At a time of growing impunity for civilian harm in warfare, the Dutch Ministry of Defense took an important step in March when it finally acknowledged that seven civilians were killed as the result of an airstrike it conducted in Iraq in March 2016. In addition to apologizing to those affected, the MoD offered to provide compensation payments to next of kin. Defense Minister Yesilgöz-Zegerius acknowledged that two men, four women, and one child – all civilians – were killed when the Dutch air force acted on American intelligence to target a building at the University of Mosul. The MoD launched its investigation in March 2023 after reporting by NRC, Nieuwsuur, and NOS.
Beyond a parliamentary statement and overview of the key findings, the MoD also released a detailed and thorough report on its internal investigation, which revealed the critical flaws that led to the civilian harm and the methods used by the Ministry to investigate the evidence. The report offers a rare insight into some of the targeting practices that introduce risks to civilians as well as lessons for how modern militaries can better investigate civilian casualties. In the United States, detailed insight into investigation methodologies have only been revealed through lengthy FOIA litigation, and they have rarely included site visits and interviews with witnesses as the Dutch investigation did.
The good practices used in the Mosul investigation should now be institutionalized in the Dutch MoD, to ensure that civilians harmed in other operations, notably those harmed in the 2015 Hawija airstrike, in which approximately 80 civilians were killed, receive a similar response, and that any civilians harmed in future Dutch operations are not forced to wait 10 years for resolution. At the same time, allies looking to understand civilian casualties in modern conflict, and to find ways to investigate and respond to such harm, should look to the Dutch process for valuable lessons.
A Fatal Flaw: Seven Weeks from Intelligence to Airstrike
The MoD found that the key flaw that led to civilian harm in 2016 was that the airstrike took place seven weeks after the intelligence for it had last been updated. It could have been even longer since the original intelligence was gathered showing that the building was being used as temporary housing for members of ISIS and their families. By the time the building was attacked by the coalition, the MoD concludes in their recent report, it appeared ISIS members were no longer present in the building. Instead, two families were in the process of moving out of the building to escape nearby bombing over the previous days. After the strike, there were no survivors in the building.
This also means that seven weeks had passed since U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which gathered the intelligence and planned the target, conducted a Collateral Damage Estimate (CDE) to calculate the likely immediate risks to civilians from the strike. According to the Dutch internal investigation, this timeline was less than the maximum period of time that was permissible between updating intelligence and conducting an airstrike during the anti-ISIS coalition; the full period allowed between target selection and an attack remains classified.
The danger of using outdated intelligence was once again in the news cycle after an alleged U.S. airstrike on an Iranian girls’ school killed over 160 civilians, mostly children, on Feb. 28, the first day of the U.S./Israeli war with Iran. Early indications suggest this tragedy was likely caused by the use of old maps that suggested the school was part of a nearby military site. That this was no longer the case was obvious in satellite imagery as far back as 2016, when the school was separated from the military site by a perimeter wall, and even more so in 2018, when playgrounds were built around the school.
However, as the Dutch airstrike in Mosul shows, even far less drastic time-periods between the gathering of intelligence and the execution of an airstrike can cause significant misunderstandings and lead to civilian harm. In any urban environment, the use of infrastructure can change drastically over seven weeks. This is particularly true in a war zone, where civilians are often forced to make changes to their patterns of life on short notice, and where the nature and use of buildings can change hour-to-hour as combatants and civilians move around each other and shift depending on conflict dynamics.
To address this specific challenge, the investigations committee, which consisted of staff from across the Dutch MoD, set out two recommendations;
In the development of missions and operations, pay attention to the residual risks associated with dependence on coalition partners in the intelligence chain;
In the establishment of missions and operations, make an assessment regarding the time elapsed between the last intelligence update and the relevant deployment of weapons.
