The Daily - A ‘Righteous Strike’

Episode Date: September 21, 2021

When he visited the site of an American drone strike in Kabul, Matthieu Aikins, a Times journalist, knew something wasn’t adding up. He uncovered a story that was quite different from the one offered up by the United States military. We follow The Times’s investigation and how it forced the military to acknowledge that the drone attack was a mistake.Guest: Matthieu Aikins, a writer based in Afghanistan for The New York Times. Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: U.S. officials said a Reaper drone followed a car for hours and then fired based on evidence it was carrying explosives for ISIS. But in-depth video analysis and interviews at the site cast doubt on that account.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. The U.S. military now says that a drone strike launched in the final hours of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan was a, quote, tragic mistake that killed 10 innocent civilians. Today, I spoke with my colleague, Matthew Akins, about the Times investigation that helped force the military to acknowledge its deadly error. It's Tuesday, September 21st.

Matt, where did this investigation begin? So it all starts after ISIS suicide bombers killed almost 200 people at the airport in Kabul. The U.S. promised retaliation, on August 29th there's this blast near the airport which the U.S. claimed was a targeted strike against an ISIS facilitator who posed an imminent threat to U.S. forces. So the next morning, August 30th, we wake up early to go find the site of the strike. So I get on my motorcycle. It's me and Jim Hoylebruck, who's a photographer for The Times and my housemate. We drive out to the neighborhood, and as I'm driving, I wonder what we're going to find. They said this is an ISIS target. Is this going to be some kind of terrorist safe house?

that this is an ISIS target. Is this going to be some kind of terrorist safe house? So we get to the neighborhood and we ask some local residents, you know, where the bombing was, and they give us directions and we start going through these increasingly narrow alleyways, turn a corner, and then down this narrow lane we can see a group of people gathered in front of this house.

And, you know, it's a really crowded, densely packed neighborhood. So we pull up. Maz New York Times esteemed. And introduce ourselves as journalists. And they usher us into this courtyard that this little house is built around. And in the courtyard is the twisted wreckage of a white Toyota Corolla. So clearly we're at the site. And there's a couple dozen people gathered there, crowded in the street and into the yard,

and they were very distraught. As we've been killed in this raid, they said 10 civilians had died in this explosion, including seven children. Oh, wow. They started showing me pictures of these children on their phones, being like, does this look like ISIS to you? Holding up a picture of a kid. I wanted to understand who the target was, so I asked who the car belonged to,

and they said it was driven by Zemirai Ahmadi, who was one of the brothers who lived in this house. And he had been killed in the strike. Are you the relative? Yes. And the family was right there. We ended up talking, and they said when Zemra had come home that day from work, he was pulling the car into the courtyard,

and the kids had this habit of running out, excited to see him, and jumping in the car, and maybe one would sit on his lap as he backed the car into the courtyard. And so they were all together, and then? And another five minutes just passed, so the drone was happening, and everything was just changed. It was a blast. Hmm.

So the scene that they are describing is their relative, this father, driving into the courtyard, his kids coming out to greet him, and them all being very close to each other when this drone strike hits the car and kills almost all of them. Yeah, and we're standing looking at the car

and it was a difficult scene to take in because there were pieces of bodies still in the wreckage. So where were you sleeping? Where is your room here? Yeah, this one. That is your room here? Yeah, this one. That's your room there? Yeah. And I spoke to the brother of the man targeted in the strike.

And this is the blood of your relatives and children? Yeah, this is the blood of children. Yeah. So I asked him about what the U.S. said. And did he have any connection with Daesh or ISIS? No, no, no. but no one's that connected. He said, you know, there's no way my brother worked for ISIS. He worked for the Americans. So what job did your brother have? What work did he do?

My brother's job was as an engineer, technical engineer. Okay. He said he worked for this American company that delivered food aid. And they brought me a business card. And on the business card it said, Samurai Ahmadi, technical engineer, nutrition and education international. The American military says that they hit some explosions. There was a motor bomb here. Do you think that's true?

It's the same mistake. Yeah, it's the same mistake. It's a mistake. Yeah, yeah, the same mistake. It's a mistake. Yeah, mistake, that's mistake. You know, wait, that in here, this is the child blood, yeah? No one's know about our hurt, like right now. It is difficult. So after I spoke to Zemirai's brother,

I asked if we could speak to some of his female relatives. And I said, you know, I know that in Afghan culture, it's not always appropriate for strange men to come and speak to women in a home. But I said that I thought it was very important to hear their voices. And they were like, okay, well, just wait a second. So they went and came back, and he's like, yeah, the women are in a house nearby. Welcome to the house that the family are in here. So we follow them out, and we go through the alley to this next house.

