Targeted Killings of Terrorist by Drone Warefare in Afghanistan: Why the Application of the Laws of Armed Conflict Should Be Modified by Human Rights Law to Succeed in the "War on Terror" against Al-Qaeda

Abstract

Targeted killings are nowadays the favoured counter-terrorism strategy of the United States of America in the “war on terror” against Al-Qaeda on Afghan soil. Many of those attacks have been launched by drone warfare, which have been quite successful in eliminating leading terrorists, but also caused a high amount of civilian casualties. The subject of this paper is to illustrate that the currently applied legal framework on the “war on terror” is inappropriate, since it is not restrictive enough considering the protection of civilians. Yet, the toleration of civilian casualties should be restricted as far as possible in order to succeed in the “war on terror”. Therefore, the international community should formulate new treaties in order to regulate the possibility of targeted killings, or at least modify the existing rules with appropriate rules of human rights law.