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It was too late. The August 29 warning came seconds before the missile hit the car, killing 10 civilians, including seven children.
In the weeks that followed, the military insisted it was a justified strike against a confirmed terrorist target, acknowledging that some civilians could have been killed. But on Friday, after weeks of media coverage questioning the legitimacy of the strike, the military admitted that no one in the car was affiliated with ISIS-K as originally believed. “It was a mistake,” General Frank McKenzie, the chief general of US Central Command, told the Pentagon bluntly.
It is not clear whether the military has informed the intelligence community that it has decided to pull the trigger – if only for this reason the situation is evolving rapidly. The military describes such strikes as “dynamic”, which commanders on the ground were allowed to carry out without consulting the chain of command.
In some cases, the military may ask the intelligence community to “load” its surveillance drones and other means of monitoring a particular car or location. The intelligence community would share target data with the MoD in real time, but it is ultimately the decision of the land military force commander to take the strike.
Some sources say the miscommunication highlights an urgent decision for the Biden administration as it reflects on how to conduct future strikes in Afghanistan without US troops on the ground: the Defense Department or the CIA will be they own the mission?
The CIA declined to comment on this story. A spokesperson for US Central Command did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
Two establishments
Counterterrorism, intelligence and military officials are unanimous: without US troops on the ground, identify the right target and launch successful strikes against legitimate ISIS-K or Al- targets. Qaeda in Afghanistan has become infinitely more difficult. Trying to divide the mission between two organizations, some current and former officials say, runs the risk that the grave tragedy in Kabul will occur much more frequently.
“If they had instructed the agency to search the target for indications of ‘go’ or ‘no access’ criteria, they should have been given the opportunity to obtain this information and determine whether they had launched a strike. If there was any way to find out they were about to take the plunge, there really is something wrong, “said Mick Mulroy, a former CIA officer and Pentagon official. Mulroy warned that he had no first-hand knowledge.
But while lawmakers on both sides of the aisle vowed to shed light on the mistakes made prior to this specific strike, current and former officials also point out that civilian casualties were a constant reality of the US mission in Afghanistan. .
“It’s a pretty good synthesis of the entire 20 Years War,” said one US official, referring to the August 29 strike.
The intelligence community and the Defense Ministry have worked together for years to carry out counterterrorism strikes in Afghanistan – part of a long-standing campaign to put the authority of drone strikes under military command under theory that there would be more accountability and transparency regarding civilian deaths. But the flow of information and decision-making between the two organizations sometimes collides with the vacuum between the institutions, and in any event, the CIA and the Department of Defense operate to different standards for carrying out military strikes. this nature.
Some former intelligence officials go further, saying CIA drone strikes kill far fewer civilians than the military – but the agency’s figures are not public, and outside groups tracking victims of the CIA strikes. drones say the US military routinely underestimates its collateral deaths. , making an accurate comparison difficult to establish.
The Biden administration insists it has the tools to carry out missions “on the horizon.” McKenzie argued Friday that the failure of the Aug. 29 strike was not predictive of challenges “on the horizon.”
“It was a self-defense strike based on an imminent threat to attack us,” McKenzie said. “This is not how we would strike in a mission (on the horizon)” – because the standards would be higher for carrying out such a strike, he said, and “we will probably have a lot more opportunities that we did not have under this extreme time pressure to take a look at the target. “
But sources tell CNN that the Biden administration is still grappling with the mechanics of how it will structure the counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan going forward. Some intelligence officials privately depreciate “above the horizon” in Afghanistan as “above the rainbow”.
Build a strike
For eight hours on August 29, intelligence officials followed the movements of Zemari Ahmadi, a long-time employee of a US aid group, on the basis of a tenuous connection to ISIS-K: Ahmadi had a brief interaction with people in what the military believed to be an ISIS secure home.
This fragile clue led military commanders to misinterpret Ahmadi’s movements during a relatively normal day. They saw him load jugs of water into the back of the car to take them home and believed they were explosives. What military commanders insisted was a large secondary explosion after the Hellfire struck the Corolla – indicating, according to senior officials, explosives in the trunk – was actually more likely a propane tank located behind the car. parked.
Military commanders did not know Ahmadi’s identity when they began to track his movements.
“We now know that there was no connection between Mr. Ahmadi and ISIS-Khorasan, that his activities that day were completely harmless and not at all related to the imminent threat we thought we were facing, and that Mr. Ahmadi was just as innocent a victim like any other tragically killed, ”Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement.
For weeks after the strike, senior military leaders publicly and privately defended the strike and the intelligence on which it was based. Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley told reporters the strike was “fair”. The Pentagon insisted that there had been a large secondary explosion that could only be caused by explosives in the trunk of the car, and that secondary explosion was the cause of the high rate of civilian casualties.
In the end, almost everything they said turned out to be wrong.
McKenzie on Friday dismissed the idea that the mission was a “complete and utter failure.”
“This particular strike was certainly a terrible mistake and we certainly regret it, and I was very clear that we take full responsibility for it. At the same time, we were carrying out a number of complex operations designed to defend ourselves,” McKenzie said. “So while I agree … this strike certainly did not live up to our standards … I wouldn’t characterize the whole operation in those terms.”
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