President Barack Obama has defended the highly controversial use of drones to strike at terrorist targets in Pakistan.
The subject is rarely acknowledged, as it is often a lightning rod for anti-U.S. sentiments within Pakistan.
“I want to make sure that people understand actually drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties,” Obama said in response to questions from the public in an online forum.
“For the most part, they have been very precise, precision strikes against al-Qaeda and their affiliates. And we are very careful in terms of how it’s been applied.”
The question came during a live-streamed question-and-answer session hosted by Google++ and YouTube. More than 130,000 questions were submitted for the hour-long session.
It is the first time that drone strikes—a thorny topic—have been acknowledged at such a high level. Obama said that perceptions over the strikes were wrong.
“I think there’s this perception somehow we’re sending in a whole bunch of strikes willy-nilly,” he said. “This is a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists who are trying to go in and harm Americans, hit American facilities, American bases.
“For us to be able to get them in another way would involve probably a lot more intrusive military action than the ones we’re already engaging in,” Obama said.
The New America Foundation reported that there were 283 recorded drone strikes in northwest Pakistan between 2004 and 2011. Those strikes had killed between 1,717 and 2,680 individuals. Of those, around 1,424 to 2,209 were believed to be militants.
The report suggested that around 17 percent of deaths from drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles, were of civilians.
The use of drones has been a strain on relations between Washington and the Pakistan government, which regards the strikes as a violation of sovereignty.
Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit on Tuesday stated the government’s position in response to Obama’s comments. “Notwithstanding tactical advantages of drone strikes, we are of the firm view that these are unlawful, counterproductive, and hence unacceptable,” he told AFP.
However, since drones have been responsible for a number of successful strikes against high-level targets, including al Qaeda’s number two commander in charge of planning, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, it is unlikely the Pentagon will abandon their use.
