BAGHDAD (AP) — U.S.-led airstrikes targeting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria have likely killed at least 459 civilians over the past year, a report by an independent monitoring group said Monday. The coalition had no immediate comment.

The report by Airwars, a project aimed at tracking the international airstrikes targeting the extremists, said it believed 57 specific strikes killed civilians and caused 48 suspected "friendly fire" deaths. It said the strikes have killed more than 15,000 Islamic State militants.

While Airwars noted the difficulty of verifying information in territory held by the IS group, which has kidnapped and killed journalists and activists, other groups have reported similar casualties from the U.S.-led airstrikes.

"Almost all claims of noncombatant deaths from alleged coalition strikes emerge within 24 hours — with graphic images of reported victims often widely disseminated," the report said.

"In this context, the present coalition policy of downplaying or denying all claims of noncombatant fatalities makes little sense, and risks handing (the) Islamic State (group) and other forces a powerful propaganda tool."

The U.S. launched airstrikes in Iraq on Aug. 8 and in Syria on Sept. 23 to target the Islamic State group. A coalition of countries later joined to help allied ground forces combat the extremists. To date, the coalition has launched more than 5,800 airstrikes in both countries.

The U.S. has only acknowledged killing two civilians in its strikes: two children who were likely slain during an American airstrike targeting al-Qaida-linked militants in Syria last year. That same strike also wounded two adults, according to an investigation released in May by the U.S. military.

That strike is the subject of one of at least four ongoing U.S. military investigations into allegations of civilian casualties resulting from the airstrikes. Another probe into an airstrike in Syria and two investigations into airstrikes in Iraq are still pending.

Airwars said it identified the 57 strikes through reporting from "two or more generally credible sources, often with biographical, photographic or video evidence." The incidents also corresponded to confirmed coalition strikes conducted in the area at that time, it said.

The group is staffed by journalists and describes itself as a "collaborative, not-for-profit transparency project." It does not offer policy prescriptions.

"The coalition's war against ISIL has inevitably caused civilian casualties, certainly far more than the two deaths Centcom presently admits to," the group says on its website.

"Yet it's also clear that in this same period, many more civilians have been killed by Syrian and Iraqi government forces, by Islamic State and by various rebel and militia groups operating on both sides of the border."

In Iraq, the U.S.-led coalition includes France, Britain, Belgium, Netherlands, Australia, Denmark and Canada. Jordan has also carried out airstrikes in Iraq as well as in Syria, although it has released no further information about the dates or locations of its attacks.

The coalition conducting airstrikes in Syria include the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Canada began its own strikes in April, while Britain carries out routine reconnaissance-only drone missions above Syria, and British pilots have carried out airstrikes while embedded with U.S. forces.

The group called for greater transparency and accountability from almost all coalition members, since each is individually liable for any civilian deaths or injuries it causes.

"Only one of twelve coalition partners - Canada - has consistently stated in a timely fashion both where and when it carries out airstrikes," the report said.

Other groups also have reported on major casualties suspected of being caused by the U.S.-led airstrikes. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of on-the-ground activists, said 173 Syrian civilians have been killed since airstrikes began. They include 53 children under the age of 18. Most of the civilians were killed in airstrikes near oil refineries and oil fields in the northern provinces of Hassakeh, Raqqa, Aleppo and Deir el-Zour.

The Observatory said the deadliest incident was on May 4, when a U.S.-led airstrike on the northern Islamic State-controlled village of Bir Mahli killed 64 people, including 31 children. A Pentagon spokesman at the time said that there was no information to indicate there were civilians in the village. The death toll was confirmed by other opposition groups in Syria.

Two videos and several photos released by a media arm of the IS group purport to show the aftermath of the strikes in the mixed Arab and Kurdish village showed children allegedly wounded in the airstrikes.

In another incident on June 8, an airstrike likely conducted by the U.S.-led coalition on the Islamic State-held village of Dali Hassan, also in northern Syria, killed a family of seven, the Observatory said.

Turkey, which recently began carrying out its own airstrikes against the IS group in Syria and Kurdish militants in northern Iraq, said it would investigate accusations by the Iraqi Kurdish regional government and activists with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, that its airstrikes caused civilian casualties in the northern Iraqi town of Zargel.