For the first recommendation, the Dutch MoD has already made significant commitments to improve its approach to working with intelligence provided by allies. These changes were made after the so-called Sorgdrager Commission found that poor intelligence provided by the United States, and an inability on the Dutch side to review this intelligence, had also played a major role in the Dutch airstrike on Hawija. In the time since the Sorgdrager Commission released its report, the MoD has committed to explicitly communicating with its parliament about its intelligence positions at the outset of new military operations, and establishing new standard operating procedures for its target approval process, to include a legal and intelligence expertise for all strikes.
The Netherlands and the United States at Odds on Investigation Outcome
It is particularly vital that the Netherlands establishes and strengthens its ability to review intelligence provided by the United States at a time when Washington has removed many of the institutions and teams responsible for mitigating harm to civilians, including those tasked with integrating an up-to-date understanding of the civilian environment into U.S. intelligence. Like many European States, the Netherlands often does not produce its own intelligence when operating in coalitions with the United States. Instead, it relies on its American counterparts to provide targets. Yet recent U.S. changes in personnel and an oft-repeated new focus on “lethality,” speed, and scale have contributed to an unprecedented uptick in harm to civilians from U.S. military operations across the world, including attacks on small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, and schools, hospitals, and other civilian infrastructure destroyed in Iran over the last few months. This should raise loud alarm bells for any military that continues to rely on the U.S. government for intelligence without the ability to examine the accuracy of the information.
It is also notable that the expectation of trusting each other’s information does not go both ways. CENTCOM maintains that the allegation of harm to civilians from the March 2016 airstrike in Mosul remains “non-credible” on the basis of a lack of information, in spite of the Dutch MoD now having gathered – and openly shared – comprehensive evidence gathered through site visits, witness interviews, and conversations with survivors.
All U.S. allies must address what systems they have in place to review the U.S. intelligence they are provided with, particularly when it comes to civilian harm mitigation. This bears particular importance for those U.S. allies who are not members of the Five Eyes intelligence community (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States), and who may therefore be asked to act on intelligence that they do not have direct access to. As the Dutch have done in the aftermath of Hawija, such States must find ways to set a baseline for what information they require to participate in an airstrike, and to review intelligence provided in spite of their limitations.
Relying on Sources That Cannot Reveal Civilian Harm
The Dutch MoD acknowledged harm to civilians in Mosul following a site visit and conversations with those affected. In the immediate aftermath of the airstrike, however, both the Netherlands and the United States reviewed only whether collateral damage could be seen in footage taken from drones or war planes high above the site in question. Countless examples over the last two decades have shown that this is not an effective or accurate way to monitor civilian harm. One internal U.S. review found that “air-video BDAs (Battle Damage Assessments) had missed civilian casualties later discovered during ground-led investigations in 19 out of 21 cases.” Yet in the aftermath of the strike, neither military appears to have engaged seriously with the possibility that civilians had been trapped under the rubble in Mosul, even though this often happens when explosive weapons are used in populated areas. Immediately after the strike, neither military reviewed whether the intelligence may have been faulty or outdated.
Even when Airwars raised a concern about civilian harm from the Mosul airstrike to the U.S. military in 2017, CENTCOM declared the incident “non-credible” on the basis that it had insufficient information to evaluate whether harm had occurred. Because of this “non-credible” designation by the U.S.-led coalition, the State responsible for the airstrike itself, the Netherlands, was not informed about the allegation of harm until public reporting in 2023. Nor did it seek information from the U.S. Department of Defense about this incident until that time.
In the years since, the Dutch Ministry of Defense has made significant improvements to its civilian harm mitigation and response mechanisms, in the context of extensive engagement with civil society organizations and academics in the so-called Roadmap Process. These improvements include how the Ministry receives allegations of harm from civilians and independent monitors, and how it investigates such allegations. The very release of the investigation report for the March 2016 strike is a huge step forward, allowing those affected, as well as independent monitors and analysts, to understand the methods used by the MoD to assess and investigate the harm it caused. The best practices, including site visits, interviews, and engagement with NGOs, should be institutionalized to form the backbone of all MoD investigations into harm, where at all possible.
