Devereaux writes: "The frequency with which 'targeted killing' operations
hit unnamed bystanders is among the more striking takeaways from the
Haymaker slides. The documents show that during a five-month stretch of the
campaign, nearly nine out of 10 people who died in airstrikes were not the
Americans' direct targets."
U.S. special operations personnel prepare to board a UH-60 Black Hawk
helicopter during a mission in Kunar province, Afghanistan, February 25,
2012. (photo: U.S. Department of Defense)
The Drone Papers: Manhunting in the Hindu Kush
By Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept
20 October 15
From 2011 to 2013, the most elite forces in the U.S. military, supported by
the CIA and other elements of the intelligence community, set out to destroy
the Taliban and al Qaeda forces that remained hidden among the soaring peaks
and plunging valleys of the Hindu Kush, along Afghanistans northeastern
border with Pakistan. Dubbed Operation Haymaker, the campaign has been
described as a potential model for the future of American warfare: special
operations units, partnered with embedded intelligence elements running a
network of informants, pinpointing members of violent organizations, then
drawing up plans to eliminate those targets from the battlefield, either by
capturing or killing them.
Intelligence community documents obtained by The Intercept, detailing the
purpose and achievements of the Haymaker campaign, indicate that the
American forces involved in the operations had, at least on paper, all of
the components they needed to succeed. After more than a decade of war in
Afghanistan, a robust network of intelligence sources including informants
on the ground had been established in parts of the historically
rebellious, geographically imposing provinces of Kunar and Nuristan. The
operators leading the campaign included some of the most highly trained
military units at the Obama administrations disposal, and they were
supported by the worlds most powerful electronic surveillance agencies,
equipped with technology that allowed for unmatched tracking of wanted
individuals.
Despite all these advantages, the militarys own analysis demonstrates that
the Haymaker campaign was in many respects a failure. The vast majority of
those killed in airstrikes were not the direct targets. Nor did the campaign
succeed in significantly degrading al Qaedas operations in the region. When
contacted by The Intercept with a series of questions regarding the Haymaker
missions, the United States Special Operations Command in Afghanistan
declined to comment on the grounds that the campaign though now finished
remains classified.
The secret documents obtained by The Intercept include detailed slides
pertaining to Haymaker and other operations in the restive border regions of
Afghanistan, including images, names, and affiliations of alleged militants
killed or captured as a result of the missions; examples of the intelligence
submitted to trigger lethal operations; and a story board of a completed
drone strike. The targets identified in the slides as killed or detained
represent a range of militant groups, including alleged members of the
Taliban and al Qaeda but also local forces with no international terrorism
ambitions, groups that took up arms against the U.S after American
airstrikes brought the war to their doorsteps.
An additional slide included in the materials charts mission statistics from
September 2011 to September 2012 for Task Force 3-10, which was responsible
for special operations across Afghanistan, breaking down in rare detail the
more than 2,000 missions conducted by elite U.S. forces in the country over
the course of a year.
Together, the materials offer an unprecedented glimpse into the kind of
killing that has come to define the war on terror, underscoring the inherent
limitations, and human cost, of those operations. With the Obama
administration publicly committed to continuing campaigns like Haymaker
special operations missions focused on hunting down specific individuals,
not only in Afghanistan but in nations around the world the documents
raise profound questions over the legacy of the longest foreign war in
American history and its influence on conflicts to come.
The frequency with which targeted killing operations hit unnamed
bystanders is among the more striking takeaways from the Haymaker slides.
The documents show that during a five-month stretch of the campaign, nearly
nine out of 10 people who died in airstrikes were not the Americans direct
targets. By February 2013, Haymaker airstrikes had resulted in no more than
35 jackpots, a term used to signal the neutralization of a specific
targeted individual, while more than 200 people were declared EKIA enemy
killed in action.
In the complex world of remote killing in remote locations, labeling the
dead as enemies until proven otherwise is commonplace, said an
intelligence community source with experience working on high-value
targeting missions in Afghanistan, who provided the documents on the
Haymaker campaign. The process often depends on assumptions or best guesses
in provinces like Kunar or Nuristan, the source said, particularly if the
dead include military-age males, or MAMs, in military parlance. If there
is no evidence that proves a person killed in a strike was either not a MAM,
or was a MAM but not an unlawful enemy combatant, then there is no
question, he said. They label them EKIA. In the case of airstrikes in a
campaign like Haymaker, the source added, missiles could be fired from a
variety of aircraft. But nine times out of 10 its a drone strike.
The source is deeply suspicious of those airstrikes the ones ostensibly
based on hard evidence and intended to kill specific individuals which end
up taking numerous lives. Certainty about the death of a direct target often
requires more than simply waiting for the smoke to clear. Confirming a
chosen target was indeed killed can include days of monitoring signals
intelligence and communication with sources on the ground, none of which is
perfect 100 percent of the time. Firing a missile at a target in a group of
people, the source said, requires an even greater leap of faith a leap
that he believes often treats physical proximity as evidence.
The documents include slides focused specifically on Haymaker operations
from January 2012 to February 2013, distinguishing between raids, described
as enabled and combined operations, and airstrikes, which are described
as kinetic strikes. In both cases, raids and airstrikes, the source said
the target was always an individual person. Every mission thats triggered
begins as an objective to find one person for whatever reason, the source
said, adding, Every jackpot is one person off the list.
According to the documents, raids performed on the ground during Haymaker
were far less lethal than airstrikes and led to the capture of scores of
individuals. Research by Larry Lewis, formerly a principal research
scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses, supports that conclusion. Lewis
spent years studying U.S. operations in Afghanistan, including raids,
airstrikes, and jackpots, all with an eye to understanding why civilian
casualties happen and how to better prevent them. His contract work for the
U.S. military, much of it classified, included a focus on civilian
casualties and informed tactical directives issued by the top generals
guiding the war. During his years of research, what Lewis uncovered in his
examination of U.S. airstrikes, particularly those delivered by machines
thought to be the most precise in the Pentagons arsenal, was dramatic. He
found that drone strikes in Afghanistan were 10 times more likely to kill
civilians than conventional aircraft.
