An extra Pentagon evaluation into the occasions surrounding the lethal bombing at Hamid Karzai Worldwide Airport in Afghanistan has decided that service members who spoke out publicly about what they felt was their skill to forestall the assault have been mistaken.
The bombing, which occurred in late August 2021, focused the massive crowds of Afghans who have been making an attempt to go away the nation within the final days of the American army presence and forward of the Taliban’s takeover. The assault killed 13 U.S. service members, together with 11 Marines and a soldier and sailor, wounded dozens extra, and killed at the very least 170 Afghans.
“Over the previous two years, some service members have claimed that that they had the bomber of their sights, and so they might have prevented the assault,” one of many officers who briefed reporters on Friday stated. “We now know that isn’t right.”
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Officers recognized the person accountable for the bombing as ISIS-Okay member Abdul Rahman al-Logari. Other than his title, army officers additionally confirmed that al-Logari was amongst a number of prisoners that the Taliban launched within the days previous to the bombing, although one official harassed that “ISIS-Okay would nonetheless have been ready and able to conducting the assault” with out al-Logari “as a result of that they had a number of bombers that have been obtainable.”
The information comes simply over a 12 months after a number of the service members who have been defending the airport and responded to the bombing spoke out publicly and earlier than Congress, alleging that extra might have been achieved to cease the bomber.
That testimony prompted U.S. Central Command to order the supplemental evaluation.
Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, a Marine Corps sniper, instructed lawmakers in 2023 that “we have been ignored” as they tried to get approval to shoot the individual they suspected to be the suicide bomber.
Nonetheless, the army officers who carried out the supplemental evaluation stated that al-Logari arrived on scene shortly earlier than the bombing and repair members had honed in on the mistaken individual.
Among the many supplies launched to reporters, officers offered a comparability picture of the person Vargas-Andrews stated he had in his sights with pictures of al-Logari. The comparability famous that the officers discovered the “strongest detrimental attainable score” that the 2 have been the identical individual.
One of many key points that the investigation discovered was that “spot studies” — situations of suspicious exercise or habits noticed by service members — had turn out to be conflated with extra developed intelligence reporting.
Officers famous that service members they spoke to as a part of the evaluation stated the misidentified, bald man wasn’t seen as having a weapon, “wires or bulging garments indicating that explosives have been current, and described no habits that may permit them to conclude that he posed a risk.”
The official studies requested for service members to be looking out for a person with unfastened garments and groomed hair, a black bag and a baby. The misidentified man that Vargas-Andrews and others centered on “had a backpack, which will be conflated with a black bag, he was clear shaven with a shaved head, which will be conflated with groomed hair, and he was with a young person, which will be conflated with a baby,” an official defined.
With the intention to arrive at these conclusions, officers stated they carried out an extra 52 interviews on high of the greater than 100 already carried out within the unique Central Command investigation, which was launched in February 2022.
Army officers interviewed present and former service members throughout 24 separate areas, 13 states and 6 army installations.
“I feel it is also very clear to us that as you speak to the completely different people, 190 whole, each single one in every of them had a distinct perspective,” one of many officers stated. “Our job in the course of the investigation was to take all these completely different views and put the items collectively from these completely different views.”
In an interview with The Washington Put up, Vargas-Andrews broadly accepted the evaluation’s findings.
The evaluation confirmed Vargas-Andrews’ studies that the Taliban was routinely executing civilians on the airport who had gathered there in hopes of catching one of many final American flights overseas.
“We discovered that the Taliban used extreme power, ensuing within the dying of civilians close to Abbey Gate,” an official stated Friday.
Officers additionally harassed that as they carried out the evaluation, “it grew to become very clear to us that service members believed that what they have been doing mattered, that it made a distinction, and that it was necessary.”
One official additionally famous that whereas “the brand new info didn’t change our Abbey Gate findings, it reaffirmed what we discovered two years in the past, and I feel it helped present extra readability.”
