Azmat Khan’s reporting in the New York Times on the miscalculations, confirmation biases, and failures by the American Military in its airstrike campaigns in the Middle East reveals a horrifying reality of American zealousness and disregard for excessive collateral damage. 

Khan explains how the military operates on the protocol that expected civilian casualty must be ‘proportional’ to military advantage gained. Considering American weapons are incredibly precise and accurate, it should be anticipated that civilian casualties would be extraordinarily low in aerial strikes. Yet, recklessness from the military can result in civilians going unidentified (for reasons such as Ramadan fasts), falsely identified as threats, being seen in footage yet not noted in communications directly prior to strikes, or for being, for redacted reasoning, hit in rogue strikes. The images portrayed and revealed by Khan demonstrate the military at what I would hope is its most careless, though I fear that may be optimistic. 

Some figures are staggering. When coming to accountability, in only one out of 1311 assessments did the Pentagon have investigators visit a strike site and in only two did investigators interview survivors. While safety risks should be considered, the overreliance on video footage, which at times has too much brevity, only frame the parts of footage the Pentagon wants to acknowledge (and keeping ‘bad targets’ out of the frame), or not capturing video footage to have reviewed. 

In Afghanistan specifically, Khan notes that “on average, each household lost five civilian family members,” largely as the result of airstrikes or American soldiers misinterpreting Afghan civilian men for Taliban. This rings particularly salient at the same time as, in many of the other articles such as those in EuroNews, Politico, Reuters, focused on Germany’s new policy under Chancellor Merz of deporting Afghans and attempting to minimize asylum application numbers. Not only is Afghanistan unstable and unsafe for many who have attempted to leave, such as the Christian converts described in The Times who were murdered by the Taliban after being deported back to Afghanistan, but it is also unsafe for civilians due to the carelessness of the American military. I wonder how the AfD or other right-leaning conservatives in Germany view the American military’s actions in the Middle East. Would the AfD fault the US for part of why asylum is sought while the Trump Administration is in power?

It is important to note that Khan’s reporting would not be necessary had the Pentagon revealed their own missteps through appropriate paper trails and accountability measures. Instead, such a burden falls on American journalists to carry out to the extent possible, often through incredibly dangerous measures, including those that could result in boots-on-the-ground civilian journalist casualties through the very practices Khan is investigating. This is one of the many reasons why the media scares militaristic regimes and autocrats.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has called for ending the refugee status of Ukrainians who fled Russia’s invasion, won the largest share of votes in the German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on Sept. 20. It was the party’s third state election victory and its second this month.

Anastasiia Yakovlieva, 25, a Ukrainian who has lived in Germany since March 2022, said the results raise questions for her. “That sometimes makes you think – do you want to stay in Germany or do you want to change your country?” she said. “Do you want to live in a society like this?”

The AfD’s national platform says refugees “need to leave Germany” and “return to their home countries.” The party’s Saxony-Anhalt chapter, which won 43.8% of the state’s vote earlier this month, has published its own manifesto calling for a mass-deportation campaign it calls “remigration” and encouraging businesses to use artificial intelligence rather than turn to “culturally alien” migrant workers, according to Reuters. Ulrich Siegmund, the lead AfD candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, has said that “remigration applies to anyone who does not contribute to society” – a category that includes Ukrainian refugees without jobs, NPR reported.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union has ruled out working with the AfD. Germany’s domestic intelligence service monitors the party nationally as a suspected extremist organization.

Sofiia Patkanovtsiy, a Princeton University sophomore from Uzhhorod in western Ukraine, described the AfD’s victories as “distressing.” She said Ukraine is increasingly “used like a buzzword for pushing political agendas or anti-immigration sentiments.” Patkanovtsiy plans to return to Ukraine after graduating, under a commitment to the nonprofit Ukraine Global Scholars, whose scholars pledge to work in Ukraine for at least five years.

