Obama’s Drone Dilemma - Eric Posner

Obama’s Drone Dilemma

The killings probably aren’t legal—not that they’ll stop.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_chicago/2012/10/obama_s_drone_war_is_probably_illegal_will_it_stop_.single.html#comments

By Eric Posner  Monday, Oct. 8, 2012

The Wall Street Journal recently reported on debates within the Obama administration about the legality of the drone war in Pakistan. State Department legal adviser Harold Koh, the former dean of Yale Law School and even more former darling of the left for his criticisms of the Bush administration’s aggressive theories of executive power, plays a prominent role in them. Koh apparently concluded that the drone war “veers near the edge” of illegality but does not quite tumble over it.

That is a questionable judgment. The U.N. Charter permits countries to use military force abroad only with the approval of the U.N. Security Council, in self-defense, or with the permission of the country in which military force is to be used. The U.N. Security Council never authorized the drone war in Pakistan. Self-defense, traditionally defined to mean the use of force against an “imminent” armed attack by a nation-state, does not apply either, because no one thinks that Pakistan plans to invade the United States. That leaves consent as the only possible legal theory.

(DO - Koh relied on self-defense theory, I guess ; the author mixed both issues of the legality of use of force and territorial integrity.  Concerning the use of drone, Koh relies on the theory of self-defense, and going in Pakistani territory, on the theory of consent and “unable and unwilling” as a fall back, which is, the author pointed out, far from flawless theory)

But Pakistan has never consented to the drone war. Publicly and officially the country has opposed it. Before the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011, the CIA sent a fax every month to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency that would identify the airspace in which drones would be sent. The ISI would send back an acknowledgment that it had received the fax, and the U.S. government inferred consent on the basis of the acknowledgments. But after the raid, the ISI stopped sending back the acknowledgments.

Now what to do? The administration argues that consent can still be inferred despite the unanswered faxes. The reason is that “the Pakistani military continues to clear airspace for drones and doesn’t interfere physically with the unpiloted aircraft in flight”—meaning that Pakistan does not shoot down the drones or permit private aircraft to collide with them.

(DO- there could be evidences that further support the tacit approval, e.g., Pakistani government could have made a formal diplomatic complaint in the U.N., which it chose not to;  to cut to the chase, the administration can infer the consent from the fact that the Pakistani government is still taking aid from the U.S. )

We might call this “coerced consent.” Consider it this way: You walk into a jewelry store and the proprietor announces that he will deem you to have consented to the purchase of a diamond tiara for $10,000, despite all your protests to the contrary, unless you use physical force to stop him as he removes your wallet from your pocket. Imagine further that he’s 7 feet tall and weighs 400 pounds. This is what a Pakistani official meant when he told the Wall Street Journal that shooting down a drone would be “needlessly provocative.” He meant that such an action would risk provoking retaliation from the United States, a risk that Pakistan cannot afford to take. Because Pakistan lies prostrate and endures the pummeling rather than makes a futile effort to stop it, it is deemed to consent to the bombing of its own territory.

But don’t blame government lawyers like Koh for devising this theory. International law lacks the resources for constraining the U.S. government. Koh knows this now if he did not before. Since he built his academic career on the claim that international law can and should be used to control nation-states and harshly criticized the Bush administration for violating international law, this must have been a bitter pill to swallow. (Though he has swallowed so many bitter pills that perhaps he has lost his sense of taste: The man who told the Senate at the end of the Bush administration that the United States must “unambiguously reassert our historic commitments to human rights and the rule of law as a major source of our moral authority” has backed away from his earlier opposition to expansive war powers, targeted killing, military commissions, and military detention.)

(DO-  war powers – shift a legal basis from Presidential war power to congressional authorization ; targeted killing – basically self-defense ; military commission and detention – what can be done under GOP obstructionism? Nevertheless, trials of Gitmo detainees are under way; and the number of detainees is in decline)

The weakness of international law governing the use of military force goes back to the signing of the U.N. Charter in 1945. The founders understood that a simple rule prohibiting the use of military force except in self-defense, or with the consent of another state, would not be adequate for regulating war. But they could not draft a code complex enough to anticipate all the contingencies that might justify war. Instead they set up the Security Council and reasoned that this body could determine when war might be justified for purposes other than self-defense. But the Security Council was frozen first by the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, and then the cold peace rivalries between the United States, Russia, and China. It has authorized only two wars since its inception (the Korean War and the first Iraq War; it also retroactively approved the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001).

