The speculation mounts that the United States is about to mount drone strikes on suspected Al-Qaeda targets in Africa, as it hunts down the killer of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three colleagues in Benghazi on Sept. 11.
With three weeks to go before the election, the Obama administration will almost certainly be considering the political impact of a strike against the terrorists. If a drone assault managed to kill the right people, then the president's advisers may well be calculating, it will revive the halo effect of the cornering and killing of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan last year.
The concern of course will be the effect on the president's re-election chances, if a strike goes awry; if, as has happened so often in Pakistan and Afghanistan, innocent people are also killed, in what the Americans so creepily call "collateral damage." That, presidential advisers will be warning, will look bad and could actually cost him the election.
Unfortunately, in terms of combating the scourge of Al-Qaeda terrorism, US electoral priorities should have no relevance whatsoever. Killing a prominent terrorist by remote control, might win Obama re-election, but it could also give a victory to the bigots.
It is not so much that Al-Qaeda needs martyrs. It is notable how the loose-knit organization Bin Laden left behind him, has not made a great public effort to paint its slain leader in martyrs' colors.
Where the drone attacks appear to be strengthening, rather than enfeebling the terrorists, is through a combination of their impersonal nature, with the sheer technological excellence they display. Effectively, the drone can be flown by an operator sitting at the controls and a bank of screens on the other side of the world. The terrorists can shoot at the aircraft, but if it is armed, it has sensors that will pinpoint the source of the firing. It will shoot back, very often with deadly effect. If it is merely a reconnaissance drone, there is probably an armed escort drone in the vicinity.
In some parts of the Afghan and Pakistani borderlands, drones are an almost constant feature, the sound of their engines buzzing like angry mosquitoes. As such, they are a grim reminder to both the innocents and the terrorists hiding in their midst, that death can strike suddenly, at any time. One Pakistani elder told a local newspaper how he and his community feel deeply oppressed by the omnipresence of the drones. In short, just by being there, they promote animosity toward the Americans, among the people below them. Washington has already deployed unmanned aircraft over Benghazi. For 48 hours following the murderous attack on the US Consulate, the city's airspace was closed to civilian traffic, as US spy drones criss-crossed the sky. Now the talk is of using them over Mali, where Al-Qaeda's Maghreb offshoot is said to have linked up with local jihadis.
The same risk of alienating the local population applies in North Africa as it does in the tribal areas of Pakistan. However, in the case of Libya, there is an even greater danger. Libya is still struggling to solve its own problems. It has a new prime minister-elect. Once a government is formed, the priority will be to restore security, disarm the local militias and absorb those militiamen who desire it, into the police and armed forces. There is a widespread feeling of shame among Libyans at the Benghazi murders and genuine sympathy for the United States, which after all played such a pivotal role in supporting the revolution.
However, those sentiments are very likely to be atomized in the first blast of a rocket, fired from a US drone. Whether it hits its target or not, the explosion will reverberate throughout the country. It will be seen as an unwarranted breach of Libyan sovereignty.
More seriously, it will provide a tailor-made excuse for some militias to refuse to disarm, arguing that Libya faces a new external threat. This in turn, will cause most other armed groups to insist they keep their own weapons,to protect themselves from the rest.
A drone strike that would be electorally popular in the United States, could exact a very high price for Libya. Obama has miscalculated so much in the Middle East. He really needs to get this call right. No unmanned strikes in Libya. He must find wiser ways to keep the White House.
Editorial: Planning drone attacks in Africa
