( CNN ) -- Last week the U.N. 's senior official for extrajudicial executions , Philip Alston , argued in a critical report and remarks delivered in Geneva , Switzerland , that the United States should explain the legal rationale for the CIA 's campaign of drone strikes in northwest Pakistan , which he characterized as `` a vaguely defined license to kill '' that has created `` a major accountability vacuum . '' Alston is also urging the Obama administration to disclose the number of civilians killed in the drone strikes . That is a controversial matter among the Pakistani public , less than a tenth of whom support the strikes , because of their perceived high civilian death rate . The drones ' latest important victim is Mustafa Abu al-Yazid , an Egyptian founding member of al-Qaeda who served as the group 's number three and was in charge of overseeing the group 's plots , recruitment , fundraising and internal security . While Yazid 's death is doubtless a blow to the terrorist group , al-Qaeda seems to have a stash of number threes waiting in the wings . At least eight men who have held that slot since 2001 have since ended up in jail or dead . Yazid joins three other number threes who have met their fates at the wrong end of Hellfire missiles : Muhammad Atef , Hamza Rabia and Abu Laith al-Libi . Yazid was not the only casualty from the drone strike that killed him : Reports say his wife , three daughters and a grandchild also died in the May attack in the mountainous Pakistani tribal agency of North Waziristan , a reminder that militant leaders are not the only ones to be felled by drones . According to our count , the drones program in Pakistan has reportedly killed at least 976 people since 2004 , of whom approximately two-thirds were described as militants or suspected militants in reliable press accounts , indicating that a third of the victims were not militants . The Obama administration has already authorized 90 drone strikes in and around Pakistan 's Federally Administered Tribal Areas ( FATA ) , double the number the Bush administration authorized in its two terms in office . The accuracy of the drone strikes has improved even as the pace of the program has increased over the past two years . In 2008 , the first year the drones program picked up speed in Pakistan , an average of only 43 percent of the fatalities from the strikes were reported to be militants or suspected militants . In 2009 , that figure shot up to 62 percent , and so far in 2010 it stands at 87 percent , suggesting that the nonmilitant death rate from drone strikes has dropped to around 10 percent this year , according to our database . Overall , since Barack Obama took office , his administration 's drone strikes in Pakistan have killed an average of 71 percent militants , compared with the Bush administration 's 55 percent , according to reliable media accounts . The Obama administration drone strikes also seem to be having more success eliminating militant leaders , as at least 13 have been confirmed killed in drone attacks since Obama was inaugurated in January 2009 , compared with 16 during the Bush administration 's five years of authorizing drone strikes in Pakistan . This increase in accuracy targeting both high-level and lower-level al-Qaeda and Taliban members appears to stem from the CIA 's use of smaller missiles and increased cooperation with the United States ' Pakistani counterparts who , despite public protests about violations of their national sovereignty by the drone strikes , have quietly been sharing vital intelligence . An unnamed U.S. official commented , `` You need guys on the ground to tell you who they [ the targets ] are and that is n't coming from some white guy running around the FATA . '' After 26 strikes in the Pakistani tribal region of South Waziristan during the first 10 months of 2009 , they halted after the start of Pakistan 's military ground operations there in mid-October 2009 , another indicator of U.S.-Pakistan cooperation about the drones program . As Pakistan gears up for operations in North Waziristan -- the last redoubt for a militant mélange that includes the Haqqani network , various factions of the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda -- the United States has fired more drone strikes than ever into this region : 37 of 2010 's 39 reported strikes have hit targets in North Waziristan . So far no drone strikes appear to have targeted Osama bin Laden , who occasionally releases audiotapes taunting the United States as he did a few weeks after the alleged botched Christmas Day attempt by an al Qaeda affiliate to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit , but who otherwise has vanished into the wilds of the Afghan-Pakistan border region . And al Qaeda 's number two official , Ayman al-Zawahiri , who was last targeted by a drone strike in January 2006 , has since then proven equally elusive . The criticism of the drone program by the United Nations official Philip Alston seems to have had little impact on the Obama administration , which is plowing ahead with drone strikes in Pakistan 's tribal regions on the grounds that they are `` effective , exact and essential . '' The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the authors . The New America Foundation drones database is available here .
U.S. drone warfare claims life of al Qaeda 's number one leader , the 8th person to hold that position . Co - authors say data shows drone attacks getting more accurate , killing fewer civilians . They say Pakistan has stepped up drone war in northwest Pakistan . U.N. official has asked U.S. to explain the legal rationale for the drone attacks .