Azmat Khan’s two-part article reveals the need for independent investigative mechanisms in wartime. The military has little to no incentive to conduct thorough investigations of their own misconduct, nor publicize their wrongdoing, as this could invite public scrutiny, fuel foreign propaganda, and slow the progress to reaching military aims. And it’s clear that the U.S. military has no interest in drawing attention to its own faulty methods; they only recommended full investigations in twelve percent of credible cases. Especially concerning are the anecdotes about the blatant refusal of some officials to accept or document civilian harm (“tell the cameras to look somewhere else”). Khan’s reporting reveals that the military cannot be trusted to hold itself to account. Journalists, NGOs, and UN bodies must do the evidence collection and analysis, so that war crimes can eventually be prosecuted, victims’ families can receive explanations and restitution, and failures can become lessons learned.
Then there is the harder truth which comes to light in these articles: just because there were civilian casualties does not necessarily mean a violation of the law of armed conflict occurred. As Khan writes, the law requires two principles in an attack: 1) the military must take precautions to avoid the loss of civilian life and infrastructure and 2) the military must ensure that innocent deaths are proportional to the military advantage gained. But these requirements are all too vague. In practice, as Khan explains, what this means is that “The expected civilian toll was proportional if the officer making that determination reasonably believed it to be so, and if it did not exceed a ‘noncombatant cutoff value.’” It’s not that the military is always acting with impunity; it may be that the law is actually too permissive of civilian death, so long as it is not ambiguously “disproportionate.” This emphasis on subjectivity resonates with simulations I participated in for my humanitarian law class, taught by Danish veterans. We would do “exercises” wherein we roleplayed military commanders and had to decide whether or not to greenlight certain strikes. Especially in urban warfare, there was always the threat that civilians would be “collateral,” so we would weigh how important the military objective was against the possibility of the destruction of innocent life. It was morally miserable, even as a classroom exercise with no real consequences. I was left with the question of whether the law should be stricter/more prescriptive about what type of destruction is legal, or if subjective judgment will always be the basis of military decision-making for reasons of pragmatism.
As several writers pointed out, the pause on the admission program for Afghan refugees is no doubt a result of the rise of the AfD party and an uptick in xenophobia. It is interesting, then, that Germany pays for some refugees’ room, food, and medical care in Pakistan. How do they garner support for this spending? And how does it compare to the cost of granting more refugees asylum, which is, as some sources voiced, a “matter of life and death”?
