Pentagon’s fault assessment for deadly air strike found no wrongdoing

WASHINGTON – A Pentagon investigation into a US air strike in Syria in 2019 that killed dozens of people, including women and children, reveals the military’s initial assessment of the attack. Public work was mishandled at multiple levels of command and suffered reporting delays and information gaps.

But the investigation also determined that most of those killed in the attack, carried out by a shadow Special Operations unit called Task Force 9, were likely Islamic State fighters. , according to three officials familiar with the finding, and military officials did. did not violate the laws of war or knowingly conceal casualties.

The findings do not require any disciplinary action.

In response to the investigation, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III ordered the military on Tuesday to improve the way it handles reports of civilian casualties. He say in a memo that he was “disappointed” in the handling of the initial review, which he said “contributed to the perception that the department was not committed to transparency and did not take the matter seriously.”

Mr. Austin appointed General Michael X. Garrett, the four-star head of Army Forces Command, to lead the investigation next November an investigation by The New York Times describes allegations that top officers and civilian officials sought to conceal casualties from the air raid.

The attack, which took place on March 18, 2019, near the Syrian town of Baghuz, was one of the largest civilian casualties in the years-long war against Islamic State, but the U.S. military has never openly acknowledged.

However, the Times investigation found that the military initially feared that dozens of people had been killed. A legal officer has treated the bombing as a possible war crime and needs to be investigated. The Department of Defense’s independent inspector general has begun an investigation, but the report containing their findings has stalled and makes no mention of the strike.

The army’s Central Command said in a statement to The Times that the attack was in self-defense against an impending threat and that 16 fighter jets and four civilians were killed. The command said it was unclear if the others killed were civilians, in part because women and children in the Islamic State sometimes took up arms.

General Garrett’s investigation is top secret, and the Pentagon does not release the results. But three officials familiar with the find said most of the others killed were described as fighters. The Times investigation found that the Islamic State camp attacked included women, children, captives and many wounded men who were no longer in combat and under the law of armed conflict. , is not a legitimate target.

In one two-page executive summary In a statement released by the Pentagon on Tuesday, General Garrett countered The Times report, saying commanders followed procedures to determine that no civilians were in the blast area prior to the attack. attack occurs. However, a senior Defense Department official admitted that the military had relied on faulty intelligence from its Syrian counterparts, who said that there were only fighters in the area and targeted inspections. with a low resolution drone camera, unable to distinguish between dozens of people. shelter in the area.

Three officials familiar with the findings, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the details of the classified report, said that 56 people were killed, but 52 of them were enemy fighters, despite the assessment. that classified all adult males at this site. as warriors, armed or not. Officials also said 17 people were injured, 15 of them civilians.

The Baghuz attack was part of a series of investigations by The Times last year into air strikes that killed civilians, including a rogue drone attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, killed 10 innocent people in August. Another Times investigation based on series of Pentagon assessments of strikes revealed systematic failures to prevent civilian deaths during the US air war against Islamic State.

Last week, this series was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. John F. Kirby, Pentagon spokesman, admit that reporting is “uncomfortable, not easy, and not straightforward to deal with.”

Responding to the investigation of The TimesAustin requested a standard civilian harm reporting process, the establishment of a military “center of excellence” and the completion of a comprehensive new policy on the matter that has been in place for more than a year. two years. That policy review is still underway, with details of the plan initially expected by the end of June, Pentagon officials said.

“Protecting innocent civilians is fundamental to our operational success and a strategic and moral imperative,” Austin said in his memo.

At a Pentagon news conference on Tuesday, Kirby defended General Garrett’s report and the lack of any disciplinary action, arguing that US ground commanders made the best decision. possibly with the information they had at the time.

“Yes, we have killed a number of innocent civilians, women and children,” Kirby said in response to questions about blaming service members for civilian deaths. “We really feel bad about this.”

But, he added, “It’s in the middle of battle, in the fog of war.”

The attack in Baghuz comes in the final days of an offensive aimed at eradicating Islamic State fighters from their self-proclaimed organization, which was once scattered across parts of Syria and Iraq. American F-15 attack jets carried out continuous bombing raids on a riverbank where many women, children and wounded took shelter.

Air Force personnel at headquarters in Qatar who were viewing aerial drone footage of the site immediately reported the attack, saying that around 70 civilians may have been killed. network and notify leaders that a formal investigation is required.

Instead, there was only a brief report by the Special Operations unit responsible for the attack, downplaying its impact, stating that several fighters had been killed and no mention of what. civilian deaths. An official investigation by the same unit said four civilians were killed and no wrongdoing was found.

Air Force personnel who witnessed the strike then alerted the Department of Defense’s inspector general’s office, which began an investigation.

General Garrett’s assessment identified a series of mistakes leading up to the attack and subsequent failures to accurately report casualties.

At the time of the attack, the Islamic State was fighting the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which had called for US strikes and said there were no civilians in the area. A senior US Department of Defense official said that a US commander carried out the attack based on faulty Syrian intelligence and blurred drone footage that did not reveal that many people were in the area. shelter in the area. , they won’t make that scene, period. ”

The defense official acknowledged that the military did not respond in a timely manner, but said General Garrett’s review did not find any “malicious or malicious intent”.

Current and former military members who have carried out thousands of airstrikes in the fight against Islamic State say service members have warned of a number of factors, including unreliability. reliance on intelligence from the Syrian Democratic Forces and excessive adherence to self-defence procedures. to justify the strikes.

“It’s the standard line of government: Mistakes have been made but no wrongdoing,” said Eugene Tate, a former assessor with the Department of Defense inspector general’s office who attempted the review. strike in Baghuz, said. “But if the same mistakes are repeated over and over for years, hasn’t someone done something? It didn’t sit well with me, and I’m not sure it would sit well with anyone else.”

Mr. Tate, who said he was never interviewed about General Garrett’s investigation, said he had witnessed Defense Department leaders trying to bury reports of the strike.

“The investigation said reporting was delayed,” Mr. Tate said. “None of the worker bees involved believed it was delayed. We believe there are no reports. “

In interviews with The Times, pilots, intelligence officers and members of a covert strike unit that ran much of the air war over Syria said the Baghuz attack was part of a pattern. worrisome: Regulatory loopholes allow Special Forces troops to speed up air strikes against the enemy, but more and more civilians are killed.

At the start of the fight against the Islamic State in 2014, top military leaders adopted a number of safeguards to minimize the damage to civilians. Targeted research drones are required to stay overhead for hours, gathering evidence that the enemy is present and not civilians. Strikes must be approved by senior officers.

But in 2016 and 2017, the power to launch strikes was vested in a secret cell, run by the Army’s elite Delta Force. The cell, called Talon Anvil, found that it could turn off these protections and attack at will by declaring self-defense. Before long, nearly all cell strikes were justified under the rules of self-defense, even when they were far from any skirmishes.

According to people familiar with the investigation, current and former members were interviewed by crime investigators from the inspector general’s office.

A spokeswoman for the office, Megan G. Reed, said they could neither confirm nor deny the existence of a criminal investigation but added, “We are conducting a team of work in the area. and is expected to publish a report within a few months. ”