We assume that theyre surgical but theyre not, Lewis said in an
interview. Certainly in Afghanistan, in the time frame I looked at, the
rate of civilian casualties was significantly higher for unmanned vehicles
than it was for manned aircraft airstrikes. And that was a lot higher than
raids.
The limited point of view of the drones camera, what Lewis describes as the
soda straw effect, together with the globally dispersed operational
network that supports drone strikes, can lead to mistakes, he argues,
including the loss of innocent lives. The materials obtained by The
Intercept make just one explicit mention of civilian casualties, in the Task
Force 3-10 mission statistics from September 2011 through September 2012.
The document reveals the U.S. conducted more than 1,800 night ops at a
time when President Hamid Karzai was calling for an end to American
involvement in controversial night raids. Of those operations which
resulted in 1,239 targets captured or killed and 709 associates of targets
captured or killed the military reported shots fired in less than 9
percent of its missions, with a total of 14 civilian casualty events for
the year.
The 14 civilian casualties is highly suspect, said the source, who
reviewed after-action reports on raids and other operations in Afghanistan.
I know the actual number is much higher, he added. But they make the
numbers themselves so they can get away with writing off most of the kills
as legitimate.
The Haymaker documents reveal little about whether the deaths reflected in
the materials were legitimate or not. They do, however, offer an
illustrative window into how the killing has been done in the past and how
it may be done in the future.
The request was unambiguous. Dated October 30, 2012, and stamped with the
seal of the United States Central Command, the title read, Request for
Kinetic Strike Approval. The desired results listed at the top of the
document included just three words: Kill Qari Munib.
Munib, whose objective name was Lethal Burwyn, was described as a Taliban
subcommander operating in the Pech district of Kunar province. He allegedly
exercised command and control over a specific portion of the organization,
was responsible for numerous attacks on both coalition and Afghan security
forces, and communicated with Taliban officials in Pakistan. Specifically,
the request reported, Munib had been implicated in recent plots to carry out
improvised explosives attacks.
The Americans considered the consequences of taking Munibs life, including
media coverage, possible political fallout, and potential population
blowback. In all three categories, it was determined that negative
repercussions were unlikely, and that Munibs death would decrease
attacks on coalition and Afghan forces. Going through with the operation,
the request asserted, would require a signals intelligence correlation,
followed by a full motion video lock, visual identification within 24 hours
of the strike, and a low probability of collateral damage. Two maps were
featured in the document intended to seal Munibs fate, one of which
included coordinates of his last known location. In the bottom right hand
corner of the document was a bar, numbered one to 10, and fading in color
from red to green. It was titled Confidence Level. A red triangle sat
between the numbers nine and 10.
Less than a week after the briefing was completed, the kill mission was
underway. Signals intelligence had been picked up from a compound where
Munib was known to sleep, according to a storyboard detailing the operation.
Images relayed from the scene revealed the presence of five military-age
males in the area. Floating above the site, an MQ-9 Reaper drone, known as
Skyraider, captured the image of a man dressed in a drab, flowing robe,
with a white cap on his head, casting a long shadow in the dirt. According
to the storyboard, the image was correlated to signals intelligence linked
to Munib.
Skyraider loitered above as the man, joined by two others, walked up a
ridgeline before heading back into the compound. The figure again emerged
from the building. The drones camera registered a positive identification.
Skyraider engaged. A screen grab from the scene shows a cloud of smoke
where the individual had been. Task force personnel watched as a group of
people collected the targets remains.
RESULTS: JP Pending EKIA, 1 x TOTAL EKIA, the storyboard reported. An
enemy had been killed in action. Confirmation that he was indeed Munib, the
jackpot, or JP, was still pending.
On Friday, November 9, 2012, NATO issued one of its standard updates on
missions around the country, including two short lines about an operation
carried out the day before in eastern Afghanistan. An Afghan and coalition
security force killed Taliban leader Qari Munib during a security operation
in Kunar province Thursday, the statement read. Qari Munib was responsible
for directing attacks against Afghan and coalition forces and coordinating
the movement of weapons and ammunition for the attacks.
The announcement appeared five days after the drone strike described in the
intelligence community storyboard, which made no mention of Afghan forces
involved in the operation. Was Munib killed in a unilateral U.S. drone
strike, later obfuscated by NATO? Or did the drone strike fail to jackpot,
resulting in a subsequent joint operation that succeeded in eliminating him?
If so, who was it that Skyraider engaged that day? Whose body parts did the
American analysts watch the first responders collect?
Those questions remain unanswered. A more fundamental question suggests
itself, however. How did the most powerful military in history come to
devote its elite forces and advanced technology to the hunt for a man like
Qari Munib a mid-level Taliban figure in a remote corner of the planet,
half a world away from the White House and ground zero in Manhattan, more
than 11 years after the September 11 attacks?
When the Americans set out to kill Qari Munib with a drone in 2012, an
intelligence document purporting to lay out his bona fides as a target
listed local insurgency figures alongside regional actors. In a graphic
titled Link Analysis, Munibs name appears under a generic cartoon of an
Afghan male, surrounded by six other headshots. Half of them are described
as Salafists, a conservative faction that has existed in Kunar for decades
and, for a period, resisted Taliban presence in the province.
One of the Salafists pictured was Haji Matin, a timber trader from the
Korengal Valley. In the early years of the war, one of Matins business
rivals wrongly fingered him as a militant to the Americans. U.S. forces
responded by bombing Matins home. While Matin survived, several members of
his family were killed. The Americans then appropriated one of his
lumberyards as an outpost, thus turning one of the most powerful men in the
area into a formidable insurgent leader. The transformation of men like
Matin and the Salafists, once locally minded powerbrokers, into anti-U.S.
fighters, was hardly unique.
When viewed from absolutely the wrong metric, the Americans were very
successful at hunting people, said Matt Trevithick, a researcher who in
2014 made more than a dozen unembedded trips to some of Kunars most remote
areas in an effort to understand the province, and American actions there,
through the eyes of its residents. The problem, he said, is that savvy,
opportunistic strongmen maneuvered to draw U.S. forces into local conflicts,
a dynamic that played out again and again throughout the war. We knew
nothing about who we were shooting at specifically in Kunar, Trevithick
said. He understands the frustration of conventional U.S. forces who were
dropped in places like Kunar. I dont blame them, he said. Theyre put in
an impossible situation themselves. But what happens is everyone starts
looking like the enemy. And that means you start shooting. And that means
people actually do become the enemy.
