According to an investigation by the New York Times, documents from hidden Pentagon archives reveal imprecise targeting and dozens of civilians' deaths since 2014 with next to no accountability.
The investigation conducted by The New York Times has revealed the role of US air strikes in killing dozens of civilians, many of them children, in the Middle East since 2014 with deeply flawed intelligence.
Although the documents obtained from the military's own confidential assessments of more than 1,300 reports reveal all the details, none of these deadly failures have resulted in a finding of wrongdoing.
According to the investigation, what has happened in the last years is a distinct contrast to the US government’s image of war waged by all-seeing drones and precision bombs.
The report also stresses that there is no way to determine the full civilian death toll. However, it is certain that the number is far higher than the Pentagon has acknowledged.
Some cases drawn from a hidden Pentagon archive of the US air war in the Middle East since 2014 have been handled in the NYT investigation to show how serious the issue is.
On July 19, 2016, US Special Operations forces bombed areas on the outskirts of Tokhar, in northern Syria, on the basis of intelligence pointing to the presence of Daesh terrorists.
It was first reported that 85 Daesh terrorists were killed but the subsequent information showed more than 120 villagers along with their families and local people were killed.
In early 2017 in Iraq, a dark-coloured vehicle became the target of an American war plane which was thought to be a car bomb. Later on, it was revealed the four killed in the car were the man identified as Majid Mahmoud Ahmed, his wife and their two children.
They were killed along with other civilians in the attack.
In another case from November 2015 in Iraq, the US forces hit a building in Ramadi after observing a man dragging an “unknown heavy object” into a Daesh “defensive fighting position”. However, a military review later found that the object was actually “a person of small stature” — a child — who died in the strike.
Moreover, according to US military's own count, 1,417 civilians have died in air strikes in the campaign against Daesh in Iraq and Syria. At least 188 civilians were kiled in Afghanistan since 2018.
However, The Times’s analysis of the documents found that many allegations of civilian casualties had been summarily discounted, with hardly any evaluation.
A number of reports during these US operations showed that the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which consists of YPG terrorists, has collaborated with the American Special Forces.
The YPG is the Syrian offshoot of PKK, which has been listed as a terrorist organisation by Turkiye, the US, and EU. PKK has been responsible for the deaths of at least 40,000 people, including women, children, and infants in Turkiye.
Who will pay the price?
It is a fact that the war of precision is not capable of promising that civilians would not die but before a strike is approved, the military must undertake elaborate protocols to estimate and avoid civilian harm.
The documents and investigations also reveal a number of occasions where the military’s predictions of the peril to civilians turned out to be wrong. However, lessons were rarely learned and these breakdowns of intelligence and surveillance continued to occur.
Indeed, the Pentagon records detail how in Mosul in 2016, three civilians were killed when a bomb aimed at one car instead struck three — in part because the military official approving the strike had decided to save more-precise weapons for other, imminent strikes.
Yet The Times’s analysis of the documents and ground reporting revealed that civilians were frequently killed in airstrikes planned well in advance.
Military officials often speak of their “over the horizon” long-range surveillance capabilities. But the recently revealed investigations and documents identify deficiencies in the quality and quantity of the video footage guiding intelligence in the Middle East.
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(With input from news agency language)
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