The U.S.-led coalition's marketing campaign in opposition to ISIS in Raqqa, Syria, contributed to the leveling of town and presents a "cautionary story" for future conflicts in city settings, a brand new report has discovered.
The report launched by RAND on Thursday concluded the Protection Division made efforts to stop civilian hurt within the 2017 battle for Raqqa, however there stays room for enchancment.
The battle for Raqqa - the final main metropolis held by ISIS in Syria and thought of the caliphate's administrative capital - resulted in as many as 1,600 civilian casualties and destroyed an estimated 60-80% of town, leaving it uninhabitable, based on the RAND report.
The RAND report was sponsored by the Protection Division and might be integrated within the Pentagon's initiatives to stop civilian casualties in US airstrikes, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby mentioned in a press briefing Thursday.
"No different army works as arduous as we do to mitigate civilian hurt and but we nonetheless trigger it," Kirby mentioned.
The battle for Raqqa performed out from June to October 2017 with the coalition taking part in a supporting position for the Syrian Democratic Forces. The coalition hit ISIS with airstrikes and shell hearth till the final of the militants left Raqqa in October 2017.
A 2018 report from Amnesty Worldwide accused the coalition of exhibiting little regard for civilian lives and diminished town to rubble.
The RAND report launched Thursday discovered that to shorten the counter-ISIS marketing campaign, the coalition selected to encircle ISIS as a substitute of wage a battle of attrition. The choice to encircle ISIS pushed the militants farther into town and prevented the development of humanitarian corridors to assist civilians evacuate. Taking the time to push militants into rural areas may have mitigated civilian hurt.
To stop dangers to its personal forces, the coalition determined to restrict the presence of its personal floor forces. This resolution prevented the forces conducting strikes from having dependable data to discern between combatants and civilians within the dense city atmosphere.
For the battle on the bottom, the coalition relied on its partnership with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF.) The partnership seemingly elevated civilian hurt for 2 causes, the report discovered.
The SDF have been insufficiently skilled on civilian-harm mitigation. Past offering a one-hour coaching session on the regulation of conflict, the coalition didn't systematically practice the SDF. As well as, the coalition performed "self-defense" strikes to guard the SDF on a compressed timeline with restricted intelligence because of the lack of floor forces which elevated the danger of hurt to civilians.
The report provides the Protection Division a number of suggestions to scale back hurt. One suggests wargamers ask whether or not there is a chance to push an enemy out of city areas previous to encircling. One other suggestion is to harness the open supply intelligence supplied by social media platforms to color an image of the atmosphere if there are restricted floor forces. .
The ultimate advice is that the Pentagon truly apply the teachings discovered from analyses like this one. The dearth of progress on the problem is a results of "weak institutional studying."
"With out a strengthened studying course of, there's a actual danger that the tragic circumstances seen in Raqqa might be repeated," the report said.