The U.S. Army acknowledged in a report published on Wednesday that it killed 23 civilians in military operations conducted around the world last year, the vast majority of whom were in Afghanistan. This number is significantly lower than estimates provided by non-governmental organizations. The U.S. Department of Defense stated in the report, which Congress has mandated since 2018 to be prepared annually, that the Pentagon estimates that 23 civilians were killed and 10 others were injured in 2020 due to U.S. military operations.
According to the report, the overwhelming majority of these civilian deaths occurred in Afghanistan, where the U.S. military accepted responsibility for killing 20 civilians. The remaining three civilian casualties were recorded as follows: one killed in Somalia in February, one killed in Iraq in March, and one case where the location or time of death was not disclosed in the public portion of the report.
Additionally, the Pentagon reassessed the civilian casualties from U.S. military operations between 2017 and 2019, now acknowledging 65 deaths and 22 injuries, most of which occurred in Syria and Yemen.
The report noted that although Congress allocated the Pentagon a budget of $3 million in 2020 to provide financial compensation to the families of civilian victims who fell in U.S. military operations, none of these victims received any of these "gifts," which is the official term used to describe these payments because Washington considers their motivation ethical rather than legal.
The toll of civilian casualties from U.S. military operations worldwide is much lower than that regularly reported by specialized non-governmental organizations. According to "Airwars," which counts the number of civilians killed in airstrikes worldwide, the most conservative estimates indicate that last year saw the killing of 100 civilians in U.S. military operations globally, five times what the Pentagon admitted.
This organization reported from the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) that 2020 saw 89 civilians killed and 31 injured in operations carried out by coalition forces led by the U.S. military in that country. In Somalia, where the Pentagon acknowledged the killing of only one civilian in its operations in 2020, "Airwars" and other NGOs estimated the number of civilian deaths in that country to be seven. The same NGO reported from local sources in Syria and Iraq that six civilians were killed in military operations conducted by the U.S. military in these two countries last year.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, "the investigations conducted by the Department of Defense and the acknowledgment of its responsibility for killing civilians remain woefully inadequate." Hina Shamsi, an official at the organization, expressed her "shock" at the reality that the Department of Defense did not present or pay any compensation to the affected civilian families in 2020, despite Congress allocating funds for this purpose.