In September 2010, nine years after the terrorist attacks in New York City,
the U.S. military and coalition forces were working their way through a list
of 744 people slated for death or capture in Afghanistan. According to the
so-called Joint Prioritized Effects List (JPEL), provided by NSA
whistleblower Edward Snowden, Kunar, with 44 targets, had the third-highest
total in the country. Few of the Kunar targets represented core al
Qaeda-linked figures, and many were associated with local groups like the
Salafists, whose listed offenses typically included attacks on Western and
Afghan government forces in the province. The targets on the 2010 list were
prioritized with rankings of one to four, in terms their significance, with
one being the most significant. In Kunar, a single target rose to the level
of priority one, while more than 80 percent were designated priority three.
Seven of the JPEL targets appear in the Haymaker slides, though just three
had been linked to al Qaeda. Regardless of their associations, the U.S.
ultimately devoted the same resources to picking off locally affiliated
militants as it did to the campaign against the group responsible for 9/11.
After nearly a decade of war, thousands of operations, and thousands of
deaths, some within the special operations community began to question the
quality of the United States targets in Afghanistan. By 2010, guys were
going after street thugs, a former SEAL Team 6 officer told the New York
Times recently. The most highly trained force in the world, chasing after
street thugs. Concerns that the U.S. was devoting tremendous resources to
kill off a never-ending stream of nobodies did little to halt the momentum.
The secret documents obtained by The Intercept, which include a slide on
Manhunting Basics, reflect the combination of U.S. military personnel and
spies who have hunted targets along Afghanistans border with Pakistan for
years. According to one of the slides, the Haymaker functional teams
included the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the NSA, and the National
Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. The Air Forces uniquely designed 11th
Intelligence Squadron also played a role. The Florida-based squadron was
reactivated in August 2006 for the express purpose of supporting find, fix,
finish operations to capture or kill targets through analysis of aerial
intelligence.
The drone operations that supported campaigns like Haymaker also included
personnel stationed at Camp Alpha, a secure facility at Bagram populated by
teams from the militarys Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), as well
as contractors manning stations at U.S. bases like Fort Gordon, a
lesser-known though crucial node in the war on terror that supports tactical
NSA operations abroad from Augusta, Georgia. The hunting and killing
operations relied on advanced technology to zero in on targets, including
the cellphone geolocation system known as GILGAMESH. As The Intercept
reported in 2014, the GILGAMESH system employs a simulated cellphone tower
to identify and locate targeted SIM cards.
While signals intelligence and electronic surveillance clearly contributed
to Haymakers kinetic operations like the drone strike that targeted Qari
Munib there was evidently more to the missions than advanced technology.
Unlike some other arenas in which the war on terror has touched down Yemen
or Somalia, for example the documents point to the robust presence of U.S.
intelligence agencies and human sources on the ground in northeastern
Afghanistan. In Nuristans Waygal district, the Defense Intelligence Agency
and the CIA had myriad complementary sources, a slide laying out
targeting criteria in the district noted, some of whom may be able to
trigger our operations. A third of the active targets in Waygal had good
selectors phones the Americans could target in the run-up to a raid or
airstrike and the NSA had taken on [signals intelligence] development in
Waygal, greatly enhancing our understanding of the [signals intelligence]
environment.
According to the slide, Waygal, described as a historic al Qaeda
sanctuary, included more than a half-dozen NAIs, named areas of interest,
the identification of which was attributed to similarly historic levels of
human and signals intelligence cultivation, as well as surveillance provided
by drones scanning the district. There were over a dozen active targets in
three villages, the slide said, adding that most of the targets were already
on a targeting list, or easily could be. The targets there are not only
senior-level Taliban facilitators and hosts, but Arabs themselves, the
slide noted, underscoring the presence of suspected foreign fighters in the
district. Elimination of these targets, it continued, will provide
demonstrable measures of success.
The documents indicate that U.S. forces launched just one airstrike as part
of the Haymaker campaign in the early months of 2012, killing two people. In
May 2012, however, the tempo of operations picked up dramatically, an
increase that coincided with a strategic shift in Afghanistan emanating from
the White House. As the militarys focus shifted to hunting down specific
targets from 2011 to 2012, drone strikes in Afghanistan increased by 72
percent.
Over the course of five months, stretching through the summer of 2012,
Haymaker operations included 27 raids and 27 airstrikes. The raids resulted
in the capture of 61 people, 13 of them jackpots, the actual targets of the
missions. A total of two people were reportedly killed in these ground
operations. In the airstrikes, meanwhile, a total of 155 people were killed
and labeled as enemies killed in action, according to a table presented in
the documents. Just 19 were jackpots. The table does not say whether the
jackpots are reflected in the EKIA total. It does, however, appear to
present a success rate: the number of jackpots divided by the number of
missions. In the case of raids, a figure of 48 percent is presented; for
airstrikes its 70 percent.
The scores of unnamed people killed in the hunt for jackpots, and the
intelligence opportunities lost by failing to capture targets alive, do not
appear to factor into the calculation. The apparent success rate, in other
words, depends solely on killing jackpots, and ignores the strategic and
human consequences of killing large numbers of bystanders.
While the source conceded there could be scenarios in which women and
children killed in an airstrike are labeled as EKIA, in the case of the
Haymaker strikes he believed it was more likely that the dead included
groups of men or teenaged boys killed because the intel says the guy JSOC
is going after may be in that group of men. In the event that a target is
identified in such a group, he said, Theyll go through with the strike.
The materials also include a chart revealing that airstrikes killed 219
people over a 14-month period in 2012 and 2013, resulting in at least 35
jackpots. The document includes thumbnail images of individuals,
representing a range of groups, who were captured or killed during Haymaker
in total 30 men, 24 of them stamped EKIA, five detained, and one wounded
in action. The deaths of just over half the individuals were noted in NATOs
press releases or media reports.
