The announcement came after the US Defence Department conducted an internal review of the strike.
What did the Pentagon say?
As many as 10 civilians, including seven children, were “tragically killed” in the drone strike, US Central Command head Frank McKenzie said.
“It was a mistake and I offer my sincere apology,” McKenzie told reporters. “At the time of the strike, I was confident that the strike had averted an imminent threat to our forces at the airport.”
McKenzie added that he is “fully responsible for this strike and this tragic outcome.”
When asked if anybody would be held responsible for the civilian deaths, McKenzie said the military was “in the process, right now, of continuing that line of investigation, and I have nothing for you now because that involves personnel issues.”
Defence secretary Lloyd Austin also apologised for what he described as a “horrible mistake.”
What was said at the time of the strike?
The Pentagon originally claimed the August 29 bombing targeted a vehicle carrying suicide bombers which were headed towards Kabul airport. The strike was conducted just days after a bombing claimed by the “Islamic State” which killed scores of Afghani civilians and over a dozen US troops. The US and other countries were scrambling to finish their evacuations from Afghanistan ahead of the August 31 deadline.
The US military had said there were “no indication” of civilian casualties at the time of the strike. They also said that “[s]ignificant secondary explosions from the vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material.”
However, an Afghan official quickly disputed the account, telling the AP news agency that children were killed in the blast.
DW’s Washington bureau chief Ines Pohl said this showed the US “needed better intelligence.”
“This might just be the beginning, as the US relies on drone strikes now that the troops have withdrawn,” she said.
What about the alleged IS connection?
McKenzie said the strike was conducted based on hours of surveillance and multiple intelligence reports, which made them believe a white Toyota Corolla was carrying explosives.
However, the review showed this to be wrong, with the secondary explosion most likely coming from the vehicle’s fuel tank.
“Moreover we now assess that it is unlikely that the vehicle and those who died were affiliated with ISIS-K, or a direct threat to US forces,” the general said, referring to the IS Khorasan group.
McKenzie said the US may make reparation payments to relatives of the victims of the strike.
Separately, defence secretary Austin confirmed “there was no connection” between the driver of the vehicle and the Islamic State group.
The driver’s activities that day were “completely harmless and not at all related to the imminent threat we believed we faced,” Austin said.
Humanitarian aid group Amnesty International said the US admission was a step in the right direction and that an impartial probe was now necessary.
“Anyone suspected of criminal responsibility should be prosecuted in a fair trial,” said the organisation’s senior crisis adviser, Brian Castner.
A survivor said about 200 labourers were sleeping in five tents pitched near a farm when they were bombed.
Jalalabad: A US drone strike intended to hit an Islamic State (IS) hideout in Afghanistan killed at least 30 civilians resting after a day’s labour in the fields, officials said on Thursday.
The attack on Wednesday night also injured 40 people after accidentally targeting farmers and labourers who had just finished collecting pine nuts at mountainous Wazir Tangi in eastern Nangarhar province, three Afghan officials told Reuters. “The workers had lit a bonfire and were sitting together when a drone targeted them,” tribal elder Malik Rahat Gul told Reuters via telephone from Wazir Tangi.
Afghanistan‘s defence ministry and a senior US official in Kabul confirmed the drone strike, but did not share details of civilian casualties.
“US forces conducted a drone strike against Da’esh (IS) terrorists in Nangarhar,” said Colonel Sonny Leggett, a spokesman for US forces in Afghanistan. “We are aware of allegations of the death of non-combatants and are working with local officials to determine the facts.”
Relatives and residents pray near a coffin during a funeral ceremony of one of the victims after a drone strike, in Khogyani district of Nangarhar province, Afghanistan September 19, 2019. Credit: Reuters/Parwiz
About 14,000 US troops are in Afghanistan, training and advising Afghan security forces and conducting counter-insurgency operations against IS and the Taliban movement.
Haidar Khan, who owns the pine nut fields, said about 150 workers were there for harvesting, with some still missing as well as the confirmed dead and injured. A survivor of the drone strike said about 200 labourers were sleeping in five tents pitched near the farm when the attack happened.
