insurgencies that require counter-insurgency operations. The schizophrenia involved in arguing against UAVs and targeted killings while ignoring the fact that the proposed option B (large scale state building and counter insurgency) also kills people and makes them unhappy, astounds me.
Of all the arguments against targeted killings, I think the grievance criticism is the most powerful, but it requires more work to iron out its assumptions. Saying “we shouldn’t do this because they will hate us” doesn’t really carry any weight in wars, because civilians will always die and people will always end up hating other people because of that. Neither is the world a place in which ill-feeling can be neatly balanced, as Schopenhauer put it: ”A quick test of the assertion that enjoyment outweighs pain in this world, or that they are at any rate balanced, would be to compare the feelings of an animal engaged in eating another with those of the animal being eaten.”
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Well..interesting title ..i do not have time to read the rest, but i am sure we have different positions, from the start.
So..the title of this blog post or article, shows you are definitelly British..no more comments needed, indeed and good for me and also Us, we do not live in your world…Do you need a hug, for the effort to post that, about love?
Thanks for a great post Jack. I’m a long time reader of this blog, but first time commenter.
I think the difference is that when you’re accidentally killing civilians during counterinsurgency operations, you can at least send a patrol back to that area to talk to a grieving family and make some attempt to repair the damage face to face, at the human level. What’s the best you can do with a drone strike? Send another drone to drop apology leaflets? I don’t think the value of a real human interaction should be underestimated here.
I think it would be difficult to ever show there is a direct causal link between targeted killings and increased action against the US (or anyone). Increased killing in general is very likely to lead to increased violence, something about Hatfields and McCoys.
That said one does not have to be a psychology student to know that there is likely to be some sort of correlation between the two or its reverse (ie if no one is bombing you may be more likely to be better disposed towards a nation).
The problem with seeing this in a COIN like light is that its stretching the idea/theory to breaking point. This is more about simple human relations that in winning, or trying to win against terrorists and insurgents.
And while its highly likely that someone whose family has been killed in a drone strike or some other manner will be less disposed towards you there is a large spectrum of possible behaviours on which they may act (from resentment and passive hostility to armed action and radicalisation).
How an individual may react is linked to so many factors (many of them intangible) that the ability to correlate even among people who are committed terrorists and insurgents is unlikely to be an isolated factor. Even in the case of people who do identify that an act such as a bombing did have a strong influence on them may not be fully aware of all the factors that made them who they are or take the action that they took.
Its also well known that insurgent groups can and do play on the feelings of others in the populace to make use of them in the struggle against the enemy.
Such a situation could be considered a tipping point, driving or motivating factor but again it’s the realm of the human mind and not so easily quantifiable.
Public opinion (in the form of polls or otherwise) are good ways of identifying a mood or feeling in a population but less so in targeting individuals and as such not likely to help profile an individuals actions or behaviour.
What a poll could do in a more COIN like sense is provide a barometer to help measure the effect of such actions on a population (ie the ration of attacks on us in compression to our drone strikes, do they go up when our goes up?)
What this discussion does do is throw into the light one of the structural flaws which has underpinned the “adventures” in Iraq and Afghanistan among other places, namely there is no half option.
If you plan to invade a country, bomb its people or some related behaviour (regardless of the reason, law or morality) then its a full course of action (all the way to end) and no half option will suffice, the post war occupations of Germany and Japan for example.
And while I do not suggest that the occupations of Japan and Germany are ways that the current situation can be solved, they do illustrate that the effort and actions required were not just to win the war but also the peace (to quote the poster).
As has been argued before by others it is that the political decision and will required to see an endeavour through is greater than the forces and treasure put in.
COIN or whatever it is called is a means to pacify a population without resorting to genocide (with acknowledge meant for the potential for a sliding scale between those two). That pacification can be positive or negative and the gauge of how well that’s working is not merely the actions of the population (as this may be the work of individuals or groups within the population) but also the mood.
I also stop here to point out that I am not suggesting that Genocide is the “all in” required to win Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else (such actions are not as constructive as they appear unless you are Ghengis Khan or effective when the viewing population is global and such barbarity is no longer acceptable) but that it is a guaranteed way of defeating the insurgency.
The OPs point that the grievance criticism requires more work to iron out its assumptions may be a hard thing to do beyond quantification such as “we drop more bombs and attacks on us go up” or testimony from individuals (due to the range of factors involved) but their point is correct as it is a strong argument against not just targeted killings but occupations in general when the full effort is not being put in to complete the occupation.
Modern occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere are almost always on timetables or played out in the light of an intervention rather than a permanent occupations and as such do not even have the psychological weight of permanence or implied inevitability behind them.
Therefore neither is the place being occupied being occupied permanently (or at least long long term) and neither is the will of the populations smashed. These two factors alone create conditions for resistance.
Personally I think COIN always falls short in that it is mostly geared for after the fact and that unless you plan to do a Gulf War One (destroy the military but not actually invade) implantation of COIN means after the fact to fix what an invasion created is a hard ask for those on the ground (Iraq and Afghanistan are testament to that). Its very much like saying “we made the mess now you clean it up!”
In short such an idea that increased attacks equals increased resisitance may serve just as some sort of common/horse sense to be used (ala Sun Tzu in the Art of War) rather than being able to identify some direct or tangible link.
As the title of the post implies, hate exists in war but it may be the war itself rather than certain actions which foster it most and drive it along. Individual actions in a war mix very strongly with so many others that trying to tease them out, even if able to show a positive and meaningful correlations, make little difference in the overall perceptions that a war produces.
Targeted killings have been tried before (think the Phoenix program in Vietnam) which while individually successful and even arguably effective in the mid term are not tools by which a conflict is won in the long term.
Again the occupations of Germany and Japan were harsh in their way but they also oversaw the reconstruction of the two defeated nations, much was poured in to ensure that there was no slide back once the enemy was truly defeated. This has not happened in Iraq or Afghanistan.
After defeat in a war there are always sections of a populace which do not like the outcome and harbour hate and resent the occupation but if the general populace has been pacified and general conditions raised such feelings and individuals are marginalised and even overcome in time.
Its not really love but it works.
Dear mr. Daniel,
please let me thank you for your reply, contrary i tried to use a more ‘diplomatic’ or rather ‘artistic’ semantics in my first comment, to this post.
Contrary i find your opinion interesting, my answer lies in 2 conclusions and when the 1st from them may be found, in my opinion, on my reply in the 1st class of ‘Political Communication’, last year, the other will be in the last points of the oral presentation i had yesterday @ 13.00 P.M, in front of a few Academics, for my Master book in Diplomacy and Security.
Please let me quote:
15. All in all, the Intelligence Cycle is used by an agent in the Dept. of Justice and that of Foreign Affairs who deals with the information, as in the 5th step of the cycle, which is THE DISSEMINATION.
16.As in my case, it dealt with the moral constraints on their and your war, to me, by institutions and people with actions, here and abroad, these years of my life.
17.And that is the reason I am asking for your help now, as I am not a graduated of 3 or sometimes 4 years, in disciplines of: law, journalism, economics, politic sciences, or philology, and also contrary I personally have and also shared, a distinct and deep professional experience with high culture in all these, over these many years, as you could also acknowledge, from the bibliography at the end of my book.
18. END: In the end, would you please be so kind and tell me if, and how much you’ve been satisfied with my presentation and also the book?
19. Thank you very much and I wish a great day for us!!
Huh?