Mark Follman

When dozens of Afghan civilians were killed during U.S. air strikes early last month, a U.S. military commander attempted to convince the public that the U.S. was not responsible for the deaths. As I wrote here on May 7:

With an investigation of the latest bombing incident underway on Wednesday, the senior U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, cautioned that the reports of civilian casualties might not withstand scrutiny. “It is certainly a technique of the Taliban and other insurgent groups to claim civilian casualties at every event,” he told reporters. In a follow-up report, McKiernan declined to give any details but said, “We have some other information that leads us to distinctly different conclusions about the cause of the civilian casualties.”

Now, an official U.S. investigation described in media reports today offers a starkly different judgment:

A military investigation has concluded that American personnel made significant errors in carrying out some of the air strikes 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.

“In several instances where there was a legitimate threat, the choice of how to deal with that threat did not comply with the standing rules of engagement,” said the senior military official, according to the New York Times.

B1 bomber over Afghanistan. (Photo: U.S. Air Force.)

The Times report points out the difficult tactical circumstances of the air strikes on the village of Granai; military investigators also found that the Taliban deliberately used civilians as human shields.

Still, as Noah Shachtman reports today over at Wired, the U.S. military keeps digging in with denials of culpability for the deaths caused by its bombs:

“There is nothing — in the story, or that we’ve seen or heard elsewhere — that says our actions led to additional collateral damage or civilian casualties,” said Lt. Commander Christine Sidenstricker, a spokesperson for U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, according to Shachtman. “And regardless, the fact remains that civilians were killed because the Taliban deliberately caused it to happen. They forced civilians to remain in places they were attacking from.”

As I also noted here recently about plans for further use of U.S. air power in Afghanistan, the Taliban undoubtedly will have more opportunities ahead to “deliberately cause” such civilian deaths.