【Text/Observer Network Ju Feng】
Video footage of the U.S. military's "last blow" in Afghanistan was made public for the first time, once again evoking the memory of 10 innocent Afghan civilians who died in the U.S. military's Hellfire missile, 7 of whom were children, the youngest being only 2 years old.
On January 19, the New York Times, under the Freedom of Information Act (FIA), had U.S. Central Command declassify footage from last August and publish it on its official website. This is the first time the Pentagon has released video of the last U.S. military airstrike before a complete withdrawal.
Screenshot of the video clip The same below
On August 29 last year, the U.S. military first claimed that they had killed "members of the Islamic State Khorasan branch suspected of preparing to attack Kabul airport" in a car, but US media reports revealed that the attack also killed nine members of an Afghan civilian family.
However, the new York Times released an investigation data on September 10, showing that the target of the US air strike was not a "terrorist" at all, and the deceased was also a member of the Afghan family and a local aid worker in Afghanistan. According to relatives of the deceased, he also filed an asylum application with the United States during his lifetime. As a result, a total of 10 Afghan civilians died in the airstrikes.
Later, the Pentagon admitted that it was a "tragic mistake."
The New York Times, which released the video of the airstrike, said the video proved how the U.S. military relied on "blurry, indistinguishable" real-time images and biases on matters "mattering life and death."
The release of video footage of civilian casualties by the U.S. military is rare in history, and it is the first time that images of airstrikes in Kabul have been made public. The silent images, taken by two drones for 25 minutes, were a complete record of the entire process before and after the airstrike. According to a military source, both are MQ-9 Reaper drones.
Based on these sometimes blurry images, the U.S. military carried out bombing missions in the densely populated kabul neighborhoods.
In late August 2021, the U.S. military took control of the chaotic Kabul airfield and was under intense pressure to arrange a retreat. On August 26, a suicide bomb attack on Kabul airport killed 182 people, including 13 U.S. soldiers.
The U.S. military judged that the terrorists would attack kabul airport again. Three days later, on August 29, U.S. forces said they were tracking a member of the "Khorasan branch of the Islamic State" who was about to detonate a bomb near Kabul airport.
As it turned out, it was not this member who was hit by the drone, and 10 civilians were killed.
One of the videos, captured by thermal imaging cameras, showed the target vehicle reversing into the courtyard of a residential area surrounded by walls. Blurry figures walked around the yard, and children walked on the streets outside the walls. Subsequently, the Hellfire missile instantly turned the courtyard into a sea of fire, and the residents threw water from the roof into the courtyard in despair.
Another, sharper video shows the bombing process more closely.
On August 29, 2021, U.S. forces continued to track the driver of a white Toyota Corolla for about 8 hours, then targeted him, mistakenly believing that he was a member of the "Khorasan branch of the Islamic State" that was about to attack the airport again.
Later investigations proved that the man's name was Zemari Ahmadi. He has been an electrical engineer for The International Nutrition and Education Organization, a California-based non-governmental aid organization, since 2006. At the time of the incident, he had just finished work and drove home.
Ahmadi's relatives said that Ahmedi was already working for a U.S. nongovernment organization, had applied for resettlement in the United States, and that his family had plans to flee to the United States with him, and that he had no motive to attack the U.S. military. "You say he's an Islamic State guy, but he's working for Americans." Ahmadi's brother, Emal, said.
Surveillance of Ahmadi's white car, video screenshot (the same below)
Ahmadi (left) and colleagues hold plastic buckets of water
At about 3:30 p.m. that day, the drone "observed" the owner and three others "loading heavy packages into the car."
Although the U.S. military did not know who was driving the car at the time, they were "convinced" that the four were "carrying bombs" and that the car had posed an "imminent threat" to the U.S. military at Kabul airport. Finally, at 4:50 p.m., after the vehicle returned to the "Islamic State Safe House" in a residential area of Kabul, the U.S. military drone fired missiles at the vehicle and killed him.
U.S. military officials also claimed that although the vehicle was in a residential area at the time, the drone operator found that "only one man was greeting the vehicle around" and therefore determined that "the attack would not endanger women, children, and non-combatants."
But according to Mr. Ahmadi's relatives and colleagues, Mr. Ahmady received a call from his superiors that day, taking a laptop and driving his white car to work in an office that was located "8 to 12 kilometers southwest of Kabul Airport" in the U.S. military.
Ahmadi and his colleagues set off in the morning to distribute food to local people and returned to the office at around 2 p.m. Ahmadi then filled several empty plastic buckets with water pipes into the car. His colleagues said there was a water outage in the neighborhood where Ahmadi lived at the time, so he would bring some water home from his office.
They denied carrying "heavy packages" to the car and adamantly denied that they carried "bombs" on the car. The colleagues said there were only two laptops on the car except for the plastic buckets filled with water. The New York Times said that plastic buckets captured by surveillance video were also found in the wreckage of Ahmadi's car, which corroborated the testimony of colleagues.
Relatives of Ahmadi said the attack by U.S. forces, including Ahmadi himself, killed a total of 10 members of his family, including a 2-year-old and two 3-year-olds.
Ironically, on November 3 last year, a so-called "independent assessment report" from the Pentagon concluded that the U.S. drone strike in late August had killed 10 Afghan civilians, an incident found to have been "not caused by misconduct or negligence," and recommended that no disciplinary action be taken.
The New York Times reported on December 18 last year that more "civilian attacks" by U.S. troops in the Middle East were exposed. The newspaper, through the Freedom of Information Act, obtained more than 1,300 documents from a "hidden archive" of the Pentagon. Through the review of these documents and on-site investigations, it was found that the US military's airstrikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and other places since 2014 have been affected by serious intelligence deficiencies and hastily located, which have caused the deaths of thousands of civilians and children.
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