Over the weekend, an American airstrike in the northern city of Kunduz, Afghanistan led 12 staff members and seven patients dead at a hospital run by the international humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders. Soon after, the organization's General Director Christopher Stokes called the strike a war crime.
Now, the U.S. military has said it will launch an investigation in cooperation with the Afghan government. Charles Sennott, head of The GroundTruth Project, joined Boston Public Radio with Jim Braude and Margery Eagan to discuss conditions on the ground in Kunduz and how investigations may move forward from here.
"If the Afghan government comes out and says that was a Taliban base, that's why they hit it, and they knew it was a hospital, they have basically confessed to a war crime," Sennott said.
The United States, he predicted, would be far more careful in their response, likely claiming they were either misled about the nature of the site or made a mistake in identifying the correct coordinates.
"I don't think you'll hear the United States say that," Sennott continued, "because the United States military is well aware that hitting a hospital is a no-go zone."
In the past, events like this were roundly criticized by the Afghan government while it was led by Hamid Karzai. But now, as America's 2016 withdrawal date looms, the government has been mostly silent on this front—perhaps, Sennott speculated, in the hope of keeping American boots on the ground beyond 2016.
To hear more from Charles Sennott, tune in to Boston Public Radio above.
