The New York Times exposes the US’ military crimes in Syria

BY OWN CORRESPONDENT

The New York Times Two in recent reports highlighted only some of the United States  military crimes in Syria, conducted under the pretext of fighting the Islamic State.

American forces over the years murdered in Syria countless numbers of civilians.

The paper exposed a 2019 US bombing in Baghuz, eastern Syria.

The US military tried to cover up a deadly attack on Syrian civilians in Baghuz that killed as many as 80 people, claiming that women and children could have been terrorist fighters, according to a New York Times investigation.

On March 18, 2019, a US F-15E fighter jet dropped a bomb on “a large crowd of women and children huddled against a river bank” near the town of Baghuz and then proceeded to drop several more, killing survivors, according to a New York Times report.

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The attack shocked even US military commanders that watched the incident unfold live through a drone camera and questioned whether it could be considered a war crime.

However, the bombing was soon covered up by the military and an investigation never took place, the report claimed.

The US Command acknowledged that the strike killed 80 people – of which only 16 were alleged ISIS terrorists, but attempted to justify the rest of the deaths by claiming that the women and children could also have been terrorists saying “in part because women and children in the Islamic State sometimes took up arms”.

According to the New York Times that episode was just only one among many episodes where US forces in Syria failed to minimise civilian casualties.

According to the newspaper, the elite US Delta Force unit that ordered the strike had a “pattern” of launching “reckless airstrikes” in its pursuit of inflicting damage against the terrorist group Islamic State.

The New York Times highlighted that the unit’s fighters were part of the secret Talon Anvil group, which, from 2014 to 2019, aimed drone strikes at targets in Syria.

They formally fought ISIS. But more often civilians became victims.

Talon Anvil specialists, in search of ISIS fighters, received and analysed a huge array of information from the allied forces, studied radio interception and satellite reconnaissance data.

As soon as the target was detected, one or more Predator and Reaper strike UAVs were aimed at it.

With the most conservative estimates, in five years the US special forces targeted 112 000 missiles and bombs in Syria.

The group was formed in 2014 after the US unlawful intervention in the Syrian civil war during Operation Unwavering Determination.

At first, the Talon Anvil fighters strictly obeyed the army command and coordinated each airstrike.

This constrained them, and the efficiency of the drones was mediocre.

But in 2016 Talon Anvil commanders were granted permition to make their own decisions about the strike.

Those, in turn, delegated this right even lower – to the senior on duty shifts.

 As a result, the first class sergeants and master sergeants were entrusted to make the difficult choice “to beat or not to beat”.

Talon Anvil commanders, having received carte blanche, no longer restrained themselves: they struck frequently and regularly.

At the same time, security requirements were neglected, and intelligence data were not always carefully checked.

The result is massive civilian casualties.

 Americans admit that 10 times more civilians were killed in air strikes in Syria from 2016 to 2019 than in the same period in Afghanistan.

The group blatantly ignored the rules to protect the local population.

According to the regulations, an offensive air attack is possible only when reconnaissance is convinced that there are no civilians in the affected area.

The drone has to circle in the sky for several hours until the operator is 100 percent sure that the target is a terrorist.

On the other hand, a defensive strike does not require special approvals and is delivered in the shortest possible time.

The commandos quickly found their bearings: since 2017, drones have been used exclusively for “self-defense”, even if the object was tens of kilometers from the allied forces.

There are dozens of examples of the death of civilians from the actions of Talon Anvil.

So, in 2016, a drone was pointed at three men who worked in an olive grove near Manbij.

 There were just canvas bags in there hands, no weapons.

Nevertheless, the operator considered them a threat and ordered them to be killed.

In March 2017, American UAVs bombed a crossing over the Euphrates river, along which civilians fled from besieged Raqqa.

At least 30 people were killed.

And in 2018, Talon Anvil launched a missile and bomb attack on a building in Al-Karama town, where the leaders of the militants were allegedly hiding.

It was not possible for a long time to accurately localize the desired house. And the commandos decided to hit at random.

Naturally, the bomb fell in the wrong place: 23 civilians were killed, including women and children, and another 30 were injured.

 This became known only now.

It is important that the entire evidence base required to bring the American predators to justice will be kept on the US Pentagon servers for many years to come, classified as “top secret.”

And it will take a long time to investigate the deaths of civilians in Syria.

Talon Anvil’s finest hour was the siege of the “capital” of ISIS, the city of Raqqa.

On a tip from Talon Anvil’s commandos, American planes bombed Raqqa from June 6 to October 17, 2017.

 Finally, the US-led coalition officially announced the capture of the city.

The intensity and indiscriminateness of the bombings can be judged by the reports of military correspondents who penetrated into Raqqa shortly before its liberation: bombs exploded right in the middle of residential areas.

The Americans did not hesitate to use even white phosphorus ammunition, prohibited by international conventions.

In 2019, Airwars and Amnesty International reported that, “at least 1,600 civilians died in Coalition strikes on the city of Raqqa in 2017 during the battle to evict so-called Islamic State – 10 times the number of fatalities so far conceded by the US-led alliance, which had admitted 159 deaths to April 24th.”

It noted that, “most of the destruction during the battle for Raqqa was caused by incoming coalition air and artillery strikes – with at least 21,000 munitions fired into the city over a four-month period.

The United Nations would later declare it the most destroyed city in Syria, with an estimated 70% laid waste.”

Former United Nations weapons inspector and former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, Scott Ritter, wrote: “The Battle of Raqqa became a template for all future anti-ISIS operations involving the SDF and the US going forward.

By the time the mopping up operations around Baghuz were conducted, in March 2019, there was in place a seamless killing machine which allowed the US to justify any action so long as it was conducted in support of an SDF unit claiming to be in contact with ISIS.”

The US strikes were apparently meant to be portrayed as “self-defense” protecting US proxies on the ground.

A feeble excuse for the slaughter that occurred.

Yet, what Syria, with the aid of allies, has been doing the past ten years has literally been self-defense.

It is defending the country against terrorists supported and funded by the West, the Gulf, Turkey and Israel.

Meanwhile, when the Syrian government is actually fighting terrorism, it is condemned for war  crimes.

When the US is fake fighting terrorism and slaughtering civilians, it’s just a “misfortune of war.”

And even if to reject all the facts about American military crimes and assume that the civilian casualties were just “misfortune of war”, the main questions remain.

What are the US and its allies doing in Syria?

Who invited them there? Who authorized the use of American military power in an independent country?

No it was not the UN Security Council.

It was not the government and people of Syria.

The decisions were taken exclusively by the US leadership.

And it is they who must bear responsibility for the war crimes committed by American militaries not only in Syria but also in other countries.

And it is the US leadership who must before the International Criminal Court.