Pentagon Civilian Casualty Count in US Global Military Ops Under-Reported, War Monitors Say

US military operations across the world resulted in a purported 12 civilian deaths, all in Afghanistan, an annual report released by the Pentagon on Tuesday claims. US military strikes also resulted in three civilian injuries in Somalia, where US forces are supporting the African Union in operations against Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Shabab.

War analysts have questioned the Pentagon’s 2021 report on civilian casualties caused by US military operations around the globe, echoing skepticism about Washington’s admission of civilian deaths in previous years.

The Pentagon’s annual assessment of global civilian casualties claims that 10 of the 12 declared civilian deaths occurred during 2021 were caused by a drone strike conducted on a house in Kabul on August 29, two days before the last US soldier left Afghanistan to wound up the two-decade-long so-called War on Terror.

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) has acknowledged that the strike was a “mistake”, but accountability for it has yet to be fixed.

The Pentagon report also acknowledged that the remaining two civilians were killed in strikes in Herat (January) and Kandahar (August). However, these figures have been widely questioned.

Former UN war crimes investigator Marc Garlosco noted on social media that civilian casualty numbers released by the Department of Defense have traditionally been “very low” compared to “open-source reporting”.

He cited the example of US airstrikes on the Syrian town of Baghuz, which reportedly caused 64 civilian deaths. However, the US said that the strike caused just four civilian casualties.

Emily Tripp, director of conflict monitoring group Airwars, told Al-Jazeera that the US civilian casualty count for 2021 was once again lower than what “communities on the ground are reporting”.

Tripp claimed that “dozens of unique incidents” involving the US military which led to potential civilian casualties in Syria were “unaccounted for” in the Pentagon report.

The US report said that although the Pentagon has received reports of six other civilian casualties caused by US military involvement in Syria, three of them were deemed to be “not credible”. It said that the remaining three cases were under investigation.

The US is involved in Syria as part of the Combined Joint Task Force–Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) to “maintain pressure” on the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISI), the report stated.

Declared civilian deaths caused by US military operations across the world have been falling for successive years since 2017, when the Pentagon reported 499 civilian deaths.

The figures for 2020, released last year, claimed that US military deaths caused 23 civilian deaths and 10 injuries in Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq. However these figures were also heavily questioned.

At the time, the New York-based Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC) and Airwars both claimed the number of civilians killed by US forces in 2020 was almost five times higher than the statistics released by Pentagon.

“The report for 2020 — the first to come out of the Biden administration — adds to the legacy of unrecognized harm by, once again, showing significant undercounting of civilian casualties. The report also indicates that the DoD has failed to offer amends to any civilian victims and family members in 2020, despite explicit congressional funding and authorization to do so,” the conflict monitor said.