IRW Reflects on Commissie Sordragers’ report on Hawija  

This week Commissie Sorgdrager published their long-awaited report on the 2015 Dutch Coalition airstrike in Hawija. This airstrike was just one of the 34.000 airstrikes conducted by the US-led coalition against ISIS across Syria and Iraq. In 2020 Commissie Sorgdrager was given a political assignment to 1) investigate how it was possible that civilian casualties occurred during the Dutch deployment of weapons in Hawija and 2) examine what lessons can be learned for the future.  

Since 2019, IRW has conducted extensive research on the Haijwa bombardment and its political aftermath. Most importantly, together with PAX and the Iraqi organization Al-Ghad, we interviewed more than 160 survivors of the airstrike and key informants in 2021 to map the impact of the Dutch airstrike. In our After the Strike report, we concluded that due to a secondary explosion a whole neighborhood was flattened, at least 85 civilians were killed and hundreds more were injured. For two more years, civilians were stuck under ISIS and a continued threat of Coalition bombardments, as well as often denied access to vital resources, rendering it nearly impossible for injured civilians to get medical attention. All of this remained unrecognised by the Coalition and the Netherlands for years to come. This was often referred to as extremely frustrating and painful for the civilians in Hawija. It was not until 2019 when investigative journalists discovered that the Netherlands had carried out the attack, that the Netherlands took responsibility for the strike. In collaboration with other civil society partners, we have been advising the Ministry of Defence on its civilian harm policies and practices since 2020 and have shared our concerns, criticisms, and recommendations over the years.  

Commissie Sordrager report confirms our previous findings 

The report by the Committee Sorgdrager confirms many of our earlier observations and statements.  In line with our research published in 2021 and 2022, the committee concludes that senior Dutch government officials withheld important information from Parliament or shared incomplete information about the civilian casualties in Hawija, even years after the airstrike.

Commissie Sorgdrager report brings new insight  

The report also brings new insight to the table, for instance, that the Netherlands should and could have known that the area in which the ISIS bomb factory was located was a populated area, hosting many displaced civilians. Combined with inadequate information about the amount of explosives stored in the factory, the Netherlands took a major risk by going ahead with the airstrike. Moreover, the Committee also concludes that the Netherlands had insufficient access to the intelligence from its Coalition partners, based on which the decision was taken to pursue the operation. As a result, the Netherlands had to rely entirely on its American ally. Also after the operation, the Netherlands appears to have had little access to US information, including the full and uncensored version of the investigation into possible civilian casualties from the Hawija airstrike.  Although it did know that the US found the 70 civilian casualty allegations in Hawija to be ‘credible’.

Commissie Sordrager overlooks the civilian harm caused by Hawija airstrike 

The Sorgdrager report also shows important shortcomings. It does a great job highlighting what went wrong technically and politically, but in no meaningful way addresses the (ongoing) human suffering caused by the airstrike. While it is commendable that the committee visited Baghdad and Hawija to talk to victims and key respondents and witness the destruction themselves, they only spend one paragraph on their meeting with survivors. The committee decided not to do systematic ground research, nor map and report on the pattern of harm caused. All the more surprisingly, the committee also chose not to draw on the detailed findings on the civilian harm effects in Hawija as laid out in the After the Strike (2022) report.  With this, it rehearses a sanitized view of Western warfare. Leaving out the devastation of human lives on the ground makes it easier for Dutch policymakers to concentrate on internal procedures instead of answering questions of care, accountability, and on the long-term political consequences of their military interventions abroad.

Initial responses from civilians in Hawija echo our sentiment. The director of the Iraqi organization Ashuor, Mohammed Abdulkareem, says: ‘The victims’ families are angry because they believe their suffering has been overshadowed and neglected in the report. The report does not sufficiently explore efforts to engage with or compensate affected communities.’ 

The report also gives few recommendations on how Defence should investigate civilian harm in future remote operations. It recommends that the Netherlands should improve its access to intel from allies, however, neither the US nor other allies did a ground investigation into the civilian harm caused in Hawija. In fact, the US led coalition has only conducted one ground investigation into civilian harm under the entire operation. Reporting by Pulitzer Prize winner Azmat Khan for the New York Times illustrates the major shortcomings of the US’ remote investigations versus her ground investigations on civilian harm across Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. With no sound methodology in place to investigate civilian harm, the Dutch MoD can also not properly inform the Public Prosecutor or the Parliament about the impact of military interventions. This leaves both unable to exert legal accountability and/or democratic control and questions the logic of the violence.  

The Committee does describe how the reconstruction projects initiated by the Netherlands (announced in 2020 and completed in 2023) have been a ‘drop in the ocean’. The committee characterizes the compensation eventually offered by the Netherlands as ‘too little, too late’.   

In conclusion, we support many of the report’s criticisms, concerns and recommendations. Together with our co-author Erin Bijl (PAX), we urge the Ministry of Defence to issue apologies and individual compensation payments to those affected. For the future, at IRW we urge the Ministry of Defence to continue to develop a systematic and transparent methodology in consultation with our consortium to investigate the impact of their military interventions on civilian harm. In this blog, we argue how this can be done, and the victims’ pleas illustrate what is at stake if we do not.  

Read the full Comissie Sorgdrager report in Dutch here.