Targeted killing is a form of assassination carried out by governments outside a judicial procedure or a battlefield.
Since the late 20th century, the legal status of targeted killing has become a subject of contention within and between various nations. Historically, at least since the mid-eighteenth century, Western thinking has generally considered the use of assassination as a tool of statecraft to be illegal. Some academics, military personnel and officials describe targeted killing as legitimate within the context of self-defense, when employed against terrorists or combatants engaged in asymmetrical warfare. They argue that unmanned combat aerial vehicles (drones) are more humane and more accurate than manned vehicles.
Scholars are also divided as to whether targeted killings are an effective counterterrorism strategy.
The strategy has also been used by non-state actors and unrecognised states such as the Islamic State.
Africa Somalia and Rwanda, 1990s During fighting in the Somali Civil War, Sean Devereux described torture and killing by warlords in Kismayo as "targeted killings, a kind of ethnic cleansing", shortly before his assassination.
Also in Africa, Reuters described "targeted killings of political opponents" by Hutu army and militias in Rwanda during the Rwandan genocide. The American State Department reported the "politically targeted killings" were a prelude to general massacres in Rwanda.
Americas During the 1980s and 1990s, targeted killings were employed extensively by death squads in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia, and Haiti within the context of civil unrest and war.
Starting under the George W. Bush administration,David Johnston and David E. Sanger, "Threats and Responses: Hunt for Suspects" , The New York Times, 6 November 2002. targeted killings became a frequent tactic of the United States government in the war on terror.Clive Stafford Smith, "Who's getting killed today? Terror, Tuesday, the US Disposition Matrix and a modern history of state-sponsored assassination" , Times Literary Supplement, 30 June 2017 pp.3–5, p. 3 Instances of targeted killing by the United States that have received significant attention include the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011 and the killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2022, as well as those of American citizens Anwar al-Awlaki and his teenage son in 2011. Under the Obama administration, use of targeted killings expanded, most frequently through use of combat drones operating in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Yemen.
American and drug cartels, 1980s Referring to killings by drug cartels in Washington, D.C. in 1989, mayor Marion Barry infamously stated, "Washington should not be called the murder capital of the world. We are the targeted-killing capital of the world." Barry said that "targeted killings" by D.C.'s cartels were comparable to those during the days of "Al Capone and Eliot Ness" at the time of Prohibition in the United States. Similarly, drug-related "mob hits" in Moscow during the 1990s were euphemistically described as "targeted killings" by the Cox News Service and Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Central and South America
The U.S.-backed Operation Condor was a campaign of political repression and state terror in Latin American right-wing dictatorships involving assassination of political opponents and dissidents. The National Security Archive reported, "Prominent victims of Condor include two former Uruguayan legislators and a former Bolivian president, Juan José Torres, murdered in Buenos Aires, a former Chilean Minister of the Interior, Bernardo Leighton, as well as former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and his 26-year-old American colleague, Ronni Moffitt, assassinated by a car bomb in downtown Washington D.C."
In 1986, the human rights group Americas Watch released a report stating that death squads and armed forces under President José Napoleón Duarte in El Salvador had carried out 240 targeted killings throughout 1985. The report relied upon figures provided by the Roman Catholic Church and included allegations of torture and summary executions. Americas Watch and other rights groups reported "targeted killing" of civilians by the Nicaraguan Sandinista government in the following year during its campaign against the Contras. Politically motivated targeted killings of trade unionists and activists were also recorded in Haiti and Colombia during the late 1980s and 1990s. Targeted killings linked to the drug trade and paramilitary organizations including FARC and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) resulted in large numbers of deaths among human rights and political activists, and women and children, throughout the 1990s.
North America Use by United States government
An early example of American targeted killing is Operation Vengeance during World War II. This counterattack shot down the plane of Isoroku Yamamoto, the senior planner of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
During the Vietnam War, the Phoenix Program targeted political leadership of the Viet Cong for assassination.
During the period 1976–2001, there was an American norm against targeted killing.
The United States has made targeted killing—the deliberate assassination of a known terrorist outside the country's territory, usually by airstrike—an essential part of its counter-terrorism strategy. Hence, the United States has justified the killing of terrorists under a war paradigm. "Using the war paradigm for counter-terrorism enabled government lawyers to distinguish lethal attacks on terrorists from prohibited assassinations and justify them as lawful battlefield operations against enemy combatants, much like the uncontroversial targeted killing of Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto while he was traveling by a military airplane during World War II."
