Pentagon review finds no criminal negligence in Afghan drone strike

A Pentagon review of an Aug. 29 drone strike in Kabul that killed 10 Afghan civilians, including children, found no violation of the laws of war but did find “execution errors,” the Air Force inspector general said Wednesday.

Lt. Gen. Sami Said told reporters that communication breakdowns and issues with how U.S. officials identified and confirmed the target of the bombing “regrettably led to civilian casualties.”

Said’s investigation concluded that the errant strike was not caused by misconduct or negligence and it doesn’t recommend disciplinary action, but the report is now with commanders who could decide on what accountability, if any, there would be.

The mistaken strike came as U.S. forces scrambled to leave the country in the final days of its mission after the Taliban’s swift takeover. It also took place three days after an ISIS-K suicide bomber killed 13 American troops and dozens of Afghans outside Hamid Karzai International Airport.

“You have to put yourself into the conditions that existed at the time,” Said said. “So you can imagine the stress on the force is high and the risk to force is high, and not appreciating [the incident] through that lens, I think would be inappropriate.”

The Defense Department — which initially defended the targeting as a “righteous strike” — carried out the bombing after commanders errantly thought the driver of a white Toyota Corolla was an ISIS-K operative with explosives.

Directly after the strike, however, reports emerged that multiple civilians —  including seven children — were mistakenly targeted, and less than a month later the Pentagon concluded it made a “tragic mistake.”

Said — who was tasked with overseeing the investigation ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin — said commanders and analysts misread the drone surveillance of the driver, 37-year-old Zemerai Ahmadi, who was actually a longtime aid worker for a U.S.-based group.

Officials “truly believed at the time that they were targeting an imminent threat to U.S. forces [at the airport]. The white Corolla, its contents and occupants were genuinely assessed at the time to be a threat to U.S. forces,” he said.

Analysts time and time again mistook visual evidence and intelligence prior to the strike as indication they were tracking the correct target, which they believed to be Ahmadi and the Corolla.

The assessment further tilted toward a strike after officials saw Ahmadi with a computer bag, similar to one used to carry explosives in the Kabul airport attack, Said said.

“It starts to build on itself in multiple, different settings throughout the eight-hour window, to the point that it became ‘that is the target and we’ve met the threshold to strike,’” he said.

“When you’re consciously or subconsciously start to perceive something and you go ‘that is a suspicious person,’ every activity they take thereafter you start seeing it through that lens,” he later added.

U.S. officials also initially said no women or children were assessed to be at risk prior to the attack, but another look at drone surveillance footage found that a child could be seen near the car two minutes before the missile was launched, Said said.

“The first time we had confirmation of kids was at the two-minute time frame before the trigger pull,” he said, stressing that he had witnessed the video himself and that the presence of a child was “100 percent not obvious” even to an image analyst.

The Air Force IG report, which is classified, also made several recommendations to prevent future errors.

Among them is installing a person with a strike team who can play devil’s advocate and question any conclusions made ahead of a decision, as well as improved procedures to ensure innocent civilians such as children are not present before launching a strike.