Today, Explained - How this Syria raid was different

Episode Date: February 8, 2022

President Biden gave strict orders to avoid collateral damage during a raid on an ISIS leader. Civilians still died, but it might be a sign of a shift at the Pentagon. This episode was produced by Victoria Chamberlin, edited by Matt Collette, engineered by Paul Mounsey, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained   Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. The war in Afghanistan's over, but the war on terror is not. You may have noticed a few days ago when you heard that U.S. forces had flown into Syria to kill a terrorist. So this is a man named Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qureshi, and he was the current leader of ISIS. And this is investigative journalist Asmat Khan.

He was known for having played a role in the slave trade that ISIS ran of Yazidi minorities. He was also known to have been involved in encouraging different ISIS sleeper cells to stage prison attacks to release ISIS prisoners. And so he was somebody that was much coveted by the Americans and someone they had been watching for some time, according to administration officials. Osmott says there was something different about this raid, and she would know. She's been investigating and suing the Pentagon over civilian casualties in the war on terror for years. On the show today, we're going to try and figure out whether the U.S. military can continue to wage this war on terror without killing innocent people. And we're going

to start with this one raid that took place a few days ago in Syria, where, again, things felt a little different. They had a tip several months ago that a senior leader was living in the top level of a home in northwest Syria. And they watched him for quite some time. They modeled his home, they say. They planned for this attack. And when they carried it out, by that time, you know, they kind of took a different approach to what we've seen, in which they had ground troops conduct this raid. Knowing that this terrorist had chosen to surround himself with families, including children, we made a choice to pursue a special forces raid at a much greater risk to our own people rather than targeting him with an airstrike. Officials say they did this so that they could minimize civilian harm, so that civilians

who lived in this house—there were families, there were wives, there were children—that they would have a chance to be spared. Two dozen commandos are deployed to this part of Syria. They arrive in helicopters, they land, they stake out this house, this house where this leader lives on the top floor, they believe. And they go to houses next door. They ask civilians to leave the area. The grandson of one local resident told Channel 4 News he was woken by what sounded like planes overhead. We were peacefully sleeping when we heard the warplanes.

When I woke up, everyone was crying and frightened. The warplane was very loud. It sounded like an earthquake, and then I heard bullets. And then, using a bullhorn, according to many residents who'd been interviewed, they call out to those inside the house. Basically say the equivalent of, you know, we want to spare the children. We want to spare the innocent.

Send them out and turn yourselves in. And that didn't happen. So administration officials say that this particular leader detonated explosives on the top level that killed civilians. You know, they also say there was a firefight with one of his top lieutenants on a lower floor of the home that resulted in that particular lieutenant's wife and children dying. It's unclear exactly what happened. You know, which deaths were the result of that alleged detonation and which were the result of, you know, maybe a potential firefight. But it is clear that there were some casualties,

which may have been the result of either party. The strong indications are here is that the lives taken in this operation, the lives of innocents taken in this operation, were caused by Abdullah and his decision to blow himself up and everybody else with him on that third floor, as well as the resistance of his lieutenant on the second floor, were willing to take a look to just examine and make sure. Is the world safer without Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qureshi in it?

What was this guy doing in Syria? Was he just hiding out or was he organizing terrorist attacks or what? So we've been told that he was influencing many to attack prisons, prisons where ISIS leaders, where ISIS members, fighters are being held in an effort to lead to a resurgence of the group. This morning, scores are dead after a mass prison break at a jail holding suspected ISIS fighters in Syria. ISIS had set off a car bomb, a suicide bomb that resulted in pandemonium and people breaking free. And there are hundreds who've been killed. We don't even know the full number yet. Some of whom were SDF fighters who were trying to retake this prison.

Rioters inside the facility clashing with security personnel, allowing hundreds of prisoners to rise up, seize weapons from their jailers and flee. We've also been told by several different organizations as well as reporters who've looked at this that he had been involved in the slave trade that ISIS conducted of Yazidi minorities. And so he's somebody who, you know, certainly has been involved in incredibly pernicious activity. But the question of, you know, are we safer? What we've seen is that when you target a high-level leader, they are fairly quickly replaced. And you can keep taking people

out, but that doesn't necessarily address the structural problem that we have to begin with. Do we know how many people died in this raid total? So I want to be careful about what numbers I use, because we have conflicting numbers. I know that the White Helmets, a group that was involved in some of the rescue efforts at the scene afterwards, said that they had taken out 13 people, including six children and four women, and that the administration or the Pentagon specifically had said that they were the deaths of five combatants and four civilians. And, you know, you have to be careful with the exact accounts here about who the government might consider a civilian and who they might not.