Yakovlieva is from Donetsk, which came under the control of Russian-backed forces in 2014. Her family fled to Kyiv and was living near Bucha and Irpin, outside the capital, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

“I didn’t want to get encircled, and that’s why I decided to flee the war,” she said.

She left with her mother, stopping briefly in Poland before settling in Germany. Her father and brother later joined them, and her family now lives near Cologne.

Yakovlieva speaks four languages, holds project-management certifications, and is working on a second bachelor’s degree, but said, “I’m not that attractive of a worker in the German labor market.” German employers want German-issued qualifications, she said, and retraining can take years. Her first degree would qualify her to teach in Germany only after two more years of study.

Her mother holds a finance degree from a Ukrainian university and spent a decade caring for children. According to Yakovlieva, she completed a job-center training course and a month of practical training at a German kindergarten. The kindergarten then declined to hire her as an assistant because she lacked the required bachelor’s degree. Yakovlieva said some Germans work in such roles without a degree or certificate “just because they are German.”

“A lot of Ukrainians had to agree to work in lower positions than they used to work in Ukraine,” she said.

In July, EU countries agreed to extend temporary protection for people fleeing Ukraine until March 4, 2028. More than 4 million people have received that protection since 2022. The status stems from an EU-wide decision, not from national or state governments.

Yakovlieva holds a residence permit under that temporary-protection provision. She said her employer, an American company, cannot provide the documents she would need for a German work visa.

In about six months, she said, she will be able to choose between applying for German citizenship and seeking permanent residency, which would require changing jobs.

“It’s in [Germany’s] interest to keep the people here,” Yakovlieva said. “I think when the time comes, they will be trying to provide an opportunity for those who want to stay.”

On September 16th, Malta’s Ombudsman published a press release which highlights that Malta has not included the Department of Ombudsman in discussions/development of the Independent Monitoring Mechanism (IMM), reflecting broader trends of anti-immigration attitudes in Malta. The IMM is part of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum which was implemented last June to address concerns surrounding immigration and asylum. The IMM was included in this pact as a safeguard for the newly robust screening system for asylum seekers, and is to be independently developed by each country in the EU. 

Malta is a small EU country in the Mediterranean located south of Sicily, which has seen a rise in immigration over the past decade, with immigrants now occupying 31% of the country’s population. Most of these immigrants come from India, Nepal, and the Philippines. The Times of Malta reports that due to these growing numbers of immigrants, and the small geographic size of the country, Malta is the most densely populated country in the European Union, putting strain on the country’s infrastructure and economy. 

As explained by Katie Cordina, a nursing student at the University of Malta, immigrants are often looked down on and disrespected in Malta. Cordina is currently writing her thesis on the experiences of immigrant nurses at Mater Dei Hospital, Malta’s main hospital. When asked about the general view of immigrants in Malta, she explained, “Recently an immigrant choked a Maltese person, which broke headlines and everyone was complaining about the trouble that immigrants cause in the country.” 

Cordina clarifies that she does not hear many discussions about immigration policy in Malta within her University or hospital networks. However, she notes that she does notice more disrespect towards immigrants as there is a rise in laws restricting immigrants and refugees into the country. International Migrations professor Christopher Blair helps explain the link between legislative policies, and public opinion regarding immigration. “Some countries try to use policies to shape attitudes, and sometimes policies follow from attitudes,” he said.  

Princeton Professor Andrew Moravcsik, head of the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination explained through an email response that there is nuance to Malta’s lack of action towards the IMM. Professor Moravsik explains that the lack of action may be a delay.  “The literature on EU compliance suggests that enormous cross-national differences exist in average speed of implementation driven by more or less efficient national bureaucracies,” he said. 

But this is not the only possibility, “A still more interesting possibility is that the countries (right now the four: Belgium, Italy, Malta, Hungary, for which this seems plausible) are engaged in willful non-compliance due to some internal conflict or particular political or economic cost to special interests of compliance accruing to that country, or specific opposition,” he said. 

