The Air Force’s investigation into the remains that were found on a plane during the first days of the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan is still open.
“The investigation is still ongoing, and I don’t have a timeline for completion,” Ann Stefanek, an Air Force spokeswoman, told the Washington Examiner on Thursday, nearly five months after the inquiry was launched.
As the Taliban overthrew the U.S.-backed Ghani government in Afghanistan in mid-August, the United States and other Western allies began evacuating third-country nationals and at-risk Afghans. On Aug. 15, with the Taliban in control of the government, videos emerged from Hamid Karzai International Airport showing chaos as evacuation flights took off even as civilians surrounded the runway.
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A U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III landed at the airport to deliver equipment to support the evacuation efforts, though before the cargo could be offloaded, the aircraft was surrounded by hundreds of Afghan civilians who had breached the airport perimeter. The crew then decided to take off from the airfield facing a “deteriorating situation,” Stefanek announced in a statement on Aug. 17.
In addition to the viral images of people running alongside and trying to hold onto the aircraft, there were reports and videos of people falling from a C-17 aircraft, and human remains were discovered in the wheel well after it landed at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
The Air Force Office of Special Investigations is leading the review in coordination with the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command and international partners, Stefanek in that statement.
In October, the Air Force published a statement that included details of the hectic tarmac situation.
“Families and spouses watched with the rest of the world, as the iconic video of a C-17 took off among a swarm of desperate Afghans who resorted to holding on to the outside and wheel chamber of the departing airplane,” the statement said, which also noted an attempted hijacking that was later denied. “Not caught on video and less than a minute later, both HC-130J Combat King II took off on a sliver of remaining runway. With seconds to spare, they were airborne skimming just 10 feet above the crowd.”
In the months since, the Washington Examiner reached out to the Air Force for updates on the investigation but has been told that it remains open. Another reporter asked about the status during a Pentagon briefing last week, and spokesman John Kirby declined to answer it at the podium, while an Office of the Secretary of Defense public affairs officer later told reporters that the investigation is still in progress.
The U.S. military and its allies spent their final days in Afghanistan evacuating more than a 100,000 out of the country before they left, though hundreds of U.S. citizens and thousands of U.S. allies were left behind. Those leading the evacuation were at risk of terror threats, which were realized when a suicide bomber killed 13 service members and roughly 170 civilians outside the gates of the airport.
The U.S. launched a drone strike days later at what officials believed to be a terrorist presenting an imminent threat to evacuation efforts, though they have since acknowledged that they targeted an innocent aid worker. The strike killed Zemari Ahmadi, the aid worker, and nine others, including seven children, many of whom were his family.
His family and the aid organization have called for ex gratia payments and for the U.S. to provide them with a new life in the U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who has signed off on investigations that concluded in no illegalities or punishments resulting from the strike, supports their request for relocation, but it remains a work in progress.
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“I don’t have an update for you specifically in terms of progress today, but this is something that Undersecretary [Colin] Kahl remains very, very focused on and is personally managing that effort,” Kirby told reporters last week.
The Pentagon is working with Ahmadi’s former employer, Nutrition and Education International, and the Defense Department is “trying to continue to work through them to make sure that we have a common understanding of who comprises the family, right, who qualifies for consideration of relocation, and then making sure that the proper documentation is in place so that they can be relocated safely and efficiently,” Kirby added.
