An Oregon Army National Guard reconnaissance drone on the flight line in a hanger in Pendleton is dwarfed by Guard spokesman Pat Caldwell and a combat-ready Chinook helicopter. The RQ7B Shadow drones are now based at the Guard’s armory at the Eastern Oregon Regional Airport and will be used to train operators for combat missions abroad.

PENDLETON — A 375-pound Oregon Army National Guard drone carrying a sophisticated camera was catapulted into the cobalt-blue eastern Oregon sky here Tuesday, in what Guard officials called the first-ever flight of an unmanned military aircraft through civilian airspace.

Until now, military drones have been confined to restricted airspace above U.S. military bases. The Guard expects to initially fly the four unmanned planes based here twice a month, and later expand the flights to once a week over the Eastern Oregon Regional Airport in Pendleton and wheat fields to the north, said Pat Caldwell, a Guard spokesman.

The brief flight of the Guard’s RQ7B Shadow around the airport takes the Guard into potentially controversial territory.

The possibility of widespread drone use has prompted debate in the Oregon Legislature this year, pitting concerns over domestic surveillance against the promise of a tantalizing new industry. Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, and Rep. John Huffman, R-The Dalles, introduced legislation that would criminalize the use of drones to fire missiles or spy on people.

But Guard officials vow that the drones flown from Pendleton will be used for combat training, not peeking poolside or in the windows of homes and businesses.

“Our cameras are here to do military training,” said Sgt. Eric Smidt, spokesman for the 27-member National Guard troop platoon that flies them. “As military personnel, we are not allowed to look in on civilians.”

Tuesday’s flight into airspace designated for general aviation puts the Oregon Army National Guard on the cutting-edge of unmanned aerial system technology, said Lt. Col. Alan R. Gronewold.

“I foresee this expanding greatly over the next few years,” said an enthusiastic Oregon Army National Guard Chief Warrant Officer Mark Braeme.

The RQ7B Shadow is eleven feet long, with a 14-foot wingspan and a noise signature like “an unmuffled lawn mower engine on steroids,” according to Braeme. The craft is a smaller, unarmed version of the unmanned Predator drones used by the U.S. military to hunt down and kill suspected terrorists in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Guard officals said the plane’s $800,000 pricetag is largely due to the cost of its miniaturized and high-tech camera payload.

The Oregon Army National Guard has been training troops to fly unmanned combat aircraft over the U.S. Navy’s 73-square-mile bombing range near Boardman for about a decade, said Braeme. Until now, they’ve stayed within the bombing range’s restricted airspace. They must vie with jets from the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station on Puget Sound use the bombing range to simulate low-level attacks.

Flying drones out of the Eastern Oregon Regional Airport will be less hassle for the Guard, said Braeme.

“This is huge,” he said. “Now we won’t have to rely on the Navy.”

Drone operators guide the craft under the same rules as general aviation pilots. They must be able to see 1.5 miles or 3,000 feet vertically around the craft, said Smidt.

When non-military pilots need to land at or take off from the airport, the radio-controlled drones will be flown to a holding pattern to the north at an elevation of about 3,500 feet, said Braeme.

Eric Simpkins, a Bend-based consultant for the state of Oregon on unmanned aircraft, said the Federal Aviation Administration announced plans to open federal airspace to drones by 2015. He expects 10,000 unmanned craft will be plying the nation’s skies by 2020.

In the meantime, six test sites are being set up around the nation to research how to integrate unmanned aircraft into the national airspace, said Simpkins. That probably will be done with new technology allowing both unmanned and piloted aircraft “to know where everybody is,” he said.

“We will not be playing bumper cars in the sky,” quipped Simpkins, who was on hand to watch the launch and landing of the RQ7B Shadow.

“We’ll be able to fly safely and not be invading anybody’s privacy,” Simpkins said.

The number of drone flights is expected to increase as local pilots get accustomed to the idea, Braeme said. With four unmanned aircraft based here, the Guard will be able to put two in the air at any one time, he said.

He expects the program to remain in Pendleton indefinitely, he said.

“This is some of the best airspace in the country,” he said.

The Guard’s drone program has gotten a positive reception from Pendleton officials, many of whom believe it could attract manufacturers to the airport’s industrial property.

“The more the better,” Pendleton Mayor Phillip Houk told guard members. “We support you. We respect the work you do up here.”