Needless to say, there have been dozens of wars since 1945. Participants have included countries as diverse as China, the Soviet Union, India, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Israel, and Argentina. Even the supposedly pacific European countries participated via NATO in several of these wars. The United States has on several occasions justified wars (for example, in Kosovo in 1999, Libya in 2011) as humanitarian interventions—a principle that can be found nowhere in the U.N. Charter but enjoys some international support. In other cases, including current drone operations in Pakistan, the United States has invoked a new idea of the “unable or unwilling” country, one that outside powers can invade because that country cannot prevent terrorists located on its territory from launching attacks across its borders. But most U.S. wars can be fit into these two categories only with difficulty. Those wars are undertaken to shut down a destabilizing or dangerous regime, one that typically has used violence to keep itself in power. One can put the second Iraq War in this category, as well as the Panama intervention in 1990, the interventions in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and the intervention in Granada in 1983. During the Cold War, the United States also often evaded the U.N. prohibition on interstate war by funding and training a domestic insurgency.

(DO- again, the new —is it really new?— idea of the unable or unwilling is to address the issues of territorial integrity, rather than the use of force itself, I guess)

The U.N. Charter does not permit states to use military force to unilaterally address long-term threats in this way. It is too easy for states to characterize other states as long-term threats regardless of whether they are. And yet this omission rendered the charter unworkable, because all states must take long-term threats seriously, whether or not the members of the Security Council can be persuaded or bribed to agree with them.

Government lawyers like Koh must scramble to revise their interpretation of international law so as to keep up with the new events that justify, in the eyes of the president, a military intervention.  The “coerced consent” doctrine, the “unable and unwilling” doctrine, and the exception for humanitarian intervention all whittle away at whatever part of the law on United Nations use of force blocks U.S. goals. If the United States ever decides to invade Iran in order to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons, expect a new doctrine to take shape, perhaps one that emphasizes the unique dangers of nuclear weapons and Iran’s declared hostility toward a nearby country.

It is curious that there is not a global outcry about the illegality of the wars in Pakistan or Libya, as there was about the illegality of the recent war in Iraq, which the Bush administration dubiously justified on the basis of Iraq’s violations of earlier U.N. resolutions that had suspended hostilities after the first Iraq War. Maybe the world doesn’t care as much about Pakistan, which has no oil. Or maybe people have finally realized that the United States, which has been almost continuously at war since the collapse of the Soviet Union, will not be swayed by legal arguments. A powerful army is too useful not to use, whether you are a Republican president or a Democratic one.

U.S. Drones Navigate Murky Legal Path In Pakistan

U.S. Drones Navigate Murky Legal Path In Pakistan

http://www.npr.org/2012/10/06/162395399/u-s-drones-navigate-murky-legal-path-in-pakistan

by DINA TEMPLE-RASTON   October 6, 2012

===

DO – the second theory – if unwilling and unable, territorial integrity can be undercut -- is also as much controversial
===

The U.S. has been carrying out drone strikes in Pakistan for some eight years, but it's done so under a policy that has emerged piecemeal over that time.

"It started in 2004, when drones were really an oddity," says Daniel Markey, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was on the State Department's policy planning staff when it all started during the Bush administration.

"The first drone attack by the United States was not admitted to by the U.S. government," Markey says, "and the Pakistani government at the time, run by Gen. [Pervez] Musharraf, took responsibility for that attack and claimed that it was not a drone, but that in fact was a Pakistani strike."

Musharraf was Pakistan's president at the time. The ruse worked when drone strikes were few and far between. But then, Markey says, "this kind of charade started to unravel."

"And as that unraveling became more painful for the Pakistanis, they changed their tune," he says. "And instead of taking credit, they started to complain about them publicly — while privately endorsing them."

U.S. officials say that from 2009 until about six months ago, there was consent from the Pakistanis for what the Defense Department calls a "foreign internal defense mission." Christopher Swift, a fellow at the University of Virginia Law School, used to track terrorism financing for the Treasury Department.

