Pentagon fails to explain deadly Nigeria attack, may have hand in it

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After having been allotted three months to submit conclusions of the investigation into the 2017 Nigeria attack on a refugee camp, the Pentagon failed to meet the deadline to clarify the US role in the January 17, 2017, airstrike which left more than 120 wounded and more than 160 killed.

The Protection of Civilians in Conflict Caucus requested in September that Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III provide intrinsic details regarding the attack, which although the Nigerian air force confessed regret to carrying out the attack, it was a formula of “US-Nigerian operations”. 

According to The Intercept, citing a document obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, US Africa Command (AFRICOM) secretly appointed Brig. Gen. Frank J. Stokes to take on an “investigation to determine the facts and circumstances” of the airstrike.

The formerly secret AFRICOM brief implies that the investigation was launched because intel was given to support the Nigerian armed forces who execute the airstrike.

Before the air strike, a surveillance plane circled above the Rann IDP camp. The camp used to house around 43,000 people and is supervised by the Nigerian military. The air strike targeted the area where most people drew water from a borehole. After that, the jet targeted the tents where people sheltered during their displacement.

'DoD unwilling to engage'

The Protection of Civilians in Conflict Caucus representatives Sara Jacobs, Jason Crow, Ro Khanna, Andy Kim, and Tom Malinowski, requested that the Defense Secretary respond to questions regarding the attack and US military activity in Nigeria within the allotted time of 90 days, which expired two weeks ago.

Anietie Ewang, Human Rights Watch’s Nigeria researcher relayed to The Intercept:“The Pentagon’s failure to provide information and documents … to determine possible U.S. involvement in an airstrike that took many civilian lives in northeast Nigeria does not bode well for the U.S. government’s expressed commitment to transparency and accountability,” adding: “It sends a worrisome message that, at minimum, the Defense Department is unwilling to engage on an issue affecting countless lives and may even reflect an attempt to evade responsibility.”

“The congressional caucus should be persistent so that the necessary information comes to light,” Ewang said.

In light of the missed deadline to submit investigation results, spokespersons for the reprtesentatives handling the probe refused to comment and Lt. Col. Phillip Ventura, a Pentagon spokesperson, merely expressed pessimism: “I don’t think we’re going to get a lot of joy on this one,” he told The Intercept.

In a statement sent to The Intercept, Ventura stated: “The Department of Defense is aware of the matter and addressing the concerns of Congress directly with them. As a Department, we have long-recognized the strategic and moral importance of mitigating harm to civilians - whether resulting from a U.S. military operation or an operation conducted by our allies and partners - and we will continue to improve by implementing the steps outlined in the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP), which Secretary Austin approved in August of this year.”

Originally, the Nigerian and US troops declared that they had no knowledge of the presence of a civilian camp in the region. However, a Nigerian human rights activist probed the matter. Callamard noted the absurdity of the strike, highlighting that the tents were visible from the air, according to satellite imagery.