Atrocity at Minab
On a Saturday morning in Minab, Iran, parents had just said goodbye at the school gate when a US Tomahawk missile destroyed the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school. Between 175 and 180 people died — girls, teachers, and the principal.
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| Aerial footage released by the WANA News Agency shows the scale of the task in Minab: excavators preparing rows of fresh graves for the victims of the February 28 strike ©credit: WANA News Agency / via Indian Express |
The intended target was a nearby naval base. The school had been physically separate from it for more than a decade. Its website, archived by Reuters, carried photographs of girls in pink and white uniforms at their desks and at play — along with their drawings, their messages of hope, and a motto that now reads as an epitaph:
"Today I learn; tomorrow we build."
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| Vibrant drawings and messages of hope from the Shajareh Tayyebeh website. The school maintained a robust digital presence that made its purpose—and its occupants—clearly identifiable to anyone who looked ©Reuters Visual Investigation |
The Geometry of Distance
A South African police commander, speaking at a 2002 conference I attended on children in armed conflict, warned that for every hundred feet of distance added between soldier and civilian, the probability of a lethal mistake roughly doubles.
In past wars, a spotter on the ground provided the ultimate safeguard — human eyes that could say: stop, there are children here. The operator who launched the strike on Minab was sitting in Tampa, Florida, 12,000 kilometres away, guided by an algorithm working from a target list a decade out of date.
The spotter has been replaced by a database. Databases do not see children.
What happened at Minab was not a malfunction. It was the predictable outcome of gutted civilian protection units, outdated targeting data, and the systematic removal of every human check that sits between a targeting algorithm and a missile launch. The frameworks of international humanitarian law were built for a different kind of war. Minab is a warning that they will not protect the next generation of children unless the international community is prepared to build something new — urgently, and with the seriousness this moment demands. The children of Minab will not be the last to pay the price.
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ReplyDelete21h
Thanks for the analysis and recommendation Tom. I hope the pentagon and dept of war will take heed. Unfortunately,once again it is children who are facing the consequences. I have still not heard the White House explain to the people, what took place and what they will do to reduce and eliminate attacks on civilians.
Well said.
ReplyDeleteI disagree. Not AI or distance killed the children of Minab, but the US military did.
ReplyDeleteThe bow and arrow were invented by an inventor in the late Paleolithic period. The idea was to increase the distance between attacker and prey. Gunpowder and rifles continued the main idea.
When I was questioned as a conscientious objector what I would want to prevent future wars, I suggested that heads of state make it out between themselves in the boxing ring, something that was dismissed by the authorities.
Science has led to greater precision in warfare. However, it cannot prevent atrocities with certainty. The lesson is not to have more frameworks and protocols, but not to make war.