And as we open the gate, we can hear the sound of women crying. And they bring us into a living room where there's a bunch of women gathered. And I sit down on the carpet and I'm looking at Zemirai's wife and his daughter. And they are in tears. The mother can't really speak. She's in shock. But the daughter is livid with grief and rage. And she tells me that she's not only lost her father, but her fiancé,

a 30-year-old man named Nasser, who was also killed in the strike. Now Nasser had applied to go to the United States as a refugee. He'd worked in private security at an American military base. And she's like, America used us to defend itself, and now they've destroyed Afghanistan. Whoever dropped this bomb on our family, may God punish you. You know, this is one of the most intense outpourings of grief that I've ever witnessed. So Jim and I were both pretty shaken when we left.

Got back on the motorcycle and headed home to write up the story. But there was still a lot we didn't know. I didn't know exactly who Zemra Ahmadiyya was. I didn't know if he had a connection to ISIS. His family said that he didn't, of course. But there was still a lot that we need to understand about him and the strike. So what ends up happening next? Well, over the next week...

Good morning. U.S. military operations in Afghanistan continue. The U.S. military starts to lay out its version of events. On Sunday, U.S. military forces conducted an unmanned over-the-horizon airstrike on a vehicle known to be an imminent ISIS-K threat. What they say was the morning of the strike, they saw a white Toyota Corolla leave a known ISIS safe house. And they followed it with a drone. And they also say that they intercepted communications between the safe house and someone in the sedan, telling the sedan to, you know, go here, go there, meet with this person.

So over the course of the day, as they're watching the sedan, they begin to suspect it's carrying out a mission for ISIS. And then in the afternoon, they see the sedan go into a compound and men load heavy packages into this car, which they think could be explosives. So the drone follows this car and it drives to another house near the airport. this car and it drives to another house near the airport. And as it pulls into the courtyard, they decide that like now is the time to carry out the strike before it gets any close to the airport. And they quickly scan the courtyard. They just see one adult man coming out to greet the sedan. They fire a hellfire missile at this car, destroying it. And then they say... Because there were secondary explosions, there's a reasonable conclusion to be made

that there was explosives in that vehicle. They saw a second explosion, which indicates there was probably a bomb inside the car. Hmm. And, you know, they say that it could have been that second explosion that caused civilian casualties, and they acknowledge that at least three civilians had died. We know from a variety of other means that at least one of those people that were killed was an ISIS facilitator. Even though they don't know the identities of these people, they say one was an ISIS facilitator.

And that's why, according to General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at this point we think that the procedures were correctly followed and it's a righteous strike. It was a, quote, righteous strike. So that didn't really add up to us because it was obvious from the scene that we had visited that there hadn't been a big bomb that had gone off, right? This little house and the walls were still standing, the tree in the courtyard was still green. And also, you know, seven children had died, not three civilians.

So you are now confronting a U.S. account that does not really square with what you have seen in that courtyard and learned in your conversation with this family. Exactly. And shortly after that, I got an email from the visual investigations team at the Times.

They asked, should we work together on this? So we teamed up to try to figure out what really happened on the day of the strike and put together a narrative using images and video footage, which is what they're really skilled at. So while the visual investigations team is looking for evidence on their end, I continued my reporting here on the ground in Kabul. Started making calls to Zemri's co-workers,

I started making calls to Zemri's co-workers, talked to everyone who was in the car with him that day that we knew about, you know. From the morning when he drove into work until the evening when he dropped off his last co-worker, went home, and then was hit by this missile. And everyone I spoke to was like, this was an ordinary day. And so what did they describe? What was his day like? So I talked to his boss who got in the office first and realized he forgot his laptop. So he had called Zemri and he's like, are you home?

Yes. Okay, great. Can you pick up my laptop on the way to work? So then Zemri goes and he picks up another colleague and then they go to the boss's house and Zemri knocks on the door and gets the laptop. They drive, they pick up a second colleague, then they drive to the office. From the office, Zemri then sets out again with three other people and they go on a planned trip into town to talk about a program they have to distribute food

to some refugees who are in a park. At the end of the day, he drives three of his co-workers home. He drops them off at their houses and then goes home where he's hit by a hellfire missile. then goes home where he's hit by a hellfire missile. So what looked to the U.S. military to be a kind of zigzagging pattern of a man doing errands for ISIS might have actually been a guy going about his business on a relatively normal day of work.

