A robust investigation by Azmat Khan’s reveals that the civilian death toll of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was much higher than what the Pentagon disclosed, investigated, or even counted. In Part 1 of her series, Khan explains how cultural misunderstandings and outdated intelligence led military airstrikes to target civilians instead of ISIS. She notes how the quality and quantity of video footage blinded officials to an air strike’s true victims. And she exposes a system of impunity in the U.S. military, which gives officials the authority to determine how many civilian deaths justify an enemy strike. Khan’s research makes clear that the technology of air warfare, which is meant to target enemies with precision, depends on adequate intelligence if it is to spare civilians.
I found Part 2 of Khan’s project especially moving. For this section, Khan compares the Pentagon’s records, which are full of redactions, to the stories of people who survived or witnessed the strikes. What she finds reveals the failures of the U.S. military to accurately identify and target members of ISIS. Civilians with nothing to do with ISIS lost lives, homes, and family members when military officials mistook civilian areas for ISIS-controlled zones, and misidentified civilians as ISIS fighters. The Pentagon’s process for reviewing strikes neglected to investigate these cases. Meanwhile, civilians who lost family members or suffered injuries were left with confusion, grief, and anger.
Khan’s project is enlightening not only because it details the underestimated–and underinvestigated–toll of air warfare, but also because it guides the reader along Khan’s own investigative process. At every moment, Khan is clear about the source of her findings. She explains how she obtained Pentagon records through FOIA requests, and used the evidence in these records to guide her investigation. She measured what the Pentagon wrote against stories from the ground. When gathering these stories, she navigated the possibility that civilians may misremember or misconstrue events. With this in mind, she made site visits without notice, asked open-ended questions, and ensured that subjects understood her motives. These details are both instructive and in line with journalistic ethics, which push for transparency.
While Khan’s reporting gives readers a window into the toll of war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, other news reports follow the huge exodus of people the wars spurred. Since the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan, scores have fled the country, with the U.S., Canada, and Germany receiving the most migrants from Afghanistan. At first, governments abroad organized special programs to take in Afghans fleeing the ruling Taliban. Operation Enduring Freedom gave many migrants humanitarian parole in the U.S., and protected citizens who helped the U.S. government during its invasion and subsequent occupation. Germany, in 2022, set up an admission program that aimed to bring in as many as 1000 Afghans per month. Though neither program was adequate (there were many more persecuted Afghans than seats on U.S. chartered flights, and many asylum seekers whose cases are yet to be processed in Germany). But each was an attempt to mitigate the humanitarian toll of the U.S.’s hasty abandonment of Afghans. Today, these attempts are dwindling as anti-immigrant politics slash humanitarian programs. After Trump took office, he suspended refugee admissions, withheld TPS from Afghans, and put a near-total ban on Afghans entering the U.S. Recently, Germany’s new chancellor suspended the program meant to admit Afghans, leaving thousands stranded in Pakistan.
As memories of the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 2021 recede and right-leaning politics gains favor globally, countries leave Afghans vulnerable to the Taliban’s persecution. At the same time, the Taliban’s violence has created a migration crisis impossible for the international community to absorb, given the inadequate systems of support for refugees. Germany’s chancellor, Friedrick Merz, who is anti-immigrant, does raise an important question, of “how one deals with [the Taliban].”