A small house, once made of large cement blocks, is reduced to rubble in a sea of untouched homes and shops in Jaar, a town in South Yemen’s Abyaan governorate. There are no signs of life where that house once stood — no photos, furniture, and certainly no people left behind. In May 2011, the house was struck by a drone — American, the locals say. Some believe the sole occupant, a man named Anwar Al-Arshani, may have been linked to Al Qaeda, although he kept to himself, so no one knows for sure. As Al-Arshani’s house smoldered from the powerful blow, townspeople frantically rushed to inspect the damage and look for survivors. And then, just as the crowd swelled, a second missile fired. Locals say 24 people were killed that day, all of them allegedly innocent civilians.

Eighteen-year-old Muneer Al-Asy was among them. His mother Loul says she knows nothing about America — not of its democracy or politics or people or values. All she knows is that it killed her son. She cannot read and does not own a television. Like many in her village, she says Al-Qaeda is “very bad,” but the thought of her youngest son being killed by an American missile haunts her dreams at night. She screams in fury at the people who took her son: “criminals!” She rocks anxiously back and forth on her sole piece of furniture — a long cushion in her single-room home — recalling the day her son was “martyred” by a U.S. drone. “I am like a blind person now,” says Loul. “Munner was my eyes.”

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Protesters march to the perimeter fence of RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire to protest its use as a centre for drone piloting in Afghanistan. Photograph: Matthew Cooper/PA

Hundreds of peace campaigners gathered outside an RAF base today to protest against armed drones being operated from Britain to conduct missions in Afghanistan.

Around 400 demonstrators took part in a march from Lincoln to a rally at nearby RAF Waddington, which assumed control of British drone missions in Afghanistan earlier this week.

The Guardian revealed on Thursday that the RAF had begun remotely operating its Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles from the Lincolnshire airbase.

The drones were previously operated from a United States Air Force base in Nevada.

Chris Cole, a coordinator of the Drone Campaign Network, said the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to wage war raised numerous legal, ethical and moral issues. Speaking near RAF Waddington’s perimeter fence, Mr Cole said: “This is the new home of drone warfare in the UK and there are questions about the growing use of these armed, unmanned systems.

“Because of their remote nature, there is no risk to any of our forces and that makes it easier to launch weapons and makes it much easier for politicians to get involved in warfare.”

In a statement issued on Thursday, the RAF said it had commenced supporting the International Security Assistance Force and Afghan ground troops with “armed intelligence and surveillance missions” piloted remotely from RAF Waddington.

The organisers of the protest march and rally are calling on the government to abandon the use of drones, claiming they make it easier for politicians to launch military interventions, which result in greater civilian casualties.

Commenting ahead of the protest, War on Want senior campaigns officer for militarism and security, Rafeef Ziadah said: “Drones, controlled far away from conflict zones, ease politicians’ decisions to launch military strikes and order extrajudicial assassinations, without democratic oversight or accountability to the public. Now is the time to ban killer drones – before it is too late.”

Chris Nineham, vice-chairman of the Stop the War Coalition, claimed drones were being used to continue the “deeply unpopular ‘war on terror’” with no public scrutiny.

Calling for armed drones to be banned, Mr Nineham said: “They’re using them to fight wars behind our backs.”

The Ministry of Defence has defended its use of drones in Afghanistan, stating that they have saved the lives of countless military personnel and civilians.

An MoD spokesman said: “UK Reaper aircraft are piloted by highly trained professional military pilots who adhere strictly to the same laws of armed conflict and are bound by the same clearly defined rules of engagement which apply to traditionally manned RAF aircraft.”

Lincolnshire Police have held talks with the organisers of the protest to minimise disruption to the local community.

The route of the march from South Common along the A15 to the peace campsite opposite RAF Waddington will see the road closed in three phases to limit inconvenience to motorists.

Community policing inspector for Lincoln, Mark Garthwaite, said: “Our aim is to ensure that visitors to the area can participate in peaceful protest but that disruption to motorists and local residents is kept to a minimum.

“Different sections of the road will be closed at varying times as the marchers move along the route.”

Noor is the Pakistani-American anti-drone campaign coordinator at CODEPINK.

Rooj is a Yemeni-American activist and organizer with SupportYemen.

We are not here to proffer an analysis. We aren’t academics. We are here as a Pakistani and a Yemeni, as activists, as citizens of this country and as citizens of our homelands. We are dismayed. We are confused. But we are not hopeless.

