Sorry I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America and by God we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again.
You've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right you guys, introducing Chris Woods from Air Wars and he's been keeping track of civilian and other casualties in the drone wars for I don't know how long, going back to very early Obama years, that's for sure at least, beginning with the Bureau for Investigative Journalism and now at airwars.org.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
Thanks for having me back on.
Yeah, you're making me feel very old actually.
I do seem to be doing this for quite a long time.
Very good work for a very long time.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's kind.
I mean, obviously the big story for us in recent days has been this major study that we did with Amnesty International on Raqqa and the very significant civilian casualties we believe resulted from US-led actions there.
So yeah, a big focus for us and important to go back to these earlier campaigns and really seek some improved accountability.
And now, so your latest monthly assessment, let's start with that before we get into Raqqa, because this is a little bit broader than Raqqa.
This is about, the headline here, hundreds of civilian deaths reported in the last days of the ISIS fight.
So this is in the smaller towns like Baghouz, is that how you say it?
Baghouz.
Well, in fact, our latest monthly assessment is just for March.
And in fact, by that point, the fight was only at Baghouz.
So really, the fight had come down to an area the size of a couple of soccer pitches.
It was a very small area that a very large number of people were crammed into, both civilians and ISIS fighters.
Tens of thousands came out.
But we now believe, based on local reporting, that hundreds were in fact killed and more injured during a very intense US-led bombardment of Baghouz in the final days of ISIS.
Yeah.
And now, so do you have a breakdown of how many of those were drone strikes versus B-1 bombers and what all?
No, I mean, we don't.
So Air Force is a bit different from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
We don't really focus on drones so much.
It's just air power and artillery.
So we started monitoring deaths from artillery back in 2016, actually, because the coalition itself was conceding civilian arm from its artillery as well as air power.
But I'm sorry, so that means that includes drone strikes or it excludes drone strikes then?
Yeah, so air strikes includes drones.
But strikes can mean air and artillery.
And artillery has played a very substantial role in a lot of the recent fighting in Iraq and Syria.
And we believe it's responsible for a significant element of the civilian arm we've been tracking.
And we know, for example, that American, French and Iraqi artillery was coming very heavily into Baghouz on top of those air strikes, which were by the US, the French, the British, and we think the Iraqis, although we're not sure about that on the air strikes at the moment.
Okay, now, so Raqqa, this is a city in eastern Syria that was sort of the dual capital, the first capital of the Islamic State, before they took Mosul in 2014.
And the last major city that they held there.
And so as you were saying, you have this in depth study then, of the aftermath of Raqqa, how many civilian casualties do you count?
Well, we think a minimum of 1600 civilians died in US led actions at Raqqa in 2017.
More than 3000 civilian deaths were actually reported, but conservatively based on lengthy Amnesty International field studies and our own remote monitoring here at Air Wars, between the two organisations, we believe that a minimum of 1600 civilians died at Raqqa.
And that is right about 10 times the number of deaths so far conceded by the US led alliance.
So it's a very significant discrepancy.
Yeah.
So, well, two major points there, right, is the major discrepancy between that number and what the US government will concede to, but also between that number and what someone might expect.
I don't want to downplay it because more than 1000 individuals, that's a lot of individuals to be killed and in horrible ways too, no downplaying it.
But then if you told me that 10,000 had died in a long term, as you say, artillery shelling and air campaign against that city, you know, for months against ensconced fighters and this and that fighting in an urban environment, I wouldn't have been surprised.
Are you ever surprised?
Are you surprised at all?
Am I crazy to think that number sounds low, Chris?
Yeah, no, I mean, you raise a fair point.
I mean, you know, the way that war is waged has changed.
And clearly, you know, US led forces, the Kurdish SDF on the ground, were going to significant efforts to limit civilian harm.
I mean, otherwise, as you say, that the casualties would have been much, much higher than they were.
And we know that the great majority of the people of Raqqa were able to escape with their lives.
Their property is a different matter.
I mean, 70% of the entire city was reduced to rubble.
And the UN has described it as the most destroyed city in all of Syria, which if you think about how much of Syria has been destroyed, that's quite some competition it's up against.
