Pentagon won’t punish any US personnel over Kabul drone killing of 10 civilians, report claims

Officials initially told media outlets that strike targeted Isis-K militants

A horrific US drone attack that killed a group of civilians including seven children and did not end up hitting a single enemy combatant will not result in any form of punishment for the personnel involved, according to The New York Times.

The newspaper reported on Monday, citing a senior Pentagon official, that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had opted to accept the recommendations of Gen Kenneth McKenzie, head of US Central Command, and Gen Richard Clarke of US Special Operations Command. The two commanders reportedly found no reason to discipline any of those involved.

Their findings come after the botched operation was initially presented to the media as a successful strike against militants aligned with Isis-K, an Islamic State-linked group opposed to Afghanistan’s new Taliban leadership that carried out a successful attack on US personnel assisting with evacuations days earlier.

What was at first portrayed as the destruction of a truck bearing explosives turned out to be the levelling of a residential building, as the truck was later judged to have only been carrying water bottles or other containers. A secondary explosion occurred when a nearby propane tank or other fuel source was caught in the first blast.

Altogether, the two explosions resulted in the deaths of 10 Afghan citizens, including as many as seven children.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby contended to reporters on Monday that the strike, while tragic, was "a breakdown in process and execution in procedural events, not the result of negligence, not the result of misconduct, not the result of poor leadership".

US personnel are rarely held to account when drone strikes or other uses of force result in the unintentional deaths of civilians. The military often accepts responsibility, but tangible punishments are few and far between.

In this particular case, the first public reporting indicating that the US military had erred and struck civilians instead of Isis-K militants came from The New York Times. A week later, the Pentagon would refer to he incident as a “tragic mistake”.

“I offer my profound condolences to the family and friends of those who were killed,” Gen McKenzie said in September at a news conference.

One of those killed in the strike was Zemari Ahmadi, an employee of a US-based aid organisation stationed in Kabul. The aid group, Nutrition & Education International, fumed over the news in a statement to the Times.

“How can our military wrongly take the lives of 10 precious Afghan people, and hold no one accountable in any way?” said Steven Kwon, the group’s founder.

The tragedy was just part of a series of incidents to occur as the US pulled out of Kabul that resulted in criticism for the Biden administration’s handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal. Mr Biden insisted in public remarks that the US withdrawal of military forces was always going to be messy, but questions remain surrounding failures of US intelligence in the final weeks of the campaign including the total failure of the intelligence community to predict the rapid downfall of Afghanistan’s former government.

Other parts of the withdrawal were heavily scrutinised by the media as well, especially scenes showing chaos on the Kabul airport runway as dozens of desperate Afghan civilians rushed the airstrip, overwhelmed US forces, and tried to cling to departing aircraft resulting in several deaths.