Right. And then a key breakthrough comes when the visual investigations team learns that there's camera footage at Zemirai's office in Kabul, which could show us exactly what he was doing at work in the hours before he was killed. So I head into the office here in Kabul and I sit with his boss and another co-worker

and we start going through the footage, looking at this monitor with all these different camera feeds from that day and what we see are these containers that he takes out of the car in the morning and later that afternoon you can see on the camera he comes out with a hose and the hose is running water. And he fills up the containers and puts them in the trunk of the car. And they said that this was something he did regularly because since the fall of the government, there hadn't been water deliveries in his neighborhood. So he was bringing home water to his family. And so now we're thinking,

well, these could have been the packages the military says the drone saw him loading into the car. The packages that they suspected contained explosives. And the thing is, is that I actually took a picture of a shredded container just like this at the scene of the blast. So the containers that the U.S. military says might have contained explosives were probably these water containers. So doubt is now being cast on yet another element of the U.S. version of what happened. Yeah, that's right. What we're hearing from people on the ground and seeing in the security camera footage

is adding up to something completely different from what the military apparently saw from the sky. And so we put it all together in print and in video and we published the investigation, which raises serious doubts about whether or not there was actually a bomb in this car, whether a samurai had any connection with ISIS, and whether this was a justified drone strike. Which is a pretty major investigative finding. So what does the U.S. military say in response to what you all publish? They don't say much because they're still in the middle of their own investigation.

And we didn't know how long it was going to take, because sometimes these things can last for months. But then on Friday, less than a week after we published our investigation, we get word that the U.S. military is going to make an announcement in the case. We'll be right back. So Matt, what does the U.S. military end up saying on Friday about this drone strike? So the Pentagon's press secretary, John Kirby, holds a press conference and he brings in by video General Frank McKenzie, Jr.

Good afternoon. Who is the commanding general for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. I'm here to brief the results of the investigation I directed following the report of civilian casualties from our strike in Kabul on 29 August. And he says that, you know, even though they initially felt reasonably certain that this was a legitimate strike on an ISIS target that posed an imminent threat, with no indication that there would be civilian casualties. Our investigation now concludes that the strike was a tragic mistake. Our investigation now concludes that the strike was a tragic mistake. They now conclude that Zemri Ahmadi and his nine relatives who were killed were innocent. Hmm.

I offer my profound condolences to the family and friends of those who were killed. And do they explain how such a tragic mistake could have been made? Do they talk through why they mistakenly targeted this man. They don't really give a lot of detail, but what they do say is that the threat was urgent that day. The strike on 29 August must be considered in the context of the situation on the ground in Kabul at Hamid Karzai International Airport. They were seeing multiple pieces of intelligence

about more attacks against the airport by ISIS. They had two key pieces of intelligence. One of the most recurring aspects of the intelligence was that ISIS-K would utilize a white Toyota Corolla as a key element in the next attack. One was that ISIS was going to use a white Corolla, which happens to be probably the most common car you see in the streets of cobble and two sensitive intelligence indicated that the

compound at point number one on the map was being used by isis k planners used to facilitate future attacks a suspected isis safe house that they had under heavy surveillance. Two adult males exited the vehicle, met with an adult male in the compound, and received a bag from him. Where they saw a samurai roll up in a white Toyota Corolla and pick up a bag. And I'll finish by saying that while the team conducted the strike, did so in the honest belief that they were preventing an imminent attack on our forces and civilian evacuees. We now understand that to be incorrect. And so we're watching this presentation, and of course we know that Zemri picked up a laptop at his boss's house. Right. And looking at the location on the map basically confirms what we've already suspected,

which is that the suspected ISIS safe house is actually his boss's house. Hmm. So in your mind, the reason the U.S. might have gotten this so very wrong is that Zamorai happens to drive a white Corolla, which, as you said, is an incredibly common car in Kabul, and he goes to his boss's house to pick up a laptop,

and the U.S. thinks his boss's house is a safe house for ISIS. Yeah. And I had actually visited his house and met with the boss and his family, who had lived there for 40 years. He was elderly parents were there. the boss and his family who had lived there for 40 years. He's my mom. As-salamu alaykum. His elderly parents were there, little kids.