"In international law, it is not illegal for a country to go into another country if they are invited," he says. "The best way to think about it is if you are having a fire in your house, and the neighbor comes to help you put out the fire, that neighbor isn't trespassing if you've invited them."

In other words, the U.S. was helping Pakistan fight its fires: al-Qaida and its associated groups, individuals who threatened both the U.S. and Pakistan.

The way it used to work is that the U.S. would send target sets to Islamabad, and the Pakistanis would respond, sometimes offering more information. It was collaborative.

But that started to change after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Now, when U.S. officials send targeting information, the Pakistanis merely acknowledge it — without the back and forth.

"The conclusion now seems to be that it is still possible to construe what Pakistan is doing as providing tacit consent," says Ashley Deeks, a former State Department lawyer. Now she's an associate professor at University of Virginia Law School.

"But you can imagine Pakistan taking one of a number of steps from here on that unwinds that tacit consent even further," she says.

For example, it could raise a diplomatic objection, like a formal complaint at the United Nations. Or it could stop clearing air space, something it does now. It could also just shoot down the drone — drones are slow.

But Pakistan hasn't done any of those things. And even if Pakistan objected more formally, it probably wouldn't end the drone attacks because there is another legal theory at work.

"The second legal justification — the underlying legal justification for using force against the groups it's using force against — is the self-defense theory," Deeks says.

That theory basically says that because the U.S. is targeting groups in Pakistan linked to the Sept. 11 attacks and the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. claims the right to target them. Even without consent.

The argument leaves Pakistan without much say in the matter.

Inside Executive Branch Policy Discussions on Drone Strikes

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204621904577013982672973836.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsThird

U.S. Tightens Drone Rules

NOVEMBER 4, 2011, By ADAM ENTOUS, SIOBHAN GORMAN and JULIAN E. BARNES

CIA brass want a free hand vs. DoD and State Dept. demands more-selective strikes out of concern about the fragile US relationship with Pakistan ...  

The Central Intelligence Agency has made a series of secret concessions in its drone campaign after military and diplomatic officials complained large strikes were damaging the fragile U.S. relationship with Pakistan.

The covert drones are credited with killing hundreds of suspected militants, and few U.S. officials have publicly criticized the campaign, or its rapid expansion under President Barack Obama. Behind the scenes, however, many key U.S. military and State Department officials demanded more-selective strikes. That pitted them against CIA brass who want a free hand to pursue suspected militants.

White House intervenes and, in essence, affirmed its support for CIA with some of CIA’s concession  

The disputes over drones became so protracted that the White House launched a review over the summer, in which Mr. Obama intervened.

The review ultimately affirmed support for the underlying CIA program. But a senior official said: "The bar has been raised. Inside CIA, there is a recognition you need to be damn sure it's worth it."

The State Dept. greater sway ; Pakistani advance notice  

Among the changes: The State Department won greater sway in strike decisions; Pakistani leaders got advance notice about more operations; and the CIA agreed to suspend operations when Pakistani officials visit the U.S.

The Pakistan drone debate already seems to be influencing thinking about the U.S. use of drones elsewhere in the world. In Yemen, the CIA used the pilotless aircraft in September to kill American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a suspected terrorist. But the White House has for now barred the CIA from attacking large groups of unidentified lower-level militants there.

The CIA concessions were detailed by high-level officials in a series of interviews with The Wall Street Journal. But in a measure of the discord, administration officials have different interpretations about the outcome of the White House review. While some cast the concessions as a "new phase" in which the CIA would weigh diplomacy more heavily in its activities, (vs) others said the impact was minimal and that the bar for vetting targets has been consistently high.

"Even if there are added considerations, the program—which still has strong support in Washington—remains as aggressive as ever," said a U.S. official.

A glance at drone operations   

Last year, Mr. Obama expanded the CIA program to 14 drone "orbits." Each orbit usually includes three drones, sufficient to provide constant surveillance over tribal areas of Pakistan. The CIA's fleet of drones includes Predators and larger Reapers. The drones carry Hellfire missiles and sometimes bigger bombs, can soar to an altitude of 50,000 feet and reach cruise speeds of up to 230 miles per hour.