We had been waiting for this hearing for a long time. With a handful of location and time changes, rumors floating around of Rand Paul as a witness and a push by human rights organizations around the globe to make calls to their senators and ask them to pose the important questions about civilian casualties of the secret war, the momentum had crescendoed by the time the moment finally approached on Tuesday. We were the first in line at noon for the 4 pm hearing, amused by the cameras trained on members of the Intelligence Committee as they were hurried by their staff into their closed meeting on the Boston bombings. One of our colleagues stood in the receiving line and asked senators the same question as they speed-walked past him, undoubtedly avoiding the activist in pink, “What about Abdulrahman Al-awlaki? He was just a boy? Will you ask about why they killed him with a drone strike?” James Risch eloquently responded with a simple “No.”

Hart 216, ironically the same room where Brennan’s first public confirmation hearing was held and that we disrupted, was filled with journalists and activists, many in Amnesty’s black shirts with white targets. Testimonies started with Retired Marine Corp General James Cartwright and moved down the line, each one with a more or less “pro-drone reform” spin. Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown spoke of the antiquity of the AUMF with regards to targets with more and more tenuous links to al-Qaeda such as Somalia’s al-Shabaab. We nodded. Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason, smiled broadly as he explained that enemy combatants on U.S. soil could be lawful drone targets. Retired Col. Martha McSally was introduced as a special guest of Lindsey Graham’s, which became more and more evident as the hearing proceeded and she spoke about how we were better off calling drones “remotely piloted aircrafts or RPAs” (not dissimilar from CEO of pro-drone lobby AUVSI Michael Toscano’s remark at the Judiciary hearing last month that drones have a negative connotation and we are better off calling them unmanned aerial vehicles). We winced. Peter Bergen spoke about calculating the dead and noted that civilian casualties were significantly reduced in 2013. Then Farea al-Muslimi, a friend from Yemen, took the microphone.

We sobbed.

For the first time ever, there was a public hearing on the human, yes, “human” cost of drone warfare. For the very first time, the drone debate included on its panel of white male faces a young, brown Yemeni man who spoke clearly but emotionally about how hard it was to reconcile his love for America and Americans with the devastation upon his dear Yemen, and his struggle with informing his community about the goodness of America– that these drone strikes which are killing innocent people were not representative of the American people. For the first time, Senators were hearing from someone whose job was not to sift through news sources to calibrate numbers of dead people, or somebody who wrote lengthy legal opinions “reasoning” with murder, or an obvious ex-military apologist for war, cowering behind podiums and office desks. For the first time, Senators saw that the human cost was far beyond dollars and triple digits. It was a man’s identity and morals in question, his home and his family’s life in jeopardy, his difficulty in both loving a country that has given him so much, but taken away equal amounts.

We can relate to his dilemma.

Farea wasn’t there to try to win the hearts and minds of Senate by giving them policy or reform suggestions. He was there to tell his story. But white privilege and its associated subjectivities were clearly in action.

“I have been to Yemen,” Lindsey Graham said to Farea al-Muslimi. Our blood pressures rose. “Isn’t your country in turmoil?” Graham continued.  “We have some problems.” replied Al-Muslimi. Graham ended his questioning, self-indulgent smirk on his face, as if to say, “I rest my case.” Although we doubt he is even aware of the terminology, Graham’s neo-colonial presumptions about Farea’s understanding of his own country were disgusting.

No, Senator, you do not rest your case. We, as citizens of the United States and witnesses to the turmoil in this nation, do not accept your reasoning. Schools are shutting down across the country and students are staging walkouts on this very day to protest this blow to their rights to a fair and equal education. Affirmative action is still a subject of debate, as though structural inequalities are a myth. We are still waging an endless, futile and racist war on drugs and extending a school to prison pipeline that is tearing apart families and disenfranchising youth. Racial profiling is rife, with a Palestinian woman in a hijab being assaulted in a Boston suburb last week following the bombings and a Bangladeshi man being savagely beaten in the Bronx on account of the color of his skin. This country is ripped down the middle when it comes to gun control despite the serious shootings that have devastated Aurora (and remember Columbine?). Monsanto damages our food diversity and destroys our health but props up our elected officials with one hand and stifles small farms with the other. There are uprisings, there is dissent, there is police brutality. This country is in no lesser turmoil than Yemen, or Pakistan,  just because the standards to which you hold our homelands in comparison to yours is whitewashed by your condescension and insensitivity to difference. Your bigotry precedes you, Senators —  your causation is fundamentally flawed.