This is particularly timely in the Dutch context, where the first government response to victims of the strike in Hawija was heavily criticized for not taking into account the wishes of those affected and not addressing their needs. As the MoD prepares a second response to address those concerns, it has an opportunity to bring its good practices from Mosul into its standard operating procedures on investigating and responding to harm. So far, however, it has refused to entertain the idea of providing individual compensation for the civilians affected by the Hawija airstrike, as survivors often request, providing chameleonic reasons for why this supposedly cannot be done, excuses often focused on the lack of evidence available. Yet as raised in a recent investigation into the Hawija strike, civilians and local NGOs have a plethora of evidence that apparently has not yet been consulted by the MoD for unknown reasons.
Remaining Concerns
While the Netherlands is becoming an emerging leader on how to conduct civilian harm investigations, two areas of concern remain. The first is that, beyond the seven civilians killed in Mosul in 2016, the MoD’s investigation identified two civilians who suffered burns when they attempted to enter the targeted building in the immediate aftermath of the strike to save their family members who were caught inside. The MoD concluded that it will not respond to these injuries because it cannot independently verify claims of injuries and “the injuries are not a direct result of the use of weapons.” However, the Netherlands has repeatedly committed itself to review both direct and indirect harm to civilians from its military operations over the last few years, including as a signatory to the Explosive Weapons declaration, which emphasizes that countries will: “Ensure that our armed forces, including in their policies and practices, take into account the direct and indirect effects on civilians and civilian objects.”
Additionally, even as the Netherlands cements its role as an emerging leader on civilian harm mitigation, it is notable that the country remains unable to proactively track civilian harm beyond reviewing footage from immediately after a strike or receiving allegations from third-party actors. The investigation committee made a vital recommendation on this point: for the MoD to proactively monitor external sources, including local media coverage in the aftermath of airstrikes to complement regular Battle Damage Assessments (BDAs). This type of monitoring is absolutely essential and should be integrated into reviews of all Dutch airstrikes and similar military operations by partners across Europe, few of whom integrate such external data into their reviews of civilian harm.
Finally, the investigation committee suggests that the Dutch MoD should:
Make better agreements with future coalition partners that stipulate that The Netherlands is informed directly and without exception as soon as reports are made within the coalition of possible civilian casualties resulting from the use of Dutch weapons.
Such a stipulation should form the basis of ongoing and future coalitions, to ensure that it is clear who is responsible for tracking civilian harm, investigating allegations, identifying lessons to ensure non-repetition, and responding to harm, and what resources are available for investigators to do so.
Next Steps
The Dutch MoD has made significant progress in acknowledging its role in civilian harm incidents and in offering apologies and financial compensation to those affected by its military operations. The MoD’s approach should now be institutionalized, and the teams responsible for investigating, understanding, and responding to harm must remain fully resourced and staffed to ensure that good practices are not vulnerable to sudden changes in personalities or government.
The Dutch findings about the 2016 strike in Mosul should also be a wake-up call for allies to request information from CENTCOM on allegations of harm from airstrikes conducted during the anti-ISIS campaign. Many States will argue that they do not need to, because they do not have evidence that they have ever harmed civilians. The UK MoD, for instance, recently acknowledged that it paradoxically does not have protocols in place to track or investigate harm because it has not seen evidence that such harm exists. Yet the Netherlands argued the same 10 years ago, before the government engaged with the evidence available to it on Hawija and beyond. A lack of evidence of civilian harm was also a consistent narrative for the United States 20 years ago in Afghanistan, before a civilian harm-tracking cell was established with an early methodology to investigate allegations of harm, finding many to be credible. Denials were echoed again by the United States 10 years later in Iraq, and they continue to define the initial response to harm reported across the world. Yet this go-to response that there is no civilian harm has been consistently disproven when the available evidence is actually reviewed.