Professor Blair explains that EU policy often provides an overarching framework, but leaves space for countries to delegate specific laws as demonstrated by the IMM. “Within the broad scope of EU rules, countries certainly implement different levels of policy liberality,” he said. In Malta’s case, the lack of the IMM reflects a trend of low liberality, as The European Council on Refugees and Exiles warns that the new EU Pact on Migration and Asylum will further prevent asylum seekers from receiving legal help in Malta. 

Despite these social and legislative trends towards immigrants and asylum seekers in Malta, human rights groups such as the Aditus foundation, Jesuit Refugee Service, and Malta Refugee Council continue to advocate for refugee and immigrant rights in Malta. “Us immigrants stick together,” said Cordina. 

Sources:

Aditus Foundation. Country Report: Malta; Update on 2025. European Council on Refugees and Exiles, June 2026. AIDA Country Report on Malta

European Commission. 2024 EMN-ESTAT Country Factsheet: Malta. European Migration Network and Eurostat, 2024. 2024 EMN-ESTAT Malta Country Factsheet

“The 31% of Malta’s Population Made Up of Foreigners, as Country Received over 32,000 Immigrants in 2025.” The Malta Independent, 9 July 2026. The Malta Independent article

“Malta Remains EU’s Most Densely Populated Country, Eurostat Finds.” Times of Malta, 2026. Times of Malta article

Azmat Khan’s NYT series did an exceptional job juxtaposing the lived experience of civilians with the apathy and lack of attention shown by the US military and the claims that officials made to the public. I especially appreciated being able to read both of her pieces in the series because it caused me to think about how writing in two different styles can change what the readers take away from the article. For example, in “Airstrikes Allowed America to wage war with minimal risk to its troops,” Khan includes information about her methodology of conducting interviews. Specifically, she notes that she didn’t contact anyone before arriving to limit awareness that she is coming, and thus bias. This was interesting to me because I had never considered awareness of forthcoming interviews to be considered the root of bias. She explains that “evidence could be doctored; stories could be aligned.” I found this to be a great way to bring more credibility to Khan and her witnesses because it demonstrates that she is considering the possibility that the witnesses may try to deceive her. However, she of course also demonstrates great empathy towards the civilians. Thus, this style of writing allowed her to include accounts of her methodology, which allows space for strengthening her credibility.

This piece also helps strengthen Khan’s credibility by explaining more context behind her experience in the field, and decisions she had to make as well as the reasoning behind these decisions. I appreciated how that style of journalism helped humanify the writer, which I believe makes her message able to reach more people, especially those who are a bit more closed minded to these types of messages. I also find the headline of this article to be worth discussion. This headline seems almost geared towards people who have a positive outlook on America’s involvement in the war, and who would believe that America is a hero in this situation. This makes me think that the article was written in this way to try to get to Americans who would not normally start reading articles that claim wrong doings by the American army in hopes of penetrating the polarizing nature of politics in America. 

 “In Hidden Pentagon Records reveal Patterns of Failure in Deadly Airstrikes,” however, Khan takes more of an impersonal writing style. She includes more context behind the US military’s procedures and thought processes, while showing the stark contrast between their apathy and the lived experience of the civilians. Thus, I thought reading these two very different articles that were written by the same person, about the same events was very interesting, and I will take this into account when planning for my Berlin article. 

In the Holy boarders vs EU boarders article, I was specifically drawn to this quote: “the heightened scrutiny on places of worship giving sanctuary to refugees reflects hardening attitudes towards immigrants in general.” As I wrote my news piece on Malta, I was particularly interested in how attitudes towards refugees intersects with attitudes towards immigrants in general, since I was speaking with a student in Malta who has witnessed blanket disrespect towards all immigrants. Thus, it was interesting to see this correlation between scrutiny against refugees reflecting scrutiny against all immigrants. 

No Paperwork, No Problem!

