"drone" has come to refer to unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs), which are UAVs equipped with combat capabilities, most commonly the ability to launch missiles.
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Everything you need to know about the drone debate, in one FAQ - The Washington Post - 0 views
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Predators were deployed to Afghanistan almost immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and on Oct. 7, 2001 they conducted their first armed mission there.
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The current program is jointly administered by the CIA and the Joint Special Operation Command (JSOC).
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Predator drones can carry up to two Hellfire missiles. Those have warheads of about 20 pounds, which are designed to pierce tank armor;
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Reapers are another story. They feature a maximum payload of 3,000 pounds, or 1.5 tons. That means they can carry a combination of Hellfires and larger 500 pound bombs like the GBU-12 Paveway II and GBD-38 JDAM. Those have an "effective casualty radius" of about 200 feet.
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From 2008 through October 2012, there were 1,015 strikes in Afghanistan, 48 in Iraq, and at least 105 in Libya
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Primarily al-Qaeda and its affiliates. That includes al-Shaabab in Somalia, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (which works in Yemen), and the Haqqani Network in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born al-Qaeda operative in Yemen, was killed in a drone strike in 2011, as was his American-born 17-year-old son
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The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) will prepare lists of potential targets, which will be reviewed every three months by a panel of intelligence analysts and military officials. They are then passed along to a panel at the National Security Council, currently helmed by CIA director nominee Brennan, and then to Obama for final approval.
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There is, however, substantial evidence that the percentage of casualties borne by civilians is much lower with drone strikes than with just about any other kind of military intervention
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It derives the authority for the strikes from the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed in the wake of 9/11, which grants the government broad powers against al-Qaeda.
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Critics, like UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, summary or arbitrary executions Christof Heyns, say that this defense is a stretch, and the killings plainly run afoul of the laws of war and international human rights treaties.
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Only the United States and the United Kingdom (which assists in the Pakistan drone effort) currently use drones in combat
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there are deeper doubts as to whether the strategy is recruiting more militants than it kills, by turning local populations against the United States.
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Nuclear deal with Iran: Pros and cons - 1 views
Barack Obama's Secret Terrorist-Tracking System, by the Numbers - The InterceptThe Inte... - 0 views
Architecture and Representation: the Arab City (Keynote Address by Timothy Mitchell) - ... - 0 views
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Libya's civil war: That it should come to this | The Economist - 3 views
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It is split between a government in Beida, in the east of the country, which is aligned with the military; and another in Tripoli, in the west, which is dominated by Islamists and militias from western coastal cities
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the revolutionaries cobbled together a National Transitional Council (NTC) claiming to represent all of Libya
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Volunteers from students to bank managers took up arms, joining popular militias and only sometimes obeying the orders of defecting army commanders trying to take control
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In August Western bombing of government bases surrounding Tripoli cleared an avenue for the revolutionaries to take the capital.
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Recognised abroad, popular at home and enjoying the benefits of healthy oil revenues—97% of the government’s income—the NTC was well placed to lay the foundations for a new Libya
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he judges, academics and lawyers who filled its ranks worried about their own legitimacy and feared confrontation with the militias which, in toppling Qaddafi, had taken his arsenals for their own.
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The NTC presided over Libya’s first democratic elections in July 2012, and the smooth subsequent handover of power to the General National Congress (GNC) revived popular support for the revolution.
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Islamist parties won only 19 of 80 seats assigned to parties in the new legislature, and the process left the militias on the outside
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tried to advertise its moderation by putting an unveiled woman at the head of its party list in Benghazi
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The incumbent prime minister, Abdurrahim al-Keib, a university professor who had spent decades in exile, fretted and dithered
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He bowed to militia demands for their leaders to be appointed to senior ministries, and failed to revive public-works programmes
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Many received handouts without being required to hand in weapons or disband, an incentive which served to swell their ranks
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the number of revolutionaries registered with the Warriors Affairs Commission set up by the NTC was about 60,000; a year later there were over 200,000. Of some 500 registered militias, almost half came from one city, Misrata.
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In May 2013 the militias forced parliament to pass a law barring from office anyone who had held a senior position in Qaddafi’s regime after laying siege to government ministries.
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In the spring of 2014, Khalifa Haftar, a retired general who had earlier returned from two decades of exile in America, forcibly tried to dissolve the GNC and re-establish himself as the armed forces’ commander-in-chief in an operation he called Dignity
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The elections which followed were a far cry from the happy experience of 2012. In some parts of the country it was too dangerous to go out and vote
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Such retrenchment has been particularly noticeable among women. In 2011 they created a flurry of new civil associations; now many are back indoors.
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Turnout in the June 2014 elections was 18%, down from 60% in 2012, and the Islamists fared even worse than before
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Dismissing the results, an alliance of Islamist, Misratan and Berber militias called Libya Dawn launched a six-week assault on Tripoli. The newly elected parliament decamped to Tobruk, some 1,300km east
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Grasping for a figleaf of legitimacy, Libya Dawn reconstituted the pre-election GNC and appointed a new government
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So today Libya is split between two parliaments—both boycotted by their own oppositions and inquorate—two governments, and two central-bank governors.
