'Inadequate co-ordination...' to blame for November airstrike, says Pentagon
James Hardy Asia-Pacific Editor - London
A Pentagon investigation into the 26 November NATO airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani troops has determined that "inadequate co-ordination by US and Pakistani military officers" was responsible.
A US Department of Defense (DoD) statement about the report, which has not been released, said that US forces had been justified in ordering the airstrike but that "reliance on incorrect mapping information" had led to Pakistani positions being targeted by mistake.
The airstrike was the worst 'friendly fire' incident involving the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Pakistani troops in the 10 years since the toppling of the Taliban regime and capped a terrible year for US-Pakistani relations.
A NATO representative in Kabul told the Associated Press that both sides had made errors. "The report says we recognise we made mistakes, and that mistakes were also made by the Pakistanis," the official said.
The incident occurred after a joint US-Afghan commando unit of about 150 troops operating in Kunar Province came under "direct and heavy" machine gun and "pretty accurate" mortar fire from a ridgeline in the direction of the Pakistani border, Brigadier General Stephen Clark, Director of Plans, Programmes, Requirements and Assessments, HQ, US Air Force Special Operations Command, said in a DoD briefing on 22 December. The ground force commander believed his forces were being attacked by militants and initially called for a show of force by air assets in the area, Gen Clark said.
These assets comprised a Hawker Beechcraft MC-12W Liberty intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft, two Boeing F-15E Strike Eagles, two AH-64D Apache attack helicopters and a Lockheed Martin AC-130H Spectre gunship. The large number of aircraft in the area was justified because the Afghan and US forces "did anticipate going into a hostile environment," Gen Clark said. (talk about overkill)
Although an F-15 and the AC-130 fired flares that "illuminated the whole valley ... this show of force didn't cause the machine gun fire or mortars to cease fire," Gen Clark said. After checking with ISAF Regional Command East that no Pakistani forces were in the area, the ground force commander directed the AC-130 to fire on the positions he had identified. In a second engagement, the AC-130 and an Apache fired on the Pakistani positions.
According to the report, "inadequate co-ordination by US and Pakistani military officers operating through the border co-ordination centre - including our reliance on incorrect mapping information shared with the Pakistani liaison officer - resulted in a misunderstanding about the true location of Pakistani military units".
Gen Clark said that within ISAF there was a feeling that the Pakistan Army was "unwilling to give information on all its border posts out of a perception that their operations had been compromised" by doing so. The New York Times also reported that NATO did not tell Pakistan that its troops were operating on the border, meaning that Pakistani soldiers would not have expected such forces near their posts. NATO and Pakistani forces are supposed to share information when launching operations on the border to avoid this kind of incident[/U].
Nonetheless, the Pentagon statement said that ISAF forces had acted correctly given the circumstances. "The investigating officer found that US forces, given what information they had available to them at the time, acted in self-defence and with appropriate force after being fired upon," the statement said. "He [the investigating officer] also found that there was no intentional effort to target persons or places known to be part of the Pakistani military or to deliberately provide inaccurate location information to Pakistani officials."