Secret Pentagon documents reveal true civilian cost of US air wars: NYT

Secret Pentagon documents reveal true civilian cost of US air wars: NYT
A investigation by The New York Times newspaper, with new documents from the Pentagon, showed the number of civilian casualties from US air strikes in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, and the lack of transparency and accountability.
5 min read
19 December, 2021
The US military relied heavily on air power during its fight with IS [Getty]

Secret Pentagon reports, uncovered by The New York Times, have laid bare the extent of the US air war in the Middle East since 2014, and the staggeringly high number of civilian casualties caused by these air campaigns. 

The report also detailed how investigations or disciplinary action was rarely taken when civilians were killed as a result of intelligence failings, rushed judgements or imprecise targeting. 

The hidden documents show is that civilians have become the "regular collateral casualties of a way of war gone badly wrong", the report said.

The New York Times was able to obtain 1,300 reports of civilian casualties, which demonstrate severe failings by the US, where "deeply flawed intelligence, rushed and often imprecise targeting" resulted in the killing of thousands of civilians, most of them children. 

The documents also showed how the Pentagon is failing to reveal the true extent of the civilian casualties resulting from the US air war and the lack of accountability, where errors have resulted in the killing of civilians. 

"In only a handful of cases were the assessments made public. Not a single record provided includes a finding of wrongdoing or disciplinary action," the report said.

"Fewer than a dozen condolence payments were made, even though many survivors were left with disabilities requiring expensive medical care. Documented efforts to identify root causes or lessons learned are rare," the report added. 

The uncovered Pentagon reports date back to 2014 and cover a period when the US military relied heavily on its air power to target combatants in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. 

The US bombing campaign against the Islamic State (IS), in both Iraq and Syria, was crucial to the demise of the extremist militants. 

Former US President Barack Obama called the US bombings "the most precise air campaign in history".

According to official reporting on civilian casualties by the Pentagon, 1,417 civilians were killed by US airstrikes during the campaign in Iraq and Syria against IS, while a further 188 civilians have been killed in Afghanistan since 2018. 

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The documents uncovered by The New York Times suggested that the true number is far higher. 

"Analysis of the documents found that many allegations of civilian casualties had been summarily discounted, with scant evaluation. And the on-the-ground reporting — involving a sampling of cases dismissed, cases deemed 'credible' and, in Afghanistan, cases not included in the trove of Pentagon documents — found hundreds of deaths uncounted," the report read.

US military policy dictates that prior to any strike being approved, the military must estimate and avoid civilian harm, and any civilian casualties that could be expected from a strike must be weighed against, and be proportional to, the military advantage gained. 

However, the US military does not give a precise definition of what is and isn’t 'proportional'.

In their reporting, The New York Times highlighted a number of specific cases, which resulted in a tragic loss of civilian life. 

One such instance was the 2017 case of Qusay Saad in East Mosul, Iraq. 

The area where Saad, his wife and three children lived had been taken over by IS forces and by January 2017 Iraqi forces were moving into it to battle the extremists with US air support. 

During the fighting, Saad and is family were forced to relocate from their home by IS, and found shelter at his brother’s abandoned home. As fighting drew closer, they were forced to flee once again, this time finding shelter in an abandoned school with two other families. 

On 13 January, 2017, as Saad and his family sat down for breakfast, a US airstrike hit the school building. Saad told The New York Times that he remembered being pinned under concrete blocks and hearing the screams of his wife. 

A man from one of the other families freed Saad, and the father was then able to rescue his 14-month-old daughter, Aisha, and hand her over to his wife.

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As he worked to free his seven-year-old son, Muhammad from the rubble, a second airstrike hit the building. 

“The strike was unbelievable,” he told The New York Times

“An entire three-story house was just crushed.”

Saad, bleeding from his head, was able to escape with Muhammad, whose thigh was split open. 

Saad’s wife, their 4-year-old son, Abdulrahman, and Aisha, never escaped the building. 

With no assistance provided by the Iraqi government, Saad would have to wait two months before the destroyed building could be excavated and the bodies recovered; for which Saad would have to pay for himself.

When the body of his wife was pulled from the rubble, his youngest daughter was still being held in her arms, but her head was missing.

In total, eight civilians were killed in the strikes. 

According to military reports, there were four IS fighters inside the building. 

A military review of the footage "shows that the building partially collapsed after the first [strike], and the four assessed adults and four assessed children were moving inside the building structure. Following the impact of the second [strike] the building fully collapsed. Later imagery shows three individuals emerging from the remains of the collapsed structure".

The military report added that due to the first strike, the viewing angle of the drone at the time “was obscured” and was unable to see the eight people inside the building. 

No investigation was ordered following the killing of these eight civilians. 

Responding to questions by The New York Times, Capt. Bill Urban, the spokesman for the US Central Command, said that “mistakes do happen”.

“We work diligently to avoid such harm. We investigate each credible instance. And we regret each loss of innocent life,” he added. 

While Qusay Saad implored the US military to go to Mosul and look at what their bombing campaign had wrought. 

“What happened wasn’t liberation. It was the destruction of humanity,” he said.