Kabul strike culprits go unpunished

WASHINGTON－No military personnel of the United States involved in an August drone strike that killed 10 Afghan civilians, including seven children, will face disciplinary action, said the Pentagon on Monday.

The Pentagon said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has approved recommendations for improvements in strike operations from the generals who lead the US Central Command and Special Operations Command, based on findings of an independent Pentagon review released last month. There were no recommendations for discipline made by the generals, said John Kirby, chief Pentagon spokesman.

The Aug 29 drone strike took place in the final days of the US-led evacuation of Kabul after the Taliban seized control of the country.

US officials said they had intelligence of a possible Islamic State attack on the evacuation operations at Kabul airport, and launched a missile from a drone at a target that in reality was a family that included an Afghan man who worked for a US aid group.

In early November, an initial report carried out by the US Air Force inspector general, Lieutenant General Sami Said, called the strike tragic but "an honest mistake".

The review by Central Command head General Kenneth McKenzie Jr. and Special Operations Command chief General Richard Clarke made use of Said's report and detailed recommendations on procedures for future drone strikes.

But it made no call for anyone to be punished for the mistake.

"What we saw here was a breakdown in process, in execution and procedural events. Not the result of negligence, not the result of misconduct, not the result of poor leadership," Kirby said.

'Shocking' decision

The drone strike on a white Toyota Corolla sedan killed Zemerai Ahmadi and nine other family members, including seven children. Ahmadi, 37, was a longtime employee of a US humanitarian organization.

"We know that there will be some who don't like this particular decision, but it wasn't an outcome that we came to without careful thought and consideration," Kirby said. He also said that if Austin "believed that accountability was warranted and needed, he would certainly support those kinds of efforts".

Steven Kwon, founder of aid organization Nutrition& Education International that Ahmadi worked for, called the disciplinary decision shocking.

"How can our military wrongly take the lives of 10 precious Afghan people, and hold no one accountable in any way?" he said on Monday. "When the Pentagon absolves itself of accountability, it sends a dangerous and misleading message that its actions were somehow justified."

The intelligence about the car and its potential threat came just days after an Islamic State suicide bomber killed 13 US troops and 169 Afghans at a Kabul airport gate. At the time, the US was working to evacuate thousands of its citizens and those of allies.

Said concluded that US forces genuinely believed that the car they were following was an imminent threat and that they needed to strike it before it got closer to the airport.

He said better communication between those making the strike decision and other support personnel might have raised more doubts about the bombing, but in the end may not have prevented it.

Recommendations

Said made a number of recommendations, spelling out that more can be done to prevent what military officials call "confirmation bias"－the idea that troops making the strike decision were too quick to conclude that what they were seeing aligned with the intelligence and confirmed their conclusion to bomb what turned out to be the wrong car.

The lieutenant general also said the military should have personnel present with a strike team, and their job should be to actively question such conclusions. He also recommended that the military improve its procedures to ensure that there are no children and innocent civilians around before launching a time-sensitive strike.

Officials said McKenzie and Clarke largely agreed with Said's recommendations.

The US is working to pay financial reparations to Ahmadi's relatives and surviving family members, and potentially get them out of Afghanistan, but nothing has been finalized. When asked why it was taking so long, Kirby said the US wants to make sure that the family will be gotten out as safely as possible, and that high-level discussions about that are ongoing.

Agencies - Xinhua