The drones are unmanned aerial planes controlled by central computers in Israel. Israelis use them to monitor the Gaza Strip for ‘security reasons.’
US helicopters and their crews arrived in Saigon on December 11 1961, ostensibly to take South Vietnamese troops deep into the jungle to wage what US advisors deemed to be a new kind of war: guerrilla warfare. Many see this event as the start of the Vietnam War.
To mark one hundred years of aerial bombing, we publish this detailed account of the path that led us from bombing cities, forests and target boxes to putting 'warheads on foreheads' in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Derek Gregory argues that our understanding of bombing has been dominated by political
‘Signature targets’ are ghostly traces of the ‘target signatures’ that once animated the electronic battlefield. Commentators have often drawn comparisons between the wars in Vietnam and in Afghanistan, but if Vietnam was a ‘quagmire’ then the air wars over Afghanistan-Pakistan threaten to create
November 2011 marks the centenary of a world-historic event. An Italian pilot, Guilio Cavotti dropped the first bombs from an aeroplane on to the oasis of Tagiura outside Tripoli. The development of aerial bombardment was more than just a military revolution. It changed both war and peace. openDem
Civilians bombed in Sudan border state. British army cut, reserves bolstered. Yemeni security forces begin offensive to retake Zinjibar. First Afghan province handed over to local forces. Court orders withdrawal from Cambodian temple. All this and more in today’s security briefing...
Will the killing of Osama Bin Laden bring justice and peace to the world? There is a growing body of evidence reaching back through the centuries, to suggest that it will not.
The changing dynamics of the Libyan conflict highlight the contradictions of "humanitarian intervention" when pressed to serve the western way of war, says Martin Shaw.
In part two of our coverage of the Paul Hirst Memorial Lecture, 2010 , Eyal Weizman, in conversation with openDemocracy editor, Rosemary Bechler, discusses the challenge of how to use international humanitarian law to permit the articulation of progressive political demands, and why this involves