Further support for the U.S. government's use of drone strike tactics is found in a report found in the Journal of Strategic Security concerning the surgical nature of drone strikes for use in a populated area. The author concedes, "Indeed the tactic of using drones promises the ability of eliminating enemies in complex environments, while minimizing the political implications of resorting to war."
The domestic legislative basis offered to justify drone strikes is the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF), a joint resolution of both houses of Congress passed exactly one week after 11 September 2001. The AUMF permits the President to use "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on 11 September 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons".
A report published in the Journal of Strategic Security focusing on the future of drones in geopolitics finds the U.S. government's use of drones in targeted killing operations an "indiscriminant and disproportionate use of force that violates the sovereignty of Pakistan".
Twenty-six members of United States Congress, with academics such as Gregory Johnsen and Charles Schmitz, media figures (Jeremy Scahill, Glenn Greenwald,"The Assassination Complex": Jeremy Scahill & Glenn Greenwald Probe Secret US Drone Wars in New Book . Democracy Now! 3 May 2016. James Traub), civil rights groups (i.e. the American Civil Liberties Union) and ex-CIA station chief in Islamabad, Robert Grenier, have criticized targeted killings as a form of extrajudicial killings, which may be illegal under both United States and international law.
In early 2010, with President Barack Obama's approval, Anwar al-Awlaki became the first U.S. citizen to be approved for targeted killing by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Awlaki was killed in a drone strike in September 2011.
A Reuters report analysing the killing of 500 "militants" by US drones between 2008 and 2010 found that only 8% of those killed were mid- to top-tier organisers or leaders; the rest were unidentified foot soldiers.Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. January/February 2013 Vol. XXXII, No. 1. p.35
The Intercept reported, "Between January 2012 and February 2013, U.S. special operations airstrikes [in northeastern Afghanistan] killed more than 200 people. Of those, only 35 were the intended targets. During one five-month period of the operation, according to the documents, nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets.""The Obama Administration's Drone-Strike Dissembling ". The Atlantic. 14 March 2016."Obama-led drone strikes kill innocents 90% of the time: report ". The Washington Times. 15 October 2015."The Assassination Complex ". The Intercept. 15 October 2015.
According to analysis by Reprieve, 874 people were killed, including 142 children, in drone strikes in Pakistan that targeted 24 people successfully and unsuccessfully, and, in numerous failed attempts to kill Ayman al-Zawahri, 76 children and 29 adults were killed.
Estimates for the total people killed in U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, range from 2,000 to 3,500 militants killed and 158–965 civilians killed. 81 insurgent leaders in Pakistan have been killed."Pakistan Leaders Killed" . New America Foundation. 23 June 2018. Drone strikes in Yemen are estimated to have killed 846–1,758 militants and 116–225 civilians. 57 Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leaders are confirmed to have been killed.
Obama administration position on combat drones
In a speech titled "The Ethics and Efficacy of the President's Counterterrorism Strategy" John O. Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, outlined on 30 April 2012 at the Wilson Center the use of combat drones to kill members of al-Qaeda by the US Federal government under President Barack Obama. John Brennan acknowledged for the first time that the US government uses drones to kill selected members of al-Qaeda.
He justified the use of drones both from domestic law and international law point of view. With respect to domestic law Brennan stated, "as a matter of domestic law, the Constitution empowers the President to protect the nation from any imminent threat of attack. The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress after the 11 September attacks authorizes the president "to use all necessary and appropriate force" against those nations, organizations and individuals responsible for 9/11. There is nothing in the AUMF that restricts the use of military force against al-Qa'ida to Afghanistan." And he further said: "As a matter of international law, the United States is in an armed conflict with al-Qa'ida, the Taliban, and associated forces, in response to the 9/11 attacks, and we may also use force consistent with our inherent right of national self-defense. There is nothing in international law that bans the use of remotely piloted aircraft for this purpose or that prohibits us from using lethal force against our enemies outside of an active battlefield, at least when the country involved consents or is unable or unwilling to take action against the threat."
The speech came a few days after Obama authorized the CIA and the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) to fire on targets based solely on their intelligence "signatures"—patterns of behavior that are detected through signals intercepts, human sources and aerial surveillance, and that indicate the presence of an important operative or a plot against U.S. interests. Under the previous rules the CIA and the US military were only allowed to use drone strikes against known terrorist leaders whose location could be confirmed and who appeared on secret CIA and JSOC target lists.