[Peace-discuss] Obama's war, not much reported here...

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Published on Sunday, June 14, 2009 by Times Online [UK]
	Afghan Villagers Slain as They Took Cover
	by John Swain

Tears streaming down her face, the Afghan woman sat in a corner of a room with 
no roof and broken windows, mourning 19 of her closest and dearest relatives. 
“They were parts of my heart,” she said.

Six weeks after American warplanes bombed her village in Farah province, on 
Afghanistan’s remote western border, mistakenly killing dozens of innocent women 
and children, the terror of the moment when the bombs fell and the ground 
erupted, turning one mud-walled house after another into rubble, still lives in 
her mind.

“I lost them all at a glance. Why am I still alive?” the 62-year-old woman asked.

The dead men, women and children, many of them her relatives, now lie in graves. 
The survivors still wonder why their families were wiped out by American airmen 
with whom they had no quarrel.

The Americans have paid families $2,000 compensation for each of those killed 
and $1,000 for each person injured. But the bombing in Farah on May 4, which 
caused the single highest civilian death toll of any incident this year, remains 
a significant political issue.

It has weakened Afghans’ support for their government, for the presence of 
international forces and for the war against the Taliban. It has also raised 
tensions with President Hamid Karzai, who condemns foreign forces for the rise 
in civilian casualties, partly to bolster his own support in advance of August’s 
presidential elections.

A United Nations investigation has found that 828 civilians were killed by 
Afghan or American-led forces last year, most in airstrikes. Reducing civilian 
casualties will be a critical task for Stanley McChrystal, the US general who 
takes command of international forces in Afghanistan tomorrow.

There is concern that 21,000 extra American troops will increase civilian 
casualties as fighting increases. Violence is already at its highest level since 
the Americans toppled the Taliban at the end of 2001.

The Americans have investigated the Farah bombing but their preliminary findings 
provided no real answers beyond admitting that a bomber’s crew had violated 
procedures.

In such cases there has always been a large discrepancy between estimates of the 
fatalities by Americans and those made by the UN and other agencies. The 
Americans rarely admit to making mistakes. In Farah, Afghan officials said that 
as many as 140 civilians died, but the US military put the civilian toll at no 
more than 30, along with about 65 insurgents. Other international investigators 
believe that as many 85 civilians died.

Last year the Americans killed 90 civilians in a bombing raid on Azizabad. An 
investigation by Dispatches, to be broadcast on Channel 4 tomorrow, will show 
that the Americans carried out the raid on the basis of faulty intelligence 
provided by an Afghan to settle a score with a rival. He is now on death row. 
But the American military has still not admitted the truth.

The Farah airstrikes were more straightforward but no less disastrous. They 
happened during a day of heavy fighting between Taliban insurgents and Afghan 
forces supported by American marines. During the fighting several 500lb bombs 
were dropped.

A lull ensued and villagers say many Taliban fighters withdrew. Many civilians 
fled, too, but some were still crammed into one compound.

At 8pm a B1 bomber dropped a 2,000lb bomb on the compound, which American 
commanders suspected of sheltering Taliban but which contained mostly civilians.

The bomber had to make an elongated approach, which meant the target should have 
been reassessed first. “Either their intelligence was so bad and they believed 
there were no civilians there, or they made a calculation that killing some 
civilians allowed them to get rid of Taliban fighters, too,” said Rachel Reid, a 
Human Rights Watch researcher.

The US air force confirmed that its jets hit a “compound in which enemy 
personnel had gathered after the fight”.

Haji Issa Khan, a tribal elder, denied American reports that the Taliban were 
shooting from the roofs. “The Taliban were getting into their cars,” he said. 
The Americans could see the Taliban cars but they didn’t attack them.”

Instead, they hit the compounds. Scores of old men, women and children had 
sheltered inside. The result turned a meaningless victory in an obscure part of 
the country into a spectacular own goal and a human tragedy.

“We told the Americans all these problems are of their own making. They are 
helping the government but they are helping the Taliban as well with their 
mistakes,” Khan added.

“Coalition forces are treating the Afghan people like prisoners,” said Zarin 
Zarin, an MP. “They need stricter rules and have got to work more closely with 
Afghan forces.”

Afghanistan poses a dilemma: it is not possible to precision-bomb small targets 
in civilian areas without causing what is euphemistically referred to as 
“collateral damage”.

Now the Americans know that success depends upon the consent of ordinary Afghan 
people. As McChrystal arrives, a review is under way to reduce civilian 
casualties. Emphasis is being placed on the propaganda war, which the Americans 
realise they have been losing.

The American command in its rhetoric seeks to minimise public outrage over 
civilian deaths – or at least the false assumption that “foreign” forces are 
responsible for causing more of them than the Taliban. But the procedures built 
on their calculation that some civilian casualties are justified will have to be 
changed if the Americans are to stop damaging their own campaign.

This has already happened in Iraq. President George W Bush’s administration used 
to sanction up to 30 civilian deaths for each attack on a high-value target, an 
American source said yesterday. It has since dropped to a single digit.

A spokeswoman for US forces in Afghanistan said yesterday that footage of the 
Farah battle, recorded by aerial cameras, is due to be released tomorrow. “The 
videos clearly show Taliban fighters massing in the buildings which were 
bombed,” she said. “The civilian casualties were caused by the Taliban.”

Lawrence of Arabia, who led the Arab revolt against the Turks in the first world 
war, wrote that the “ideal” fighting weapon was the knife: “The worst was the 
airplane.”

There are good arguments for the use of close air support to protect troops on 
the ground. Coalition forces would have suffered many more casualties without 
it. But it is a blunt instrument. And so it is that, 90 years on, Lawrence is 
being proved right in Afghanistan.

Additional reporting: Jerome Starkey, Kabul

© 2009 Times Online
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/06/14