DÉFENSE ZONE
Amélie Ferey, researcher at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) and author of an op-ed in the newspaper Le Monde, looks back on the killing by the United States of the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri. “Eliminating enemies is a way for democracies to preserve their interests abroad while reducing the cost of interventions”, says the researcher, “but it raises questions of timing and ethics.”
“Justice has been delivered”: on Monday 1 August, Joe Biden announced the death of the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, killed by a Hellfire R9X missile fired from a drone. He was echoing the words spoken by Barack Obama 11 years earlier, when al-Zawahiri’s predecessor was eliminated: Osama bin Laden. Of course, the methods used in these two killings, and in the many others in recent years, differ, yet the doctrine is the same: “that of targeted killings, allowing a state to use lethal force to eliminate people who pose a threat to its security and are outside its national territory.” When used in the context of a conflict, these killings “do not contradict the applicable law”, provided they target only direct participants in the conflict, explains Amélie Ferey. “Abdelmalek Droukdel, leader of AQIM (al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb), was thus killed by French special forces in Mali in June 2020.” However, outside a theatre of operations, “their compatibility with international law is problematic, because of the principle of sovereignty, which prohibits military operations by third countries without prior agreement”, the researcher cautions.
Amélie Ferey then questions the timing of these strikes. Indeed, even if these operations initially offer an undeniable “tactical advantage”, they can subsequently strengthen the “offensive posture” of the targeted organisation. “This was the case with the strike on Abbas Musawi, the Hezbollah leader killed by Israel in 1992 and replaced by Hassan Nasrallah, a proponent of more radical positions”, says the IFRI researcher. Moreover, even if these “targeted killings make it possible to keep a light but effective footprint”, the vocabulary associated with them must not obscure “the risk of ‘collateral damage’, that is, people near the targets who are killed or wounded during these operations”.
Finally, the American withdrawal from Afghanistan and France’s withdrawal from Mali “show the difficulty of translating military successes into political achievements” and at the same time strengthen criticism of Western interventionism. Added to this are Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and the “American pivot to Asia”. According to Amélie Ferey, the combination of these different factors “increases the appeal of targeted drone strikes” and confirms their “full integration into the strategic landscape”.
Photo credit: French Air and Space Force
