Celebrating ten years of Drone Wars UK

Chris Cole

Expertise, experience and energy encapsulate the mood and atmosphere of the presentations at the Drone Wars UK 10th anniversary webinar on the theme \Drone Warfare Today, Tomorrow, Forever?' held on 27th October with 170 participants. If we needed to be jolted out of our COVID restricted lives and reminded that the world of warfare is ever evolving, this was the place to be.

Drone Wars UK was created out of the vision of its Director, Chris Cole, a Catholic. In 2009, while Director of Fellowship of Reconciliation, Chris became aware that the use of armed drones was capturing and concretising the nature of modern warfare. But this was not yet in the public eye. Chris, who is also a board member of Pax Christi, was seeking to develop ethical insights on the use of Drones, prompted by his study of theology. So Drone Wars UK was born to shine a spotlight on the use of military drones.

Ten years on and Drone Wars UK has become the go-to place for journalists, researchers and campaigners on all matters relating to the use of UK drones. In the words of the webinar facilitator, Aditi Gupta, Coordinator for the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drones, no group has done more to raise awareness of drone warfare.

Panellist Elke Schwarz, Lecturer in Political Theory at Queen Mary's, University of London raised concerns that ethical and legal issues have are not adequately addressed by government or the military. The dominant drive, she suggested, is to speed, action, range, reach, towards utility that can be achieved through machines. Here she made the link between drone warfare and the development of automated weapons, seeing them as allied. Ethics, she explained, can be seen as a hindrance, slowing things down in the world of military planning and objectives.

The proliferation of drone technology was outlined by Rachel Stohl, Vice President at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC. The number of states with drone programmes has risen from 60 to 102 over the past ten years. 41 countries are in the process of acquiring armed drones. The USA, Israel and the UK lead the way. Initial use of drones was seen in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq but this has disturbingly spread to other parts of the Middle East and North Africa and most recently by Turkey in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. In fact, Drone Wars UK has just produced a briefing on this.

This opened the discussion to the impact of drones on civilian populations. While the use of drones may be seen as a way to 'protect' military personnel in conflict, the burden is transferred to civilians. Ella Knight a former researcher and campaigner in Amnesty International's Military, Security and Policing Team, outlined the difficulty in getting clear information on the injury and deaths of civilians in drone attacks. Siting work that Amnesty had undertaken in Somalia, she reported that it took almost two years for the US Government to admit that their drone strikes, supposedly targeting Al-Shabab, had also injured and killed civilians. This example highlights the need to evoke human rights, humanitarian and international law in challenging the use of drones.

Why do we need Drone Wars UK in the future? The use of drone technology in warfare, border control, and civilian surveillance is growing not diminishing. Their seductive qualities, as outlined, are presented as a way of normalising, even accepting their use. While international controls are in place and developing, it is up to campaigners and citizens to ensure that national governments adhere to them. Chris Cole stressed the value of campaigning, from raising awareness and seeking accountability to letter writing and research.

The quality of the work of Drone Wars UK and of all the panellists energises me and prompts me to see how we can all 'shed a spotlight' on this evolving and dangerous feature of modern warfare.

You can find out more about their work here: https://dronewars.net/

Pat Gaffney is a Vice-President of Pax Christi England and Wales.