Lauren Moye, FISM News
U.S. Command Central confirmed a 2019 airstrike in Syria that took the lives of civilian women and children for the first time this week in response to a report from The New York Times, while also saying the strike was a justified attack against active combatant Islamic State fighters.
The New York Times article, published on Nov. 13, draws heavily on the testimony of Pentagon officials who claim that there had been an intentional coverup of a potential war crime. The reporters also reviewed various confidential documents.
The crime in question occurred on March 18, 2019 near Baghuz, Syria when U.S. military jets dropped multiple bombs on a group of women and children taking shelter alongside the banks of the Euphrates River. The strike took a total of 80 lives.
U.S. Central Command’s chief spokesman, Captain Bill Urban, said, “We abhor the loss of innocent life and take all possible measures to prevent them. In this case, we self-reported and investigated the strike according to our own evidence and take full responsibility for the unintended loss of life.”
“The ISIS pocket included thousands of fighters and family members including women and children,” Urban continued. “The remaining fighters including some women and child combatants, along with many ISIS family members, including some who were likely held against their will, decided to make a determined stand in an area that included buildings, tunnels, and cliffs. Multiple entreaties to ISIS to allow family members to depart the area were rebuffed, and thousands of family members remained in the area of the fighting.”
New York Times reports that the bombing was witnessed by officials in the Combined Air Operations Center at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar through the use of a high-definition drone. The command force was scouting the area for hostile militants but had only located the group of women and children, who were known to frequent the banks to escape the area. These officials looked on in “stunned disbelief” when an American F-15E jet entered the camera and then dropped a 500-lb bomb. Another jet tracked down the survivors from the initial blast, dropping an additional two 2000-lb bombs.
It’s been reported that the airstrike was called in by a classified special operations team known as Task Force 9. Officials at the Qatar base did not know the strike was incoming. This same team, according to the NYT article, was also responsible for the only immediate assessment of the legality of the strike. They determined that 16 fighters and 4 civilians were killed by the bombs. The military status of the other 60 lives could not be determined.
According to Central Command, the Syrian Democratic Forces reported they were under fire by the remnants of ISIS fighters that morning and requested air support. However, there were no precision missiles available at that time. The task force determined that the likelihood that “a majority of those killed were also combatants,” along with the unavailability of more precise munitions, justified the strike as being lawful with a low loss of civilian life.
The task force determined that no further action regarding war crime notification or disciplinary actions was warranted, and no independent investigation was performed.
Although Central Command formally acknowledged the Baghuz airstrike on Saturday, the actual events of March 18 remain in dispute. This includes claims that Task Force 9 relied on standard-definition video footage from their own drone. Central Command claimed that high-definition video was not available for use at that time.
In the Air Operations Center in Qatar, officials immediately recognized the potential war crime. Lt. Col. Dean Korsak, the Air Force lawyer present at the time, alerted the independent inspector general at the Defense Department, however, the resulting report made no mention of the airstrike.
Korsak also emailed the Senate Armed Services Committee two years later, which the Times obtained for their report. Korsak wrote, “I’m putting myself at great risk of military retaliation for sending this. Senior ranking US military officials intentionally and systematically circumvented the deliberate strike process.”
Times also interviewed Gene Tate, an evaluator within the inspector general’s office at the time. Tate said, “Leadership just seemed so set on burying this. No one wanted anything to do with it. It makes you lose faith in the system when people are trying to do what’s right but no one in positions of leadership wants to hear it.”