The Haymaker files also point to the psychological impact of living under
the constant threat of death from above an effect human rights workers
have documented among civilians living in areas populated by militants. A
quote attributed to a Taliban detainee identified as Ahmad, aka Objective
Brandywine, features prominently on three of the documents. Hands down,
the scariest/most intimidating message for the Taliban, at any level, from
fighter to Taliban senior leadership, is anything to do with drones or
aerial bombings, Ahmad purportedly said. The Taliban has no way to defend
against them and they are certain to end in absolute destruction of whatever
their target is.
Still, the documents assessment of Haymakers effectiveness was frank. A
slide detailing the campaigns effects from January 2012 through February
2013 included an assessment of Objectives & Measures of Effectiveness. The
results were not good. Disruptions in al Qaedas view of northeastern
Afghanistan as a safe haven and the loss of key al Qaeda members and
enablers in the region were deemed marginal. Meanwhile, a comparison of
Haymaker 1.0 (August 2011) with Haymaker 2.0 (February 2013) noted that al
Qaeda faced little to no local opposition and enjoyed relatively free
movement to and from Pakistan. Kinetic strikes, the slide reported,
successfully killed one [al Qaeda] target per year, allowing the
organization to easily reconstitute.
By 2013, Haymaker was amassing a significant body count but making little
headway against al Qaeda forces in the region. According to the Success
Criteria slide, sporadic reporting of concern over [the] viability of
northeastern Afghanistan as a safe haven had been overshadowed by the
groups senior leadership discussing the establishment of a post-2014
sanctuary. Individuals continued to return to Pakistan to support
operations in and outside of Afghanistan, the slide asserted. While nascent
developments in some valleys indicated that locals were tiring of al
Qaedas efforts to root out spies as a perceived method to stopping
strikes, the strikes and raids themselves had succeeded in
killing/capturing few [al Qaeda] targets. As slides detailing its
effectiveness noted, Haymakers impact on al Qaeda and Taliban enablers in
Kunar and Nuristan was considered temporary without a long-term, persistent
campaign.
On February 18, 2013, while Haymaker was still underway, Afghan President
Hamid Karzai issued a decree: Afghan military forces were barred from
calling in U.S. airstrikes for support on missions. The order followed an
operation in Kunar in which NATO and Afghan forces were blamed for the
deaths of 10 civilians including one man, four women, and five children.
In 2012, the U.N. mission in Afghanistan had documented a number of other
incidents involving civilian deaths resulting from U.S. operations,
including a raid that left seven civilians dead, an aerial attack that
killed seven children and one adult, and a drone strike targeting two
insurgents that killed a teenage girl.
The most recent date included in the Haymaker materials is February 28,
2013. Whether the date marked the end of the campaign is unclear. What does
seem clear, however, is that Haymaker coincided with an increase in drone
strikes and civilian casualties across Afghanistan. By the end of 2013, the
U.N. reported the number of civilian casualties from drone strikes in
Afghanistan had tripled from 2012, with almost one-third of the civilian
deaths from aerial operations reported in Kunar, the heart of the Haymaker
campaign. Records of condolence payments disbursed by the U.S. military,
obtained by The Intercept, show more than $118,000 distributed in 45
disbursements to Kunar in fiscal years 2011 through 2013. In addition to
numerous injuries, the payments also cover the deaths of 27 people,
including at least four children. The records do not indicate whether the
incidents were linked to the Haymaker campaign or whether they were the
result of mistaken ground raids or airstrikes.
Until recently, the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan had largely receded from
public conversations in the U.S. This month, an American airstrike on a
hospital run by the international organization Médecins Sans Frontières,
offered a forceful reminder that the war, despite the Obama administrations
declaration in 2014, is far from over. Unleashed in the early morning hours
of October 3, in the province of Kunduz, the U.S. attack killed at least a
dozen members of the humanitarian groups medical staff and 10 patients,
including three children. A nurse on the scene recalled seeing six victims
in the intensive care unit ablaze in their beds. There are no words for how
terrible it was, the nurse said. MSF denounced the strike as a war crime
and demanded an independent investigation.
The Kunduz attack underscored an ugly reality: After nearly a decade and a
half of war, more than 2,300 American lives lost, and an estimated 26,000
Afghan civilians killed, the nature of combat in Afghanistan is entering a
new, potentially bloodier, phase. In August, the United Nations reported
that civilian casualties in Afghanistan are projected to equal or exceed
the record high numbers documented last year. While most civilian
casualties in the first half of 2015 were attributed to anti-government
forces, 27 deaths and 22 injuries were attributed to airstrikes by
international military forces, a 23 percent increase over last year, most
of them, unlike the air raid in Kunduz, carried out by drones.
Despite the rise in civilian casualties and the well-documented failure of
drone strikes to achieve the militarys broader objectives, there is every
indication that unmanned airstrikes will play an increasing role in U.S.
military engagement in Afghanistan, as they have in war zones across the
world. Less than two weeks after the U.N. issued its report, Foreign Policy
revealed that JSOC has drastically reduced the number of night raids it
conducts in Afghanistan, while dramatically increasing its reliance on
airstrikes, and is currently on pace to double the rate at which it kills
high-value individuals using kinetic strikes, compared to how many it was
killing that way five years ago.
Afghanistans northeastern border with Pakistan remains an active area of
focus for the remaining U.S. special operations forces in the country. The
Pech Valley, once a hotspot during the Haymaker campaign, continues to host
a constellation of armed groups. Al Qaeda, the organization used to justify
both the invasion of Afghanistan and the Haymaker campaign, reportedly
enjoys a more pronounced presence in the valley than ever. The al Qaeda
presence there now, according to a report by the United States Institute
for Peace, is larger than when U.S. counterterrorism forces arrived in
2002.
With JSOC and the CIA running a new drone war in Iraq and Syria, much of
Haymakers strategic legacy lives on. Such campaigns, with their tenuous
strategic impacts and significant death tolls, should serve as a reminder of
the dangers fallible lethal systems pose, the intelligence community source
said. This isnt to say that the drone program is a complete wash and its
never once succeeded in carrying out its stated purpose, he pointed out.
It certainly has. But even the operations military commanders would point
to as successes, he argued, can have unseen impacts, particularly in the
remote communities where U.S. missiles so often rain down. I would like to
think that what we were doing was in some way trying to help Afghans, the
source explained, but the notion that what we were part of was actually
defending the homeland or in any way to the benefit of the American public
evaporated long ago. Theres no illusion of that that exists in
Afghanistan, he said. It hasnt existed for many years.