The drone program over the past decade has moved from a technological oddity to a key element of U.S. national-security policy. The campaign has killed more than 1,500 suspected militants on Pakistani soil since Mr. Obama took office in 2009, according to government officials.

the diplomatic costs of air strikes

To some degree, the program has become a victim of its own success. Critics question whether aggressive tactics are necessary following the eradication of senior al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, including Osama bin Laden, killed in a helicopter raid by Navy Seals in May after drone and satellite surveillance of the compound where he was living.

Many officials at the Pentagon and State Department privately argued the CIA pays too little attention to the diplomatic costs of air strikes that kill large groups of low-level fighters. Such strikes inflame Pakistani public opinion. Observers point to the rising power in Pakistan of political figures like Imran Khan, who held large rallies to protest the drones and could challenge the current government.

All this comes at a time when the State Department is trying to enlist Pakistan's help in advancing peace talks with the Taliban, a key element of a White House drive to end the war in neighboring Afghanistan. Top officials of the (i) CIA, (ii) Pentagon, (iii) State Department and (iv) National Security Council have been pulled into the debate. Among those voicing concerns was Gen. David Petraeus, who commanded the war in Afghanistan before becoming CIA director in September. A senior intelligence official said Gen. Petraeus voiced "caution against strikes on large groups of fighters."

drone operations still remains a key element despite internal dispute

Changing the handling of the drone program doesn't mean the CIA is pulling back. The agency in recent weeks has intensified strikes in Pakistan focusing on the militant Haqqani network, a group believed to be behind a series of attacks in Afghanistan. The Pentagon and State Department have backed those strikes as serving U.S. interests.

why Pakistani public outraged

The debate in Washington was fueled by a particularly deadly drone strike on March 17. It came at a low point in U.S.-Pakistani relations, just a day after Pakistan agreed after weeks of U.S. pressure to release a CIA contractor who had killed two Pakistanis.

Infuriated Pakistani leaders put the death toll from the drone strike at more than 40, including innocent civilians. American officials say about 20 were killed, all militants.

"signature" strike vs. "personality" strike

The March 17 attack was a "signature" strike, one of two types used by the CIA, and the most controversial within the administration. Signature strikes target groups of men believed to be militants associated with terrorist groups, but whose identities aren't always known. The bulk of CIA's drone strikes are signature strikes.

The second type of drone strike, known as a "personality" strike, targets known terrorist leaders and has faced less internal scrutiny.

Signature strike and Pakistani permission

Signature strikes were first used under former President George W. Bush. His administration began arming unmanned aircraft to hunt al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks. As al Qaeda militants fled to Pakistan, the CIA began a secret drone program there, with quiet backing from Islamabad.

For the first years, U.S. officials used drones only to target known, top terror suspects. The drone strikes quickly became unpopular with the Pakistani public. In 2008, when Pakistani leaders bowed to public pressure and began to block U.S. requests for strikes, President Bush authorized a major expansion, allowing the CIA to conduct strikes, including signature strikes, without Pakistani permission.

Initially, the CIA was skeptical of the value of expending resources on lower-level operatives through signature strikes, a former senior intelligence official said. Military officials, however, favored the idea. The debate eventually would lead to the CIA and the military reversing their initial positions.

Obama gives CIA freehand  

Mr. Obama was an early convert to drones. The CIA has had freedom to decide who to target and when to strike. The White House usually is notified immediately after signature strikes take place, not beforehand, a senior U.S. official said.

The program had some early skeptics, but their concerns gained little traction. Dennis Blair, Mr. Obama's first director of national intelligence, recommended that the CIA measure the program's effectiveness beyond numbers of dead militants, U.S. officials said. It didn't happen.

The CIA and the State Department had been at odds for months over the use of drones. Tensions flared with the arrival in Islamabad late last year of a new ambassador, Cameron Munter, who advocated more judicious use of signature strikes, senior officials said.

On at least two occasions, Leon Panetta, then the CIA director, ignored Mr. Munter's objections to planned strikes, a senior official said. One came just hours after Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, visited Islamabad.

Pentagon began to question the CIA’s approach  

State Department diplomats weren't alone in their concerns. Adm. Mike Mullen, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other military leaders, who initially favored more aggressive CIA methods, began to question that approach.