Mila was only fourteen years old when she was raped. After enjoying a cigarette with her classmates in Weichselplatz, a playground next to the Neukölln shipping canal, she left her friends early to return home. “I assume that’s when he spotted me,” she says. Mila was walking through the neighborhood when an adult man approached, restrained, and then assaulted her. She assumed he was a Syrian refugee based on his physical appearance and the borough’s demographics, including its large refugee population; however, this is conjecture and has not been verified. The man was never caught, and little was done by Berlin authorities to ensure accountability for the attack. Mila’s story serves as one example of the growing sexual violence within Germany’s own borders.

Unsolved assaults like Mila’s are common in Berlin’s police records. In 2025, police in the city documented 1,300+ cases of sexual assaults in particularly serious cases, according to state parliament preliminary data. Ninety-four of those cases occurred in the borough of Neukölln, the borough where Mila was walking through. Among the victims across Berlin, 268 were between 14 and 17, which was also Mila’s age group at the time of her attack. Police identified at least one suspect in almost 900 cases which left 425 with no suspect identified, roughly one third.

Refugee status does not exempt a refugee from prosecution or imprisonment; however, that does not mean there will be consequences. When a refugee is identified as a suspect or offender, German authorities can prosecute them under the same criminal law that applies to any normal German citizen or tourist; however, a conviction does not always mean an offender can be deported after serving their sentence. A few notable challenges are possible missing travel documents and difficulties confirming their nationality with the country of origin. Germany also cannot return a refugee to a country where they face a verifiable risk of torture or inhuman treatment(s), regardless if that refugee has committed a serious crime, like a sexual assault. As a result of this, an offender would potentially remain in Germany after being released. Another obstacle authorities encounter are establishing a refugee suspect’s identity when their identity documents are missing or nationality cannot be confirmed. Some refugees arrive without a passport, leaving authorities to establish their identity through other methods, like trying to locate someone via the information of a guest register at a hostel or hotel where that person may have stayed.

“I worked at two hostels while in Germany and both played fast and loose with the documentation rules,” says Jessica Tutor. “While there were no sexual assaults while I was there [hostel], there were regular reports of women feeling ‘creeped out’ by the men who did long-term stays.” A police inspection of a hostel on Wundtstrabe on April 20, 2021 documented a case where officers visited and investigated the hotel after receiving an anonymous tip from the public. According to Berlin police, the owner had not documented his guests identity and could not provide specific information about them. Amongst the guests were individuals who police suspected had left their assigned refugee accommodation to flee a potential deportation. Additionally, officers also found a 26-year-old man who was staying in Germany unlawfully. Authorities then had to close the hotel and investigate the operator for violating the Residence Act. Although the police statement reported no sexual assault, this case adds some context for how missing guest records would leave German authorities lacking information about who is staying where.

Women staying in a hostel should be able to expect that their concerns will be taken seriously and that staff know who else is staying there. Reports of men making guests uncomfortable do not establish criminal behavior; regardless, they deserve attention and recognition before anything more serious happens. Tutor comments further this concern as reports of potential crimes may be occurring in places where basic documentation was already being neglected. It is also important to note that there is no evidence that a hostel sheltered Mila’s attacker but by not keeping accurate guest records, it exposes flaws in a system especially where there seems a reasonable responsibility for businesses where strangers share bedrooms and bathrooms.

Mila left her friends that evening with the normal expectation to make it home safely. At fourteen, she should have not been expected to remember every detail of her attacker’s face to help with his identification, especially in the modern world full of technological advancements. Her attacker’s identity remains unknown, and neither his appearance nor the neighborhood can establish where he came from. For Mila, accountability would mean “knowing the identity of the man who assaulted her” so she can “no longer question the safety of her neighborhood; This is an answer she is still waiting for, and will remain waiting until there is effective change.