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U.S. special operations personnel prepare to board a UH-60 Black Hawk
helicopter during a mission in Kunar province, Afghanistan, February 25,
2012. (photo: U.S. Department of Defense)
https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/manhunting-in-the-hindu-kush/https://t
heintercept.com/drone-papers/manhunting-in-the-hindu-kush/
The Drone Papers: Manhunting in the Hindu Kush
By Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept
20 October 15
From 2011 to 2013, the most elite forces in the U.S. military, supported by
the CIA and other elements of the intelligence community, set out to destroy
the Taliban and al Qaeda forces that remained hidden among the soaring peaks
and plunging valleys of the Hindu Kush, along Afghanistans northeastern
border with Pakistan. Dubbed Operation Haymaker, the campaign has been
described as a potential model for the future of American warfare: special
operations units, partnered with embedded intelligence elements running a
network of informants, pinpointing members of violent organizations, then
drawing up plans to eliminate those targets from the battlefield, either by
capturing or killing them.
ntelligence community documents obtained by The Intercept, detailing the
purpose and achievements of the Haymaker campaign, indicate that the
American forces involved in the operations had, at least on paper, all of
the components they needed to succeed. After more than a decade of war in
Afghanistan, a robust network of intelligence sources including informants
on the ground had been established in parts of the historically
rebellious, geographically imposing provinces of Kunar and Nuristan. The
operators leading the campaign included some of the most highly trained
military units at the Obama administrations disposal, and they were
supported by the worlds most powerful electronic surveillance agencies,
equipped with technology that allowed for unmatched tracking of wanted
individuals.
Despite all these advantages, the militarys own analysis demonstrates that
the Haymaker campaign was in many respects a failure. The vast majority of
those killed in airstrikes were not the direct targets. Nor did the campaign
succeed in significantly degrading al Qaedas operations in the region. When
contacted by The Intercept with a series of questions regarding the Haymaker
missions, the United States Special Operations Command in Afghanistan
declined to comment on the grounds that the campaign though now finished
remains classified.
The secret documents obtained by The Intercept include detailed slides
pertaining to Haymaker and other operations in the restive border regions of
Afghanistan, including images, names, and affiliations of alleged militants
killed or captured as a result of the missions; examples of the intelligence
submitted to trigger lethal operations; and a story board of a completed
drone strike. The targets identified in the slides as killed or detained
represent a range of militant groups, including alleged members of the
Taliban and al Qaeda but also local forces with no international terrorism
ambitions, groups that took up arms against the U.S after American
airstrikes brought the war to their doorsteps.
An additional slide included in the materials charts mission statistics from
September 2011 to September 2012 for Task Force 3-10, which was responsible
for special operations across Afghanistan, breaking down in rare detail the
more than 2,000 missions conducted by elite U.S. forces in the country over
the course of a year.
Together, the materials offer an unprecedented glimpse into the kind of
killing that has come to define the war on terror, underscoring the inherent
limitations, and human cost, of those operations. With the Obama
administration publicly committed to continuing campaigns like Haymaker
special operations missions focused on hunting down specific individuals,
not only in Afghanistan but in nations around the world the documents
raise profound questions over the legacy of the longest foreign war in
American history and its influence on conflicts to come.
The frequency with which targeted killing operations hit unnamed
bystanders is among the more striking takeaways from the Haymaker slides.
The documents show that during a five-month stretch of the campaign, nearly
nine out of 10 people who died in airstrikes were not the Americans direct
targets. By February 2013, Haymaker airstrikes had resulted in no more than
35 jackpots, a term used to signal the neutralization of a specific
targeted individual, while more than 200 people were declared EKIA enemy
killed in action.
In the complex world of remote killing in remote locations, labeling the
dead as enemies until proven otherwise is commonplace, said an
intelligence community source with experience working on high-value
targeting missions in Afghanistan, who provided the documents on the
Haymaker campaign. The process often depends on assumptions or best guesses
in provinces like Kunar or Nuristan, the source said, particularly if the
dead include military-age males, or MAMs, in military parlance. If there
is no evidence that proves a person killed in a strike was either not a MAM,
or was a MAM but not an unlawful enemy combatant, then there is no
question, he said. They label them EKIA. In the case of airstrikes in a
campaign like Haymaker, the source added, missiles could be fired from a
variety of aircraft. But nine times out of 10 its a drone strike.
The source is deeply suspicious of those airstrikes the ones ostensibly
based on hard evidence and intended to kill specific individuals which end
up taking numerous lives. Certainty about the death of a direct target often
requires more than simply waiting for the smoke to clear. Confirming a
chosen target was indeed killed can include days of monitoring signals
intelligence and communication with sources on the ground, none of which is
perfect 100 percent of the time. Firing a missile at a target in a group of
people, the source said, requires an even greater leap of faith a leap
that he believes often treats physical proximity as evidence.
The documents include slides focused specifically on Haymaker operations
from January 2012 to February 2013, distinguishing between raids, described
as enabled and combined operations, and airstrikes, which are described
as kinetic strikes. In both cases, raids and airstrikes, the source said
the target was always an individual person. Every mission thats triggered
begins as an objective to find one person for whatever reason, the source
said, adding, Every jackpot is one person off the list.
According to the documents, raids performed on the ground during Haymaker
were far less lethal than airstrikes and led to the capture of scores of
individuals. Research by Larry Lewis, formerly a principal research
scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses, supports that conclusion. Lewis
spent years studying U.S. operations in Afghanistan, including raids,
airstrikes, and jackpots, all with an eye to understanding why civilian
casualties happen and how to better prevent them. His contract work for the
U.S. military, much of it classified, included a focus on civilian
casualties and informed tactical directives issued by the top generals
guiding the war. During his years of research, what Lewis uncovered in his
examination of U.S. airstrikes, particularly those delivered by machines
thought to be the most precise in the Pentagons arsenal, was dramatic. He
found that drone strikes in Afghanistan were 10 times more likely to kill
civilians than conventional aircraft.
We assume that theyre surgical but theyre not, Lewis said in an
interview. Certainly in Afghanistan, in the time frame I looked at, the
rate of civilian casualties was significantly higher for unmanned vehicles
than it was for manned aircraft airstrikes. And that was a lot higher than
raids.
