U.S.
soldiers walk into the charred remains of the Doctors Without Borders
hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, Thursday, Oct. 15, 2015. The attack,
which killed a number of hospital staff and patients, was intended to
back up Afghan forces fighting to dislodge Taliban insurgents who
overran the strategic city earlier in the month.
| |
Associated Press
Published: October
WASHINGTON
— American special operations analysts were gathering intelligence on
an Afghan hospital days before it was destroyed by a U.S. military
attack because they believed it was being used by a Pakistani operative
to coordinate Taliban activity, The Associated Press has learned.
It's
unclear whether commanders who unleashed the AC-130 gunship on the
hospital - killing at least 22 patients and hospital staff - were aware
that the site was a hospital or knew about the allegations of possible
enemy activity. The Pentagon initially said the attack was to protect
U.S. troops engaged in a firefight and has since said it was a mistake.
The
special operations analysts had assembled a dossier that included maps
with the hospital circled, along with indications that intelligence
agencies were tracking the location of the Pakistani operative and
activity reports based on overhead surveillance, according to a former
intelligence official who is familiar with some of the documents
describing the site. The intelligence suggested the hospital was being
used as a Taliban command and control center and may have housed heavy
weapons.
After
the attack - which came amidst a battle to retake the northern Afghan
city of Kunduz from the Taliban - some U.S. analysts assessed that the
strike had been justified, the former officer says. They concluded that
the Pakistani, believed to have been working for his country's
Inter-Service Intelligence directorate, had been killed.
No
evidence has surfaced publicly to support those conclusions about the
Pakistani's connections or his demise. The former intelligence official
was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke only on condition of
anonymity.
The
top U.S. officer in Afghanistan, Gen. John Campbell, has said the
strike was a mistake, but he has not explained exactly how it happened
or who granted final approval. He also told Congress he was ordering all
personnel in Afghanistan to be retrained on the rules governing the
circumstances under which strikes are acceptable.
The
new details about the military's suspicions that the hospital was being
misused complicate an already murky picture and add to the unanswered
questions about one of the worst civilian casualty incidents of the
Afghan war. They also raise the possibility of a breakdown in
intelligence sharing and communication across the military chain of
command.
White
House spokesman Josh Earnest said questions about what the Defense
Department knew about the clinic and whether it was communicated to
personnel operating the gunship would be part of the Pentagon's
investigation. He said President Barack Obama was expecting a "full
accounting."
Pentagon officials declined comment.
The
international humanitarian agency that ran the facility, Doctors
without Borders, has condemned the bombing as a war crime. The
organization says the strike killed 12 hospital staff and 10 patients,
and that death toll may rise. It insists that no gunmen, weapons or
ammunition were in the building. The U.S. and Afghan governments have
launched three separate investigations. President Barack Obama has
apologized, but Doctors without Borders is calling for an international
probe.
Doctors
without Borders officials say the U.S. airplane made five separate
strafing runs over an hour, directing heavy fire on the main hospital
building, which contained the emergency room and intensive care unit.
Surrounding buildings were not struck, they said.
Typically,
pilots flying air support missions would have maps showing protected
sites such as hospitals and mosques. If commanders concluded that
enemies were operating from a protected site, they would follow
procedures designed to minimize civilian casualties. That would
generally mean surrounding a building with troops, not blowing it to
bits from the air.
What
the new details suggest "is that the hospital was intentionally
targeted, killing at least 22 patients and MSF staff," said Meinie
Nicolai, president of the operational directorate of Doctors without
Borders, which is also known by its French initials MSF. "This would
amount to a premeditated massacre. ... Reports like this underscore how
critical it is for the Obama administration to immediately give consent
to an independent and impartial investigation by the International
Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission to find out how and why U.S. forces
attacked our hospital."
By one U.S. account from the scene, American and Afghan troops were under fire in the area.
Nicolai
said in an email exchange that the group's staff "reported a calm night
and that there were no armed combatants, nor active fighting in or from
the compound prior to the airstrikes."
Doctors
without Borders has acknowledged that it treated wounded Taliban
fighters at the Kunduz hospital, but it insists no weapons were allowed
in. Afghans who worked at the hospital have told the AP that no one was
firing from within.
The airstrike came as U.S. advisers were helping Afghan forces take Kunduz back from the Taliban, which had seized the city.
The U.S. military's cursory description of what transpired has changed over time.
Initially,
the military portrayed the incident as an accident stemming from the
fog of war. American forces in the vicinity were under attack, a U.S.
military spokesperson in Afghanistan said in a statement, and called in
an air strike "against individuals threatening the force. The strike may
have resulted in collateral damage to a nearby medical facility."
Two
days later, Campbell told reporters that "Afghan forces advised that
they were taking fire from enemy positions and asked for air support
from U.S. forces."
He added, "An airstrike was then called to eliminate the Taliban threat and several civilians were accidentally struck."
The
following day, however, Campbell told the Senate Armed Services
Committee, "To be clear, the decision ... was a U.S. decision made
within the U.S. chain of command. A hospital was mistakenly struck. We
would never intentionally target a protected medical facility."
Asked
about the location of any U.S. troops on the ground, Campbell said, "We
had a special operations unit that was in close vicinity that was
talking to the aircraft that delivered those fires."
His
remark did not make clear whether any American on the ground had a
direct view of the hospital. Military officials declined to answer
questions, citing the investigation.
According
to the former intelligence officer, the commander on the ground has
told superiors he was in the worst firefight of his career while taking
fire from the building, which he said he did not know was a hospital. He
requested the gunship strike. In that scenario, it's not readily
apparent why his unit couldn't have retreated. The hospital is within a
compound surrounded by a 12-foot wall that could have offered cover from
fire emanating from one building.
The
intelligence analysts who were gathering information about suspected
Taliban activity at the hospital were located in various bases around
Afghanistan, and were exchanging information over classified military
intelligence systems. Typically, a decision to order a strike in a
populated area would require many layers of approval and intelligence
analysis of the potential impacts and civilian casualties.
It
would be significant if U.S. intelligence had concluded that Pakistani
spies were continuing to play an active role helping the Taliban. The
U.S. and Afghan governments have long accused Pakistan of aiding the
Taliban, but U.S. rhetoric on the issue has cooled over the past year as
American-Pakistani counterterrorism cooperation has improved.
Yet
it's theoretically possible that a staffer at a hospital in Afghanistan
was working for Pakistan's intelligence service. Two days before the
strike, Afghan defense officials accused Pakistan's intelligence service
of playing a key role in the Taliban's seizure of Kunduz.
Nicolai
said, "There were only Afghan staff and nine international staff, none
of whom were from Pakistan, working in the hospital. There was
absolutely nothing that indicated at any level, including at senior
management, that any of our staff was working for Pakistani
intelligence."
Disputes
within the U.S. government about airstrikes have played out before. In
December 2013, the U.S. military's Joint Special Operations Command
bombed a group of people it considered militants, but whom outside
groups claimed were civilians attending a wedding. Even after the CIA
assessed that some civilians were killed in the strike, Pentagon
officials continued to insist that all those hit were combatants.
The
incident added an argument for some members of Congress who were
resisting Obama's proposal to shift the CIA's drone killing program to
the military.
National Security Writer Robert Burns and AP Writer Josh Lederman contributed to this story.
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