Nerve

gas in Salisbury, drones in Syria: is there a moral difference?

Simon Jenkins

The attempted murder of a former Russian spy is rightly condemned. Yet Britain advocates
the execution of its own citizens in the Middle East. It’s sheer hypocrisy

Fri 9 Mar 2018 06.00 GMT Last modified on Fri 9 Mar 2018 12.50 GMT

In 2015 a British student from Cardiff, Reyaad Khan, was killed in Syria by an RAF drone bomb,
presumably “piloted” from Lincolnshire. A House of Commons report later accepted that he
was “orchestrating and inciting” terrorist attacks in Britain, but could not discover how
imminent the attacks were or the legal basis for his killing. His British associate, Junaid
Hussain, was killed by an American drone. Two years later, Hussain’s widow, Sally Jones, and
their 12-year-old son were similarly wiped out. No trial preceded these executions of British
citizens on foreign soil. They died by executive action for being a threat to national security.
If we assume someone in Moscow took the same view of Russian spy Sergei Skripal, what is
the difference?

The foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, implied this week that Britain was now a victim of
Russian “acts of war”, notably cyber-attacks. He implied that if the Skripal case was traced to
the Kremlin, he would “look again at sanctions”. He is right that the murder of anyone on a
British street is terrible and, if sanctioned by a foreign power, is, in diplomatic jargon,
“unacceptable”. But murder is a criminal act against individuals. It is silly to merge it into an
act of war.

Khan and Hussain were apparently involved in much savagery in Syria and in plotting
terrorism in Britain. Yet there was no indication that killing them was the sole way of
preventing further crimes. Hussain’s wife appears to have been extremely unpleasant on
social media. But Britain is not at war with Syria – any more than Russia is at war with Britain.

For governments to go about the world killing people without judicial process offends every
international law, even if not much can be done about it. But for a British government to kill
its own citizens without trial defies Magna Carta. When, in 2011, President Obama authorised
the drone execution in Yemen of the US citizen and al-Qaida propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki,
it provoked outrage as an offence against American liberty. Obama claimed Awlaki “posed a
continued and imminent threat to US persons or interests”. The result was years of legal
dispute, the case championed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Times,
no less.

In Britain there was no outcry at the killings of Khan and the Hussains, just a mumble from
the opposition. We were merely told that 21 passports had been revoked from unnamed
Britons, presumably to leave them vulnerable to drone killing. This suggests the Home Office
accepted that a passport ought to confer judicial protection. The absence of any legal debate
of drones is a sure sign of a guilty Whitehall conscience.

Do such doubts appear at the defence ministry? In December the defence secretary, Gavin
Williamson, advocated the drone killing of “all” British citizens on the wrong side in Middle
East wars. The implication is that UK citizens abroad cannot consider themselves immune
from extrajudicial killing by their own government, should they meet with government
disapproval. Does this include gangsters on the Costa Brava?

Both these sagas may fall into the category of small earthquake, not many dead. What is
indefensible is the hypocrisy on the British side. Both are instances of the arrogance of power
taking the law into its own hands.

I imagine Vladimir Putin and his henchmen view turncoat spies such as Skripal as “enemies of
the state” wherever they live. That Skripal was the beneficiary of a spy swap would hardly
have mattered in what appears a squalid vendetta. Putin would barely have to wink for him
to be targeted. This is why it seems pointless to respond to his machismo with the
parliamentary bombast of Britain’s foreign secretary. A Salisbury park bench is not the
invasion of Poland.

In proportion, drone killings are far more significant. Britain is not threatened by Syria or Iraq.
We have been bombing these countries largely at the behest of the Americans, and doing so
as an alternative to a painful commitment of troops on the ground. If this means demolishing
a whole block (and everyone in it) to take out one sniper, so be it. To the British government,
at least British soldiers were not at risk. It is estimated that about 6,000 civilians have been
killed by coalition bombs in the past three years alone.

I sense that the real difference between Syria and Salisbury is sadder. It is that we view killing
from the air as somehow more “legitimate” than killing on the ground. The drone is clean,
digital, hi-tech, “targeted”, even if it slaughters innocent people in the process. Since faulty
technology can be blamed if missiles miss, airborne death is somehow more acceptable than
ground-level massacres by “terrorists”. In reality we are back to the old maxim that the AK-
47 is the poor man’s B-52. But the AK-47 is at least more accurate – as is Russian poison. If
Moscow had used a British drone against Skripal, it might have done to Salisbury cathedral
what drones have done to the ancient sites of Mesopotamia.

In just three and a half years, British taxpayers have spent a staggering £1.75bn bombing Isis-
held towns. The cost of the bombs alone (£268m) is more than was spent on British
humanitarian relief in Iraq. These drones have now been “at war” for 10 years. Since they are
considered risk-free (to our side) and “hyper-asymmetric”, they can go anywhere, at anyone’s
bidding. They show no respect for law or jurisdiction. They are strictly foreign policy for
psychopaths. In comparison, Putin in Salisbury looks like a wimp.

• This article was amended on 9 March 2018. An earlier version said that “the costs of the
bombs alone (£268m) was more than the sum spent on British humanitarian relief in the
entire theatre” (of war). That reference should have been to the sum spent in Iraq.