Also on Monday, the leader of Iraq's Kurdish region, President Massoud Barzani, said Iraqi Kurds must maintain control of areas in northwestern Iraq, including the city of Sinjar, after they are recaptured from Islamic State militants.

His speech marked the anniversary of the fall of Sinjar to the Islamic State group, which forced tens of thousands of people from Iraq's Yazidi minority to flee into the mountains, prompting the U.S. to begin the airstrikes targeting the militant group.

Other Kurdish groups, including the PKK and the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units, claim Sinjar as part of their territory. All three groups are battling to retake Sinjar.

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Karam reported from Beirut. Associated Press writer Salar Salim in Irbil, Iraq, contributed to this report.

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Follow Vivian Salama on Twitter at www.twitter.com/vmsalama . Follow Zeina Karam on Twitter at www.twitter.com/zkaram .

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Online:

Airwars: www.airwars.org

Wochit
State Department Watered Down Human Trafficking Report

By Jason Szep and Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In the weeks leading up to a critical annual U.S. report on human trafficking that publicly shames the world’s worst offenders, human rights experts at the State Department concluded that trafficking conditions hadn’t improved in Malaysia and Cuba. And in China, they found, things had grown worse.

The State Department’s senior political staff saw it differently — and they prevailed.

A Reuters examination, based on interviews with more than a dozen sources in Washington and foreign capitals, shows that the government office set up to independently grade global efforts to fight human trafficking was repeatedly overruled by senior American diplomats and pressured into inflating assessments of 14 strategically important countries in this year’s Trafficking in Persons report.

In all, analysts in the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons - or J/TIP, as it’s known within the U.S. government — disagreed with U.S. diplomatic bureaus on ratings for 17 countries, the sources said.

The analysts, who are specialists in assessing efforts to combat modern slavery - such as the illegal trade in humans for forced labor or prostitution - won only three of those disputes, the worst ratio in the 15-year history of the unit, according to the sources.

As a result, not only Malaysia, Cuba and China, but countries such as India, Uzbekistan and Mexico, wound up with better grades than the State Department’s human-rights experts wanted to give them, the sources said. (Graphic looking at some of the key decisions here: http://reut.rs/1gF2Wz5)

Of the three disputes J/TIP won, the most prominent was Thailand, which has faced scrutiny over forced labor at sea and the trafficking of Rohingya Muslims through its southern jungles. Diplomats had sought to upgrade it to so-called “Tier 2 Watch List” status. It remains on “Tier 3” - the rating for countries with the worst human-trafficking records.

The number of rejected recommendations suggests a degree of intervention not previously known by diplomats in a report that can lead to sanctions and is the basis for many countries’ anti-trafficking policies. This year, local embassies and other constituencies within the department were able to block some of the toughest grades.

State Department officials say the ratings are not politicized. “As is always the case, final decisions are reached only after rigorous analysis and discussion between the TIP office, relevant regional bureaus and senior State Department leaders,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said in response to queries by Reuters.

Still, by the time the report was released on July 27, Malaysia and Cuba were both removed from the "Tier 3" blacklist, even though the State Department’s own trafficking experts believed neither had made notable improvements, according to the sources.

The Malaysian upgrade, which was highly criticized by human rights groups, could smooth the way for an ambitious proposed U.S.-led free-trade deal with the Southeast Asian nation and 11 other countries.

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(L-R) China's Premier Li Keqiang, Myanmar's President Thein Sein, U.S. President Barack Obam …

Ending Communist-ruled Cuba’s 12 years on the report’s blacklist came as the two nations reopened embassies on each other’s soil following their historic détente over the past eight months.

And for China, the experts’ recommendation to downgrade it to the worst ranking, Tier 3, was overruled despite the report’s conclusion that Beijing did not undertake increased anti-trafficking efforts.

That would have put China alongside the likes of Syria and North Korea, regarded by the United Nations as among the world’s worst human right abusers.

Typically, J/TIP wins more than half of what officials call “disputes” with diplomatic sections of the State Department, according to people familiar with the process.

“Certainly we have never seen that kind of an outcome,” said one U.S. official with direct knowledge of the department.

ABILITY TO EMBARRASS

The Trafficking in Persons report, which evaluated 188 countries and territories this year, calls itself the world’s most comprehensive resource of governmental anti-human trafficking efforts. Rights groups mostly agree.

