11/21/2023 0 Comments Us drone strike afghanistan farmersoperations difficult - a challenge that has been compounded by the military’s own long-standing refusal to compile statistics and verify information about who is killed in its strikes. The opaque nature of the war in Afghanistan has made calculating accurate death tolls from U.S. Journalists and rights advocates have so far not reported any details of on-the-ground investigations or if such investigations are even possible. Other than dedicated Afghanistan observers, few took notice. A retaliatory strike that came immediately after the recent terrorist attack at Hamid Karzai International Airport hit rural eastern Afghanistan, allegedly killing two people: an ISIS “planner” and a “facilitator,” according to the Defense Department.Īt the press briefing Monday, Kirby declined to share further information about the identities of the two people allegedly killed in that prior attack. In contrast, many past strikes have gone under the radar - and continue to do so. When the strike was reported, immediate video footage of the civilians who were killed in the attack began to circulate, and even international journalists were able to quickly access the attack site. Kabul, on the other hand, is the highly populated capital and the country’s center for expatriates, nongovernmental organizations, and both Afghan as well as international journalists. war in Afghanistan has mostly been waged in rural areas, away from the attention of international media. What separated the recent Kabul drone strike from the long pattern of reported civilian deaths was the level of immediate attention and outrage it has generated. The drone program is opaque, with extremely limited accountability for anyone involved.” “At the same time, the military has repeatedly suppressed information on civilian casualties. What investigations do take place are neither consistent nor rigorous,” said Nick McDonell, author of “The Bodies in Person: An Account of Civilian Casualties in American Wars,” an analysis of the impact of the U.S. “In my experience, the bar for thorough military investigation has been so high as to discount a majority of credible incidents. “The drone program is opaque, with extremely limited accountability for anyone involved.” war have pointed to the lack of serious investigations on the ground into the deaths - accountability that will be even harder to come by in a remote war. striking targets with aircraft launched from faraway drone bases.Ĭritics of civilian casualties in the U.S. While the withdrawal of American troops can be described as the end to the war in Afghanistan, the Kabul strike shows how the war may simply enter a new chapter, with the U.S. ![]() Past attacks have hit families traveling in cars and buses, wedding parties, hospitals filled with patients, and groups of farmers working in fields. forces and their proxies reported to have killed large numbers of civilians. The Kabul drone strike is just one in a long string of attacks in Afghanistan by U.S. As reports confirmed that an innocent family had been killed, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said that the Department of Defense is “not in a position to dispute” reports that civilians were killed, stating that the incident would be investigated. The Defense Department and other arms of the Biden administration continued to describe the drone attack as a “successful” strike against the militant group Islamic State-Khorasan, or ISIS-K, which had taken responsibility for a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport. ![]() “Where is Daesh here? Were these children Daesh?” “The Americans said the airstrike killed Daesh members,” a neighbor of the family angrily told reporters after the strike, referring to the Islamic State.
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