Civilians casualties may be endemic to any U.S. effort to defeat the Islamic State, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles Dunlap warns.
Dunlap’s warning comes after reports that a March 17 airstrike may have inadvertently killed nearly 200 civilians in Mosul, when supporting the Iraqi Security Forces in the fight against ISIS. Circumstances surrounding the blast are murky, with one Iraqi counter-terrorism commander saying the strike was called in on an ISIS car bomb.
“When the (vehicle) was struck, it exploded, destroying one or two of the houses next to where families were hiding,” he told CNN.
Another Iraqi officer told The New York Times the blast was caused by an airstrike called on ISIS snipers on the roof of a building that Iraqi Security Forces did not know contained civilians. Col. John Thomas clarified Friday that the U.S. was trying to investigate whether the blast was caused by a U.S. airstrike or an ISIS booby trap, but the U.S. has not corroborated the Iraqi military’s claim.
“The grim truth is that given ISIS tactics, civilians will die in the effort to crush the terrorists,” Dunlap laments. He continues, “we ought to brace ourselves for more civilian casualties, even when there is no miscalculation and a completely legal strike goes as exactly as planned.”
Dunlap underscores the intense difficulty of the Iraqi Security Force’s effort to retake Mosul from ISIS. Hundreds of thousands of civilians remain inside the city, and the Iraqi Security Forces are now advancing on the most densely populated part of the city.
He further points out that “using precision airpower is not more deadly than relying exclusively upon ground troops to root out ISIS fighters,” highlighting Mark Bowden’s 2013 observation that “[g]round combat almost always kills more civilians than drone strikes do.”
“This is a war, and mistakes can happen, and there can be losses,” an Iraqi special forces general lamented to The New York Times after the strike. He continued that the loss of 200 civilian lives “in return for liberating the entire city of Mosul — I think it is a normal thing.”
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