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Drones for Human Rights

By ANDREW STOBO SNIDERMAN and MARK HANIS
Published: January 30, 2012

Washington

DRONES are not just for firing missiles in Pakistan. In Iraq, the State Department is using them to watch for threats to Americans. It’s time we used the revolution in military affairs to serve human rights advocacy.

With drones, we could take clear pictures and videos of human rights abuses, and we could start with Syria [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/syria/index.html ].

The need there is even more urgent now, because the Arab League [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/arab_league/index.html ]’s observers suspended operations last week.

They fled the very violence they were trying to monitor. Drones could replace them, and could even go to some places the observers, who were escorted and restricted by the government, could not see. This we know: the Syrian government isn’t just fighting rebels, as it claims; it is shooting unarmed protesters, and has been doing so for months. Despite a ban on news media, much of the violence is being caught on camera by ubiquitous cellphones. The footage is shaky and the images grainy, but still they make us YouTube witnesses.

Imagine if we could watch in high definition with a bird’s-eye view. A drone would let us count demonstrators, gun barrels and pools of blood. And the evidence could be broadcast for a global audience, including diplomats at the United Nations and prosecutors at the International Criminal Court.

Drones are increasingly small, affordable and available to nonmilitary buyers. For hundreds of thousands of dollars — no longer many millions — a surveillance drone could be flying over protests and clashes in Syria.

An environmental group, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, has reported that it is using drones to monitor illegal Japanese whaling in the waters of the Southern Hemisphere. In the past few years, human-rights groups and the actor and activist George Clooney [ http://www.satsentinel.org/ ], among others, have purchased satellite imagery of conflict zones. Drones can see even more clearly, and broadcast in real time.

We could record the repression in Syria with unprecedented precision and scope. The better the evidence, the clearer the crimes, the higher the likelihood that the world would become as outraged as it should be.

This sounds a lot like surveillance, and it would be. It would violate Syrian airspace, and perhaps a number of Syrian and international laws. It isn’t the kind of thing nongovernmental organizations usually do. But it is very different from what governments and armies do. Yes, we (like them) have an agenda, but ours is transparent: human rights. We have a duty, recognized internationally, to monitor governments that massacre their own people in large numbers. Human rights organizations have always done this. Why not get drones to assist the good work?

It may be illegal in the Syrian government’s eyes, but supporting Nelson Mandela in South Africa was deemed illegal during the apartheid era. To fly over Syria’s territory may violate official norms of international relations, but governments do this when they support opposition groups with weapons, money or intelligence, as NATO countries did recently in Libya. In any event, violations of Syrian sovereignty would be the direct consequence of the Syrian state’s brutality, not the imperialism of outsiders.

There are some obvious risks and downsides to the drone approach. The Syrian government would undoubtedly seize the opportunity to blame a foreign conspiracy for its troubles. Local operators of the drones could be at risk, though a higher-end drone could be controlled from a remote location or a neighboring country.

Such considerations figured in conversations we have had with human rights organizations that considered hiring drones in Syria, but opted in the end for supplying protesters with phones, satellite modems and safe houses. For nearly a year now, brave amateurs with their tiny cameras arguably have been doing the trick in Syria. In those circumstances, the value that a drone could add might not be worth the investment and risks.

Even if humanitarian drones are not used in Syria, they should assume their place in the arsenal of human rights advocates. It is a precedent worth setting, especially in situations where evidence of large-scale human rights violations is hard to come by.

Drones can reach places and see things cell phones cannot. Social media did not document the worst of the genocide in the remote villages of Darfur in 2003 and 2004. Camera-toting protesters could not enter the fields where 8,000 men and boys were massacred in Srebrenica in 1995. Graphic and detailed evidence of crimes against humanity does not guarantee a just response, but it helps.

If human rights organizations can spy on evil, they should.

Andrew Stobo Sniderman [ http://www.stobo.ca/Home.html ] and Mark Hanis [ http://www.echoinggreen.org/fellows/mark-hanis ] are co-founders of the Genocide Intervention Network [ http://www.genocideintervention.net/ ].