Watershed event-- March 17 strike, spark dispute

The debate erupted after the March 17 strike, when National Security Advisor Tom Donilon and others at the White House, taken aback by the number of casualties and Pakistan's sharp reaction, questioned whether the CIA should for large groups, at times, hold its fire. Officials asked what precautions were being taken to aim at highly valued targets, rather than foot soldiers.

"Donilon and others said, 'O.K., I got it; it's war and it's confusing. Are we doing everything we can to make sure we are focused on the target sets we want?'" said a participant in the discussions. "You can kill these foot soldiers all day, every day and you wouldn't change the course of the war."

A senior Obama administration official declined to comment on Mr. Donilon's closed-door discussions but said that he wasn't second-guessing the CIA's targeting methodology and pointed to his long-standing support for the program. The official said the White House wanted to use the drone program smartly to pick off al Qaeda leaders and the Haqqanis. "It's about keeping our eyes on the ball," the official said.

In the spring, military leaders increasingly found themselves on the phone with Mr. Panetta and his deputy urging restraint in drone attacks, particularly during periods when the U.S. was engaging in high-level diplomatic exchanges with Pakistan. "Whenever they got a shot [for a drone attack], they just took it, regardless of what else was happening in the world," a senior official said.

The first concession of the CIA

Mr. Panetta made his first concession in an April meeting with his Pakistani counterpart. He told Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha that the U.S. would tell the Pakistanis ahead of time about strikes expected to kill more than 20 militants, officials said.

Internal debate intensified after the killing of OBL (over signature strike)

The debate over the future of the drone program intensified after the death of Osama bin Laden the next month. Pakistani leaders were embarrassed that the U.S. carried out the operation in their country, undetected. They demanded an end to the signature drone strikes.

Mr. Donilon, the National Security Advisor, launched a broad review of Pakistan policy, including the drone program. Officials said the internal debate that ensued was the most serious since the signature strikes were expanded in 2008.

(look at what the signature strike has done thus far) CIA officials defended the signature strikes by saying they frequently netted top terrorists, not just foot soldiers. Twice as many wanted terrorists have been killed in signature strikes than in personality strikes, a U.S. counterterrorism official said.

  Adm. Mullen argued that the CIA needed to be more selective. Then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates feared that the Pakistanis, if pushed too hard, would block the flow of supplies to troops in Afghanistan, officials said.

For Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has supported the CIA's strikes in the vast majority of cases, the biggest focus has been to make sure political ramifications are properly assessed to avoid a situation where the political opposition in Pakistan becomes so great that the country's current or future leaders decide to bar the drones outright.

A lack of verifiable information

Independent information about who the CIA kills in signature strikes in Pakistan is scarce. The agency tells U.S. and Pakistani officials that there have been very few civilian deaths—only 60 over the years. But some senior officials in both governments privately say they are skeptical that civilian deaths have been that low.

Broader question on wisdom of drone operation

Some top officials in the White House meetings this summer argued for a broader reassessment. "The question is, 'Is it even worth doing now? We've got the key leadership in al Qaeda, what is it that we're there for now?" one of the officials recalled some advisers asking.

The White House review culminated in a Situation Room meeting with Mr. Obama in June in which he reaffirmed support for the program.

current state around drone operations   

But changes were made. Mr. Obama instituted an appeals procedure to give the State Department more of a voice in deciding when and if to strike. If the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan objected to a strike, for example, the CIA director or his deputy would first try to talk through their differences with the ambassador. If the conflict was unresolved, the secretary of state would appeal directly to the CIA director. If they couldn't reach agreement, however, the CIA director retained the final say.

Since the changes were made, officials say internal tensions over the strikes have eased and agencies were acting more in concert with each other.

Though Mr. Petraeus voiced a preference for smaller drone strikes, officials said the agency has the leeway to carry out large-scale strikes and hasn't been formally directed to go after only higher-value targets and avoid foot soldiers. Since Mr. Petraeus's arrival at CIA, some strikes on larger groups have taken place, the senior intelligence official said.

To reduce the number of CIA strikes on Pakistani soil, the military moved more of its own drones into position on the Afghan side of the border with Pakistan, according to participants in the discussions. That makes it easier for the CIA to "hand off" suspected militants to the U.S. military once they cross into Afghanistan, rather than strike them on Pakistani soil, U.S. officials said.

