US must be held accountable for Kabul drone strike that killed civilians: Activist

Drones have become the weapon of choice for the US military in many countries as they significantly lower the risk of injury and death to US soldiers while providing a measure of deniability when civilian casualties are involved.

On Aug. 29, 2021, an American MQ-9 Reaper drone shot a Hellfire missile in a neighborhood near the Kabul airport, killing 12 civilians.

Speaking with Press TV’s Spotlight program on Wednesday, peace and justice activist Judith Bella said the explanations provided by US officials regarding the drone attack were not sufficient at all. They cannot justify their mistake because the Americans monitor a place for a long time and check the movement of people before any strike is ordered, she said.

“Everywhere the United States has a base, they have a special set of rules where the host country will not prosecute any Americans for any crime and it has been a horrific problem,” she added.

An internal military investigation into the Kabul attack reportedly found that erroneous assumptions and biases by US analysts during the Pentagon’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 led to the Kabul drone attack that killed 12 civilians, including seven children.

Afghans still worried over drone strikes after US puts limits on drone use

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Three days prior to the drone attack, a bomber had killed more than a dozen US soldiers and scores of Afghan civilians at a main gate of the Kabul airport. Then, officials had intelligence that there would be another attack there and that it would involve a white Corolla. Then, US military analysts observed a white Toyota Corolla parked at what they believed was a Daesh compound. US officials hastily authorized a drone strike on the Toyota Corolla to thwart a suspected bombing attack. Hours later, US officials announced they had successfully thwarted the attack. As reports of civilian deaths started to emerge, the US military issued statements saying they had “no indications” of civilian casualties but would assess the claims and were investigating whether a secondary explosion may have killed civilians.

A US Central Command investigation into the drone attack, which was partially obtained by The New York Times (NYT), showed that military analysts reported within minutes of the drone strike that civilians may have been killed, and within three hours, it had assessed that at least three children were killed in the attack.

“Since no country under any law holds the American soldiers accountable for the crimes they commit in the countries of the world, they continue their wrongdoings in any way possible, and it is only one of the American standards in war, because the United States is not a member of any international convention, so no law can hold American soldiers accountable,” Bella pointed out.

The documents obtained by the Times also provided detailed examples of how assumptions and biases led to the deadly blunder that US military officials had wanted to cover up.

Central Command declined to provide additional comment beyond statements it had previously made about the strike. The Pentagon previously acknowledged that the strike was a “tragic mistake”, and told The Times that a new action plan intended to protect civilians drew on lessons learned from the incident.

Back in 2017, the Trump administration replaced old guidelines with a looser set of rules for drone engagement that led to a 330 percent rise in civilian casualties in Afghanistan. Research by an independent media organization shows that from 2015 to 2020 alone, between 300 to 900 civilians lost their lives to US drone operations. Experts say that even with the new policy adopted, US drones in Afghanistan are still dangerous.

The aforementioned policy requires “near certainty” that a target is a member of a designated terrorist group and “near certainty” that no civilians will be killed or injured before pulling the trigger. But it still remains unclear what this “near certainty” standard means in practice.

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