1. Mila, interview by Ellis Speagle on September 23rd, 2026. Surname requested to be withheld.
2. Berlin Senate Department for the Interior and Sport, response to written inquiry, January 20, 2026.
3. German Criminal Code (Strafgesetzbuch)
4. Jessica Tutor, interview by Ellis Speagle, September 23rd, 2026.
5. Polizei Berlin, “Gemeinsamer Einsatz mit dem Ordnungsamt. Hotel versiegelt”, April 21, 2021

Germany’s left-wing party Die Linke secured the most votes in Berlin’s state election on Sunday, September 20, with party leader Elif Eralp, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, poised to become Berlin’s next mayor. As the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) prevailed in other parts of the country, some see Eralp’s victory in Germany’s most multicultural city as a rebuke to the anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies dominating German politics. But voters are divided as to whether Eralp’s candidacy portends real change.

Eralp’s platform highlighted affordability and alleviating Berlin’s housing crisis, as well as social justice and standing up to the rising right. Die Linke won an unprecedented 25.7% of the vote in Berlin. The AfD finished a distant third, but put up a stronger showing than it has in past races, edging out the Social Democrats.

Eralp has drawn comparisons to Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City who is lauded for his left-wing populism and charismatic style. But Melina, a young voter and pro-Palestinian activist in Berlin who asked to be referred to by her first name only, was skeptical about this analogy. 

“Erap was trying to recreate Mamdani’s aura, which I didn’t think was authentic. She’s not that radical, in my opinion,” Melina said. She explained that she has qualms about Eralp’s reluctance to take a stronger stand opposing Israel’s conduct in Gaza. “I can’t say that things are going to change, especially when it comes to Palestinian life in Berlin.”

Others were more optimistic about how Eralp’s background as a child of refugees may influence her governance. Julia Hack, a student from Frankfurt who described being highly engaged in politics as a teenager, praised the historic nature of Eralp’s triumph. 

“She is the first elected mayor with a migrant background,” Hack said. “That fits what you want from a Berlin mayor, because Berlin is such a diverse city.”

However, Jan-Werner Müller, a German political philosopher and Professor of Politics at Princeton University, cautioned against exaggerating the novelty of Eralp’s victory. He called the “German Mamdani” narrative “facile,” pointing out that other prominent figures in German politics hail from a Turkish background, and Eralp is not the first leftist or female mayor of a major German city.

Still, Müller said, Eralp’s win “deservedly gets attention.” He added that she will now face pressure to deliver on the ambitious housing and expropriation promises that helped propel her to victory.

Hack expressed the view that Eralp’s identity enhances her receptivity to the needs of her constituency. “With her migration background, she is closer to the average Berliner,” she said.

Müller speculated that beyond Eralp’s identity, Die Linke’s welcoming approach to migration contributed to their ascendance in Berlin. He argued that center-right and center-left parties across Europe have begun “copying elements of far-right rhetoric” on migration. “I think it’s understandable that people might want an uncompromising message in this regard,” he said.

Juli Janitz, a German student studying in the U.S., also echoed the belief that Die Linke’s impressive performance may be partially attributable to the party’s status as a counterpoint to the anti-immigrant hostility espoused by its rivals. The AfD “creates this fear of Germany being overrun by immigrants,” Janitz said.

Noting the significance of the decline in support for the center-left Greens, Müller observed that the Greens’ willingness to work with the Christian Democrats, who are “increasingly soft on the far right….can look like they’re legitimating [far-right migration policies].” For many voters, Die Linke represented the only option prepared to unequivocally defend immigrants.

“I think living in a diverse city makes people more tolerant and open-minded,” Melina reflected, when asked about why Berlin’s voting patterns on migration might diverge from those of other parts of the country. “But Berlin is also not Germany. Berlin is an exception.”

For Veronika’s relatives in Ukraine, leaving the country has gone from something they had decided to do in the past to a plan with a deadline.