“Some of us managed to escape, some were injured but many were killed,” said Juma Gul, a resident of northeastern Kunar province who had travelled along with labourers to harvest and shell pine nuts this week. Angered by the attack, some residents of Nangarhar province demanded an apology and monetary compensation from the US government.
“Such mistakes cannot be justified. American forces must realise (they) will never win the war by killing innocent civilians,” said Javed Mansur, a resident of Jalalabad. Scores of local men joined a protest against the attack on Thursday morning as they helped carry the victims’ bodies to Jalalabad city and then to the burial site.
Attaullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the provincial governor said the aerial attack was meant to target IS militants who often use farmlands for training and recruitment purposes, but had hit innocent civilians.
Men carry a coffin of one of the victims after a drone strike, in Khogyani district of Nangarhar province, Afghanistan September 19, 2019. Credit: Reuters/Parwiz
Jihadist IS fighters first appeared in Afghanistan in 2014 and have since made inroads in the east and north where they are battling the government, US forces and the Taliban.
The exact number of IS fighters is difficult to calculate because they frequently switch allegiances, but the US military estimates there are about 2,000. There was no word from IS on the attack. There has been no let-up in assaults by Taliban and IS as Afghanistan prepares for a presidential election this month.
In a separate incident, at least 20 people died in a suicide truck bomb attack on Thursday carried out by the Taliban in the southern province of Zabul.
Hundreds of civilians have been killed in fighting across Afghanistan after the collapse of US-Taliban peace talks this month. The Taliban has warned US President Donald Trump that he will regret his decision to abruptly call off talks that could have led to a political settlement to end the 18-year-old war.
The United Nations says nearly 4,000 civilians were killed or wounded in the first half of the year. That included a big increase in casualties inflicted by government and US-led foreign forces.
The Taliban control or contest more territory in Afghanistan than at any time since they were ousted by a US-backed intervention in late 2001, and US officials have acknowledged the uneven performance of Afghan security forces.
US President Barack Obama plays host to a LGBT Pride Month reception at the White House in Washington, US June 9, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst
Washington: President Barack Obama has approved giving the US military greater ability to accompany and enable Afghan forces battling a resilient Taliban insurgency, in a move to assist them more proactively on the battlefield, a US official told Reuters.
The senior US defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the decision would also allow greater use of US air power, particularly close air support.
However, the official cautioned: “This is not a blanket order to target the Taliban.”
Obama’s decision again redefines America’s support role in Afghanistan’s grinding conflict, more than a year after international forces wrapped up their combat mission and shifted the burden to Afghan troops.
It also comes ahead of Obama’s eagerly anticipated decision on whether to forge ahead with a scheduled reduction in the numbers of US troops from about 9,800 currently to 5,500 by the start of 2017.
A group of retired generals and senior diplomats urged Obama last week to forgo those plans, warning they could undermine the fight against the Afghan Taliban, whose leader was killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan last month.
Under the new policy, the US commander in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, will be able to decide when it is appropriate for American troops to accompany conventional Afghan forces into the field – something they have so far only been doing with Afghan special forces, the official said.
The expanded powers are only meant to be employed “in those select instances in which their engagement can enable strategic effects on the battlefield,” the official said.
That means that US forces should not be expected to accompany Afghan soldiers on day-to-day missions.
“This added flexibility … is fully supported by the Afghan government and will help the Afghans at an important moment for the country,” the official said.
Aiding Afghan offensive
The decision is a departure from current US rules of engagement in Afghanistan, which impose limits on US forces’ ability to strike at insurgents.
For example, the US military was previously allowed to take action against the Taliban “in extremis” – moments when their assistance was needed to prevent a significant Afghan military setback.
That definition, however, left the US military postured to assist them in more defensive instances. The new policy would allow US forces to accompany Afghans at key moments in their offensive campaign against the Taliban.
“The US forces will more proactively support Afghan conventional forces,” the official said.
