Afghan Airstrike Deaths: US Military Admits Errors

Earlier this week The New York Times carried a significant piece on last month's airstrikes in western Afghanistan, which seems to have slipped under the radar. Despite previous denials:

A military investigation has concluded that American personnel made significant errors in carrying out some of the airstrikes in western Afghanistan on May 4 that killed dozens of Afghan civilians, according to a senior American military official.

The official said the civilian death toll would probably have been reduced if American air crews and forces on the ground had followed strict rules devised to prevent civilian casualties. Had the rules been followed, at least some of the strikes by American warplanes against half a dozen targets over seven hours would have been aborted.

Later last month another NYT report on the strikes had "officials and human rights workers" calling them "the worst episode of civilian casualties in eight years of war in Afghanistan." The new report appears to contradict earlier claims by the US military, quoted in the May 14 Times article, that these estimates of civilian casualties were "far too high."

Two things stand out in all of this. Firstly, the US military has admitted to errors- in fact to rules not being followed- but only well after the event. As can be seen by the relatively light coverage of the new investigation, this amounts to a successful burying of the story on the military's part. Which brings me to the second significant point. The civilian deaths on May 4 did not result from just one tragically mistargeted missile. The airstrikes went on for seven hours, during which time rules were not followed. This week's Times report discusses, "the difficult, split-second decisions facing young officers in the heat of combat as they balance using lethal force to protect their troops under fire with detailed rules restricting the use of firepower to prevent civilian deaths," but offers no analysis of why these detailed rules were not followed, or why this calamity was allowed to go on for a whole night.