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The army—which has two chiefs of staff—is largely split along ethnic lines, with Arab soldiers in Arab tribes rallying around Dignity and the far fewer Misratan and Berber ones around Libya Dawn.
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General Haftar’s Dignity, which has based its government in Beida, has air power and, probably, better weaponry
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the Dignity movement proclaims itself America’s natural ally in the war on terror and the scourge of jihadist Islam
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Libya Dawn’s commanders present themselves as standard-bearers of the revolution against Qaddafi now continuing the struggle against his former officers
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Ministers in the east vow to liberate Tripoli from its “occupation” by Islamists, all of whom they denounce as terrorists
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threatens to take the war to Egypt if Mr Sisi continues to arm the east. Sleeping cells could strike, he warns, drawn from the 2m tribesmen of Libyan origin in Egypt.
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The struggle over the Gulf of Sirte area, which holds Libya’s main oil terminals and most of its oil reserves, threatens to devastate the country’s primary asset
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And in the Sahara, where the largest oilfields are, both sides have enlisted ethnic minorities as proxies
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ibya Dawn has drafted in the brown-skinned Tuareg, southern cousins of the Berbers; Dignity has recruited the black-skinned Toubou. As a result a fresh brawl is brewing in the Saharan oasis of Ubari, which sits at the gates of the al-Sharara oilfield, largest of them all.
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On January 3rd, IS claimed to have extended its reach to Libya’s Sahara too, killing a dozen soldiers at a checkpoint
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have since been conspicuous by their absence. Chastened by failure in Afghanistan and Iraq, they have watched from the sidelines
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Dignity is supported not just by Mr Sisi but also by the United Arab Emirates, which has sent its own fighter jets into the fray as well as providing arms
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If oil revenues were to be put into an escrow account, overseas assets frozen and the arms embargo honoured he thinks it might be possible to deprive fighters of the finance that keeps them fighting and force them to the table
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Until 1963 Libya was governed as three federal provinces—Cyrenaica in the east, Fezzan in the south and Tripolitania in the west
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the marginalised Cyrenaicans harked back to the time when their king split his time between the courts of Tobruk and Beida and when Arabs from the Bedouin tribes of the Green Mountains ran his army
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July 2011 jihadists keen to settle scores with officers who had crushed their revolt in the late 1990s killed the NTC’s commander-in-chief, Abdel Fattah Younis, who came from a powerful Arab tribe in the Green Mountains. In June 2013 the Transitional Council of Barqa (the Arab name for Cyrenaica), a body primarily comprised of Arab tribes, declared the east a separate federal region, and soon after allied tribal militias around the Gulf of Sirte took control of the oilfields.
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In the west, indigenous Berbers, who make up about a tenth of the population, formed a council of their own and called on larger Berber communities in the Maghreb and Europe for support
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Derna—a small port in the east famed for having sent more jihadists per person to fight in Iraq than anywhere else in the world
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opposed NATO intervention and insisted that the NTC was a pagan (wadani) not national (watani) council
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Some in Derna have now declared their allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the caliph of the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq.
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In December the head of America’s Africa command told reporters that IS was training some 200 fighters in the town.
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Iran Complies With Nuclear Deal; Sanctions Are Lifted - The New York Times - 0 views
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Seven Iranians, either convicted or charged with breaking American embargoes, were released in the prisoner swap, and 14 others were removed from international wanted lists.
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Iran sanctions are lifted after coming to an agreement with the U.S. and E.U. Iran gained control of 100 billion in frozen assets and dismantled a large part of its nuclear program. A prisoner swap took place, releasing American citizens from Iran as well as 7 Iranians being imprisoned in Washington.
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Polisario accused of trafficking children to Europe | Sahara Question - 0 views
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The trafficking ring is said to involve Sahrawi children being shipped to European families for adoption.
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the international network had a ready list of European families who wanted to buy children for adoption, and approached the Polisario/Algerian team with the offer.
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11.12.2015 Yemen Crisis News - YouTube - 1 views
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This video lists pieces of news revolving around Yemen on December 11, 2015. A week-long truce between warring factions in Yemen was declared to start on December 15, 2015 while peace talks were held in Switzerland. A leader of Blackwater, a mercenary group aiding Saudi Arabia, was killed a fight against Houthi fighters. Jaafar Mohammed Saad, the governor of Aden, was assassinated while travelling.
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In Egypt, the Law itself is an Enemy of Women's Rights | Informed Comment - 0 views
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However, Egypt – along with most Muslim countries – incorporates a list of laws based on Islamic Sharia. Some of these are indisputable Sharia laws while others are based on individual interpretations, and both are indeed discriminatory.
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This article provides laws that protect women as well as those whom only protect men. It shows the sexism between the laws for different genders.
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Describes how the laws in Egypt are an enemy to Women's Rights. Egypt is ranked as the worst of 22 Arab states with regards to women's rights.
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This article gives a brief description of laws and rules set in Egypt for women.
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