<\/p>\n
With Pentagon chief<\/span> Pete Hegseth temporarily safe from impeachment, a dozen humanitarian groups are calling on Congress to investigate one of the eight shelved charges<\/a> lodged against him: his role in the deaths of hundreds of people during the \u201cunauthorized war in Yemen.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe urge members of Congress to conduct robust oversight into Operation Rough Rider and the resulting human toll,\u201d reads a new letter shared exclusively with The Intercept, using the Pentagon\u2019s term for its war against Yemen\u2019s Houthi government<\/a>. The 12 groups \u2014 including Airwars, Amnesty International USA, the Center for Civilians in Conflict, and Mwatana for Human Rights \u2014 seize on civilian harm prevention efforts that Hegseth\u2019s War Department slashed, demanding \u201cmore information about how and why civilian harm incidents occurred, what lessons the Department learned from these operations, and the status of ongoing civilian harm assessments and investigations.\u201d<\/p>\n The push for accountability follows last week\u2019s electoral rout<\/a> of the GOP <\/a>and immediate calls by top Democrats for scrutiny of war powers abuses by the Trump administration. But with Democrats taking the gavel in both chambers next year, a defense official told The Intercept that the Trump administration\u2019s failed 2025 conflict in Yemen risks becoming a \u201cforgotten war\u201d amid a push for accountability focused on higher profile conflicts.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the House Armed Services Committee\u2019s incoming chair, announced<\/a> last week that the committee\u2019s \u201ctop priority will be to conduct vigorous oversight of the Department of Defense and the Trump Administration,\u201d specifically singling out \u201cthe illegal war against Iran\u201d and \u201cunauthorized military strikes in the Caribbean and Latin America.\u201d Smith did not mention Yemen, and his office did not respond to repeated queries about whether Yemen would also be a priority. The office of Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., who is slated to head the Senate Armed Services Committee, also did not immediately respond to questions about whether oversight of Rough Rider would be a focus.<\/p>\n Over just 52 days, from March to May 2025, Rough Rider caused \u201cextraordinarily high numbers of civilian casualties,\u201d the groups noted. As The Intercept first reported in August, the Pentagon\u2019s annual report to Congress on civilian harm acknowledged almost 400 civilian casualties<\/a> \u2014 153 deaths and 243 injuries \u2014 from just three attacks in Yemen: a strike in Sanaa on April 6, a strike on the Ras Isa Port on April 17, and a strike on a migrant detention center<\/a> in Saada on April 28.<\/p>\n Amnesty, one of the signatories, spoke with five survivors of the strike in Saada who cannot work because of their injuries.\u00a0\u201cIf I\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0take a painkiller, I feel hopeless and wish to die,\u201d said a 22-year-old\u00a0Ethiopian man who\u00a0sustained\u00a0a serious arm injury in the U.S. attack. \u201cI think about how at such\u00a0a young age\u00a0I\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0even support myself and still rely on help from others. The metal rod inside me is very painful and uncomfortable. It drives you insane.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n A U.S. official called the Pentagon\u2019s civilian casualty count \u201clowball numbers.\u201d According to the\u00a0Yemen Data Project<\/a>, the estimated toll was higher: at least 238 civilians killed and 467 injured.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s striking that the Department acknowledged nearly 400 civilian casualties from just three incidents \u2014 a staggeringly high rate \u2014 without any explanation whatsoever about what happened and why, how they\u2019ll respond to victims and their families, and how they\u2019ll prevent it from happening again,\u201d Annie Shiel, the U.S. director of Center for Civilians in Conflict, told The Intercept.<\/p>\n \u201cHow will they get through hundreds of cases for Iran if their one civilian harm person still hasn\u2019t finished Yemen?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n More than a year after Operation Rough Rider ended, 15 additional attacks were still under assessment, according to the civilian harm report. One official told The Intercept<\/a> in August that the backlog would likely carry over several years. Under Hegseth, the 10-person civilian harm mitigation team at Central Command, or CENTCOM, has been reduced to just one individual<\/a>.<\/p>\n This lack of attention doesn\u2019t bode well for understanding civilian harm in Hegseth\u2019s longer-running and even more destructive war efforts, officials said.<\/p>\n \u201cHow will they get through hundreds of cases for Iran if their one civilian harm person still hasn\u2019t finished Yemen?\u201d a U.S. official asked in August.<\/p>\n At present, CENTCOM claims that the U.S. attack on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school\u00a0<\/a>in Minab, Iran \u2013 that killed more than 150 people, most of them children<\/a> \u2014 is the lone civilian harm incident of that burgeoning<\/a> forever war. For months, CENTCOM has failed to answer questions about that attack and additional Iranian civilian casualties, including eight members of a family \u2014 the youngest, a 20-day-old infant<\/a> \u2014 killed in a strike documented in an investigation by The Intercept.<\/p>\n Shiel highlighted the connections between the civilian casualties during Rough Rider and those in Iran. <\/p>\n \u201cThere is a through-line here from Yemen. We\u2019ll never know if the devastation of Minab would have been prevented through a fully staffed civilian protection program and a more robust inquiry into what happened in Yemen, but it\u2019s clear that important reckoning didn\u2019t happen,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is part of a broader trend of focusing on \u2018lethality\u2019 over civilian lives, ignoring hard-learned lessons in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n A group of Democratic lawmakers told Hegseth\u00a0in a July letter<\/a> that his \u201cgutting\u201d of Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response efforts has left the Pentagon unable to \u201ccomply with the law and its congressionally-mandated CHMR responsibilities.\u201d Sent by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and nine other lawmakers, the letter echoed concerns raised by a War Department\u00a0inspector general report<\/a>\u00a0that described civilian protection efforts as largely \u201cinactive.\u201d The May missive by the Pentagon\u2019s top\u00a0watchdog<\/a> says cuts to civilian harm mitigation and response efforts have been so severe under Hegseth that the United States cannot adequately protect civilians in conflict zones or track harm when it occurs.\u00a0<\/p>\n These criticisms were echoed in an another report<\/a>, first revealed by The Intercept in July, that found Hegseth\u2019s Pentagon gutted its premier center devoted to preventing civilian casualties in war zones. The War Department\u2019s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence slashed its staff from 40 personnel in January 2025 to just nine by the end of the year, according to the report.<\/p>\n Last week, The Intercept published<\/a> an expos\u00e9 quoting six current and former defense officials under Hegseth who called for his ouster, including a former senior adviser at that center. \u201cHe is conducting state terrorism. He is 100 percent a war criminal. He needs to be prosecuted,\u201d said Wes J. Bryant, who was pushed out of his job for blowing the whistle on Hegseth\u2019s efforts to undermine protections for civilians<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n