Note: This is my first post on this blog. Col. Lang recently very kindly invited me to be a guest author and while I don't know that I'm up to the standards of this august group, I hope to learn much from your comments and encouragement.
Information is starting to appear that suggests that elements of the US military knew that the Doctors Without Borders (also known as MSF, its French initials) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan was, indeed, a hospital, and therefore not a legitimate target and despite that, the US bombed it anyway. The Pentagon is sitting on some of the most crucial information, however, citing the allegedly ongoing investigation, so many questions remain to be answered, but enough information on what happened has leaked out into the public domain that suggests that a criminal act may have been committed, an act that killed 22 people, including 12 hospital staffers, when the hospital was bombed by a US aircraft on Oct. 3.
- The Attack Was Anything But Random -
On October 13, Vice News, relying on knowledgeable sources and a US Air Force doctrine document on targeting, reported that the attack was anything but random. "The airstrike on the hospital was not just a spur-of-the-moment decision; rather, it was the end product of detailed planning and coordination," Vice News reports, which then provides a description of the targeting process based on the doctrine document to include the provision of a "no strike" list, which lists all of those objects which are exempt from attack, including hospitals. The targeting process always includes a determination of the legality of the target and requires commanders to take steps to "avoid excessive incidental civilian casualties and damage to civilian property." It is fairly likely, Vice concludes, that a US military lawyer signed off on the Kunduz attack. Gen. Campbell, the US commander in Afghanistan, has testified that there was a ground controller in the vicinity and that he was talking to the AC-130 crew, which, itself, would have been fully briefed on the situation, before even leaving the ground, including the presence of any such prohibited targets.
- US Intelligence Knew It Was a Hospital -
An Associated Press story that first appeared on Oct. 15 reported that special operations intelligence analysts, in the days before the hospital was bombed, were investigating an alleged Pakistani intelligence services operative who may have been working for the Taliban from inside the hospital. The special operations analysts, AP reports, had assembled a dossier that included maps with the hospital circled, along with indications that intelligence agencies were tracking the location of the Pakistani operative and activity reports based on overhead surveillance, according to a former intelligence official who is familiar with some of the documents describing the site. The intelligence suggested the hospital was being used as a Taliban command and control center and may have housed heavy weapons. No evidence has surfaced indicating that there was, indeed, a Pakistani agent inside the hospital--MSF denies that there were any Pakistanis on its staff–-but whether it is true or not, US military intelligence clearly knew that the facility was a hospital. It is not clear, however, whether or not the AC-130 gunship crew that carried out the attack that night was informed of the intelligence on the hospital.
- Repeated Attacks -
MSF officials have said that hospital was hit five times over the period of an hour, and that they could hear the attacking aircraft circling overhead. Aircrews, AP goes on to report, would typically fly with maps showing the protected sites, and if that protection is violated by the adversary, there are procedures in place to minimize civilian casualties, procedures that were apparently not applied. What the new details suggest "is that the hospital was intentionally targeted, killing at least 22 patients and MSF staff," said Meinie Nicolai, president of MSF's operational directorate. "This would amount to a premeditated massacre. …" MSF also insists that there was no firefight in the area and that it was a calm night, contrary to what Gen. John Campbell, the US commander in Afghanistan, testifed to the US Congress a week-and-a-half ago. MSF admits treating Taliban fighters at the hospital but they say that no weapons were allowed in and there were no weapons in the hospital that night.
Even if it was an accident, Obama's apology is not nearly enough for MSF. "We are still in the dark about why a well-known hospital full of patients and medical staff was repeatedly bombarded for more than an hour," said Dr. Joanne Liu, president of MSF told the New York Times. "We need to understand what happened and why." Françoise Bouchet-Saulnier, an MSF legal director, added that "Even behind a mistake, there is still a potential violation of humanitarian law that may amount to a war crime."
- US Acting To Destroy Evidence? -
On Oct. 15, an armored vehicle carrying members of the US-Afghan-NATO investigation team forced its way into the hospital compound. The hospital is no longer being used by MSF but an MSF team was visiting the facility at the time. "The unannounced and forced entry damaged the gate to the property, potentially destroyed evidence, and caused stress and fear for the MSF team that had arrived earlier in the day to visit the hospital," MSF said in an Oct. 16 statement . "This occurred despite an agreement made between MSF and the joint investigation team that MSF would be provided advance notice before each step of the process involving the MSF's personnel and assets." The Huffington Post reported that the incursion suggests that the government probes may be heavy-handed and ineffective, trampling on the aid organization's rights and, perhaps, on clues that remain at the site of the bombing. "The organization's push for an independent inquiry may gain traction now that it appears that the government investigations involve sending over armored vehicles unannounced."
- It Looks Like a War Crime -
MSF continues to maintain its original charge that the US military bombed its hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan deliberately. At the same time, anonymous Pentagon sources, told CNN that MSF did, indeed, doing everything right to alert the US that it was operating in Kunduz, which had been taken over by the Taliban some days before the Cotober 3 bombing incident.
Christopher Stokes, general director of MSF, told the Associated Press in an interview in the ruined remains of the facility that the precise nature of the attack casts doubts on the US assertions that it was a mistake. "The hospital was repeatedly hit both at the front and the rear and extensively destroyed and damaged, even though we have provided all the coordinates and all the right information to all the parties in the conflict," he said. "The extensive, quite precise destruction of this hospital ... doesn't indicate a mistake. The hospital was repeatedly hit." The attack went on for an hour despite repeated calls to the US military telling them they were hitting a hospital. Stokes told the AP that that MSF wanted a "clear explanation because all indications point to a grave breach of international humanitarian law, and therefore a war crime."
Anonymous sources within the Pentagon, meanwhile, confirmed to CNN, that MSF did, indeed, do everything right. The US government was well aware that the facility was a hospital but, according to CNN's sources, that information did not get to the correct military personnel. One of the sources said that MSF "did everything right in informing us." The location of the hospital "was in the military database" of restricted sites such as hospitals, mosques and schools that U.S. pilots are not allowed to strike even if insurgents are present. There had been reports of Taliban at the hospital, but that does not override the rules of engagement or the fact that as a hospital, it was a protected target, CNN's sources said.
- Survivors Contradict Official Accounts of Kunduz Hospital Attack -
Afghanistan's acting defense minister, Masoom Stanekzai, went so far as to defend the attack. In comments to the Associated Press, yesterday, he claimed that there were Taliban and Pakistani operatives in the hospital and that a Taliban flag had been painted onto the walls of the compound. "That was a place they wanted to use as a safe place because everybody knows that our security forces and international security forces were very careful not to do anything with a hospital," he said. Stanekzai further claimed that the Afghan government had evidence that Taliban and Pakistani ISIS operatives were communicating from the hospital to command centers in Pakistan, as if this justifies the attack.
Eyewitnesses and survivors interviewed, last week, by Andrew Quilty of {Foreign Policy} magazine completely contradicted Stanekzai's claims, however. A mullah who was the brother of a patient who was killed in the attack and two others, all of whom asked not to be named, all said that the MSF staff did not allow any weapons into the facility, a ban that the Taliban actually respected, and that the fighting in the city that night never got closer to the hospital than about 200 yards.
Whether or not Taliban forces were in the hospital, attacking such a facility is totally contrary to internationally accepted war practices, and in fact constitutes a war crime, as MSF and others have rightly stated.
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