U.S.-Pakistani relations remain troubled, but Islamabad recently expanded intelligence cooperation and has toned down its opposition to the drone strikes, both in public and private, officials said. Pakistani officials had sought advance notice, and greater say, over CIA strikes so they could try to mitigate the public backlash.

"It's not like they took the car keys away from the CIA," a senior official said. "There are just more people in the car."

—Jay Solomon contributed to this article

http://opiniojuris.org/2011/11/04/inside-executive-branch-policy-discussions-on-drone-strikes/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+opiniojurisfeed+%28Opinio+Juris%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Inside Executive Branch Policy Discussions on Drone Strikes

by Kenneth Anderson  , November 4th, 2011

Among other things, the article follows arguments, raised in earlier news stories .. over the weight to be given the Pakistan government’s anger over the strikes — and, more exactly, not being told in advance or being asked permission for attacking targets.  This was primarily a concern raised by the State Department, and the then-new US ambassador, Cameron Munter.  One difficulty, noted in earlier articles, was that advance warning to Pakistan sometimes resulted in obvious leaks to the targets.  But to judge by today’s piece, the permissions process has been altered to give more weight to State’s concerns  

It is noteworthy that there appears to be no sense anywhere in the US government that there is a legal issue with the CIA conducting the strikes, despite the on-going debate among academics and others outside of the US government.

The personality strikes are at the core of the US’s counterterrorism program, whereas the signature strikes are much more part of the counterinsurgency campaign — attacking safe havens, fighters who would otherwise wind up in Afghanistan, etc. 

(A distinct legal debate, as Charlie Savage has reported in the Times, took place over the legal authority for engaging in signature strikes in places outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan’s border regions, such as Yemen, but it appear to have been resolved at this point in favor of a legal view that such strikes are permitted, but as a policy matter do not make sense for the United States at this point.)

(DO- counter-terrorism, turning more toward preventing direct attack on the US ; counter-insurgency, attacking safe haven)

Much of the policy debate within the administration seems to have revolved around the extent of signature strikes which, by their nature, attack a group of people who the US has identified as fighters, rather than individual as in a targeted killing.  Indeed, this illustrates the important point that as drone uses ramify, targeted killing is only one such use (and targeted killing, too, might be carried out with a human team; targeted killing and drone warfare only partly overlap). 

CIA Escalates in Pakistan

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704029304575526270751096984.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_world

OCTOBER 2, 2010

Pentagon Diverts Drones From Afghanistan to Bolster U.S. Campaign Next Door

By ADAM ENTOUS, JULIAN E. BARNES And SIOBHAN GORMAN

Reuters

Onlookers in Pakistan's Sindh province after suspected militants set fire to tankers Friday carrying fuel for NATO troops in Afghanistan.

WASHINGTON—The U.S. military is secretly diverting aerial drones and weaponry from the Afghan battlefront to significantly expand the CIA's campaign against militants in their Pakistani havens.

Tensions between the US and Pakistan after a key supply route was closed following NATO air strikes. Video courtesy of Reuters.

The shift in strategic focus reflects the U.S. view that, with Pakistan's military unable or unwilling to do the job, more U.S. force against terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan is now needed to turn around the struggling Afghan war effort across the border.

In recent months, the military has loaned Predator and Reaper drones to the Central Intelligence Agency to give the agency more firepower to target and bombard militants on the Afghan border.

The additional drones helped the CIA escalate the number of strikes in Pakistan in September. The agency averaged five strikes a week in September, up from an average of two to three per week. The Pentagon and CIA have ramped up their purchases of drones, but they aren't being built fast enough to meet the rapid rise in demand.

View Full Image

The escalated campaign in September was aimed, in part, at disrupting a suspected terrorist plot to strike in Western Europe. (==>. something to do with the alert by state dept. today? ) U.S. officials said Friday their working assumption is that Osama bin Laden and other senior al Qaeda operatives are part of the suspected terror plot—or plots—believed to target the U.K., France or Germany. They said they are still working to understand the contours of the scheme.

U.S. officials say a successful terrorist strike against the West emanating from Pakistan could force the U.S. to take unilateral military action—an outcome all parties are eager to avoid.

Regional Violence

View Interactive

Follow events in Afghanistan and Pakistan, day by day.

