On 22 August — coincidentally just as I was writing an explanation of why “civilian casualties” is such a frequent topic on this blog — a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan killed a large number of people. Whether those killed were mainly Taliban insurgents or civilians is a matter of dispute.
The incident occured when coalition (US and Afghan army) ground troops had entered Azizabad, a village in Herat province. According to coalition military reports, they came under attack as they moved into the village, so they called in an air strike by an AC-130 gunship, which has side-firing cannons and 105-millimeter howitzers. The gunship blasted at least two of the buildings from which insurgents were firing at the allied forces.
Local Afghan residents and Afghan officials said that up to 95 civilians were killed along with a small number of Taliban. If true, that would make this incident the worst in terms of civilian casualties in the seven years of the war in Afghanistan. In contrast, U.S. military officials claimed that their own investigation found that 25 Taliban including a Taliban leader died in the airstrike, along with 5 civilians. Each side claimed that its data was correct and the other side’s data was flawed.
Let’s examine a chronology of how this story has unfolded over time, as the various investigations yield their findings:
- Aug 24: An initial report of this incident was published by the NY Times. A local police official said that there were no Taliban in the area, and that the dead included 50 children, 19 women, and 26 men. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has for the past year been chastising US and NATO for excessive civilian casualties, strongly condemned the attack. Although civilian deaths have been decreasing over the past year, they have sharply increased in recent months. For example, this latest incident came on the heels of an airstrike in eastern Afghanistan on July 6 that killed 27-47 people in a wedding party, mainly women and children, including the bride. Karzai’s spokesman said that requests to US forces for greater care had had little effect, and that Karzai was considering imposing restrictions on US/NATO air strikes. US officials said “all allegations of civilian casualties are taken very seriously”, and that they were investigating the attack and that their preliminary findings backed their own casualty estimates. [NYT story]
- Aug 24: The NY Times reported that Afghan President Karzai relieved two Afghan army officers, including one general, of their posts as punishment for their part in the incident. [NYT story]
- Aug 26: The NY Times and SF Chronicle each report that the recent jump in civilian casualties caused by US and NATO airstrikes had prompted the Afghan Council of Ministers to review the presence of international forces and agreements with foreign allies, including NATO and the United States. [NYT story] [SF Chronicle story]
- Aug 27: Tne Associate Press and the NY Times reported that the U.N. had investigated the incident and had estimates similar to those of Afghan officials: 90 civilians dead, including 60 children. They based their estimates on interviews of local villagers, who said that at the time of the airstrike, villagers and their relatives had gathered for a memorial service for a militia commander allied with the Afghan police. The US military stood by its original estimates: 25 militants and 5 civilians killed. The NYT story mentioned that Afghans often complain that they are targeted by coalition forces based on mis-information provided by Afghan business rivals, neighbors with a vendetta, or people who want the rewards offered for fingering Taliban. [NYT story] [AP story]
- Aug 27 – Sep 3: The US military issued statements, reported by the Washington Post and the NY Times, describing their version of what happened, defending their casualty estimates, and challenging the estimates of the U.N. and Afghan officials. They included forensic evidence to back up their claims. One US military official, who saw photographs taken at the scene as troops went house to house assessing damage and casualties, said there was no evidence to support the higher civilian death toll. The NYT story also quotes a US general accusing the Taliban of hiding in civilian residences to try to shield themselves. [NYT story] [Washington Post story]
- Aug 31: The LA Times reported that the US, U.N., and Afghan officials had agreed to a joint investigation in order to try to resolve the highly disparate casualty estimates. The US military continued to accuse Taliban fighters of placing civilians in jeopardy by basing themselves in villages. They also accused the militants of trying to hide their own battlefield casualties by falsely labeling them as civilian dead. Thirdly, they argued that compensation payments offered to the families of people accidentally killed by Western and Afghan troops sometimes spur false claims. Afghan officials suggested that a local clan had tricked US special forces, who conducted the raid along with Afghan commandos, into carrying out the strike against one of its rival clans. But US authorities maintained that Taliban fighters were in the area and that a Taliban commander named Mullah Siddiq was among those killed. [LA Times story]
- Sep 7-8: The Associated Press and NY Times reported that videos of scores of dead bodies lined up side-by-side — including bodies of children — began to surface in Herat, providing seemingly irrefutable evidence that the number of civilian casualties was higher than estimated by US forces. A U.N. official who saw one video of Azizabad told The Associated Press it shows many maimed children. He became highly emotional describing rows of bodies. After viewing the videos, US officials re-opened their investigation of the incident. “There is some evidence that suggests that the evidence that the US military used in … its investigation may not have been complete,” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. He said that a general would be dispatched to Afghanistan by U.S. Central Command to review the initial US military investigation, and that Central Command might conduct its own investigation of the incident. [Aug 7 AP article] [Aug 8 AP article] [NY Times article]
- Sep 15: The Associated Press reported that Afghan government investigators concluded that the August 22 airstrike: a) was based on false information that had been fed to the Americans by a rival tribe, and b) killed no Taliban fighters, only civilians. This conclusion was announced by a spokesman of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The spokesman also said that Afghan police had arrested three men alleged to have given the US military the false intelligence that led to the airstrike, but that their tribal head was not arrested because he was in “protective custody of US forces.” The spokesman said “… personal animosity led to trying to use the international forces for their own political disputes, which led to a disasterous event and caused a strain on the relationship of the Afghan government and international forces. Not a single Talib was killed. So it was a total disaster, and it made it even worse when there were denials, total denials.” The Coalition has declined to comment. Oddly, the US airstrike targeted Afghan employees of a British security firm and their families. [AP story]
- Nov 9: The Los Angeles Times reported that the US military had, after re-investigating, concluded that 33 civilians were killed in the Azizabad airstrike. [LA Times article]
Meanwhile, on September 1 an errant NATO artillery strike killed three more Afghan children and wounded seven other civilians. [LA Times story]
