On March 14, 2025, the Dutch Cabinet released a comprehensive letter to parliament with detailed commitments on further strengthening its approach to civilian harm mitigation. The commitments were made in response to the late-January publication of a damning report by the Sorgdrager Commission on the Dutch airstrike in Hawija, Iraq in 2015 that killed at least 70 civilians. The Commission outlined a series of systematic errors that contributed to the civilian toll of the airstrike, presenting valuable lessons for both the Dutch government and the coalition set-up – particularly in relation to intelligence sharing between allies.
In his letter to parliament, Dutch Defence Minister Ruben Brekelmans accepted all recommendations made by the Sorgdrager Commission, highlighting both the significant changes that the Netherlands has already made since the Hawija airstrike, and laying out additional reforms to address remaining concerns.
In the weeks since the release of the letter, developments have highlighted the urgent need for continued scrutiny in the Netherlands; in late March, the Minister announced that the Dutch post-strike video of Hawija, which the military claimed had been overwritten the day after the strike because it showed nothing important, had been found at a military base. Far from insignificant footage, the video clearly showed that the industrial area had been unintentionally “completely wiped out” and the residential area surrounding it “destroyed and badly damaged.” The Commission has responded by stating they will modify the conclusions in their report, while also calling for a hearing with those involved in the airstrikes under oath. The Minister of Defence has announced that there will be an external investigation into the context of the re-appeared video.
The Netherlands should promptly release the Hawija airstrike footage publicly to enhance transparency and accountability. At the same time, the Netherlands’ potentially offers a model of reform that allied nations can adapt and implement in their own civilian harm mitigation practices.
Apologizing for Harm
The Minister’s letter to parliament includes an apology for the harm caused to civilians in Hawija in 2015. This point is hugely important as survivors in Hawija, many of whom had lost loved ones, homes, and livelihoods, spent years unsure about who had conducted the airstrike as the Dutch Ministry of Defense kept its involvement secret. Even after Dutch responsibility was revealed, research by peacebuilding organisation PAX, the Intimacies of Remote Warfare Programme at Utrecht University, and the Iraqi NGO al-Ghad, showed that citizens of Hawija repeatedly requested an apology for the harm they had suffered. Yet while the Dutch Ministry of Defense admitted responsibility for the strike, no such apology followed. Rather than the individual reparations preferred by those affected, the Dutch government also made a “voluntary donation” to the International Organisation for Migration and the United Nations Development Programmes, leading to development projects in Hawija. These have received criticisms on the lack of engagement with local stakeholders and a lack of connection between the harm caused and the services offered in response.
In his response to the Sorgdrager Commission report, Minister Brekelmans acknowledged the Commission’s report that community-based compensation to those affected in Hawija came “too little and too late.” This aligns with the findings of independent NGOs and civilians in Hawija, who have long found that the Dutch compensation did not align with the wishes of those affected and did not lead to the intended improvement in Hawija. While the Ministry of Defense maintains that individual compensation payments will likely still not be possible in this case, it is encouraging that the Minister emphasizes that the Ministry will review whether additional resources can be made available – and, importantly, that local authorities will be involved in decision-making, based on the lessons of the past. This is also strengthened by an apology that the Defense Minister conveyed on behalf of the Cabinet to the Mayor of Hawija in March.
The Dutch Minister of Defense should build on the strength of this new approach, by communicating their apologies directly to those affected by the 2015 strike and working with local organisations and survivors of the airstrike to understand their preferences for future reparations in Hawija. In response to the letter released last month, PAX found that the apologies of the minister were well-received – and that those affected wish for a Dutch delegate to apologise directly to them, in person.
National Approaches to Intelligence in International Coalitions
Beyond offering this important apology for their involvement in the 2015 airstrike, the Minister’s letter to Parliament commits the Dutch government to several significant improvements. One of the key findings in the Sorgdrager Commission report was that the Dutch military conducted the strike on Hawija despite having access to no intelligence of their own, no Dutch intelligence capability to verify American information, and no Dutch military lawyer present to advise the Dutch Red Card Holder. The Coalition was entirely trust-based, meaning that the Americans and the other partners in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance would select and develop the targets, which would then be passed to other national partners for execution. In effect, this meant that non-Five Eye partners were asked to conduct lethal airstrikes without full access to the relevant intelligence before – or even after – the airstrike. The Dutch military had been aware that this would be a challenge and had created doctrine to address this challenge in late 2014; but this did not lead to any practical changes, leaving the Dutch reliant on the Americans.