But yeah, I mean, relatively speaking, somewhere between 1,600 and perhaps 3,000 civilians killed is a relatively light toll.
But it's still the worst civilian harm from US fighting probably since, you know, the 70s.
So, you know, and the fact that the US led coalition is undercounted by a factor of 10, that should have us really worried, I think.
I mean, we can't see a reason that they're underestimating to that point.
Other than, you know, they've not gone in on the ground, they've not conducted a proper investigation into civilian harm at Raqqa, as they should have done.
And it's been left to Amnesty to do that kind of work.
You know, there are clearly lessons to be learned from Raqqa and Mosul as well, where we also saw very significant casualties, in fact, far higher casualties at Mosul in the same year.
Again, no ground investigation by the US and its allies to understand the actual casualty toll there.
Yeah, by the way, please remind us, so how many civilians, the best of your knowledge, were killed in the battle for Mosul?
So overall, we think around 12,000 civilians died at Mosul, a minimum of 12,000 as a result of all parties to the fighting.
Mosul was a much nastier, much more complex fight.
There were multiple parties to the fighting.
You had ISIS with heavy artillery, vehicle-borne bombs, huge number of those deployed.
You had Iraqi forces, you had Kurdish forces, you had Iraqi irregular units supporting and even the federal police acting as assault battalions.
And then you had the international coalition, heavy air strikes by the Americans, the British, the French, the Dutch, and as I mentioned, Iraq, also American and French artillery strikes.
So the ferocity of the bombardment and the chaos of the bombardment at Mosul meant that it was sometimes very difficult to untangle who had killed the civilians.
Sometimes you had incoming fire from multiple parties at the same time.
But there is, in my mind, no doubt that thousands died at Mosul.
And again, we would have hoped for a proper inquiry into understanding that civilian toll from US-led actions.
We know that urban fighting is a bad thing when it comes to civilian harm.
But if we want to limit the number of civilians we're killing, we need to investigate, we need to assess, we need to review whether we used the right weapons, whether the rules of engagement were set at the right level, whether we behaved appropriately or could do better.
Or should be there at all.
That's a whole other question.
Right.
Now, listen, I'm sorry I'm so short on time, Chris, but there was one Peshmerga commander in Iraq who told Patrick Coburn he thought 40,000 people had been killed in Mosul.
And that speaks to, obviously, and who knows what incentive he might have to inflate that estimate at that point.
But it seemed at least within the realm of possibility to Patrick at the time.
I know that.
But I wonder, it sounds like maybe that speaks to the question of whether civilians were allowed to leave or not.
I think you said in Raqqa that ISIS got out of their way and let the civilians flee the city before the worst of it.
Whereas in Mosul, maybe more of the population was essentially being held hostage by the Islamic State during the same campaign.
Would that explain a discrepancy there, perhaps?
I think it's mainly with Mosul, but it's a much bigger city and many times more civilians were trapped in the city.
ISIS was shooting down civilians, attempting to flee in both cities.
Right.
Yeah, it was like East Germany, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
They murdered civilians when they tried to escape.
There's no doubt about that.
And they held them as effectively as human shields.
But gunfire, of course, will kill civilians, but a 500 pound bomb will kill a lot more civilians.
And that really was the problem at Raqqa.
It was the very heavy bombardment by artillery, by airstrikes.
Raqqa, or you mean to say Mosul?
The great majority of that, yeah, was incoming fire.
Well, Raqqa in particular.
Oh, okay.
I'm sorry.
But Mosul as well.
But as I say, Mosul was a much more confused fight.
For Raqqa, we know much more clearly where the destruction came from.
It was almost all from incoming fire and it was almost all from international forces.
And that really is where the responsibility for civilian death mostly lies at Raqqa.
Right.
Okay.
Listen, I'm so sorry I have to go, but thank you so much for coming on the show to talk about this stuff with us again, Chris.
Thanks for having me on.
Okay, guys, that is Chris Woods.
He's at airwars.org.
And you can also check out that monthly... well, there's the monthly report and then there's the brand new study with Amnesty on Raqqa as well.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org.
At scotthorton.org, antiwar.com, and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh, yeah.
And read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at foolserrand.us.