The Taliban control or contest more territory in Afghanistan than at any time since they were ousted by a US-backed intervention in late 2001, and US officials have acknowledged the uneven performance of Afghan security forces.
Large portions of Afghanistan, including the provincial capital of northern Kunduz and multiple districts of southern Helmand province, have fallen, at times briefly, to the Taliban over the past year-and-a-half. Many other districts and provinces are also under varying degrees of Taliban control.
The new authorities that Obama has given the US military could give it greater leeway in addressing the shortcomings of Afghan security forces.
Still, experts warn that its hard to predict when Afghanistan will be able to stand on its own against the Taliban, not to mention the country’s enormous economic difficulties and fractious political system.
The US government’s top watchdog on Afghanistan told Reuters that the US had wasted billions of dollars in reconstruction aid to Afghanistan over the past decade, and now a renewed Taliban insurgency was threatening the gains that had been made.
While Mullah Mansour successfully steered Taliban politics towards consolidation of his authority, 2015-16 was still the movement’s most intensely political year yet, and the succession and its aftermath will trigger another round of internal politicking of the sort Mansour had just about kept in check.
While Mullah Mansour successfully steered Taliban politics towards consolidation of his authority, 2015-16 was still the movement’s most intensely political year yet, and the succession and its aftermath will trigger another round of internal politicking of the sort Mansour had just about kept in check.
The scene of the drone strike said to have killed the Taliban’s leader. Credit: The Conversation/EPA
The May 21 drone strike that killed Taliban leader Akhtar Mohammad Mansour was no ordinary assassination; it was an act of armed politics against an acutely political war strategist. The Taliban has already named Mansour’s successor, Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada, and is reassuring its members that the status quo will endure – but Mansour kept a steady hand on the tiller and, now he’s gone, the movement could struggle to hold the line.
Mansour set the tone for a particular approach to the Afghan and Pakistani governments, one that endures today. For over a year, the US has backed the efforts of Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani, to persuade the Pakistani government to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table. Mansour was the architect of the Taliban’s response to these overtures, which ranged from obfuscation to downright rejection.
Much of this was directed against US-backed Pakistani officials, whom Mansour treated to a string of excuses, delays and platitudes. These ultimately boiled down to the message that he was not ready to negotiate.
By the time the Taliban announced its 2016 spring offensive, pretty much all analysts had concluded that Mansour had simply been playing for time, banking on being able to make military progress in Afghanistan without negotiations, while trying not to provoke Pakistan into denying the Taliban access to their undeclared safe haven there.
During the stand-off, as Taliban representatives repeatedly explained their unavailability for talks, they consistently invoked Mansour’s authority. On the big issues of war and peace, he was the only empowered figure in the movement. And yet, after an initial period when he made himself visible in meetings, Mansour spent most of his leadership out of sight, and therefore unable to participate in any meaningful debate in the movement.
One of the main reasons for this was his brinksmanship with Pakistan and the US. He may not have expected to be killed by a US drone strike well inside Pakistan, but he certainly worried about a clampdown by the Pakistani authorities and wanted to stay ahead of them.
This was not the approach of a garden-variety guerrilla fighter. To appreciate just how much of a political and military strategist Mansour was, you have to examine his record of dealing with internal dissent.
Running the show
In retrospect, Mansour was remarkably successful. While the Taliban did formally splinter for the first time under his stewardship – when the Mohammad Rasool group was formed – Mansour relentlessly pressured this faction and rounded up its dissidents. In the period when he was still attending meetings, he tried to sweet talk estranged members of the movement into taking an oath of allegiance; after that, he depended on his aides to woo pretty much any senior veteran of the movement who had not accepted his leadership.
Mansour: continuing presence. Credit: The Conversation/EPA
But where sweet talking did not work, Mansour readily deployed Taliban columns against recalcitrant commanders. He had commander Mansour Dadaullah killed, and effectively wiped out a small faction of Uzbek extremists whom Dadaullah had sheltered.
For months, pro-Mansour commanders have been involved in armed clashes in Afghanistan’s Herat and Farah provinces with fighters from Rasool’s splinter group. Mansour successfully projected the message that any rebellion against him, the Taliban’s lawful ameer, would be dealt with sternly.