The limited point of view of the drones camera, what Lewis describes as the
soda straw effect, together with the globally dispersed operational
network that supports drone strikes, can lead to mistakes, he argues,
including the loss of innocent lives. The materials obtained by The
Intercept make just one explicit mention of civilian casualties, in the Task
Force 3-10 mission statistics from September 2011 through September 2012.
The document reveals the U.S. conducted more than 1,800 night ops at a
time when President Hamid Karzai was calling for an end to American
involvement in controversial night raids. Of those operations which
resulted in 1,239 targets captured or killed and 709 associates of targets
captured or killed the military reported shots fired in less than 9
percent of its missions, with a total of 14 civilian casualty events for
the year.
The 14 civilian casualties is highly suspect, said the source, who
reviewed after-action reports on raids and other operations in Afghanistan.
I know the actual number is much higher, he added. But they make the
numbers themselves so they can get away with writing off most of the kills
as legitimate.
The Haymaker documents reveal little about whether the deaths reflected in
the materials were legitimate or not. They do, however, offer an
illustrative window into how the killing has been done in the past and how
it may be done in the future.
The request was unambiguous. Dated October 30, 2012, and stamped with the
seal of the United States Central Command, the title read, Request for
Kinetic Strike Approval. The desired results listed at the top of the
document included just three words: Kill Qari Munib.
Munib, whose objective name was Lethal Burwyn, was described as a Taliban
subcommander operating in the Pech district of Kunar province. He allegedly
exercised command and control over a specific portion of the organization,
was responsible for numerous attacks on both coalition and Afghan security
forces, and communicated with Taliban officials in Pakistan. Specifically,
the request reported, Munib had been implicated in recent plots to carry out
improvised explosives attacks.
The Americans considered the consequences of taking Munibs life, including
media coverage, possible political fallout, and potential population
blowback. In all three categories, it was determined that negative
repercussions were unlikely, and that Munibs death would decrease
attacks on coalition and Afghan forces. Going through with the operation,
the request asserted, would require a signals intelligence correlation,
followed by a full motion video lock, visual identification within 24 hours
of the strike, and a low probability of collateral damage. Two maps were
featured in the document intended to seal Munibs fate, one of which
included coordinates of his last known location. In the bottom right hand
corner of the document was a bar, numbered one to 10, and fading in color
from red to green. It was titled Confidence Level. A red triangle sat
between the numbers nine and 10.
Less than a week after the briefing was completed, the kill mission was
underway. Signals intelligence had been picked up from a compound where
Munib was known to sleep, according to a storyboard detailing the operation.
Images relayed from the scene revealed the presence of five military-age
males in the area. Floating above the site, an MQ-9 Reaper drone, known as
Skyraider, captured the image of a man dressed in a drab, flowing robe,
with a white cap on his head, casting a long shadow in the dirt. According
to the storyboard, the image was correlated to signals intelligence linked
to Munib.
Skyraider loitered above as the man, joined by two others, walked up a
ridgeline before heading back into the compound. The figure again emerged
from the building. The drones camera registered a positive identification.
Skyraider engaged. A screen grab from the scene shows a cloud of smoke
where the individual had been. Task force personnel watched as a group of
people collected the targets remains.
RESULTS: JP Pending EKIA, 1 x TOTAL EKIA, the storyboard reported. An
enemy had been killed in action. Confirmation that he was indeed Munib, the
jackpot, or JP, was still pending.
On Friday, November 9, 2012, NATO issued one of its standard updates on
missions around the country, including two short lines about an operation
carried out the day before in eastern Afghanistan. An Afghan and coalition
security force killed Taliban leader Qari Munib during a security operation
in Kunar province Thursday, the statement read. Qari Munib was responsible
for directing attacks against Afghan and coalition forces and coordinating
the movement of weapons and ammunition for the attacks.
The announcement appeared five days after the drone strike described in the
intelligence community storyboard, which made no mention of Afghan forces
involved in the operation. Was Munib killed in a unilateral U.S. drone
strike, later obfuscated by NATO? Or did the drone strike fail to jackpot,
resulting in a subsequent joint operation that succeeded in eliminating him?
If so, who was it that Skyraider engaged that day? Whose body parts did the
American analysts watch the first responders collect?
Those questions remain unanswered. A more fundamental question suggests
itself, however. How did the most powerful military in history come to
devote its elite forces and advanced technology to the hunt for a man like
Qari Munib a mid-level Taliban figure in a remote corner of the planet,
half a world away from the White House and ground zero in Manhattan, more
than 11 years after the September 11 attacks?
When the Americans set out to kill Qari Munib with a drone in 2012, an
intelligence document purporting to lay out his bona fides as a target
listed local insurgency figures alongside regional actors. In a graphic
titled Link Analysis, Munibs name appears under a generic cartoon of an
Afghan male, surrounded by six other headshots. Half of them are described
as Salafists, a conservative faction that has existed in Kunar for decades
and, for a period, resisted Taliban presence in the province.
One of the Salafists pictured was Haji Matin, a timber trader from the
Korengal Valley. In the early years of the war, one of Matins business
rivals wrongly fingered him as a militant to the Americans. U.S. forces
responded by bombing Matins home. While Matin survived, several members of
his family were killed. The Americans then appropriated one of his
lumberyards as an outpost, thus turning one of the most powerful men in the
area into a formidable insurgent leader. The transformation of men like
Matin and the Salafists, once locally minded powerbrokers, into anti-U.S.
fighters, was hardly unique.
When viewed from absolutely the wrong metric, the Americans were very
successful at hunting people, said Matt Trevithick, a researcher who in
2014 made more than a dozen unembedded trips to some of Kunars most remote
areas in an effort to understand the province, and American actions there,
through the eyes of its residents. The problem, he said, is that savvy,
opportunistic strongmen maneuvered to draw U.S. forces into local conflicts,
a dynamic that played out again and again throughout the war. We knew
nothing about who we were shooting at specifically in Kunar, Trevithick
said. He understands the frustration of conventional U.S. forces who were
dropped in places like Kunar. I dont blame them, he said. Theyre put in
an impossible situation themselves. But what happens is everyone starts
looking like the enemy. And that means you start shooting. And that means
people actually do become the enemy.