It organizes countries into tiers based on trafficking records: Tier 1 for nations that meet minimum U.S. standards; Tier 2 for those making significant efforts to meet those standards; Tier 2 "Watch List" for those that deserve special scrutiny; and Tier 3 for countries that fail to comply with the minimum U.S. standards and are not making significant efforts.

While a Tier 3 ranking can trigger sanctions limiting access to aid from the United States, the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank, such action is frequently waived.

The real power is its ability to embarrass countries into action. Many countries aggressively lobby U.S. embassies to try to avoid sliding into the Tier 3 category. Four straight years on the Tier 2 Watch List triggers an automatic downgrade to Tier 3 unless a country earns a waiver or an upgrade.

The leverage has brought some success, including pressuring Switzerland to close loopholes that allowed the prostitution of minors and prompting the Dominican Republic to convict more child trafficking offenders.

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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (L) shakes hands with India's External Affairs Minister Sushm …

President Barack Obama has called the fight against human trafficking “one of the great human rights causes of our time” and has pledged the United States “will continue to lead it.”

But the office set up in 2001 by a congressional mandate to spearhead that effort is increasingly struggling to publish independent assessments of the most diplomatically important countries, the sources said.

The rejection of so many recommendations could strengthen calls by some lawmakers to investigate how the report is compiled. After Reuters on July 8 reported on the plans to upgrade Malaysia, 160 members of the U.S. House and 18 U.S. senators wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry urging him to keep Malaysia in Tier 3, based on its trafficking record. They questioned whether the upgrade was politically motivated.

Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat, has threatened to call for a Senate hearing and an inspector general to investigate if top State Department officials removed Malaysia from the lowest tier for political reasons.

The final decision on disputed rankings this year was made in meetings attended by some of the State Department’s most powerful diplomats, including Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman and Kerry’s Chief of Staff, Jonathan Finer, according to the sources.

Sarah Sewall, who oversees J/TIP as Undersecretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights, presented the experts’ recommendations, the sources said. The State Department declined to make any of those officials available for comment.

“NO, NO, NO”

The unprecedented degree of discord over this trafficking report began to become clear after Reuters early last month revealed plans to upgrade Malaysia from the lowest Tier 3 rank to Tier 2 Watch List.

The improved ranking came in a year in which Malaysian authorities discovered dozens of suspected mass migrant graves and human rights groups reported continued forced labor in the nation’s lucrative palm oil, construction and electronics industries. As recently as April, the U.S. ambassador to Malaysia, Joseph Yun, urged the country to take prosecution of human trafficking violations more seriously.

U.S. officials have denied that political considerations influenced Malaysia’s rankings.

“No, no, no,” said Sewall, when asked by reporters last Monday whether Malaysia was upgraded to facilitate trade negotiations. She said the decision was based on how Malaysia was dealing with trafficking.

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U.S. President Barack Obama (R) shakes hands with Cuba's President Raul Castro as they hold a bi …

Representative Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican who authored a 2000 law that led to the creation of J/TIP, said in an interview that the office’s authority is being undermined by the president’s agenda. “It’s so politicized,” he said.

If Malaysia had remained on Tier 3, it would have posed a potential barrier to Obama's proposed trade pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. That deal is a crucial part of his pivot to Asia policy. Congress approved legislation in June giving Obama expanded trade negotiating powers but prohibiting deals with Tier 3 countries such as, at that time, Malaysia.

Congressional sources and current and former State Department officials said experts in the J/TIP office had recommended keeping Malaysia on Tier 3, highlighting a drop in human-trafficking convictions in the country to three last year from nine in 2013. They said, according to the sources, that some of Malaysia’s efforts to end forced labor amounted to promises rather than action.

The analysts also clashed over Cuba’s record with the State Department’s Western Hemisphere Affairs Bureau, whose view took precedence in the final report.

Human rights groups and people with knowledge of the negotiations over the rankings said an unearned upgrade for Cuba, especially at a time of intense attention due to the historic diplomatic thaw between Washington and Havana, could undermine the integrity of the report.

Cuba had been on the “border line” for an upgrade in recent years, a former State Department official said. And although Cuba ended up with an upgrade, the final report remained highly critical, citing concerns about Cuba’s failure to deal with a degree of alleged forced labor in medical missions that Havana sends to developing countries.