Over the past year, there has been a big gap between the internal politics of Mansour’s Taliban and the peace agenda which the Kabul government and its allies have tried to advance. The Taliban’s politics revolved around Mansour’s attempts to consolidate his hold over the movement – and he used his authority to keep the Taliban focused on the war effort. The movement never had a meaningful internal debate about the possibility of peace.
Marching on
And so the Taliban enters a new era. It considers its Islamic emirate to be a system of government and, even before the leadership publicly acknowledged Mansour’s death, the message to cadres was that there will be continuity: the system will survive, so carry on doing whatever you are doing. The incoming leader, Akhundzada, will be expected to sustain the structures, political practices and dogma that Mansour helped to build up.
Initially at least, this means maintaining the Taliban’s committed jihadist image, raising whatever funds possible, keeping up the military campaign in Afghanistan and rewarding loyal and obedient supporters with positions in the hierarchy. The movement will keep looking for any state or non-state actor prepared to back it.
But it remains to be seen if the movement will or even can stay the same. While Mansour successfully steered Taliban politics towards consolidation of his authority, 2015-16 was still the movement’s most intensely political year yet, and the succession and its aftermath will trigger another round of internal politicking of the sort Mansour had just about kept in check.
Whatever Taliban doctrine says about the continuity of authority, Afghan politics involves intricate manoeuvres between competing networks, each seeking to take advantage of the elevation of a kinsman or fellow tribe member. Replacing the leader will force the movement’s informal networks into some sort of realignment. But things are going to get shaken up, and somewhere along the way the movement’s members are going to question the absence of debate – and maybe even the long war strategy itself.
Mansour’s real problem was that he believed in the military campaign but lacked the means to win it. He did not live to see the failure of his strategy, and others are bound to start questioning it. And so begins the next chapter of the Taliban’s armed politics.
The drone strike may have killed Mullah Mansour but what it has really done is to deal a deathblow to Pakistan’s perennial game of plausible deniability after harbouring terrorists and unleashing them on its neighbours.
The drone strike may have killed Mullah Mansour but what it has really done is to deal a deathblow to Pakistan’s perennial game of plausible deniability after harbouring terrorists and unleashing them on its neighbours.
Mullah Mansour. Credit: Twitter
It is one thing for US officials to describe Pakistan as the ‘ally from hell’ and its policies as ‘duplicitous’, and quite another to actually remove any doubt about it by taking out Mullah Akhtar Mansour right on Pakistani soil. Mullah Mansour was the Afghan Taliban’s current emir and Pakistan’s handpicked successor to their previous leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar. Pakistan’s military leaders, who have a chokehold on the country’s foreign and national security policies, were caught with their pants down yet again. This past weekend, a US drone strike killed Mullah Mansour near Nushki in Pakistan’s Balochistan province where he was likely en route to his usual abode near the provincial capital, Quetta. Five years earlier the US had eliminated al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a raid right next to Pakistan’s premier military academy in Abbottabad. The key difference between the two attacks is that Pakistan’s current army chief, General Raheel Sharif, has been reassuring both his countrymen and the world that his outfit has changed tack and is fighting terrorism of all shades.