In September 2010, nine years after the terrorist attacks in New York City,
the U.S. military and coalition forces were working their way through a list
of 744 people slated for death or capture in Afghanistan. According to the
so-called Joint Prioritized Effects List (JPEL), provided by NSA
whistleblower Edward Snowden, Kunar, with 44 targets, had the third-highest
total in the country. Few of the Kunar targets represented core al
Qaeda-linked figures, and many were associated with local groups like the
Salafists, whose listed offenses typically included attacks on Western and
Afghan government forces in the province. The targets on the 2010 list were
prioritized with rankings of one to four, in terms their significance, with
one being the most significant. In Kunar, a single target rose to the level
of priority one, while more than 80 percent were designated priority three.
Seven of the JPEL targets appear in the Haymaker slides, though just three
had been linked to al Qaeda. Regardless of their associations, the U.S.
ultimately devoted the same resources to picking off locally affiliated
militants as it did to the campaign against the group responsible for 9/11.
After nearly a decade of war, thousands of operations, and thousands of
deaths, some within the special operations community began to question the
quality of the United States targets in Afghanistan. By 2010, guys were
going after street thugs, a former SEAL Team 6 officer told the New York
Times recently. The most highly trained force in the world, chasing after
street thugs. Concerns that the U.S. was devoting tremendous resources to
kill off a never-ending stream of nobodies did little to halt the momentum.
The secret documents obtained by The Intercept, which include a slide on
Manhunting Basics, reflect the combination of U.S. military personnel and
spies who have hunted targets along Afghanistans border with Pakistan for
years. According to one of the slides, the Haymaker functional teams
included the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the NSA, and the National
Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. The Air Forces uniquely designed 11th
Intelligence Squadron also played a role. The Florida-based squadron was
reactivated in August 2006 for the express purpose of supporting find, fix,
finish operations to capture or kill targets through analysis of aerial
intelligence.
The drone operations that supported campaigns like Haymaker also included
personnel stationed at Camp Alpha, a secure facility at Bagram populated by
teams from the militarys Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), as well
as contractors manning stations at U.S. bases like Fort Gordon, a
lesser-known though crucial node in the war on terror that supports tactical
NSA operations abroad from Augusta, Georgia. The hunting and killing
operations relied on advanced technology to zero in on targets, including
the cellphone geolocation system known as GILGAMESH. As The Intercept
reported in 2014, the GILGAMESH system employs a simulated cellphone tower
to identify and locate targeted SIM cards.
While signals intelligence and electronic surveillance clearly contributed
to Haymakers kinetic operations like the drone strike that targeted Qari
Munib there was evidently more to the missions than advanced technology.
Unlike some other arenas in which the war on terror has touched down Yemen
or Somalia, for example the documents point to the robust presence of U.S.
intelligence agencies and human sources on the ground in northeastern
Afghanistan. In Nuristans Waygal district, the Defense Intelligence Agency
and the CIA had myriad complementary sources, a slide laying out
targeting criteria in the district noted, some of whom may be able to
trigger our operations. A third of the active targets in Waygal had good
selectors phones the Americans could target in the run-up to a raid or
airstrike and the NSA had taken on [signals intelligence] development in
Waygal, greatly enhancing our understanding of the [signals intelligence]
environment.
According to the slide, Waygal, described as a historic al Qaeda
sanctuary, included more than a half-dozen NAIs, named areas of interest,
the identification of which was attributed to similarly historic levels of
human and signals intelligence cultivation, as well as surveillance provided
by drones scanning the district. There were over a dozen active targets in
three villages, the slide said, adding that most of the targets were already
on a targeting list, or easily could be. The targets there are not only
senior-level Taliban facilitators and hosts, but Arabs themselves, the
slide noted, underscoring the presence of suspected foreign fighters in the
district. Elimination of these targets, it continued, will provide
demonstrable measures of success.
The documents indicate that U.S. forces launched just one airstrike as part
of the Haymaker campaign in the early months of 2012, killing two people. In
May 2012, however, the tempo of operations picked up dramatically, an
increase that coincided with a strategic shift in Afghanistan emanating from
the White House. As the militarys focus shifted to hunting down specific
targets from 2011 to 2012, drone strikes in Afghanistan increased by 72
percent.
Over the course of five months, stretching through the summer of 2012,
Haymaker operations included 27 raids and 27 airstrikes. The raids resulted
in the capture of 61 people, 13 of them jackpots, the actual targets of the
missions. A total of two people were reportedly killed in these ground
operations. In the airstrikes, meanwhile, a total of 155 people were killed
and labeled as enemies killed in action, according to a table presented in
the documents. Just 19 were jackpots. The table does not say whether the
jackpots are reflected in the EKIA total. It does, however, appear to
present a success rate: the number of jackpots divided by the number of
missions. In the case of raids, a figure of 48 percent is presented; for
airstrikes its 70 percent.
The scores of unnamed people killed in the hunt for jackpots, and the
intelligence opportunities lost by failing to capture targets alive, do not
appear to factor into the calculation. The apparent success rate, in other
words, depends solely on killing jackpots, and ignores the strategic and
human consequences of killing large numbers of bystanders.
While the source conceded there could be scenarios in which women and
children killed in an airstrike are labeled as EKIA, in the case of the
Haymaker strikes he believed it was more likely that the dead included
groups of men or teenaged boys killed because the intel says the guy JSOC
is going after may be in that group of men. In the event that a target is
identified in such a group, he said, Theyll go through with the strike.
The materials also include a chart revealing that airstrikes killed 219
people over a 14-month period in 2012 and 2013, resulting in at least 35
jackpots. The document includes thumbnail images of individuals,
representing a range of groups, who were captured or killed during Haymaker
in total 30 men, 24 of them stamped EKIA, five detained, and one wounded
in action. The deaths of just over half the individuals were noted in NATOs
press releases or media reports.
The Haymaker files also point to the psychological impact of living under
the constant threat of death from above an effect human rights workers
have documented among civilians living in areas populated by militants. A
quote attributed to a Taliban detainee identified as Ahmad, aka Objective
Brandywine, features prominently on three of the documents. Hands down,
the scariest/most intimidating message for the Taliban, at any level, from
fighter to Taliban senior leadership, is anything to do with drones or
aerial bombings, Ahmad purportedly said. The Taliban has no way to defend
against them and they are certain to end in absolute destruction of whatever
their target is.
