The “perfect target” and the “perfect hit” – in retrospect, the operation did not deserve these labels. The bombing of an ISIS bomb factory in the Iraqi city of Hawija on June 2, 2015, resulted in far more casualties than intended. Estimates range from seventy to more than a hundred deaths; whereas there should have been none. The “hit” was calculated to cause minimal collateral damage and took place at night to avoid killing civilians.
Some of the victims are, therefore, demanding justice in a trial in The Hague: at the very least, compensation and an apology. They ask for help with their medical disabilities and traumas resulting from the explosion.
Their lawyers argue that the bombardment was unlawful: if better intelligence had been collected, it would have been clear that the industrial area where the ISIS bomb factory was located was inhabited by displaced people and that many explosives were stored in the warehouses. And that therefore, many civilians would be killed.
The tragedy of Hawija is somewhat overshadowed by the violent images from Israel and the Palestinian territories. But I remember well my first visit to the city shortly after it was liberated in 2017. I was shocked by the lunar landscape I found. An ISIS explosive factory had exploded, the Iraqi officer accompanying me said. The blast could be felt as far as Kirkuk, 50 kilometers away.
Stronghold
Hawija was one of ISIS’s strongholds. The group felt safe here. Decisions were made here, it was a military center, and many of the roadside and car bombs used by the group in their fight were manufactured here. That bombing must have significantly impacted the group’s sense of invulnerability. Between 50,000 to 100,000 kilograms of explosives could no longer be used against the enemy.
The Iraqi army was pleased with the blow dealt to ISIS (or Daesh, the local name). I heard this two years later from the way the officer spoke of it with some pride. For the army and Baghdad, Hawija was an ISIS den, and the “best Daeshi was a dead Daeshi”. They were indifferent to the fact that many people had died; in their view, they were all ISIS members.
The reality was different, as became clear in the courtroom in The Hague when survivors of the disaster spoke. They recounted how they had fled violence elsewhere in Iraq but saw no chance to leave the caliphate. ISIS did not allow them in hospitals; those were only for its members and their families. No ambulance came, no help arrived, and they saw wounded family members die.
Rashid Salih says he had just arrived home after spending four months in an ISIS cell. He had been punished for trying to flee ISIS territory from Tikrit. Home was the place he had taken refuge with his wife and children in Hawija for lack of a better option. Then the world exploded. “It was like Hiroshima,” he says.
Seven members of his family died. He describes being covered in their blood and trying to save his daughter by driving her to Mosul. On the way, she said, “Daddy, I don’t think I’ll make it,” and asked for a hug. By the time they reached Mosul, she had died.
Tears
Even his interpreter can’t hold back tears in the courtroom while listening to the story. However, shortly thereafter, the State responds in its plea that, according to the laws of war, an armed conflict may result in damage to civilians and objectives. That a warring party almost never has all the information. That the attack was carefully prepared and executed. That the State is not to blame, and legally, the survivors have no right to individual compensation.
The State’s lawyers emphasize the reality of warfare. Even the liberation of the Netherlands from the Germans in 1945 resulted in many civilian casualties, they say.
The court will not deliver its verdict until January and is aware that all eyes are on it. Because this is a ruling concerning the legality of military action. There is a precedent: previously, a Dutch court ruled in favor of a victim of a Dutch bombing in Iraq. He lost his family and home because it was mistakenly identified as an ISIS headquarters, due to insufficient intelligence gathered.
The same applies now, according to lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld, representing the victims. Lack of knowledge is also a form of knowledge. The fact that the risks were unclear should have been a reason to refrain from the bombardment.
Hidden
The court must make a decision based on the knowledge of June 2015. However, several elements should be considered. Such as the fact that this incident, and the fact that the damage was far greater than expected, was kept under wraps for more than four years. The perception that a precision war was being fought was not to be tainted.
The State refers to it as a ‘total surprise’ that the secondary explosion was so vast; this had not been the case in any of the previous attacks on small explosive factories. What stands out to me is that the location is much larger than one would expect from a workshop where ISIS tinkers with roadside and car bombs. It’s not about one warehouse, but five. These are situated in the middle of a bustling neighborhood, as ISIS always did — using civilians as shields to prevent such factories from being bombed.
Five warehouses can indeed be called a bomb factory — a term the State’s lawyers object to in an attempt to make the target seem smaller than it was.
With five warehouses, one would assume that a significant amount of explosives must be stored there; while it’s known that ISIS primarily used fertilizer ingredients that are highly unstable. Why could a layperson deduce that if you drop a bomb on it, the damage would be extensive, while the experts kept tweaking and calculating until their computer models deemed the risk acceptable?
Trucks
The problem is that they did not consider that a few trucks (the court hearing assumes six) had been parked at the factory shortly before. The mayor of Hawija speaks to the court of trucks with explosives which the coalition observed moving to his city. The news about the trucks outside reached us shortly after the disaster through the press. Thus, that knowledge must have been present locally. And reconnaissance drones must have detected them.
The fact that displaced people lived there, I only learned about much later, but that knowledge must have been present in 2015. Especially since spies were active for the Iraqi intelligence service, some of whom I spoke to later. The presence of other workshops (mainly garages) and shops should also have been known. This all should have led to enough doubt not to bomb.
Finally, there’s an aspect I haven’t heard mentioned during the trial. The Americans, who gathered intelligence for the attacks on ISIS, were partly dependent on the Iraqis and the Kurds. Both collected intelligence in Hawija through their spies. For them, ISIS was a menace that needed to be eradicated. The State’s lawyers do mention that Baghdad believed that ISIS in Iraq needed to be completely eradicated. However, they don’t draw any conclusions from this.
Role
In hindsight, it’s probably impossible to prove what role this played in the information about the bomb factory that was or wasn’t shared with the Americans. But what the judges should consider is that the Iraqis and Kurds weren’t hesitant about the possibility of a bombing causing civilian casualties. For them, everyone in Hawija was simply a member of ISIS, and thus, every death meant one less of them.
Even after its liberation, Hawija continues to fight against this image. It negatively impacts the aid it receives from Baghdad for reconstruction. When you say there you’re from Hawija, you immediately face suspicion, I was told by a sheikh, who lost family members to ISIS.
So, it’s not surprising that victims from Hawija look to the Netherlands for help. Of course, they see the attack as unjust. To them, the Netherlands is the instigator of their misery. Not ISIS, not the Iraqi army. Because the Netherlands stands for justice, it’s where the International Criminal Court is located. That’s why they ask the Netherlands for apologies and redress. They don’t expect this from Baghdad.
I wish the judges of the Hague court much wisdom. For they can expect other victims to look to their verdict. Hawija is far from the only or the last target where innocent civilians became victims.