The fact is that Pakistan army under General Raheel Sharif has continued to harbour transnational jihadist terrorists like Mullah Mansour and his even more lethal lieutenant, Sirajuddin Haqqani, without a pause. Mullah Mansour was chosen the emir of Taliban in Kuchlak, which is about a half hour drive from Quetta, in an open assembly under the auspices of the Pakistani intelligence apparatus. Like Abbottabad, Quetta is also a major garrison city and is home to the Pakistan army’s Command Staff College, XII Corps, military selection and recruitment centre and the regional office of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate. A highly active air force flying base is located at Samungli right outside Quetta. More importantly, the Balochistan province has been under a complete control of the army and the Frontier Corps, which have been conducting a particularly brutal and dirty war against the secular Baloch separatists for years. The province, especially Quetta, has been a no-go area for the foreign media and journalists for over a decade now. Veteran The New York Times correspondent and author of The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014, Carlotta Gall was physically beaten up by the intelligence goons when she was reporting on the Taliban activities there. Even US diplomats are not liberty to visit Balochistan at will. It is simply inconceivable that Mullah Mansour could have lived large in Balochistan and was appointed the Taliban leader without the Pakistani army’s knowledge, approval and patronage. It is imperative to remember that the Pakistani army is a highly disciplined organisation and the ISI is part of it, with the ISI chief often showing up at domestic and foreign engagements with General Sharif. The buck for harbouring Mullah Mansour stops at General Sharif’s desk and not with any lowly intelligence thug. The question of any rogue elements within the army or its ISI Directorate does not arise because insubordination has never been tolerated in the military’s 69-year history.
While some in Pakistan are trying to spin the Mullah Mansour assassination as some sort of cooperation between the US and Pakistan, where the latter tipped off the Americans because the Taliban leader was averse to peace talks, it actually smacks of distrust the size of the Grand Canyon. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has already conceded that the US officials informed him and General Sharif of the attack after it occurred. The complete radio silence from the Pakistan army’s otherwise hyperactive spokesman, General Asim Bajwa, also indicates that they were stumped and stunned by the strike in an area not too far from where Pakistan had tested its nuclear weapons in 1998. The US had not informed Pakistan of the bin Laden raid either, and rightly so. While over half a dozen key members of the Haqqani Network (HQN) have been killed in over 90 drone attacks directed against the group, Sirajuddin has managed to escape several times thanks to being tipped off by his Pakistani patrons. Pakistan managed to keep secret not only Mullah Omar’s life there but also his 2013 death for a good two years while its blue-eyed boy Mullah Mansour ran the deadly show. It is extremely unlikely that after striving so hard to install, consolidate and project Mullah Mansour’s power over the fractious Taliban, Pakistan would simply hand him on a platter to the US. Mullah Mansour’s assassination is a great setback for Pakistan army and a major vindication for the Afghan government, which has claimed all along that Pakistan, through its Taliban and HQN proxies, is waging an undeclared war against Afghanistan. The Pentagon issuing a formal statement declaring the attack and US President Barack Obama himself confirming Mullah Mansour’s death underscores the fact that it was not a clandestine CIA hit but an act of war for which the US is willing to take responsibility under international law.
Both the US and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani have shown tremendous patience with the Pakistani leadership, and have gone through the tedious and fruitless talks that turned out to be a ruse by Pakistan to buy time for the Taliban and consolidate the jihadist group’s battlefield position. Unlike what some Pakistani analysts are saying, this US drone strike did not kill the peace talks; it merely buried a dead process. The Quadrilateral Coordination Group comprising the US, China, Pakistan and Afghanistan, which had met in Pakistan earlier this month, had made no headway at all. Pakistan had promised to deliver the “reconcilable” Taliban to the negotiations table and to take action against the “irreconcilable” ones. But as expected the pledge was hogwash. In all likelihood Mullah Mansour’s replacement will be as much a Pakistani proxy as he was and as averse to the peace talks. In the short run the level of Taliban and HQN-perpetrated violence in Afghanistan will go up but the decapitation will have far-reaching benefits in the long run. It will demoralise and divide an already bickering Taliban and stymy the momentum that Mullah Mansour had started to gain. The drone strike may have killed Mullah Mansour but what it has really done is to deal a deathblow to Pakistan’s perennial game of plausible deniability after harbouring terrorists and unleashing them on its neighbours. From General Pervez Musharraf to General Sharif, the Pakistani army has claimed that it fights terrorists only for the world to discover them inside Pakistan. Whatever the so-called redlines may be for Pakistan, the US seems have drawn a line in sand. It would be crucial to see whether the US eliminates the next Taliban chief as swiftly as it did in case of Mullah Mansour or waits as had happened with Mullah Omar.
Mohammad Taqi is a former columnist for the Daily Times, Pakistan. He tweets @mazdaki.