Lindsey Graham was not the only one whose self-righteous “understanding” of the political and cultural landscapes of places like Pakistan and Yemen barred him from actually exploring the human cost of war. The majority of the hearing focused on analyzing the flaws of the current administration’s reliance on an overbearing executive authority and reforming the AUMF. We waited with bated breath for it to go beyond what we had hoped was only a self-obsessed, stagnant battle of the egos, but it did not. Questions prized legal, constitutional and operational aspects over ones actually pertaining to stories that Farea could have told, their commentaries punctuated with “We thank you for coming such a long way,” or “We thank you for that chilling perspective.” Nobody apologized for bombing his village, Wessab. They ascribed so profoundly and unwaveringly to forceful measures of “counterterrorism” as a given strategy with no room for questioning that they, in turn, tried to reject the validity of his personal experiences.

There are both benefits, and costs to having witnessed a panel of white male privilege embodied, questioning a similarly colored panel, except with one brown face. The outlier, the subject of fascination, the other, upon whom were projected a series of embarrassingly condescending generalizations about the “untrustworthiness” of the Yemeni government and questions about whether “Yemenis supported AQAP before the drone strikes,” to which he answered no (because surprisingly, people of color do not welcome terrorism of any variety). Farea spoke beautifully and passionately when he was afforded the chance about the dangers of drones in creating more enemies than friends, but was not allowed to analyze or explain his statement any further, curtailed by a reliance on legal jargon and reining in executive authority. We are thankful for him being there, but we are distressed that the Subcommittee’s treatment of his presence was just that– a cold, removed, and uninvolved treatment markedly different from their involved and lengthy conversations with the remaining witnesses. Why invite a Yemeni to speak about the human costs of drone wars and then cast a shadow of doubt and ignorance over his experiences by adopting a presumptuous tone?

The benefits are that Farea’s testimony was the only segment of the hearing that was any different from what we have heard before and what the public wants to hear more of. We appreciate that he prompted moral discussion and colored the panel of academics and military experts with his very human experiences of drone-related tragedies. We are grateful that he occupies a very special place as a person who looks at the United States as a second home and as a place of generosity and kindness; this sentiment occupied the center of his testimony and thus positively problematized the complexities of his relationship with drone wars in Yemen.

We must focus on these personal stories, destroyed and mangled bodies, identified by mothers as their son’s via a video on a cell phone. We must focus on his love and respect for this country and his simultaneous dismay at its terror. We must cherish his challenge of the usual power dynamics. We must invite a Farea to every hearing on drone strikes and allow for the voice of a person of color to be empowered and to resound with its own volition, devoid of the presumptions and blanket abstractions of our elected officials. We must disempower them of their given privilege and attend to the power of his words as they are importantly different from the rest. We must not presume that his country is lesser than ours, or more conflicted than ours, or in need of the sort of dialogue that is prefaced on “What I feel is good for you, must be good for you.”

As we left the hearing room, a young male journalist came up to us and said, “Are you with CODEPINK? Do you know that what you do is counterproductive? Your chortling and whispering during the hearing impairs my ability to listen.” This is for him: We are Yemeni, we are Pakistani, we are Americans. We are activists and we are dissenting– be it with an article, or a louder than usual whisper, a die-in in front of a drone manufacturer’s, a sit-in, a voluntary arrest, or charging towards an elected representative.

We stand with justice. We are here to stay.

Farea al-Muslimi just wants the U.S. drone strikes in his home country of Yemen to stop. Photo courtesy of Farea al-Muslimi

Powerful Americans are beginning to listen to Farea al-Muslimi, a 23-year-old, California-educated Yemeni who wants to stop the drone strikes in his country. Including some in the White House.

Danger Room has confirmed that before he leaves Washington D.C. on Friday, al-Muslimi will meet with White House officials to tell them what he told a Senate subcommittee yesterday: CIA and military drone strikes are strengthening al-Qaida’s Yemeni affiliate and making average Yemenis hate America.

“He will meet with a working-level expert on Yemen policy,” a White House official confirms, declining to provide the name of the official or the time of the meeting. In other words, he shouldn’t count on an Oval Office sit-down with the President — or even a quick meet with Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco. And the meeting isn’t a response to al-Muslimi’s testimony yesterday.

But there’s buzz now around al-Muslimi, a Sana’a-based freelance writer on public policy. And that didn’t exist the last time he came to Washington — when al-Muslimi also had a White House meeting. In September, he recalls to Danger Room, al-Muslimi trudged from one drab policymaker’s office to another — he declines to give specifics — while his interlocutors grew uncomfortable when he wanted to talk about the human costs of the drones. “It was a taboo,” al-Muslimi says, “like if you’re talking in a conservative society about sex.”