This has been the house where I was born here, raised here, went to school. This was the house his father built where he grew up. And then went to work. This did not seem like a nice and safe house. And so the reason why they started following Zemri in the first place, assumed that he was a terrorist, and then killed him and his family, was because he visited an ISIS safe house,

which we don't believe to be true. The way we live, it's a normal life. What do you mean by that? Normal life means by discussing about our future, about the current situation, about my job, about having fun, and about these kind of things.

But the thing is, and General McKenzie was actually asked about this at the briefing, the U.S. is still standing by their assertion that this was an ISIS safe house. Hmm. Why do you think that the U.S. is admitting that they got this wrong, but unwilling to back down from this assertion that Zemirai visited an ISIS safe house? I don't know.

But it means that even though Zemri's name has been cleared... I really feel threatened, afraid, insulted, and humiliated by having the label of ISIS. His boss still feels like he has this label of ISIS on his forehead. So the repercussions of this all are even bigger his boss still feels like he has this label of ISIS on his forehead. So the repercussions of this all are even bigger than just the horrible death of Zemari Ahmadi's family. Yeah, and it's not just his boss. All of his family and co-workers now feel like they're under serious threat

because they've been associated with the U.S. Now, it's very public knowledge that they worked with an American company and that they all have refugee cases to go to the U.S., but they're still stuck here in Kabul, fearing for their lives. Huh. Potentially, the Taliban can read all this coverage and watch a U.S. news conference

and realize that these people have strong ties to the United States, you're saying? Yeah, so they're still at risk and they're desperately hoping to get out. And when it comes to the surviving family members, I'm curious what the U.S. government can do for that family and what it has said it might do to bring them some sort of justice or comfort.

Well, the government has raised the possibility of compensation payments, which would really help because they killed the family's main breadwinner. But when I visited his brother on Saturday, he said that no one from the government had been in touch yet, not even to apologize. And, you know, even though they were really happy that Zemra's name had been cleared, they're still living through the trauma of this. He sees it every day when he comes back to their house, looking at that destroyed Corolla, which is still

there in the courtyard. Wow. And so for them, the nightmare isn't over. And they say that the compensation they really want is for the U.S. to help them get out of Afghanistan. Mm-hmm. for the U.S. to help them get out of Afghanistan. Matt, when we think about modern warfare and the use of drones,

what you all have uncovered here in your investigation and what the U.S. military has now acknowledged happened here, it feels like everyone's nightmare version of it. The reckless use of this remote control technology that can end lives, innocent lives, at the touch of a button from very far away. And it occurs to me that this is probably how the U.S. will now be waging war in Afghanistan. So what are the implications of what we have just learned here? I think it's important to understand that this is

not an isolated incident. There have been other documented cases of civilian casualties from air strikes, but also in the vast majority of incidents, we only have the official version of events, like the version that the military initially came out with. In the case of this strike, because it happened in Kabul, I and other journalists were able to go to the site, speak to the family, interview key witnesses, and get the investigation out in under two weeks. But most of these drone strikes happen in remote areas that are difficult and even dangerous

to access. So usually all we have is the official version of events. And if we're going to continue the war on terror in countries using drones now that we've withdrawn from Afghanistan, then there's going to be more incidents like this. There's going to be more civilians killed. But we might not even know that that's happening because things look one way from the sky, but they look very different on the ground.

Matt, thank you very much. Thank you, Michael. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Monday, the Biden administration said that starting in November, it would lift travel restrictions for foreigners who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. The decision will reopen the United States to thousands of people from 33 different countries, including China, South Africa, and Brazil, as well as the 27 countries within the European Union. And in the first test of the nation's most restrictive abortion ban,

two lawsuits have been filed against a doctor in Texas who admitted to performing an abortion considered illegal under the new law. The law specifically encourages citizens to sue anyone who aids or abets an abortion. The lawsuits were filed against a doctor based in San Antonio who said he knowingly violated the law because he believes that women have a fundamental right to an abortion. Today's episode was produced by Rob Zipko, Rachel Quester, and Stella Tan, with help from Lindsay Garrison. It was edited by Michael Benoit, contains original music by Marion Lozano and Dan Powell.

And was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. Special thanks to Christophe Cuddle, Evan Hill, Eric Schmidt, Najim Rahim, Alyssa Rubin, and Parin Beruz. Rahim, Alyssa Rubin, and Parin Behrouz. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.