China was another source of friction. J/TIP’s analysts called for downgrading China, the world’s second-biggest economy, to Tier 3, criticizing Beijing for failing to follow through on a promise to abolish its “re-education through labor” system and to adequately protect trafficking victims from neighboring countries such as North Korea. The final report put China on Tier 2 Watch List.

SHOWING DEFERENCE

But the candor of J/TIP can run afoul of other important diplomatic priorities, particularly in countries beset by instability or corruption where U.S. diplomats are trying to build relationships. That leads every year to sometimes contentious back-and-forth over the rankings with far-flung embassies and regional bureaus – the diplomatic centers of gravity at the State Department.

“There is supposed to be some deference to the expertise of the office,” said Mark Lagon, J/TIP’s ambassador-at-large from 2007 to 2009 and now president of Freedom House, an advocacy group in Washington. If the office is now losing more disputes over rankings than it is winning, that would be “an unfortunate thing,” he said.

Most U.S. diplomats are reluctant to openly strike back at critics inside and outside of the administration who accuse them of letting politics trump human rights, the sources said.

But privately, some diplomats say that J/TIP staffers should avoid acting like “purists” and keep sight of broader U.S. interests, including maintaining open channels with authoritarian governments to push for reform and forging trade deals that could lift people out of poverty.

From the start, J/TIP has tried to be impartial. It is based in a building a few blocks away from State Department, adding to the sense of two separate identities and cultures.

But establishing genuine independence has been difficult. At first, the heads of regional bureaus, representing the business and political interests of U.S. embassies, would join the J/TIP team around a table and have almost an equal say in deciding country rankings in the final report.

John Miller, a former Republican congressman from Washington state named by President George W. Bush to head the bureau from 2002 to 2006, overhauled that structure.

“I said ‘no way’,” Miller said in an interview. By 2004, decisions on how to rank countries were made by his office. Diplomats who objected could appeal to then deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage. “He rarely overruled me,” said Miller. Armitage, who is no longer in a government job, did not respond to a request for comment sent through his office.

Laura Lederer, who helped set the office up as senior human trafficking adviser from 2002 to 2007, said its job was “to assess and rate countries solely on their progress in addressing the prevention of trafficking, the prosecution of traffickers, and protection and assistance of victims.”

But officials who worked in the office over the past 15 years acknowledge that countries with sensitive diplomatic or trade relationships with the United States sometimes received special treatment following pressure from local embassies and other constituencies within the department.

One such country is Mexico – a key trading partner whose cooperation is also needed against drug trafficking and illegal immigration. It was kept at Tier 2 despite the anti-trafficking unit’s call for a worse grade, according to officials in Washington and Mexico City.

The controversy over this year’s report comes at a time when J/TIP lacks a congressionally confirmed leader.

The prior chief, ambassador-at-Large Luis CdeBaca, left in November of last year. His deputy, Alison Friedman, then resigned to join a non-profit anti-slavery organization. And then it took until mid-July for Obama to nominate Georgia federal prosecutor Susan Coppedge as the next ambassador-at-large.

The lack of a director can increase the unit’s exposure to political influence, said Lederer.

Some say the perceived hit to the integrity of the 2015 report could do lasting damage.

“It only takes one year of this kind of really deleterious political effect to kill its credibility,” said Mark Taylor, a former senior coordinator for reports and political affairs at J/TIP from 2003 to 2013.

(Reporting by Jason Szep and Matt Spetalnick; Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle in Washington, Dave Graham in Mexico City, Michael Martina in Beijing, and Dan Trotta in Havana; Editing by Martin Howell)

Associated Press Videos
Raw: Officer Killed During Memphis Traffic Stop

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — An ex-con accused of fatally shooting a police officer who interrupted a drug deal turned himself in Monday, ending an intensive two-day manhunt, authorities said.

Tremaine Wilbourn, 29, is accused of killing officer Sean Bolton on Saturday night, after the officer approached a car along a street that had been known for years as a quiet oasis amid a troubled neighborhood.

Wilbourn was with his family and an attorney when he turned himself in.

"I think he felt the walls closing in and thought it would be in his best interest to turn himself in," Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong said Monday.

Armstrong spoke briefly to Wilbourn and the suspect told him: "I want you to know that one, I'm not a cold-blooded killer and two, I am not a coward."

Armstrong had used that word to describe Wilbourn during the manhunt.

