Chris Cole -- Drone Warfare, Remote Killing in Northern Syria. What We Know about the Khan Killing

Drone Warfare, Remote Killing in Northern Syria. What We Know about the Khan Killing

By Chris Cole

Global Research, August 23, 2016

Drone Wars UK 18 August 2016

Region: Middle East & North Africa

Theme: Militarization and WMD

In-depth Report: SYRIA: NATO'S NEXT WAR?

One year ago this weekend (on 21 Aug) an RAF pilot sitting in a Ground Control Station at RAF Waddington pushed a button and Hellfire missiles flashed away from a British Reaper drone loitering a few miles from Raqqa in Northern Syria.  The missiles slammed into an SUV killing all three occupants.  What was said in the Ground Control Station at the time is not publicly known but, as a senior British military officer put it a few months later, a Rubicon had been crossed.

For the first time, as the then Prime Minister David Cameron went on tell hushed MPs in the House of Commons, British forces had launched a remote air strike against one of its own citizens and in a country in which the UK was not at war. The target of the strike, 21-year Cardiff man Reyaad Khan, was killed alongside his cousin from Aberdeen, Ruhul Amin and a Belgian man, known only as Abu Ayman al-Belgiki.

A year on from the Khan Killing as it has become known, it’s possible to put together something of a timeline of events leading up to the strike and what has happened subsequently.

Reyaad Khan – killed in British targeted drone strike on Aug 21 2015

Sep 26, 2014		MPs authorise British air strikes in Iraq specifically excluding military action in SyriaThe parliamentary resolution reads “this motion does not endorse UK air strikes in Syria as part of this campaign and any proposal to do so would be subject to a separate vote in Parliament.”
Oct 21 2014		MoD announces  that British drones will begin surveillance operations inside Syria  Despite the barring of operation in Syria, one month after the vote the MoD quietly announces British drones will cross the Iraqi border and enter Syria.  A response to a Freedom of Information (FoI) from Drone Wars UK later revealsthat all UK Reapers entering Syria are in fact armed.