XBradTC

Just days after an attack on a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders (also known by its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF), in Kunduz, Afghanistan, Army General John F. Campbell, the senior military commander in Afghanistan, was called to testify before the Senate.The attack killed 22 and injured 37, and MSF called it a “war crime.” The organization described the airstrike as “a series of aerial bombing raids at approximately 15-minute intervals,” beginning at 2:08am and lasting for more than an hour. MSF maintains that both US and Afghan authorities were made aware of the exact coordinates of the hospital as recently as September 29, four days before the bombing.”A hospital was mistakenly struck,” Campbell said during his testimony. “We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility.” Nonetheless, Campbell confirmed that the decision to attack the hospital was “made within the US chain of command.”The details of the airstrike on the MSF hospital remain under investigation. However, there are a number of details about the airstrike and the process for its approval that are known.The city of Kunduz was seized by the Taliban a month ago. The operation that included the airstrike on the MSF hospital was part of a major counteroffensive by Afghan forces, with the assistance of US Special Forces, to retake the city from Taliban militants.Related: Taliban, Helped by Foreign Fighters, Makes Inroads in KunduzThe airstrike on the hospital was not just a spur-of-the-moment decision; rather, it was the end product of detailed planning and coordination. Long before Afghan troops began operations on that night, with US Special Forces serving in an advisory role, there were detailed preparations to ensure that both US and Afghan forces had adequate close air support — in this case an AC-130 gunship circling thousands of feet above the battlefield.In military-speak, an attack, or the use of a weapons system on a target, is referred to as “fires.” The call for fire is a concise message prepared by the observer on the ground, in this case a member of US Special Forces, requesting fires on behalf of the ground forces, Afghan soldiers in this case. This call for fire is facilitated by a joint terminal attack controller (JTAC), usually a member of the Air Force, who has specialized training in calling for fire during close air support, which is the application of fires against hostile targets that are close to friendly forces.This request is sent from the JTAC, who accompanies US Special Forces, to US military authorities in Afghanistan. Those authorities review the request, determine its legality, and pass this information back to the JTAC.This review process, known as targeting, “is the selecting and prioritizing of targets and matching the appropriate response to them.” The targeting process always includes a determination of the legality of the target and requires commanders to take steps to “avoid excessive incidental civilian casualties and damage to civilian property.” It is fairly likely that a US military lawyer signed off on the Kunduz attack.Early in the targeting process, a no-strike list, which contains objects or entities protected from military operations, such as hospitals, is compiled. Targets on this list may be removed if their status has changed; for example, “medical structures that functions (sic) as a weapons storage or barracks facilities may lose their protected status and may be legally attacked.” In other words, it doesn’t count if you paint a big red cross on the side of a fortress and call it a hospital.Targeting for the strike on the MSF hospital would have occurred in a relatively short period of time — likely only a number of minutes — because the request was coming from Afghan forces who reported they were under fire from the hospital. Even with the compressed timeframe, however, all the same questions would still be asked: Was the MSF hospital on the no-strike list? If so, did the hospital lose its protected status because it was being used by Taliban military forces? Does targeting the hospital comply with the Law of Armed Conflict?Watch the VICE News Documentary The Afghan Interpreters:These are all questions the commander would have answered, with the assistance of his staff and military lawyers, before authorizing the strike on the MSF hospital. Because the strike on the hospital is under investigation, however, the information necessary to answer these questions has not yet been released to the public.During his Congressional testimony, Campbell confirmed that the airstrike on the hospital was carried out by an AC-130 gunship. The AC-130 is a converted cargo plane, packed with advanced sensors and communications equipment, featuring multiple cannons, machine guns, and other weapons sticking out of the left side.

Source: What Happened at the Kunduz Hospital Airstrikes? Details Are Starting to Emerge | VICE News

I’d like some more details before passing final judgment on this incident (for instance, did the JTAC actually see enemy fire coming from the hospital), but more and more I’m becoming convinced that MSF allowed Taliban forces to occupy the hospital, and fight from it.

Understand, when that happens, the hospital loses its protections under the Law of Land War. A commander might make the judgment that an enemy violation of the sanctity is minor, and not enough to justify an attack, especially in our age of social media. Or he might determine that the attack is both legally justified, and sufficiently important to achieving his objective that bad publicity is justified. Or, alternatively, it’s simply possible MSF is lying, and never identified the hospital to coalition forces.