In their response, the Ministry of Defense acknowledges both that their staffing was insufficient, leaving significant gaps, and that they should have been more transparent to parliament on the limits of their own intelligence position. At the same time, as Brekelmans acknowledges in his letter to parliament, states such as the Netherlands who are not part of the Five Eyes will likely remain reliant on others for intelligence. As the new U.S. administration seeks to roll back their own commitments and systems for mitigating harm to civilians – in spite of new civilian harm allegations emerging in mid March 2025 in a series of major strikes in Yemen – the Dutch (and every other European ally), should consider the risk of continuing to rely on American intelligence to mitigate harm to civilians.
In the months following the 2015 Hawija airstrike, the Dutch intelligence position and legal advice were improved by placing the right people in the right headquarters. All states should learn from this and, as a national minimum, should have personnel available to verify the intelligence presented to them, and a legal advisor (LEGAD) available to national decision makers. In the current climate, this is more important than ever.
Reporting on Civilian Harm
On the morning of July 3, 2015, as the suspicion of civilian harm was spreading among those involved in the airstrike, and the Americans were launching their own post-strike assessment that would find civilian harm “plausible,” the Dutch detachment commander filing out the Dutch After-Action Report (AAR) ticked a box saying “no” to the suspicion of civilian harm, because he had not seen “hard evidence.” This meant that other transparency and accountability mechanisms did not kick into action. It took four years for investigative journalists to prove Dutch involvement, and only then did it become public knowledge that the Dutch were responsible for significant civilian harm. On this, the Dutch Ministry of Defense acknowledged their mistake;
“For too long, the lack of clarity about whether there were civilian casualties and the precise nature of the damage has been used as a reason for not being transparent about this. When it comes to the balance between transparency on the one hand and correct and precise information provision on the other, it is sometimes important to be transparent even when there is no certainty yet. Based on the report, the cabinet judges that your House should have been informed immediately when the suspicion of civilian casualties arose, even when there was no certainty about this yet.”
This statement reflects years of advocacy led by independent civilian harm monitoring group Airwars and others on the importance of transparency, particularly in the face of complex information environments. As years of incident-based documentation efforts by groups like Airwars have shown, it is possible to identify harm allegations even in contested information spaces and it is vital that complex information environments are not used to excuse a lack of transparency.
To further address this in the Dutch context, the Dutch have created a “transparency test” to evaluate on a running basis what information can be released. This will be applied before, during, and after military operations to ensure that there is always as much transparency as possible. This system now faces a significant test in the case of the post-strike footage of Hawija, with the Sorgdrager Commission calling for the footage to be released not just to select parliamentarians, but to the public, to ensure that “transparency and truth-finding are then actually put into practice.”
Seeking Clarity in Future Coalitions
Finally, in their letter to parliament, the Dutch Ministry of Defense announced a new program of seeking “Letter of Intent” from the countries that the Netherlands regularly collaborate with militarily. This will seek clarity on key elements of civilian harm mitigation before coalitions are commenced, including agreements reporting on civilian casualties. This is valuable both in the clarity it will add to future coalitions, and in ensuring that mechanisms to address civilian harm remain high on the agenda for military actors. This is a major step forward, and reflects a marked change from the status quo of the Coalition set up in the war against ISIS, where the collective Coalition set up meant that individual states rarely invested in their own civilian harm tracking and response mechanisms.
The response to the Sorgdrager Commission report comes in the context of wider developments in the Dutch Ministry of Defense; just hours before the letter was released, the Ministry also released the outcome of a year-long engagement with Airwars reviewing the largest number of civilian harm allegations potentially relating to Dutch actions in the war against ISIS. This process reflects steps towards transparency taken by the Ministry, in a marked change compared to the opaque systems described by Sorgdrager at the time of the Hawija strike and in the years that followed.
The recent release of footage from the Dutch Hawija incident underscores the urgent, ongoing need for the implementation of commitments made by the Dutch Ministry of Defence towards stronger transparency, accountability, and responsiveness. Moreover, the reforms the Netherlands has undertaken in recent months demonstrate promising practices that allied nations should emulate as they strengthen their own oversight and accountability frameworks.
Airwars is currently working on a comprehensive analysis of the report together with civil society partners, due to be released later this year