• More interactive graphics and photos

Although the U.S. military flies surveillance drones in Pakistan and shares intelligence with the Pakistani government, Pakistan has prohibited U.S. military operations on its soil, arguing they would impinge on the country's sovereignty. The CIA operations, while well-known, are technically covert, allowing Islamabad to deny to its unsupportive public its involvement with the strikes. The CIA doesn't acknowledge the program, and the shift of Pentagon resources has been kept under wraps.

Pakistan has quietly cooperated with the CIA drone program which started under President George W. Bush. But the program is intensely unpopular in the country because of concerns about sovereignty and regular reports of civilian casualties. U.S. officials say the CIA's targeting of militants is precise, and that there have been a limited number of civilian casualties.

U.S. officials said there is now less concern about upsetting the Pakistanis than there was a few months ago, and that the U.S. is being more aggressive in its response to immediate threats from across the border.

"You have to deal with the sanctuaries," Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D., Mass.) said after meeting with Pakistan's foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, in Washington this week. "I've pushed very, very hard with the Pakistanis regarding that."

Tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan have been exacerbated in recent days by a series of cross-border attacks by North Atlantic Treaty Organization helicopter gunships. Islamabad responded by shutting a key border crossing used to supply Western troops in Afghanistan and threatening to halt NATO container traffic altogether. On Friday, militants in Pakistan attacked tankers carrying fuel toward another border crossing, in another sign of the vulnerability of NATO supply lines crossing Pakistani territory.

Because U.S. military officials say success in Afghanistan hinges, in large part, on shutting down the militant havens in Pakistan, the surge in drone strikes could also have far-reaching implications for the Obama administration, which is under political pressure to show results in the nine-year Afghan war and has set a goal of beginning to withdraw troops in July.

The secret deal to beef up the CIA's campaign inside Pakistan shows the extent to which military officials see the havens there, used by militants to plan and launch attacks on U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, as the primary obstacle to the Afghan war effort.

"When it comes to drones, there's no mission more important right now than hitting targets in the tribal areas, and that's where additional equipment's gone," a U.S. official said. "It's not the only answer, but it's critical to both homeland security and force protection in Afghanistan."

The idea of funneling military resources through the CIA was broached during last year's Afghanistan-Pakistan policy review, officials say. The shift in military resources was spearheaded by CIA Director Leon Panetta and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a former CIA director himself. It also has the backing of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, and the new commander of allied forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus.

Mr. Gates helped smooth over initial dissent among some at the Pentagon who argued that the drones were needed in Afghanistan to attack the Taliban.

Since taking command in Afghanistan in July, Gen. Petraeus has placed greater focus on the tribal areas of Pakistan, according to military and other government officials.

The U.S. military has been focused on trying to persuade the Pakistan army to step up its actions against militants in the tribal areas. That effort led to operations in some areas, but not North Waziristan, which is used by the Haqqani militant network to mount cross-border attacks and is believed by U.S. officials to be the hiding place of senior al Qaeda leaders.

Pakistan says its army has been spread thin, limiting its ability to carry out additional large-scale operations. Its resources have also been diverted to responding to the worst flooding in the country's history.

The U.S. now sees the need for a stronger American push in Pakistan because of the growing belief that Pakistan isn't going to commit any more resources to fighting militants within its borders, said a former senior intelligence official. The Pakistani military is tapped out, the former official said. "They've gone as far as they can go."

U.S. officials are also increasingly frustrated by what they see as Islamabad's double-dealing. Some elements of the country's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency continue to support the Haqqanis as a hedge against India's regional influence, and the government has rebuffed U.S. calls for a crackdown on the group.

Pakistani government officials have repeatedly denied that they provide any support to the Haqqanis and said their military is too overstretched to take them on directly in their North Waziristan base.

Gen. Petraeus has taken a hard line on the Haqqani network, calling them irreconcilable. He has also met with top Pakistani military leaders and presented intelligence tying the Haqqanis operating out of North Waziristan havens to attacks on U.S. and Afghan troops, according to a military official.

The Pentagon has allowed loaned equipment and personnel to the CIA several times since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to former intelligence officials.

In addition to drone aircraft, officials said the military was sharing targeting information with the CIA from surveillance over-flights