Pentagon report on Kunduz Hospital attack confirms US immunity to international law, writes Suraya Dadoo
On October 3, an American gunship attacked a hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing 42 people and wounding dozens.
The findings of a Pentagon investigation, released on Friday, found that this was simply the result of human error and technology failures.
Army General John Campbell, then the US Forces-Afghanistan commander, directed the investigation, and took action against 12 of the personnel still in Afghanistan. Suspension, “letters of reprimand and admonishment”, formal counselling and “extensive retraining” were the “punishments” meted out to those responsible for one of the most colossal war zone blunders in recent history.
According to the Pentagon report, the gunship crew failed to locate the intended target and fired on the MSF hospital assuming that it was a building occupied by Taliban fighters.
Senior officers approved the strike despite MSF having previously provided the co-ordinates of the hospital to the American and Afghan forces.
The air strikes did not stop even after MSF alerted the American military of the error.
The report found that equipment and communication failures that night contributed to the catastrophe.
Meinie Nicolai, president of MSF Belgium, finds it “incomprehensible” that, under the circumstances described by the US, the attack was not called off.
Although Campbell concluded that some service members had flouted the rules of engagement and violated the law of armed conflict, the Pentagon has ruled out the possibility of holding the officers accountable in a court of law because of their lack of intent – even though under the American military code and international laws of war, fatal mistakes that result from recklessness and gross negligence can constitute crimes.
“The threshold that must be crossed for this deadly incident to amount to a grave breach of international humanitarian law is not whether it was intentional or not,” Nicolai argued.
“With multinational coalitions fighting with different rules of engagement across a wide spectrum of wars today, whether in Afghanistan, Syria, or Yemen, armed groups cannot escape their responsibilities on the battlefield simply by ruling out the intent to attack a protected structure such as a hospital.”
MSF has argued that the slap on the wrist punishments announced by the US military are disproportionate to the destruction of a protected medical facility, the deaths of 42 people, the wounding of dozens of others, and the total loss of vital medical services to hundreds of thousands of people.
Susannah Sirkin of Physicians for Human Rights supports MSF’s position, declaring that the investigation of the Kunduz attack must go beyond administrative punishment and include an examination of criminal liability.
MSF has consistently stated that an American military investigation alone is insufficient, and its request for an independent and impartial investigation by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission has so far been ignored.
This has simply compounded the American military’s sense of total immunity and supremacy.
* Suraya Dadoo is a researcher for Media Review Network, a Johannesburg advocacy group. Find her on Twitter: @Suraya_Dadoo
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An assault on health care
Between 2012 and 2014, in just 11 countries, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) documented nearly 2 400 attacks against health workers, patients, medical facilities and transport.
The majority of these attacks were against local medical facilities and personnel, and the knock-on effects for the surrounding communities are devastating.
Last year, 75 Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospitals and supported-hospitals suffered 106 bombing and shell attacks.
Countless lives were lost and medical equipment destroyed.
In September, the World Health Organisation reported that 654 medical personnel had been killed since the beginning of the conflict in Syria, and that almost 60% of hospitals were either partially functional or completely out of service. – ICRC and MSF