But certainly we know that children were killed. And I always say that it takes time, especially at the scene, to really evaluate what happened and who was killed. And so there are these competing numbers, and I would just urge a little bit of caution in applying certainty to them. How did the U.S. government characterize this raid? What was their sort of verdict on how it went? So immediately afterwards, they called this a successful raid. So his death, we believe, dealt a significant blow to ISIS. And as, you know, news came out that the White Helmets were saying that children had been killed, that there appeared to be civilians who'd also been killed, people started to call this into question. And so President Biden came forth to do a briefing about this, so did Pentagon leaders.

And what we learned is that they had been planning this for several months, that they took a great deal of precautions, they say, to protect civilians, even at the risk of U.S. troops, by putting them on the ground rather than conducting an airstrike or doing this from a distance. And while the cowardly actions of Haji Abdullah and a small number of his followers resulted in the death, the tragic death of at least three innocent civilians, the calculated efforts of our forces succeeded in protecting more than 10 women, children, and babies. And it's true. We've seen, certainly, casualties result from that in the past. So, for example, the raid on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, that, for example, did kill civilians. You know, there is some credence to what the administration is saying, that they undertook risk to do this in a manner that would prevent civilian death.

But civilians died anyway. This is complicated. I think it's complicated because you can see the precautions that were taken here, which is not the norm. To deploy ground troops is rare. To allow that risk is rare. So you certainly see greater efforts. At the same time, I think that there is an incredible credibility that what the Pentagon claims is often not, does not turn out to be the case. That something that might be dubbed a righteous strike turned out to be misidentification.

And what did you find in your investigation? The most shocking thing I found was just how bad this intelligence, intelligence that we're told is so pristine, is so vetted, could actually be. And that sometimes it was people who were not in the military who were best able to analyze that intelligence and actually warn about civilian loss. Thank you. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained. Ramp.com slash explained. R-A-M-P.com slash explained.

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Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk, an authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. We're back with Asmat Khan, who has investigated civilian casualties in U.S. military operations for the New York Times,

and we're trying to figure out if the Pentagon is capable of waging its ongoing war on terror without killing innocent people. We asked Asmat what she found in her investigations. You know, when I first started doing this work in early 2016, I was on the ground in places that had been retaken from ISIS, basically going door to door in different areas and sampling the airstrikes that occurred there. You know, I went to the sites of more than 103 airstrikes in three different sample areas. And what I found was that one in five of

these airstrikes was resulting in a civilian death. That's 20%. And it's a rate that was 31 times higher than what the military was claiming. 31 times higher than the military's count of civilian death. And so what I did is I took all of the coordinates, you know, what I was finding, and I presented them to the U.S. military. You know, I asked them, did you conduct these airstrikes? Half of the reasons for the civilian casualty incidents were the result of poor or outdated intelligence. In one case, they saw children on the roof of a home. And rather than relying on that to maybe question whether they had the wrong target, there was an ISIS location across the street.

You know, they now determined that this house they were looking at with these children was an even more dangerous target than they'd identified it before. You know, they thought it was an ISIS sleeping center. And now they were calling it a weapons manufacturing facility. And so they targeted it. And, you know, they said they saw one injured child. I went on the ground and everyone in this neighborhood said a family of 11 were killed, that a little girl survived, and that people were injured in the house next door,

including a different little girl who was permanently disabled. The Pentagon says it holds itself accountable. And, you know, when they would publicly release these press releases in which they would admit, you know, maybe there'd be sentence-long summaries of what they found about each claim, I knew that behind each of those was a longer document. And I requested all of them through the Freedom of Information Act. What I wound up doing was suing the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command for these documents. And over three years,

