US military must avoid civilian deaths: report

WASHINGTON-
The US military must adjust its planning, training, targeting and use of weapons to better avoid widespread civilian death and damage, such as the devastating 2017 battle to liberate the Syrian city of Raqqa from state militants Islam, a new RAND report said Thursday. .

The report requested by the Pentagon reflects criticism of the army’s airstrike campaign which, by some estimates, killed more than 1,600 civilians in Raqqa, as the US-led coalition worked to destroy the Islamic State caliphate that wrested control of large swaths of Iraq and Syria.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said the report, which sets out a series of recommendations for improving military procedures and strategy, will be used as the department develops its own broader plan to reduce civilian harm.

“No other military works as hard as we do to mitigate civilian damage, and yet we still cause it,” Kirby said. “We will continue to try to learn from past issues.”

RAND concluded that the Battle of Raqqa provided important lessons.

Michael McNerney, lead author of the RAND report, called Raqqa “a cautionary tale of civilian damage in urban fighting”. He said this “should serve as further incentive for the DoD to strengthen its policies and procedures to mitigate, document and respond to civilian harm.”

The RAND report noted that there was a wide range of estimated civilian casualties during the siege, but also said it estimated 60-80% of Raqqa had become uninhabitable by the time the city was liberated. in October 2017.

Initially, the US-led coalition believed it was responsible for 38 incidents resulting in 240 civilian casualties, including 178 killed. A consortium of local Syrian and international groups, including Amnesty International and Airwars, put the death toll at a ‘high estimate’ of 1,600, but said around 774 of them could be specifically ‘verified’ by given as a result of coalition action. .

The report makes it clear that several thousand more civilians are likely dead, based on the number of bodies discovered by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, but many were likely killed by ISIS or other fighters on field.

“Our report focuses on U.S. actions in Raqqa, but the actions of the Syrian government and its Russian and Iranian partners have undoubtedly contributed far more to the damage and suffering of civilians in Syria as a whole,” McNerney said.

The report noted that the challenges in Raqqa were compounded by limits on the number of US troops that could be there, as well as where they could be positioned. US troops on the ground could have provided better intelligence on targeting and civilians, including efforts by Islamic State militants to use civilians as human shields, the report said.

RAND recommended that the U.S. military provide more extensive training and guidance on the need to avoid harm to civilians, and to plan and execute operations to achieve those goals. Changes could include better planning, better assessments of potential collateral damage, increased mission rehearsals, better intelligence gathering, and more selective use of airstrikes and munitions that minimize bomb fragmentation.