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Swiss arms exports – Pilatus aircraft involved in airstrikes in Afghanistan – News

23 February 2022

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Pilatus PC-12 aircraft have been involved in attacks in Afghanistan that have killed hundreds of civilians. This is shown by research by SRF.

Author:
Ben Heubl / Andreas Schmid

The Afghan Ministry of Defense provided the decisive evidence: On July 15, 2021, the authority reported on Twitter that Taliban fighters had been killed in a bombardment. A little later, villagers complained about the deaths of civilians on social media.

We examined the videos in joint research by “SRF Investigativ”, journalists from RTS, the research network Lighthouse Reports and other journalists. The result: the air strike was filmed by a Swiss PC-12 machine. The Swiss aircraft acted as a flying command center in Afghanistan, directing the bombers of the Afghan Air Force in the attacks.

Many civilian casualties

The Afghan Air Force has used the PC-12 since 2015 to coordinate ground forces and support A29 fighter jets. Since then, hundreds of civilians have died in such operations, according to data from the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and data from the ACLED organization.

Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon strategist, says attacks by Afghan forces accounted for about 30 percent of all attacks in Afghanistan in the final years of the war. The high number of civilian casualties is due to the poor training of the Afghan armed forces.

With open data to research success

Forensic work with open data helped pinpoint the exact location of the attack on July 15, 2021. A journalist from RTS traveled to the site and confirmed the damage from the bombing. A Taliban fighter told the journalist he saw the PC-12 attack.

The attack killed Taliban fighters, but also civilians. International agencies and the villagers spoke of 12 civilian victims.

On July 15, 2021, the Afghan Air Force attacked the small town of Maidan-e-Shuhada in Badakshan province. Videos of the attack were shared a little later by the Afghan Ministry of Defense on Twitter. An open data analysis verified the location and destruction.

Google Earth, Twitter

Two PC-12s in Taliban hands

When the last US soldier left Afghanistan at the end of August, a lot of equipment was left behind. It quickly became clear that a Swiss plane was also left behind and fell into the hands of the Taliban. Open data – satellite imagery and video – not only allowed the exact location of this PC-12 to be verified, but also found another PC-12 machine among the Taliban that was previously unknown.

Pilate leaves questions unanswered

Further image analyzes also showed the close cooperation between Pilatus and the US armaments company Sierra Nevada, which had converted the PC-12 aircraft for the US Army for use in the war.

Using freely available data and tools from the internet, it was possible to verify where video footage of Afghan PC-12 airmen was taken from. The team of journalists was able to pinpoint the exact locations of the videos using geographic analysis. The journalists used, among other things, Google Earth for this work. Flight data has been used to trace the path of some of the PC-12s in Afghanistan. Forensic image analyzes of some of the 18 PC-12 planes exported to the USA and converted show how closely Pilatus worked with the US arms company Sierra Nevada.

Did the Pilatus company know before the PC-12 was deployed in Afghanistan that the planes would get to the war zone? The use in the war zone was established early on and was published in the USA in contracts from Sierra Nevada. The Swiss Parliament also dealt with the topic in 2013.

The company leaves these and other questions from SRF unanswered in connection with the PC-12 machines in the Afghan war. “Pilatus is not ready to answer these questions,” writes Jérôme Zbinden in a brief statement. Zbinden is assistant to the Pilatus CEO. Technical information about the PC-12 is listed on the company’s website, he notes.

SRF Investigativ produced a podcast on this story:

With an air offensive in the summer of 2021, the Afghan army is still trying to prevent the Taliban from taking power. The armed forces fly attack after attack in the final stages of the Afghan war. Not only Taliban fighters are killed, the bombs also kill hundreds of civilians. Pilatus aircraft from Switzerland are also used in the air raids. What role do these PC-12 planes play? How come they are deployed in a war? And where are the machines now that the Taliban have taken power?

https://www.srf.ch/audio/hotspot