Neil Prakash Dead to Family Long Before Mosul Strike
What to Know About the Civilian Casualty Files
A New York Times investigation found that the American air war in Iraq, Syria and Transitional islamic state of afghanistan has been plagued by flawed intelligence, poor targeting and thousands of noncombatant deaths.
In the years since American boots on the ground gave mode to a war of airstrikes in Iraq, Syrian arab republic and Afghanistan, the U.S. armed services has made a primal hope: that precision bombs and drones would kill enemies while minimizing the risks to civilians.
Recent investigations by The New York Times have undercut that promise. In September, The Times reported that a drone strike in Kabul, Transitional islamic state of afghanistan, which American officials said had destroyed a vehicle laden with bombs, had instead killed 10 members of a family. Last month, The Times reported that dozens of civilians had been killed in a 2019 bombing in Syrian arab republic that the military had subconscious from public view.
Now, a Times investigation has found that these were not outliers, but rather the regular casualties of a transformed manner of war gone wrong.
Drawing on more than 1,300 documents from a hidden Pentagon archive, the investigation reveals that, since 2014, the American air state of war has been plagued past deeply flawed intelligence, rushed and imprecise targeting and the deaths of thousands of civilians, many of them children.
In addition to reviewing the military'southward own assessments of reports of noncombatant casualties — obtained through Freedom of Data requests and lawsuits confronting the Defense Department and U.S. Cardinal Command — The Times visited nearly 100 casualty sites in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan and interviewed scores of surviving residents and electric current and onetime American officials.
Hither are cardinal takeaways from Function 1 of the investigation. Role two examines the air war'southward human cost.
Civilian deaths have been drastically undercounted
According to the military's count, ane,417 civilians have died in airstrikes in the campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria; since 2018 in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan, U.Due south. air operations have killed at least 188 civilians. But The Times institute that the civilian death toll was significantly college. Discrepancies arose in example after case — none more stark than a 2016 bombing in the Syrian hamlet of Tokhar.
American Special Operations forces hit what they believed were iii ISIS "staging areas," confident they were killing scores of ISIS fighters. A armed forces investigation ended that seven to 24 civilians "intermixed with the fighters" might have died. Only, The Times found, the targeted buildings were houses where families had sought refuge. More than 120 civilians were killed.
In 1,311 reports, ane 'possible violation'
The Pentagon has also failed to uphold pledges of transparency and accountability.
Until now, only a handful of the assessments accept been fabricated public. None included a finding of wrongdoing or disciplinary activity. Only one cited a "possible violation" of the rules of engagement — a alienation in the process for identifying a target. Fewer than a dozen condolence payments were made, fifty-fifty though injured survivors oftentimes required costly medical care. The records bear witness little effort by the military to place patterns of failure or lessons learned.
In many instances, the command that had canonical a strike was responsible for examining it, oftentimes using incorrect or incomplete evidence. In but one instance did investigators visit the site of a strike. In only two did they interview survivors or witnesses.
Taken together, the v,400 pages of records point to an institutional credence of noncombatant casualties. In the logic of the armed services, a strike was justifiable as long equally the expected risk to civilians had been properly weighed confronting the war machine proceeds, and it had been canonical upward the chain of control.
Over 50,000 airstrikes, nigh not planned in advance
America's new style of state of war took shape after the 2009 surge of U.S. forces into Afghanistan. By the end of 2014, President Barack Obama declared America's ground war essentially done, shifting the armed forces's mission to mostly air support and advice for Afghan forces battling the Taliban. At roughly the aforementioned time, he authorized a entrada of airstrikes against ISIS targets and in support of centrolineal forces in Iraq and Syria.
At an ever-quickening pace over the next five years, and equally the assistants of Mr. Obama gave mode to that of Donald J. Trump, American forces executed more than l,000 airstrikes in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.
When the wars intensified, the authorization to approve strikes was pushed further down the chain of control, even as an overwhelming majority of strikes were carried out in the oestrus of war, and not planned far in accelerate.
Biases and blind spots created danger
The records suggest that civilian deaths were oft the effect of "confirmation bias," or the trend to notice and interpret information in a style that confirms pre-existing beliefs. People rushing to a bombing site were assumed to be ISIS fighters, non noncombatant rescuers. Men on motorcycles, thought to be moving "in formation," displaying the "signature" of an imminent attack, were just men on motorcycles.
Cultural blind spots also left innocent civilians vulnerable to assail. The armed services judged, for case, that there was "no noncombatant presence" in a house where families were napping during the days of the Ramadan fast or sheltering from the rut or intense fighting.
Breakdowns in technology and surveillance
For all their promise of pinpoint accuracy, at times the American weapons simply missed. In 2016, the armed services reported that it had killed Neil Prakash, a notorious Australian ISIS recruiter, in a strike on a house in East Mosul. Iv civilians died in the strike, according to the Pentagon. Months later, Mr. Prakash was arrested crossing from Syria into Turkey.
Poor or insufficient surveillance footage often contributed to deadly targeting failures. Afterward, it also hamstrung efforts to examine strikes. Of the 1,311 reports examined by The Times, the armed forces had deemed 216 allegations "credible." Reports of civilian casualties were ofttimes dismissed because video showed no bodies in the rubble, yet the footage was often too brief to make a reliable decision.
Sometimes, only seconds' worth of footage was taken earlier a strike, inappreciably enough for investigators to assess civilians' presence. In another cases, there was no footage at all for review, which became the basis for rejecting the allegation. That was frequently considering of "equipment error," because no shipping had "observed or recorded the strike," or because the unit could not or would not find the footage or had not preserved it equally required.
A failure to account for secondary explosions
A target like a weapons cache or ability station came with the potential for secondary explosions, which often reached far beyond the expected blast radius. These deemed for nearly a third of all civilian casualties acknowledged by the war machine and half of all noncombatant deaths and injuries at the sites visited past The Times.
A June 2015 strike on a car-bomb factory in Hawija, Iraq, is amidst the deadliest examples. In plans for the dark set on, the nearest "collateral business" was assessed to be a "shed." Merely apartment buildings ringed the site, and dozens of displaced families, unable to afford rent, had too been squatting in abased buildings close past. Co-ordinate to the military investigation, as many as seventy civilians were killed that nighttime.
In response to questions from The Times, Capt. Bill Urban, the spokesman for the U.Due south. Central Command, said that "fifty-fifty with the best applied science in the earth, mistakes practice happen, whether based on incomplete information or misinterpretation of the information available. And we try to acquire from those mistakes." He added: "We work diligently to avoid such harm. Nosotros investigate each credible case. And nosotros regret each loss of innocent life."
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/18/us/airstrikes-civilian-casualty-files-pentagon.html
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