We used these to get satellite images which showed the house had been attacked, with the damage consistent with a strike. From metadata contained in photos supplied by Masih, we were able to obtain the coordinates of his home. We had to do this without visiting the village, because it was not safe for reporters to go to the Taliban-controlled area.
First we needed to do the basics - to verify that a strike had hit his house. He had carefully collected evidence he hoped would shine a light on what happened that day. By this time, he had been knocking on doors for months in search for answers. Interviews he did with Afghan media led us to contact him, and in April we were able to meet him in Kabul. Masih wanted the world to know what had happened. In a later email in February, they claimed to have no record at all of a strike in the district on September 23. Its story changed repeatedly as our reporting developed and the New York Times got involved.Ī US spokesperson first stated in October that there were “no connections” between their actions and the allegations of civilian casualties in Mullah Hafiz. When we went to the US military, we were met with contradictory statements. Officials in the Afghan Ministry of Defence told us no one was available for comment. Our first step was to contact both the Afghan and the US militaries. But this time, over the course of several months, working with Afghan reporters on the ground and the Visual Investigations unit of The New York Times, we were able to prove that the US was responsible for a strike which killed multiple children. We faced all these same barriers with this strike. They are often not reported by local media and neither the US nor the Afghan military is fully transparent. The attacks mostly take place in remote areas under Taliban control. Getting to the bottom of what has happened is often difficult. The Bureau has been recording strikes in Afghanistan for over four years. We had independently heard of a strike that had killed multiple children in Mullah Hafiz on September 23, and were trying to establish who had carried it out. Following our investigation, the military has now admitted that it did conduct a strike in that location, but it still denies it resulted in civilian deaths.Īs Masih was investigating, so was the Bureau. But using satellite imagery, photos and open source content, we proved that denial false. The US denied repeatedly that it had bombed Masih’s house, or even that any airstrike in his area had taken place. An apology, or any form of public accountability, is even harder to obtain.
But getting confirmation of who has carried out a fatal strike is often impossible. Airstrikes are raining down on the country, with US and Afghan operations now killing more civilians than the insurgency for the first time in a decade. His story is one window into the struggles faced by families across Afghanistan every day. Ultimately it would lead to one definitive conclusion - the US military had dropped the fatal bomb. It would lead him to work alongside the Bureau and journalists from The New York Times, putting together a puzzle piece by piece. His journey to find out would last more than eight months, pit him against military and government officials, and see him face obfuscation and denials. In the following weeks, as grief consumed Masih, so did an intense need for answers. His youngest child was just four years old. “He told me to have patience in God - no one is left.”Īn airstrike on Masih’s house had killed his wife and all his seven children, alongside four young cousins. “He tried to avoid telling me the whole story, but I insisted that he tell me the truth,” Masih recalled in a wavering voice. Relatives avoided his calls or gave vague replies to his questions, until finally his brother broke the news. It took another day for him to the learn the truth. Through the whole of that day and the next, he repeatedly called. But at 9am, when he dialled his wife’s number, her phone was off. The call ended with Masih saying he would call again when things had calmed. Amina was told to turn off her phone but Masih asked her not to - how would he know they were ok? She told him that soldiers were raiding their village. When he picked up the phone, he could hear the panic in her voice.Īmina was calling from the Afghan province of Wardak, where she brought up their children while he worked over the border in Iran to support them. It was 4am when Masih Ur-Rahman Mubarez’s wife Amina called, an unusually early time for their daily chat.