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Related

Times Topic: Predator Drones and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/u/unmanned_aerial_vehicles/index.html

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© 2012 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/opinion/drones-for-human-rights.html


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Officials: US drones monitoring clashes in Syria

By msnbc.com staff, NBC News and news services
February 17, 2012

"A good number" of unmanned U.S. military and intelligence drones are operating in the skies over Syria, monitoring the Syrian military's attacks against opposition forces and innocent civilians alike, U.S. defense officials tell NBC News' Jim Miklaszewski.

The officials said this surveillance is not in preparation for U.S. military intervention. Rather, the Obama administration hopes to use the overhead visual evidence and intercepts of Syrian government and military communications in an effort to "make the case for a widespread international response," the officials told Miklaszewski.

Unlike in Libya, there has been no widespread international support for military intervention in the country. And while there has been some discussion among White House, State Dept. and Pentagon officials about possible humanitarian missions, U.S. officials fear that those missions could not be carried out without endangering those involved and would almost certainly draw the United States into a military role in Syria.

On Friday, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces renewed bombardment of the opposition stronghold of Homs and attacked rebels in Deraa, in blatant disregard of a U.N. resolution.

Demonstrations against Assad were reported by activists in several cities across Syria, including the capital Damascus and the commercial hub Aleppo, after Friday Muslim prayers, despite the threat of violence from security forces.

In a show of support for Assad, China's vice foreign minister, Zhai Jun, arrived in Damascus after the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution telling the increasingly isolated president to halt the crackdown and surrender power.

China, along with Russia, had voted against the motion and says Syria must be allowed to resolve its problems without being dictated terms by foreign powers.

Its stance on Syria will "withstand the test of history," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said in Beijing.

Zhai said before leaving for Damascus: "China does not approve of the use of force to interfere in Syria or the forceful pushing of a so-called regime change."

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday that the UN General Assembly resolution showed an overwhelming consensus that Syria's bloody crackdown must end.

"So we will keep working to pressure and isolate the regime, to support the opposition and to provide relief to the people of Syria," Clinton said at a press conference [ http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jQMTSNJCUkagiXVPDtb_O2n5BEUQ ( http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/Hillary-Clinton-welcomes-overwhelming-consensus-on-Syria/articleshow/11933975.cms )].

Even as Zhai landed in Damascus, government forces pummeled opposition-held areas of the strategic western city of Homs, now under fire for two weeks.

In Deraa, a city on the Jordanian border where the revolt erupted nearly a year ago, explosions and machine gun fire echoed through districts under attack by troops, residents said.

Army tanks rolled through the streets of the conflict-torn city, even as regime forces categorically denied using them.

"We will not use them and we will win," a Syrian general in Deraa told ITN's Bill Neely.

The military has also opened a new offensive in Hama, a city with a bloody history of resistance to Assad's late father.

A doctor told Neely that a growing number of revolutionary troops are suffering head and neck wounds, proof that they are facing a well-trained enemy -- in many cases, defectors from their own ranks.

Protests continued in spite of the attacks, and one activist told Neely that Assad was doomed.

"One hundred percent he will go," the activist said.

The U.N. assembly vote in New York on Thursday showed Assad had few foreign sympathizers left. The vote went 137-12 in favour with 17 abstentions on a resolution endorsing an Arab League plan that calls for him to step down.

The assembly vote, unlike Security Council resolutions, has no legal force but it reflected global revulsion at the ferocity of the crackdown in which security forces have killed several thousand civilians since last March.

Assad portrays the opposition as foreign-backed terrorists and has promised reforms while rejecting the idea of surrendering power.

On Wednesday he announced a referendum on a draft constitution on Feb. 26 followed by a multi-party parliamentary election, a move swiftly dismissed the opposition and the West.

Assad told a visiting Mauritanian official on Friday that political reforms "have to march parallel with returning security and stability and protecting citizens," the state news agency said.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and other world leaders have decried the violence and are considering steps to get humanitarian aid to civilians suffering in embattled areas.

But the West has ruled out military intervention of the type that helped topple Moammar Gadhafi in Libya last year and must pin its hopes on a bringing together a fragmented opposition movement which includes activists inside Syria, armed rebels and politicians in exile.

The military intervention in Libya was possible due to widespread support within NATO and among the Arab Gulf States and also because of the lack of support for Gadhafi, which is not the case for Syria.

Reuters contributed to this report.

© 2012 msnbc.com

http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/17/10435915-officials-us-drones-monitoring-clashes-in-syria [with comments]