These days drones are sexy. Yesterday, al-Muslimi publicly told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee that the drones cause “psychological fear and terror” amongst average Yemenis and strengthen the very terrorists they’re supposed to kill. Even James “Hoss” Cartwright, a retired Marine general once in the thick of administration drone-strike deliberations, allowed during the hearing that the drones were costing America “the moral high ground.” A trail of D.C. journalists are competing for al-Muslimi’s time — that’s how rare it is for Americans to even to hear second-hand accounts of drone attacks. And the White House is still willing to meet with a man whose message is, he says simply, “stop this program.”

The White House says it wants to hear what al-Muslimi has to say about Yemen, as it has in the past. “We and other U.S. officials have previously met with Mr. al-Muslimi at the working level on prior trips to D.C., just as we meet with other figures from across the spectrum of Yemeni society,” the White House official adds. “The meeting is to continue our broad dialogue with figures from across Yemeni society, not to specifically discuss Mr. al-Muslimi’s testimony.”

Still, Al-Muslimi doesn’t exactly have high hopes for what he can get out of his White House, Senate or other Washington meetings. “We think the administration already knows the blowback of this,” he says as he munches on a sandwich between appointments. “This is their baby. There are lots of people in the administration [for] whom the drone program are their babies. And if this program is over, they’re going to lose their jobs.” As someone whose home village of Wessab recently hit by a drone, al-Muslimi is hoping instead that his message can resonate to the American public, especially after last week’s attack in Boston, which took place the same week.

“The difference between me and you is you are [upset] about Boston,” he says. “I was [upset] about Boston and my village.”

That’s because al-Muslimi is anything but an America-hater. Thanks to a State Department program, he went to high school near Rosemont in southern California (an “awesome” place, he says). He’s into Mexican food, but McDonald’s is his favorite thing to eat in the States. It’s not just that he’s outraged by innocents killed by the drones, he’s disappointed: he says he cannot believe that America would do something that would make al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP as the affiliate is known, look like “heroes.”

By substituting the drones for Yemeni soldiers who might capture suspected terrorists instead of blowing them up, “You’re making me not believe in my army,” al-Muslimi says. “You’re banning me from fighting this war by my own rules of the game. Instead, you have made AQAP a hero. Even when you don’t kill civilians and you miss AQAP, they are heroes, because all the people look at them like, ‘Ha, ha.’ You’re the greatest power in the world and you make them look like a role model.”

And it leaves him, he says, without a counterargument about the awesomeness he saw in America. Once that argument was the election of Barack Obama. “I used to tell my village, ‘Look how great it is that this person came to power and he was a minority, one day [hundreds of] years ago they were slaves’ — he droned them,” al-Muslimi says. End of discussion.

The counterargument is that without the drone strikes, AQAP, which has attempted (unsuccessfully) to attack America at home, would run rampant. Instead, the Obama administration contends, AQAP has now been driven out of the areas the terrorist group once overran. Al-Muslimi isn’t buying, saying that all the militants did was shave their beards, so the U.S. thinks they’re gone.

What’s more, the variated group — “AQAPs” is how al-Muslimi describes a collection of people who span from hardcore violent religious fanatics to bored corner boys — gets tacit support because it has a better record for probity and competence than the Yemeni government, which is both an American client and barely present in villages like Wessab. Unlike the Americans, AQAP actually pays reparations to civilians caught up in its war with the central Yemeni government.

It’s not that AQAP will disappear if the drones leave — al-Muslimi is clear that the U.S. shadow wars didn’t create the group — but the U.S. needs to “get the drone out of my way so I can work on the real problems of Yemen.”

There may be some reason — however minor — to believe that al-Muslimi’s message might resonate after his White House meeting. Obama administration officials are said to be wary that their national-security legacy is an unaccountable process for delivering robotic death around the world, and asking themselves how they might wind the drone strikes down. The United Nations’ drone inquisitor explicitly stated he thinks the new CIA director, John Brennan, has the interest and the influence to rein in the drones, thanks in part to his status as the program’s old advocate. After years of all-but-blind support, there are now stirrings in Congress to limit Obama’s targeted killing efforts. Maybe that explains why al-Muslimi is getting a White House invitation.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has canceled the creation of a controversial new medal that would have honored drone pilots and cyber warriors, after veterans organizations and members of Congress expressed outrage that it would outrank some battlefield medals like the Purple Heart.

The Distinguished Warfare Medal was approved in February by then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, intended to honor members of the military for achievements beyond the battlefield since Sept. 11, 2001. The backlash to the medal centered around the fact that it would have taken precedence over several traditional combat awards, which require that the recipient risk his or her life in order to receive them.