Still, the documents assessment of Haymakers effectiveness was frank. A
slide detailing the campaigns effects from January 2012 through February
2013 included an assessment of Objectives & Measures of Effectiveness. The
results were not good. Disruptions in al Qaedas view of northeastern
Afghanistan as a safe haven and the loss of key al Qaeda members and
enablers in the region were deemed marginal. Meanwhile, a comparison of
Haymaker 1.0 (August 2011) with Haymaker 2.0 (February 2013) noted that al
Qaeda faced little to no local opposition and enjoyed relatively free
movement to and from Pakistan. Kinetic strikes, the slide reported,
successfully killed one [al Qaeda] target per year, allowing the
organization to easily reconstitute.
By 2013, Haymaker was amassing a significant body count but making little
headway against al Qaeda forces in the region. According to the Success
Criteria slide, sporadic reporting of concern over [the] viability of
northeastern Afghanistan as a safe haven had been overshadowed by the
groups senior leadership discussing the establishment of a post-2014
sanctuary. Individuals continued to return to Pakistan to support
operations in and outside of Afghanistan, the slide asserted. While nascent
developments in some valleys indicated that locals were tiring of al
Qaedas efforts to root out spies as a perceived method to stopping
strikes, the strikes and raids themselves had succeeded in
killing/capturing few [al Qaeda] targets. As slides detailing its
effectiveness noted, Haymakers impact on al Qaeda and Taliban enablers in
Kunar and Nuristan was considered temporary without a long-term, persistent
campaign.
On February 18, 2013, while Haymaker was still underway, Afghan President
Hamid Karzai issued a decree: Afghan military forces were barred from
calling in U.S. airstrikes for support on missions. The order followed an
operation in Kunar in which NATO and Afghan forces were blamed for the
deaths of 10 civilians including one man, four women, and five children.
In 2012, the U.N. mission in Afghanistan had documented a number of other
incidents involving civilian deaths resulting from U.S. operations,
including a raid that left seven civilians dead, an aerial attack that
killed seven children and one adult, and a drone strike targeting two
insurgents that killed a teenage girl.
The most recent date included in the Haymaker materials is February 28,
2013. Whether the date marked the end of the campaign is unclear. What does
seem clear, however, is that Haymaker coincided with an increase in drone
strikes and civilian casualties across Afghanistan. By the end of 2013, the
U.N. reported the number of civilian casualties from drone strikes in
Afghanistan had tripled from 2012, with almost one-third of the civilian
deaths from aerial operations reported in Kunar, the heart of the Haymaker
campaign. Records of condolence payments disbursed by the U.S. military,
obtained by The Intercept, show more than $118,000 distributed in 45
disbursements to Kunar in fiscal years 2011 through 2013. In addition to
numerous injuries, the payments also cover the deaths of 27 people,
including at least four children. The records do not indicate whether the
incidents were linked to the Haymaker campaign or whether they were the
result of mistaken ground raids or airstrikes.
Until recently, the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan had largely receded from
public conversations in the U.S. This month, an American airstrike on a
hospital run by the international organization Médecins Sans Frontières,
offered a forceful reminder that the war, despite the Obama administrations
declaration in 2014, is far from over. Unleashed in the early morning hours
of October 3, in the province of Kunduz, the U.S. attack killed at least a
dozen members of the humanitarian groups medical staff and 10 patients,
including three children. A nurse on the scene recalled seeing six victims
in the intensive care unit ablaze in their beds. There are no words for how
terrible it was, the nurse said. MSF denounced the strike as a war crime
and demanded an independent investigation.
The Kunduz attack underscored an ugly reality: After nearly a decade and a
half of war, more than 2,300 American lives lost, and an estimated 26,000
Afghan civilians killed, the nature of combat in Afghanistan is entering a
new, potentially bloodier, phase. In August, the United Nations reported
that civilian casualties in Afghanistan are projected to equal or exceed
the record high numbers documented last year. While most civilian
casualties in the first half of 2015 were attributed to anti-government
forces, 27 deaths and 22 injuries were attributed to airstrikes by
international military forces, a 23 percent increase over last year, most
of them, unlike the air raid in Kunduz, carried out by drones.
Despite the rise in civilian casualties and the well-documented failure of
drone strikes to achieve the militarys broader objectives, there is every
indication that unmanned airstrikes will play an increasing role in U.S.
military engagement in Afghanistan, as they have in war zones across the
world. Less than two weeks after the U.N. issued its report, Foreign Policy
revealed that JSOC has drastically reduced the number of night raids it
conducts in Afghanistan, while dramatically increasing its reliance on
airstrikes, and is currently on pace to double the rate at which it kills
high-value individuals using kinetic strikes, compared to how many it was
killing that way five years ago.
Afghanistans northeastern border with Pakistan remains an active area of
focus for the remaining U.S. special operations forces in the country. The
Pech Valley, once a hotspot during the Haymaker campaign, continues to host
a constellation of armed groups. Al Qaeda, the organization used to justify
both the invasion of Afghanistan and the Haymaker campaign, reportedly
enjoys a more pronounced presence in the valley than ever. The al Qaeda
presence there now, according to a report by the United States Institute
for Peace, is larger than when U.S. counterterrorism forces arrived in
2002.
With JSOC and the CIA running a new drone war in Iraq and Syria, much of
Haymakers strategic legacy lives on. Such campaigns, with their tenuous
strategic impacts and significant death tolls, should serve as a reminder of
the dangers fallible lethal systems pose, the intelligence community source
said. This isnt to say that the drone program is a complete wash and its
never once succeeded in carrying out its stated purpose, he pointed out.
It certainly has. But even the operations military commanders would point
to as successes, he argued, can have unseen impacts, particularly in the
remote communities where U.S. missiles so often rain down. I would like to
think that what we were doing was in some way trying to help Afghans, the
source explained, but the notion that what we were part of was actually
defending the homeland or in any way to the benefit of the American public
evaporated long ago. Theres no illusion of that that exists in
Afghanistan, he said. It hasnt existed for many years.
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