Did Monday's Drone Strike Hit a Mere "Building" or a Mosque?

Robert Chesney
Tuesday, October 5, 2010, 10:37 AM
There are several reports circulating in the media concerning Monday's drone strike in Pakistan, the one said to have killed a group of men from Germany linked to recent warnings of an impending attack in Europe. Interestingly, they are inconsistent regarding the nature of the building the missiles struck. Melissa Eddy's AP report appearing in the Washington Post suggests nothing unusual, indicating simply that  the strike targeted "German militants taking shelter in a house in the town

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There are several reports circulating in the media concerning Monday's drone strike in Pakistan, the one said to have killed a group of men from Germany linked to recent warnings of an impending attack in Europe. Interestingly, they are inconsistent regarding the nature of the building the missiles struck. Melissa Eddy's AP report appearing in the Washington Post suggests nothing unusual, indicating simply that  the strike targeted "German militants taking shelter in a house in the town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan."  According to other reports, however, the building was a mosque, struck during or just before a call to prayer.  That's the account according to Richard Norton-Taylor and Ian Traynor of the Guardian and Michael Georgy of Reuters, at any rate.  Mark Mazzetti at the New York Times handles the point gingerly, noting simply that news outlets in Pakistan are describing the building as a mosque [UPDATE: Greg McNeal alerts me to the BBC's coverage, which contains the "house of a tribal leader" account that I had in mind from last night; my apologies to Mark for suggesting earlier that his original story might have had this language--I'm sure now it was the BBC piece I saw] (note: I could have sworn that when I read Mark's piece online last night, it included a line to the effect that a U.S. official described the building as the home of a tribal leader; either I was looking at something else and misremembering it this morning, or else that line has been removed...anyone know which it is?). The mosque claim may be significant from an IHL perspective, of course, and it certainly is significant in terms of hearts-and-minds.  I have no idea whether the claim is accurate, though I suspect it is not (or at least that the building was not known to be a mosque by decisionmakers at the time).  If it is not accurate, then the episode is an illustration of the ease with which media accounts can be seeded with damaging characterizations of this kind.  If it is accurate, on the other hand, it certainly raises some difficult legal and strategic questions--ones that will be hard if not impossible to evaluate from an outside perspective.  At any rate, we're not likely to get a clearer picture going forward.

Robert (Bobby) Chesney is the Dean of the University of Texas School of Law, where he also holds the James A. Baker III Chair in the Rule of Law and World Affairs at UT. He is known internationally for his scholarship relating both to cybersecurity and national security. He is a co-founder of Lawfare, the nation’s leading online source for analysis of national security legal issues, and he co-hosts the popular show The National Security Law Podcast.

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