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This undated photo released by the Memphis Police Department shows Tremaine Wilbourn. According to a …

On Saturday night, police said Wilbourn was a passenger in a 2002 Mercedes Benz that was parked illegally in the southeast Memphis neighborhood. Bolton approached the car, Wilbourn got out of the Mercedes and the two men got into a struggle, police said.

Wilbourn took out a gun and fired, striking Bolton multiple times. Then Wilbourn and the driver ran away as a civilian used Bolton's radio to notify police, authorities said.

The driver later turned himself in, and was released without charges. Police sought Wilbourn on a first-degree murder warrant. His first court appearance is expected Tuesday.

Officers said they found about 1.7 grams of marijuana in the car.

Wilbourn was on probation for an armed bank robbery. A sentencing memorandum filed by Wilbourn's lawyer on May 16, 2006, said Wilbourn was persuaded by his uncle to join the robbery to help him with his finances and "he was awaiting news regarding a possible college scholarship based on his athletic ability."

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This undated photo released by the Memphis Police Department shows Officer Sean Bolton, who was fata …

He was sentenced to more than 10 years in federal prison and released on probation in July 2014. He used marijuana in December and was ordered to undergo mental health treatment July 7, according to federal court documents released Monday. It's not clear whether he was ever evaluated.

The documents said witnesses to the officer's shooting identified Wilbourn in a photo lineup.

Wilbourn, who goes by the names Tremaine Martin and "T-Streetz," is black. Bolton, who was white, was a 33-year-old Marine who served in Iraq.

He was the third Memphis officer to be fatally shot in slightly more than four years. His funeral was scheduled for Thursday.

Residents along the street where Bolton was gunned down said their block had been quiet compared to the neighborhood around them, where gunshots cut through the night and people are afraid to go outside after dark.

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A police officer walks by an armored truck during a search of an apartment complex on Sunday, Aug. 2 …

Melvin Norment, whose family has lived on the block for 25 years, said he saw the Mercedes on Saturday night and knew it didn't belong to his neighbors.

"It's not a car I've seen before," he said. "Because I sit outside all the time. I knew it wasn't anybody's car from around here."

Just a few blocks away — at a busy intersection with fast-food restaurants, apartment complexes and an empty lot — police have for years battled drugs and crime in this city long listed among America's most violent.

On Monday morning, yellow crime tape rested in a bundle along the curb on Summerlane Avenue. A vase with yellow, red and white flowers and a white stuffed unicorn had been placed at the scene as a make-shift memorial to the fallen officer.

The street is lined with small, mostly well-kept homes, and neighbors say it has been insulated from the crime erupting around them.

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A Memphis police officer walks down a staircase at an apartment that was searched by authorities Sun …

Phillip Price said he lives in Cottonwood Apartments, a few blocks from the shooting.

"We hear gunshots all the time," he said. "There's a lot of people here that carry weapons, that shouldn't be carrying weapons. Some of them are trigger happy. We have seven, eight different gangs in this area."

Michael Williams lives about three blocks from where Bolton was shot. Williams — a police officer, candidate for mayor and president of the Memphis Police Association — said he was in bed two weeks ago and heard 42 gunshots.

When they bought their house eight years ago, "you could be in your front yard and not be concerned, you didn't hear gunshots in the middle of the night, we weren't concerned about going to the gas station at night," he said.

But they've watched the neighborhood deteriorate, he said. Homeowners died off or moved to the suburbs, and the renters that replaced them didn't take the same sort of pride in keeping the streets safe and clean, he said.

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A Memphis Police officer looks out from an apartment balcony after a standoff near the area where Po …

"I even told my wife, 'it's looking like it's time to move on,'" he said.

Meanwhile, the number of police officers has dwindled from more than 2,500 in the city to around 2,000, Williams said. Budget cuts dug into officers' pensions and benefits, prompting experienced officers to flee to other departments, in cities with better pay and lower crime rates.

Rank and file officers, he said, are disgruntled and burnt out.

Williams believes the most recent shooting can be traced, at least to some degree, to the fury over police treatment of African-Americans in incidents across the country. Williams estimates that the Memphis police force is around 60 percent African-American, roughly reflective of the city's overall population.

"I think officers are becoming hesitant to react," Williams said. "They don't want to end up in court, or plastered all over the national news."