The change follows a shift in the pattern of Russian attacks on Kyiv from nighttime to round-the-clock bombardment of targets. In a September 4 report, the Associated Press described how Russian drone and missile attacks, which for much of the war had come mainly at night, were increasingly occurring during the day as well. As Samya Kullab of the Associated Press writes, “[the air raids have] interrupted commutes, shopping trips and children’s school, intruded on life’s biggest moments.”

Her relatives have considered leaving before, said Veronika, an alumni of Princeton University from Kyiv, Ukraine who asked to be identified only by her first name. But in recent weeks, as Russian daytime strikes began, many families around them have also left, according to Veronika.

“They have decided to leave before, but this is the time they sound the most earnest to leave,” Veronika said. When asked where they might go, Veronika said her extended family has not decided. They are considering joining her family in the United States or moving to Spain. They now plan to leave within the month, she said.

About 4.41 million people had returned to their places of residence after being displaced by the war as of December 2025, including about 1.1 million who returned from abroad, according to the International Organization for Migration. The IOM also reported that nearly 4 million people remained internally displaced within Ukraine.

For Ukrainians who have remained in the country through more than four years of war, the attacks come as another winter approaches. “Combined with the cold winter around the corner, it no longer makes sense to stay. Finding basic needs like water will be an issue once more,” Veronika notes.

Ekaterina Pravilova, Professor of History and Director of the Program in Russian, European, and Eurasian Studies at Princeton University whose research focuses on the Russian Empire and its prior satellite states including Ukraine, said the winter is particularly difficult because Russia’s targeted attacks on infrastructure leave residents without electricity and heating.

Pravilova remarks that people she hears from in Kyiv describe repeatedly responding to air-raid alerts, “So it’s like constantly, all day, drones and missile attacks.”

Yet, many Ukrainians have adapted to the conditions, she said, including by buying generators and changing their routines around power outages and air raids. “The resilience of the population is just remarkable,” Pravilova said.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that 5.9 million Ukrainians were refugees abroad at the end of 2025. UNHCR further emphasized that persistent airstrikes, damaged housing, and attacks on essential infrastructure continue to hinder sustainable returns to Ukraine by refugees.

For Veronika’s relatives, these challenges are weighed against fleeing. “My relatives plan to flee, but it is so hard for them to leave [their country] and their livelihoods, that is why they have stayed so long,” Veronika said.

I was impressed and appalled by Azmat Khan’s investigation into the U.S.’s devastating airstrikes on Syria and Iraq. I was particularly struck by how Khan was able to establish a pattern of “confirmation bias” in which civilians were consistently presumed to be combatants. Rather than a series of incidental errors, the killings of civilians were an inherent feature of a system in which all ethical considerations were subordinated to the goal of obliterating ISIS targets. While reading, I wondered whether the astonishing civilian death toll was a product of Pentagon incompetence, or merely a callous disregard for human life. The stagnation of the accountability process made me inclined to believe the latter; that no disciplinary action was taken in nine out of ten cases of failed strikes and only a quarter garnered further review suggests that the Pentagon views civilians as disposable. I was also curious as to how much of the misidentification of civilians as combatants can be attributed to racism, and whether myths and stereotypes about Arabs are being perpetuated at the highest levels of the military, leading to the devaluation of human life. 

I appreciated how Khan drew attention to the replacement of boots-on-the-ground warfare with airstrikes directed by controllers sitting at computers far away. I think the remoteness of airstrikes likely contributes to their inhumanity, as it is harder to conceptualize the impact of violence on real people when you are divorced from their physical presence. The cold, clinical language in the military chat logs that Khan reproduced revealed the dehumanization of civilians in strike zones, reflecting the gamification of violence. The rise of autonomous weapons seems like an even more dystopian extension of this trend. The Pentagon’s lack of transparency about the civilian toll of its strikes and failure to make condolence payments to victims was horrifying but unsurprising. Drawing any attention to this devastation would lay bare, as Khan’s reporting does, the contradiction between the soft power image the U.S. seeks to project of itself as a bastion of liberal democratic values and humanitarianism, and the destructive effect of U.S. intervention on the rest of the globe. ISIS’s exploitation of the strikes for propaganda purposes demonstrates how they undercut the U.S.’s diplomatic goals, calling into question whether the Pentagon was more motivated by the expansion of American empire than the defeat of ISIS alone.

