Study: Effectiveness Of U.S. Drone Strikes Doubtful
U.S. drone strikes carried out in Pakistan appear to have little impact on insurgent violence in neighboring Afghanistan, according to a new meta-study published by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College.
But the study also finds that strikes carried out by unmanned aerial vehicles cause fewer civilian casualties than other kinds of combat and that those deaths don't appear to be linked to further violence against U.S. forces and allies.
"We know little about how effective [drones] are as tools of punishment and deterrence," according to James Igoe Walsh, the author of the study titled The Effectiveness of Drone Strikes in Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism Campaigns. Walsh writes:
"[O]ne reasonably consistent finding ... is that drone strikes have little influence, positive or negative, on the amount of insurgent violence that occurs in Afghanistan. This is important, because one objective of the drone strike campaign is to weaken and undermine insurgent organizations based in Pakistan that launch attacks against American, Afghan, and international military forces."