The New York Times has revealed that former US President Donald Trump in 2017 secretly issued regulations aimed at “direct counter-terrorism” operations outside the war zones in countries such as Afghanistan and Syria.
The Administration of US President Joe Biden has revealed a set of rules secretly issued by the Donald Trump Administration in 2017 to counterterrorism “direct action” operations, such as drone attacks and special forces outside of conventional combat zones, informs The New York Times.
The document, which has been hidden in some areas for reasons of state secrecy, was published by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act.
Under the guidelines, during the Trump presidency, field commanders were given freedom to make decisions about attacks, as long as they adhered to broad sets of “operating principles,” including that of the “almost total certainty” that civilians “will not be injured or killed in the course of operations.”
Nevertheless, the rules were also flexible at the time of allowing exceptions to this and to other norms, establishing “when necessary” the possibility of making “variations”, provided that certain bureaucratic procedures are followed to approve them.
The review, officials said, uncovered that the Trump Administration’s principles for regulating attacks in certain countries often introduced an exception to the “near certainty” requirement that there would be no civilian casualties. While that rule was maintained for women and children, it allowed for a lower standard of mere “reasonable certainty” when it came to civilian adult males.
In addition, the regulations stipulated that in the course of operations against terrorists, their capture should be given priority over their elimination, in order to obtain more intelligence information.
The Biden Administration suspended the rules of the Trump presidency on his first day in office and imposed an interim policy requiring White House approval for proposed strikes outside the war zones of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. At the same time, Biden’s team began a review of the Obama and Trump-era policies with a view to developing their own guidelines.