On March 12, Hagel said the Defense Department would be conducting a 30-day review of the medal.

In announcing the decision on Monday, Hagel said in a statement that the review confirmed the need to recognize these post-9/11 achievements and acknowledge the changing nature of warfare, but added that “misconceptions regarding the precedence of the award were distracting from its original purpose.” In response, there will be a “distinguishing device” for extraordinary achievements rather than a new medal. Read more

Protesters hold signs and chant slogans outside the White House in Washington on April 13, 2013 during a demonstration against the use of dones against Islamic militants and other perceived enemies of the US around the world. (AFP Photo/Nicholas Kamm)

As Washington pushes to expand its drone warfare in Africa, hundreds have gathered in front of the White House to protest the “robotic killing machines” slaughtering thousands across the globe.

Organized by the ANSWER coalition, the movement is calling on the administration to stop the use of drones on foreign soil. The coalition urges its members to stop the US government as it “functions as a death squad government, permitting the president and military leaders to create secret ‘kill lists’ of people who have been selected for assassination.”   

On the organization’s website people have voiced their reasons behind their protest.

“No one should sit passively and allow our government to wage a ‘quiet war’ – an undeclared war but a real war in our name!” Rev. Graylan Hagler, a senior minister wrote.

“It’s time we Americans join the rest of the world in condemning President Obama’s barbaric drone killing spree, a policy that benefits the war profiteers but makes us hated around the world,” Medea Benjamin, Co-Founder of CODEPINK said in her post.

Protesters on the ground have confirmed the overall message of American frustration due to drone strikes worldwide.

“We’re saying to this president, we don’t like these policies that turn America into a war-mongering country, an assassination capital of the world,” a protester has told RT.

“I don’t want the government that takes my tax money and spends it murdering thousands of people around the world,” another protester concurred.

Brian Becker from the anti-war coalition told the RT crew that

“drones are being used to make sure that the American people are not part of the political equation”allowing wars to be carried out in total secrecy.

“A war could be raged, a real war but all the bleeding is done on one side,” Becker said.

“Drones are used to violate every nation’s sovereignty. The Obama administration flies them in whenever it wants and kills whoever it wants – that is not legal.” Many of the participants also voiced their anger over Washington’s recent move to expand its military involvement on the African continent.

“As an advocate against the re-colonization of Ivory Coast, I believe that drones will be used as war machines to re-colonize Africa. These war toys will surely target freedom fighters and activists opposing Western stooges in power in Africa,” said Leo Gnawa, Coordinator for CRI-Pan African.

The North and West Africa are rapidly becoming yet another frontier of the United States’ war on terror. The US has set up a drone base in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, and flies unarmed Reaper drones from Ethiopia. Washington has also carried out surveillance flights over East Africa from the island nation of the Seychelles.

With the recent introduction of Predator drones in Niger the Pentagon is set to secure a drone stronghold in West Africa as the country shares a long border with Mali, where Washington believes Islamist groups have taken root. Niger also borders Libya and Nigeria two nations barely coping to contain armed extremist movements.

The Predator drones in Niger are unarmed and are conducting surveillance over Mali and Niger, but Washington has not ruled out arming them with missiles in the future.

All this, as US kick starts its African campaign by sending troops to as many as 35 African nations, citing a growing threat from extremist groups. The Department of Defense is hoping to install American soldiers overseas in order to prepare local troops there for any future crises as tensions escalate.

Drone strikes were first used after the 9/11 attacks from bases in Pakistan and Uzbekistan, in combat missions inside Afghanistan. More than a decade later, having killed almost 5,000 people, mostly civilians including women and children, Washington has expanded the use of the remotely controlled aircraft into Yemen, Somalia and most of all Pakistan.

The Sabaoon School for boys in northern Pakistan is anything but average.

Nestled amid the bucolic charm of the Swat Valley’s fertile terraced fields and steeply rising crags it looks idyllic. But if you get up close, a harsher reality becomes clear.

Two army check-posts scrutinize visitors entering the sprawling site. Once inside, the high razor wire-topped walls around the classroom compounds create a feeling reminiscent of a prison.

The boys here, aged 8 to 18, were all militants at some point. Some are killers, some helped build and plant improvised explosive devices, and others were destined to be suicide bombers until they were captured or turned over to the Pakistani army. All of them are at the school to be de-radicalized.