I also thought Khan did a fantastic job explaining the methodology of her investigation and why it matters. She spelled this out particularly well in the nut graf, writing that “the Times did what military officials admit they have not done”: the piece epitomizes how journalists should serve as democratic watchdogs. Khan also preemptively shuts down potential skepticism of her damning findings by clearly delineating her methodology – she went to the strike sites, looked for eyewitnesses, did not give advance notice of her visits, and more to prevent bias from tainting the information she received. Journalism shouldn’t have to justify itself, but in an era of the erosion of trust in mainstream media, reporters can enhance their own credibility by reaffirming why their function is vital.

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”?

by Devon Williams

Azmat Khan’s New York Times series shocked me with how flippantly America seemed to measure foreign lives. The number of civilians killed by avoidable airstrikes, the way the ‘best’ technology could be so extremely wrong, and how little officials seemed to care about the cost of their mistakes showed another side of American militarism than what is broadcast to the general population. After reviewing thousands of casualty assessments and seeing a “pattern of impunity” rather than isolated mistakes, Khan emphasized that these losses are more than a simple discrepancy or even negligence. This military is capable of taking responsibility for this harm yet intentionally avoids it, instead using the excuse of video limits or technological errors that cannot be disputed yet are still indirectly the fault of operatives. The same branches that committed these grave mistakes are the same ones who investigate it, and it is no surprise that they don’t want to be the ones held accountable.

The ideas of “transient” civilians and heat maps of the traffic of public areas struck me because surveillance itself usually still identifies innocents like women and children, yet the people operating the machines still accept the strikes. The fact that people are moving and ‘could’ get out of the way or there ‘may not’ be as many people as their could be within a space is enough plausible deniability for the US to dismiss the lives likely to be extinguished, and even when these decisions are challenged, the military stands by their flawed techniques.

Technological obscurity is continuously employed as a scapegoat, as children are called “unknown heavy objects” within rubble or in buildings, cars entire colors are mismatched, or men on motorcycles are seen as possible attach formations all because of an easy moral escape and intentional confirmation bias. Even when external analyses reveal extremely high death toles like the 120 civilians following the Tokhar strike, the existing policies and practices are seen as acceptable for continued operations. Where is the line where countless innocent deaths are acceptable for the possibility of striking one or two select targets? The obscurity and instability of technology and decision-making before a strike  can justify action due to the possibility of harm while also acting as a system to take the fall when that inference is wrong or miscalculated. It seems like there is no way that the operatives themselves are ever held accountable for their actions or actually accept that they are the ones to take the blame.

This led me to consider how institutional responsibility continues after conflict is over or when mistakes are retroactively recognized by internal or external bodies; even the withdrawal from Afghanistan was a ‘mistake’ to some, with Abdul Wahid Wafa calling it “hasty” and “irresponsible” when it jeopardized careers and institutions built alongside American presence and protection. Despite America being the institution to cause much of the unnecessary harm aforementioned, the shadow of retaliation and strength still deterred harm for many within the country. Germany’s suspension of the programs accepting Afghans into the country was parallel in its haste and self-interest, leaving people stranded in Pakistan seeking their deportation (Reuters) or at risk of being sent back to the country that was already violent enough to force them to escape, with EuroNews reporting that “Afghanistan is not safe” even when Europeans want it to be for deportation. The countries and institutions that cause this harm both directly and indirectly still never seem to feel like they have blood on their hands, and through technological errors, miscalculations, or straight-up refusal of wrongdoing it doesn’t seem like anything can force them to recognize their role as the aggressor in addition to the self-proclaimed ‘protector.’