I started receiving these pages in batches every other month. And I was able to obtain more than 1,300 of them, the majority of which they rejected these claims of casualties. Sometimes we found for reasons as simple as they couldn't find some of these areas on maps. They couldn't identify them and determined that because they couldn't find this like village or they couldn't find this neighborhood that they were going to reject that claim. So some of them were summarily dismissed. But even within the credible ones, you know, you can see patterns. You can start to see what's happening and why. Can you give us like their total tally of civilian deaths versus something closer to the reality that you found? Is it that simple? The Pentagon says that

there were a little over 1,400 civilian deaths resulting from, you know, the tens of thousands of airstrikes they've conducted in Iraq and Syria. Now, I can't give you a precise number, but I know that back in 2017, when a colleague and I went on the ground to do a systematic sample, a sample that we believe is an undercount, because of the areas we went to and because we simply could not count, for example, children of ISIS, right? We were relying on documenting what we had records for, what we could interview people about. And for many reasons, this sample we did, we believe was an undercount. And from that, looking at strikes that had occurred through 2016, so I guess in the first little over two years of this air campaign, our inference came out to between 7,000 and 10,000 people,

civilians having been killed. And that was several years ago. Now, you know, I want to be careful because it's an inference. I want to be careful because it's a war zone, right? You can only sample particular areas that are accessible. They have to be populated. This is hard work to do. But if that many years

ago, before we saw some of the loosening of restrictions on strikes, if that's what we were looking at, you know, you're looking at a much, much higher rate of civilian death. What do you see when you look at this stuff in aggregate? Do you see indifference on the part of the Pentagon? Or are you seeing sort of more ineptitude or both? Now, I can't tell you the intentions of the officers who are conducting these, but I think if you look at the overall system and what it prioritizes, right, which is not being on the ground, it prioritizes following this particular process. And if you see civilians in this video, you can count them. It essentially winds up

becoming, you know, what many experts have now told me is a means to model accountability for the rest of the world, to say that we are going through this incredible and complex array of procedures, which is true. The United States has a very complex process for this to mitigate harm. But in effect, it's being used more to establish America's reputation on this issue rather than necessarily to truly prevent civilian loss, to study it, to go on the ground, to do these very straightforward things. You know, if I can go to these sites, you know, more than a hundred of them, civilian casualty sites in different war zones, you know, as somebody who is just a reporter without the means or access of the U.S. military, which to change confirmation bias in a way that really shows results, what does that tell you about their intentions of truly trying to prevent civilian loss?

You say the Pentagon is trying to model accountability to the world. Is there actual accountability inside the Pentagon is trying to model accountability to the world. Is there actual accountability inside the Pentagon? issued saying, you know, really putting in place a timeline for this new civilian casualty policy, starting a, I guess, an institute or a center to learn lessons, a center for excellence. But the reality of the matter is, is that that policy, that civilian casualty policy that he's now put a timeline on, that was mandated by Congress several years ago. And, you know, they've been working on this for quite some time. And his response was to put a timeline on it for something that had actually, you know, Congress had gone so far as to actually fence off some military funding until they completed this policy. It's unclear to me what is different because they have been claiming for years to be doing many of these things. We should be watching what they actually release in the timeline that's been given and to really follow up to see if there are differences between what

they've been claiming for so long and what they are now doing. What we have is this attack last week that resulted in the death of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qureshi, where it looks like special forces went to great lengths to prevent civilian death. Of course, civilians still died, but does that give you hope that something may have changed here? That is someone that they are going to expend a great number of resources to take out. That is not the kind of care and attention that's given to bombings that happen every day,

sometimes with far less planning. I think it does say things about the Biden administration specifically, but it doesn't necessarily tell us about the Pentagon's own process when it comes to all of these other airstrikes that are being carried out, not just in Iraq and Syria, but in places like Somalia,

places where the CIA might be operating, places like Yemen. We don't have a true grasp of how sustainable a change like this is. And will we? You know, I know that there are hearings scheduled in Congress. So, for example, on Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on this issue. There are many civilian harm organizations that are pressing the Biden administration for change.

And I know that there are several members of Congress who have been leading on this issue for quite a while, who've been asking for some of these things. So people have made these calls. I don't know what comes of it, but I do take heart in the way that reporters are approaching this to ask for evidence, I think, of some of the claims, to not necessarily take some of the military statements at face value, because we've seen how often some of those statements have unfolded and turned out not to be true. Certainly that approach does give me some hope. Osmots Khan is an assistant professor of journalism at Columbia Journalism School

and a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine. You can find her reporting at the New York Times by searching for the civilian Casualty files our show today was produced by Victoria Chamberlain edited by Matthew Collette Engineered by Paul Mounsey and fact-checked by Laura Bullard. I'm Sean Ramos firm. It is today explained Thank you. you