Ninety-nine percent of the boys, I am told, have never heard of Osama bin Laden, despite the fact he was killed by U.S. Navy SEALs in the next valley over from here. What has radicalized these boys instead, the school’s director says, is what turns teenagers the world over to crime: poverty, poor education, limited prospects and often lack of parental control.

It is in this setting that the boys have made ready recruits for Taliban scouts who wean them on tales of the U.S. drone strikes that have killed scores of Pakistani women and children over the past few years.

The walls of the school, I learn, are not so much to keep the boys in, but to keep the local Taliban out. A few years ago they held sway in the Swat Valley, and while the army has since reclaimed control, the militants remain a threat — particularly for the teachers.

The boys here are being schooled in basic math and literature. Drama and sports are also encouraged, as is art. Physiologists evaluate the boys and offer council, and a religious scholar is attempting to draw them away from extremist ideology and back towards mainstream Islam.

For Pakistan it is a new approach to radicalism that has been forged out of necessity.

The director tells me the need for more resources in Swat is huge. Just a few days before our visit, a dozen more child militants were arrested by Pakistani officials.

The U.N. Special Rapporteur on drones, British lawyer Ben Emmerson, recently visited Pakistan and told me: “The consequence of drone strikes has been to radicalize an entirely new generation.”

READ MORE: U.S. drone program by the numbers

In early March he spent close to a week in Pakistan meeting government officials and tribal leaders, some of who claim to have lost family members in strikes. Since 2003 there have been more than 350 drone strikes in Pakistan, but no one has a reliable figure for precisely how many have been killed.

The New America Foundation estimates that in Pakistan, drones have killed between 1,953 and 3,279 people since 2004 — and that between 18% and 23% of them were not militants. The nonmilitant casualty rate was down to about 10% in 2012, the group says.

A study by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that since 2004, Pakistan has had 365 drone strikes that have killed between 2,536 and 3,577 people — including 411 to 884 civilians.

U.S. President Barack Obama has maintained the strikes are necessary for defeating al Qaeda and the Taliban, but others including Emmerson have their doubts.

READ MORE: U.S. drone kills 4, Pakistani sources say

He said: “Through the use of drones you may win the immediate battle you are waging against this particular faction or that particular faction … but you are losing the war in the longer term.”

Emmerson’s legal insights will form the basis of his report to the U.N., expected later this year. For the United States, at least, it could make for a damning read.

Emmerson says the drone strikes are illegal under international law as they violate Pakistan’s sovereignty and fly in the face of Pakistani government calls for them to desist — and that they also legalize al Qaeda’s fight against America.

He said: “If it is lawful for the U.S. to drone al Qaeda associates whereever they find them, then it is also lawful for al Qaeda to target U.S. military or infrastructure where ever (militants) find them.”

Until now the U.S. has used its own lawyers to give legitimacy to the covert war being waged by drones. Now Emmerson believes it is time to challenge them.

“There is a real risk that by promulgating the analysis that is currently being developed and relied up by the United States they legitimize, in international law, al Qaeda, by turning it in to an armed belligerent involved in a war and that makes the use of force by al Qaeda and its associates lawful,” he told me.

The boys of Sabaoon School are at the sharp end of the drone debate and are living with its consequences.

And in the relative safety of these classrooms, there’s little doubt change is long overdue.

Pervez Musharraf returned to Pakistan last month after more than four years of self-imposed exile. Photograph: Fareed Khan/AP

Pakistan’s former president Pervez Musharraf has admitted giving permission for the CIA to launch drone attacks inside his country, directly contradicting repeated claims by the Pakistani government that it has never authorised drone strikes.

His comments in a CNN interview screened on Thursday night follow US media claims this week that Pakistani officials were for years intimately involved in the US drone campaign in the country. The unexpected admission breaks Pakistan’s policy of blanket denial of involvement. Last month following a visit to Islamabad Ben Emmerson QC, the UN’s special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, said he had been given assurances that there was no “tacit consent by Pakistan to the use of drones on its territory”.

For its part the Obama administration has defended the legality of its drone activities and said strikes are conducted only with consent from the states involved.

Musharraf said Pakistan gave permission “only on a few occasions, when a target was absolutely isolated and [there was] no chance of collateral damage”.

He said the strikes were discussed “at the military [and] intelligence level” and cleared only if “there was no time for our own [special operations task force] and military to act. That was … maybe two or three times only”.

Musharraf added: “You couldn’t delay action. These ups and downs kept going … it was a very fluid situation, a vicious enemy … mountains, inaccessible areas.”

