Civilian Protection Programs Reduced in Recent Changes
Following a series of civilian casualty incidents during U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Congress passed legislation in 2019 directing the Pentagon to take steps to reduce civilian harm during military operations. During the Biden administration, the Defense Department launched the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response initiative as part of those efforts.
Specialized civilian mitigation teams were created to work with military commanders on target planning and to confirm that potential targets were legitimate military sites. These teams also helped develop “no strike” lists that included locations such as religious sites, cultural landmarks, and schools. In addition, they provided assessments regarding the number of civilians potentially present in targeted areas and recommended the use of precision munitions or smaller weapons when possible to reduce civilian casualties.
According to the report, those mitigation teams were reduced by roughly 90 percent after Hegseth took office. The changes significantly scaled back the resources previously dedicated to civilian casualty prevention.
“At every level, civilian protection has been deprioritized,” said Oona Hathaway, a professor of International Law at Yale Law School and the director of its Center for Global Legal Challenges. “A modern army has to fight according to the law, and the law requires that you protect civilians.”
The U.S. official who spoke with NPR said that Hegseth’s decision to reduce the program meant that U.S. Central Command — which oversees American military operations in the Middle East — was left with only a single staff member assigned to civilian casualty mitigation efforts. The official also stated that because funding for civilian protection initiatives had been reduced at the Defense Department level, some military commands had begun paying for analysts out of their own operational budgets to continue work that had previously been centrally coordinated.
Ongoing Investigation Into the Strike
The investigation into the strike is expected to examine the entire targeting process, including intelligence assessments, planning decisions, and the execution of the attack. Officials say interviews will be conducted with everyone involved in the operation in order to determine how the strike occurred and whether failures in intelligence, targeting, or oversight contributed to the incident. The inquiry is expected to take months to complete, and its findings could have implications for military procedures and civilian casualty mitigation efforts in future operations.
