No punishment for those involved in fatal Kabul drone strike

No military personnel involved in a botched drone strike that killed 10 civilians in Kabul, Afghanistan, earlier this year will face punishment, the Pentagon said Monday.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin approved recommendations from US Central Command head Gen. Kenneth McKenzie and US Special Operations Command leader Gen. Richard Clarke not to take any administrative action against those involved in the August 29 strike, press secretary John Kirby told reporters.  

Kirby said that when McKenzie and Clarke listed their recommendations to Austin “there was no recommendation by either of them about accountability.”

“The recommendations were more about procedure and process and the secretary reviewed them and has accepted them,” Kirby told reporters. “And again, most of them are of a classified nature. ... but there was no overt recommendation made by either specific to accountability or any punishment for anyone.”

The Defense Department admitted in September that the drone strike — which came in the final days of the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan — was a “tragic mistake” that killed the civilians, including seven children. Prior to that, Pentagon officials had said the strike was necessary to prevent “an imminent ISIS-K threat” to US forces evacuating people at Kabul’s airport.

The Pentagon, which initially defended the targeting as a “righteous strike,” carried out the bombing after commanders errantly thought the driver of a white Toyota Corolla — 37-year-old Zemerai Ahmadi, a longtime aid worker for a US-based group — was an ISIS-K operative with explosives.

After a high-level Pentagon review into the incident, no violation of the laws of war were found but it was discovered there were “execution errors” in the lead-up to the strike. 

The investigation, revealed last month, concluded that the errors were not caused by misconduct or negligence and doesn't recommend disciplinary action, but gave commanders the power to decide on what accountability, if any, there would be.

But both McKenzie and Clarke found no grounds for punishing any of the military personnel involved, a Pentagon official told the Times.

In a statement, Kirby said the department takes seriously “our obligation to avoid civilian harm in the execution of our operations, and as the secretary made clear, we will not be afraid to make necessary changes to our processes and procedures to that end.” 

The US military has killed hundreds, possibly thousands, of civilians by accident in war zones in places including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Somalia in the past 20 years but has rarely held specific individuals accountable. 

Public outcry has grown over such killings, including a recently revealed US airstrike in Syria in 2019 that killed dozens of women and children, which military officials tried to conceal. 

 

Height of US brutality or tragic mistake

Calling it a "tragic mistake," the US Department of Defense admitted Friday that it killed 10 people, including seven children, in a drone strike that wrongly targeted an aid group worker in Afghanistan late last month.

“I offer my profound condolences to the family and friends of those who were killed,” US Central Command Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. said at a briefing at the Pentagon Friday afternoon. "It was a mistake and I offer my sincere apology."

McKenzie added that the US was exploring the possibility of payments to compensate the families of the victims.

The 29th August 2021 drone strike came in response to a bombing at the Kabul airport that had killed 13 US service members as evacuations continued in the waning days of the US withdrawal from the country.

A Hellfire missile launched from the US drone killed 10 people in a Kabul neighborhood, with officials saying they were targeting an ISIS-K terrorist who was planning to use a car packed with explosives in a suicide attack.

The official military statement at the time said the US had “conducted a self-defense unmanned over-the-horizon airstrike today on a vehicle in Kabul, eliminating an imminent ISIS-K threat to Hamad Karzai International airport.”

“We are confident we successfully hit the target,” said Capt. Bill Urban, the US Central Command spokesman. “Significant secondary explosions from the vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material. We are assessing the possibilities of civilian casualties, though we have no indications at this time.”

There were almost immediate reports of civilian casualties, but on 1st September 2021, Gen. Mark Milley — the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — defended the bombing as “righteous” and “still valid.”

“At the time — and I think this is still valid — we had very good intelligence that ISIS-K was preparing a specific type of vehicle at a specific type of location,” Milley said. “We monitored that through various means and all of the engagement criteria were being met. We went through the same level of rigor that we’ve done for years, and we took a strike.”

On 10th September, both the Washington Post and New York Times published stories calling the official account into question, with analyses finding no evidence of explosive materials in the car that belonged to the Nutrition and Education International, a US charity. The driver was Zemari Ahmadi, an electrical engineer who was a long-time employee of the aid group. Officials had said they did not know Ahmadi’s identity at the time of the strike but had deemed him suspicious.

"On behalf of the men and women of the Department of Defense, I offer my deepest condolences to surviving family members of those who were killed, including Ahmadi, and to the staff of Nutrition and Education International,  Ahmadi’s employer," Lloyd Austin, secretary Defense, said in a statement.

"We now know that there was no connection between Ahmadi and ISIS-Khorasan, that his activities on that day were completely harmless and not at all related to the imminent threat we believed we faced, and that Ahmadi was just as innocent a victim as were the others tragically killed."

Earlier, an analysis by Brown University earlier this year estimated that more than 71,000 Afghan and Pakistani civilians had been killed in the US-led War in Afghanistan between its start in October 2001 and April 2021. The war ended on 30th August 2021 when the final US troops left the country.

Biden sends B-52 heavy bomber over Persian Gulf

Last week, a B-52 bomber of United States Air Force flew over the Middle East, the fourth time since Joe Biden became President of the United States. Washington said the flybys were due to instability in the region, but the reference was very clearly to Iran. 

What was more unusual about these flights than the previous was that the US Central Command announced that these were accompanied by supporting aircraft from Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Israel is a US ally and Saudi Arabia has been allegedly cooperating with Israel for years but has still not recognized it. Qatar has perhaps the closest relationship with Tehran and it is a key intermediary between Iran and the United States. If the purpose of these flights was to warn Iran; such warnings have little impact.

In a clear signal to Iran, a ‘Stratofortress bomber flew over the Persian Gulf, before the plane was spotted in Israeli airspace heading back to its base in the US. It was escorted by Israeli Air Force F-15s as it passed over Israel. It was the seventh mission into CENTCOM’s area of operation in the last four months and the second deployment of the heavy bomber since Joe Biden became president on January 20.

It is believed that the United States continues to deploy combat-ready capabilities into the US Central Command area of responsibility to deter any potential adversary, and make clear that it is ready and capable of responding to any aggression directed at its interests. Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander, US Central Command had said, “We do not seek conflict, but no one should underestimate our ability to defend our forces or to act decisively in response to any attack.”

One can recall that Iranians or their proxies have launched attacks at the US bases in Iraq. They have also damaged an Israeli merchant vessel off the Lebanese coast. The Biden administration’s pledge to revive the nuclear treaty has been rejected by Iran. Since Biden has made restoring the agreement an important objective of his presidency, Iran may feel Biden is desperate for a deal.

The flight of the B 52s didn’t matter, despite two of Iran’s greatest enemies – Israel and Saudi Arabia joining hands. Israel may be eager to strike Iran, but sees itself restrained by the United States.

Iran’s primary goals are to restore its economy and prevent an attack from the West. It can’t leave Iraq alone, nor can it abandon its allies in Yemen and elsewhere. Demonstrating real regional power is a foundation of its security. Iran knows its relative importance to the United States that gives it a sense of security.