Pakistani denials of involvement have been questionable since the WikiLeaks disclosure of a 2008 diplomatic cable in which the US ambassador Anne Patterson mentioned a discussion about drone strikes during a meeting with the then interior minister, Rehman Malik, and the then prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani.

Last year Pakistan’s parliament declared all drone strikes illegal, which activists argue overrides any secret arrangements that might still exist with the US. There have been reports that the CIA sends regular faxes to Pakistan’s military spy agency, notifying them of the general areas where drones will operate.

The issue of whether Pakistan has approved US drone strikes on militants is a key issue in determining the legality of the strikes under international conflict law.

On Tuesday US media firm McClatchy reported on a review of US intelligence reports that it claimed confirmed for the first time the existence of a long-term arrangement between the CIA and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), under which US drones were used against Pakistani Taliban militants at the ISI’s request in exchange for helping the US to identify and hit al-Qaida targets.

According to McClatchy: “That partnership was so extensive during the Bush administration that the Pakistani intelligence agency selected its own targets for drone strikes. Until mid-2008 the CIA had to obtain advance approval before each attack, and under both administrations the Pakistanis received briefings and videos of the strikes.”

The collaboration was continuing as late as 2010, documents reportedly show, although an ISI veto on targets had by then been removed. The McClatchy claims followed a report in the New York Times last week based on a dozen interviews with US and Pakistani officials, offering a detailed depiction of the beginning of secret co-operation between the ISI and CIA over the Pakistani drone campaign.

The claims appear to have made Pakistan’s policy of denial unsustainable. What is puzzling, however, is why Musharraf chose to break precedent, beset as he is by multiple court cases and a distinct lack of popular enthusiasm for his election campaign, which he kicked off last month by returning to Pakistan after more than four years of self-imposed exile.

Shahzad Akbar, a lawyer and Pakistan’s most prominent anti-drones activist, said the remarks would potentially change the legal status of only a handful of strikes, and not the vast majority that occurred after Musharraf stood down in 2008.

“The only thing it changes is we have one more person to sue, one more person to bring cases against,” he said.

Akbar, who is awaiting the verdict in a case at the Peshawar high court that is likely to declare drone strikes illegal and order Pakistan to pay compensation to people killed by the attacks, said he would explore whether Musharraf could be prosecuted for “waging a war against Pakistan”.

“Either he is extremely stupid and doesn’t realise what he’s doing, or he knows that there is nothing left and it was a big mistake to come back to Pakistan,” Akbar said. “He’s giving the US a leeway on the legality of drone strikes, he is looking for a safe passage out.”

Finally, proof that the United States has lied in the drone wars.

It turns out that the Obama administration has not been honest about who the CIA has been targeting with drones in Pakistan. Jonathan Landay, national security reporter at McClatchy Newspapers, has provided the first analysis of drone-strike victims that is based upon internal, top-secret U.S. intelligence reports. It is the most important reporting on U.S. drone strikes to date because Landay, using U.S. government assessments, plainly demonstrates that the claim repeatedly made by President Obama and his senior aides — that targeted killings are limited only to officials, members, and affiliates of al Qaeda who pose an imminent threat of attack on the U.S. homeland — is false.

Senior officials and agencies have emphasized this point over and over because it is essential to the legal foundations on which the strikes are ultimately based: the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force and the U.N. Charter’s right to self-defense. A Department of Justice white paper said that the United States can target a “senior operational leader of al-Qa’ida or an associated force” who “poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States.” Attorney General Eric Holdersaid the administration targets “specific senior operational leaders of al-Qaeda and associated forces,” and Harold Koh, the senior State Department legal adviser dubbed them “high-level al-Qaeda leaders who are planning attacks.” Obama said during a Google+ Hangout in January 2012: “These strikes have been in the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas] and going after al-Qaeda suspects.” Finally, Obama claimed in September: “Our goal has been to focus on al Qaeda and to focus narrowly on those who would pose an imminent threat to the United States of America.”

As the Obama administration unveils its promised and overdue targeted-killing reforms over the next few months, citizens, policymakers, and the media should keep in mind this disconnect between who the United States claimed it was killing and who it was actually killing.

Landay’s reporting primarily covers the most intensive period of CIA drone strikes, from September 2010 to September 2011. “[T]he documents reveal estimates of deaths and injuries; locations of militant bases and compounds; the identities of some of those targeted or killed; the movements of targets from village to village or compound to compound; and, to a limited degree, the rationale for unleashing missiles,” he writes. Read more