CD (Portland) — Senator Elizabeth Warren and other US lawmakers are demanding that the Pentagon stop its systematic undercounting of civilian deaths after more than two decades of the so-called Global War on Terrorism.

In a letter to US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Warren and House of Representatives lawmaker Sara Jacobs said they are “troubled” that the Pentagon’s annual civilian casualty report, which was released in September as required by an amendment Warren attached to the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, again undercounts noncombatants killed by US forces.

“In this year’s report, the department reported that approximately twelve civilians were killed and five were injured in Afghanistan and Somalia as a result of US military operations during 2021,” the lawmakers wrote. “However, the report did not admit to any civilian deaths in Syria, despite credible civilian casualty monitors documenting at least fifteen civilian deaths and seventeen civilian injuries in Syria in 2021.”

UK-based monitoring group Airwars counted up to 25 civilians likely killed last year by US forces, sometimes operating with coalition allies, in Syria alone, with another two to four people killed in Somalia and one to four killed in Yemen.

Airwars does not track civilians killed or wounded in Afghanistan, where all of last year’s casualties acknowledged by the Department of Defense (DOD) occurred. These incidents include an errant August 29 drone strike that killed ten people—most of them members of one family—including seven children, which the Pentagon originally told the media was a successful disruption of an imminent attack on retreating US forces.

“The report also appeared to undercount additional civilian casualties from Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve that occurred prior to 2021,” the lawmakers’ letter continues, referring to the anti-Islamic State campaign launched during the Obama administration and ramped up under then-President Donald Trump, who infamously vowed to “bomb the shit out of” Islamic State militants and to “take out their families” as well.

“For example, the report… only disclosed four civilians killed and fifteen civilians injured as a result of the March 18, 2019 strike in Baghuz, Syria,” the lawmakers noted. “But the New York Times investigated this strike in 2021, finding evidence that the military concealed the extent of the civilian casualties, and according to Airwars, local sources alleged that the strike resulted in at least 160 civilian deaths, including up to 45 children.”

“This vast difference between independent reporting and the DOD investigation raises concerns and undermines DOD credibility on civilian casualty reporting,” Warren and Jacobs stressed. “One reason for this underreporting appears to be that DOD is not giving appropriate weight to outside sources when investigating casualty reports.”

The lawmakers also expressed concern that “this year’s report revealed that DOD made only one total ex gratia payment in 2021, despite an annual US$3 million authorization from Congress,” a reference to the compensation sometimes paid by the US military to relatives of civilians its forces kill.

“It is a continued betrayal of our values to continually undercount and refuse to acknowledge or take proper steps to address the civilian casualties that result from US military action,” Warren and Jacobs wrote.

For its part, the Pentagon had declared in August that “the protection of civilians is a strategic priority as well as a moral imperative.” As part of its Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan issued at that time, a series of policy steps aimed at preventing and responding to the death and injury of noncombatants. These steps include establishing a civilian protection center of excellence, improving commanders’ understanding of civilian environments, developing standardized incident reporting and data management processes, and improving the military’s ability to assess and respond when noncombatants are harmed by US attacks.

After the publication of this Pentagon plan, Jacobs and a number of other Democratic Party Representatives–Jason Crow, Ro Khanna, Andy Kim, and Tom Malinowski–formed a new caucus to “conduct oversight and advance policies to prevent, reduce, and respond to civilian harm.”

Spearheaded by Jacobs, the caucus worked to include US$25 million in funding for Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan implementation into the US$858 billion Pentagon budget for 2023.

“Every time Congress is briefed about an instance of civilian harm, we are almost always told that the service member followed the proper protocol and processes,” Jacobs told Politico earlier this month. “So I think it’s clear that it’s an institutional not an individual problem.”

While it is notoriously difficult to track how many civilians have been killed by a military that, in the words of General Tommy Franks, doesn’t “do body counts,” researchers at the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs estimate that combatants on all sides of the US-led War on Terrorism have killed as many as 387,000 civilians as of last year.

Airwars, meanwhile, estimated last September that US airstrikes alone have killed as many as 48,000 civilians in nearly 100,000 bombings in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen since 2001.

This killing continues. Since last month, Airwars has posted credible reports of civilians killed by US airstrikes in Syria and Yemen. In the latter country, two children and a woman were reportedly killed three weeks ago when a US drone bombed their home while targeting Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula militants.

Meanwhile, Airwars also reports that this month hundreds of Al-Shabab fighters have been killed in numerous US air and drone strikes within Somalia.

Originally published at Common Dreams. Republished by cc by-sa 3.0. Edits for style and content.

For our full news coverage, become a Shingetsu News supporter on Patreon and receive our daily “Japan and the World” newsletter.