WASHINGTON - Ramped-up United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) airstrikes in Afghanistan are causing an increased civilian death toll,
raising concerns about the fallout from civilian deaths on the war effort
against the Taliban insurgency, according to a major new report by Human Rights
Watch (HRW) released this week.
The 43-page report, "Troops in Contact: Airstrikes and Civilian Deaths in
Afghanistan", warned that the cost in civilian casualties caused by the
increase in bombings goes well beyond the loss of human life and could put the
nearly seven-year US-NATO war effort at risk.
"The harm caused by airstrikes is not limited to the immediate
civilian casualties," said the report, which also cited the destruction of
homes and property and the displacement of their civilian occupants caused by
the bombing.
"Civilian deaths from airstrikes act as a recruiting tool for the Taliban and
risk fatally undermining the international effort to provide basic security to
the people of Afghanistan," said Brad Adams, HRW's Asia director of HRW.
Citing HRW statistics, an editorial in Saturday's New York Times went further,
asserting that civilian deaths caused by the stepped up bombing played into the
hands of the Taliban and other insurgents: "America is fast losing the battle
for hearts and minds, and unless the Pentagon comes up with a better strategy,
the United States and its allies may well lose the war."
Fueling a growing controversy here, both the Times and the report said that the
increase in air attacks - and the "collateral damage" they caused - was due in
part to the relative lack of NATO and US troops on the ground whose fire tends
to be considerably more discriminating in their impact than aerial attacks.
Both the Pentagon and leading Democrats have been arguing for months for
deploying at least 10,000 more US troops to Afghanistan but have been unable to
overcome resistance by military commanders in Iraq who, backed by President
George W Bush, are reluctant to draw down troop levels there below the current
144,000. US ground forces are so stretched globally that deploying additional
forces to Afghanistan must await further withdrawals from Iraq.
The increased level of bombing has come as a result of a stepped-up insurgency
led by anti-government Taliban fighters and associated groups. Fighting in
Afghanistan has intensified dramatically over the past year. At least 540
civilians have been killed in the conflict so far this year, a sharp increase
over last year's total. Casualties among the more than 60,000 US and NATO
troops in Afghanistan have also risen sharply this year.
US and NATO forces, according to the report, dropped 362 tonnes of munitions in
Afghanistan during the first seven months of this year, including a flurry of
bombings in June and July that, by itself, nearly equaled the total amount of
bombs, by weight, dropped by the coalition forces on suspected enemy positions
in all of 2006.
"[...] While attacks by the Taliban and other insurgent groups continue to
account for the majority of civilian casualties," said the report, "civilian
deaths from US and NATO airstrikes nearly tripled from 2006 to 2007 [from 116
to 321]."
That increase prompted Afghan President Hamid Karzai to demand changes in
targeting tactics, including using smaller munitions, delaying attacks where
civilians might be harmed, and turning over house-to-house searches to the
Afghan National Army.
Those changes were adopted by the NATO-led International Security Assistance
Force (ISAF) with the result that, despite increased bombing during the first
seven months of this year, fewer civilians (119) were killed compared to the
same period in 2007.
But that figure does not include a controversial airstrike August 22 on the
village of Azizabad in western Afghanistan which, according to the Afghan
government and a UN investigating team, killed 90 people, the vast majority of
whom were women and children. The US military, which carried out the attack,
has insisted that 42 people were killed, 35 of them insurgents.
In some incidents, according to the report, US-NATO air strikes may have
violated the laws of war, particularly adherence to the principles of
proportionality and the requirement that parties take all feasible precautions
to prevent non-combatant casualties.
The report suggested that blame for civilian deaths can be focused fairly
narrowly. While most foreign troops in Afghanistan operate under the banner of
the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), a disproportionate
number of civilian casualties resulted from air strikes called in by the nearly
20,000 US troops who operate exclusively under US command as part of Operation
Enduring Freedom. Their rules of engagement, including when they can call for
air support, are less strict than NATO's.
The most problematic engagements have come when insurgents take US Special
Operations Forces (SOF) by surprise, and the SOF call in air support. The
military term, "troops in contact" (TIC), gave the HRW report its name.
In TIC situations, US forces have often engaged insurgents who then retreat to
nearby villages, taking up positions in homes and preventing their civilian
residents from leaving.
Faced with a standoff, US troops have called in rapid-response air support to
bomb the homes from which they were taking hostile fire. That appears to have
been what took place in Azizabad.
While condemning of Taliban "shielding" - using civilian human shields or
putting civilians at unnecessary risk so that when hurt, the story can be used
as propaganda - the report noted that this does not excuse US forces from the
laws of war and considerations of civilian populations.
The report outlined several incidents where questionable rapid-response
bombings caused civilian deaths. In one of them, two anti-government fighters
were seen entering a compound that was then hit with an airstrike that caused
nine casualties.
The US claimed to have killed the two insurgents, but a local Afghan authority
denied the claim, and journalists at the scene found no evidence supporting it.
Moreover, US troops and local villagers said that US forces had visited the
home the day before and should have known that civilians were present.
"The available information about the attack - in particular evidence suggesting
that US forces knew the house was inhabited by civilians and that only two
lightly armed fighters may have been present - raises serious concerns that the
airstrikes violated the international humanitarian law prohibition against
disproportionate attacks," said the report.
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