NATO confirms Kandahar Air Strike Kills Five Civilians

This is just another example of correction of reports after the official version of events does not stand up. It seems they never verify the facts before releasing reports, reports which usually have a positive spin. This is not the first time this has happened. It happens quite regularly. A supposedly errant missile that killed a house containing many civilians was actually a target it turns out since NATO forces thought that there were militants firing from inside. Much of the kerfuffle about avoiding civilian casualties is just window dressing. Using mortars and missiles and calling in airstrikes in urban areas is a sure recipe for civilian casualties.

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NATO Confirms Kandahar Air Strike Killed Five Civilians

Posted By Jason Ditz

In a scenario which has played out all too regularly in the nation in recent weeks, NATO forces say they called in an air strike against what they assumed to be “persons planting an IED explosive device” in the Kandahar Province, but were later revealed to be innocent civilians.

The strike left at least five of the civilians dead and two others wounded. NATO expressed “regrets” for the killings, and promised to offer the families of the slain financial compensation for the loss of their loved ones.

Officials were unclear about what the civilians were actually doing instead of planting IEDs, but the incident had shades of a previous air strike in Kandahar, in August. In that case, US troops saw people “loading munitions into a van,” ordering an air attack against them. The “munitions” turned out to be cucumbers, and the militants were farmers.

This is the second major incident of NATO forces killing civilians in the past 24 hours in Afghanistan, as yesterday a US rocket attack in the Helmand Province missed its intended target, killing 12 civilians in a house.


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US strikes in Afghanistan kill 100 mostly civilians

The military as usual makes the Taliban responsible for the deaths. Of course in a sense this is true in that the Taliban retreat into civilian areas. However, it is also true that the strikes are surely made with the knowledge that many civilians will be collateral damage. This is in effect a message. If you don't drive out the Taliban you will die. Killing civilians is not an accident but part of a policy. Collateral damage is simply a euphemistic public relations term that relates to reality only as an excuse for what is inexcusable.

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US Strikes in Afghanistan Kill 100, Mostly Civilians
Posted By Jason Ditz On May 6, 2009 @ 7:35 am In Uncategorized Last updated 5/6 11:25 PM EST
Afghan police are saying today that over 100 people were killed in this week’s US air strike in Farah Province. 25 to 30 are suspected Taliban, while the vast majority were civilians. A Red Cross investigative team confirmed the findings, saying they had seen “dozens” of bodies in two separate locations and that civilians were still digging through the rubble of their mud-brick homes looking for others.
The US military is still conducting its own investigation of the killings, and President Obama has expressed “regret” for the deaths, promising (as has been so often the case) to make every effort to avoid a repeat. Yet General David McKiernan is not so certain, he and other officials are claiming that the entire incident may have been manufactured by the Taliban.
The incident stands as the largest civilian toll in Afghanistan since August, 2008, when the US killed at least 90 civilians in the neighboring Herat Province. In that case the US angrily denied the allegations for months, finally admitting to killing many civilians but insisting it was legitimate.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, in Washington DC today for a summit with US President Obama and Pakistani President Zardari, has ordered his own probe into the incident, and promises to once again bring up the issue of mounting civilian casualties with Obama. Karzai’s repeated complaints about the massive civilian toll of the US operations has soured his relationship with the international forces, still prosecuting their already eight year long war with no end in sight.

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Afghans seething with anger over civilian deaths from air strikes.

No one seems to remark on the fact that even though there is a lot being done to train Afghan ground troops there seems to be virtually nothing done about the air force. The Afghan have nothing but a few Soviet era planes! The U.S. and NATO seem to want to control the skies. Exactly the same pattern occurs in Iraq where the occupiers dominate the sky. I gather in Iraq the US even controls air traffic.

North American News Service
Sep 10, 2008 07:02 EST
KABUL Sept 10 (Reuters) - Afghans are seething with anger over a spate of civilian deaths in air strikes mounted by U.S.-led coalition forces, a top Afghan defence official said on Wednesday, calling for greater involvement of the Afghan army in operations.




Major-General Zaher Azimi said there was no military justification for an air strike in western Herat last month in which the government says more than 90 people, most of them women and children, were killed, a figure backed by the United Nations.
"It is difficult for the Afghan people to tolerate any more. Civilian casualties happen in war, but they are now so much on the rise," said Azimi, a former mujahideen commander and now an adviser and spokesman at the Afghan defence ministry.
The U.S. military, which plans to reinvestigate the Aug. 22 bombing in Herat's Shindand district, says the air strike was called after coalition and Afghan army forces came under intense fire during an operation against suspected Taliban militants in the area.
It said 30 to 35 militants were killed in the raid.
But Azimi said the operation was flawed from the beginning because it was launched on the basis of intelligence input that was not coordinated with the Afghan National Army.
"If they had coordinated with the Afghan troops it wouldn't have ended up in an air strike," he said. "I mean, what justification is there to kill 100 people because 10 rounds were fired at you?"
He said coalition and Afghan troops could have surrounded the village and forced out the Taliban if they were there. "There wasn't really any immediate need for bombardment."
Violence has mounted in Afghanistan in the past three years with a resurgent Taliban carrying out suicide bombings and ambushes, forcing the over-stretched Western coalition forces to rely more and more on air strikes.
Twice as many tonnes of bombs were dropped in 2007 than in 2006, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report this week, citing U.S. Air Force data. More people were killed by air strikes in 2007 than by U.S. or NATO ground fire.
This year as violence hit its highest level since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 with more than 2,500 people killed, there has been a surge in the use of air power. More bombs have been dropped in the months of June and July than in the whole of 2006.
GIVE US PLANES
Azimi said given Afghanistan's harsh and rugged terrain, the use of air power was inevitable in tackling a full-blown insurgency.
But even here if the Afghans were conducting the operations, the chances of inflicting civilian casualties would be less because they were more likely to know a particular area better than foreign forces.
"We know people by name in our country, and we know their homes. We have pilots who know the villages and can identify targets themselves so that we hit our enemies, not civilians."
Afghanistan's fledgling air force has a fleet of five Soviet-era transport planes, and a few helicopters but no combat aircraft.
Unlike the Afghan army, the rebuilding of the air force, which lost all its 500 aircraft in the Soviet invasion and the civil war later on, has been slow.
"No army in the world can have successful operations unless it has an air force to give it logistics, transport and firepower support," he said. "But especially in the kind of environment we are in Afghanistan, we need a strong Afghan air force. (Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Editing by David Fogarty)
Source: Reuters North American News Service





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Foreign Raid kills dozens of Afghans

The authors of this article apparently have never heard of Bomber McNeil. Of course the US military is making checks! The US does not check very carefully to see who they are bombing. They have killed Brits and Canadians more than once. These villages are in Taliban controlled territory. They must be made to pay for it. Karzai can complain to his US contracted security guards or to the media but it will do no good. What does Karzai know after all. He says that Iran is playing a constructive role in Afghanistan.

Foreign raid kills dozens of Afghans: residents By Abdul Qodous
Sun Aug 26, 3:16 AM ET



LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Residents of a Taliban-controlled town in southern Afghanistan said on Sunday dozens of civilians including women and children had been killed in aerial bombing.

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British and American forces confirmed there had been fighting in the area but the British denied any air strikes occurred there late on Saturday, while the U.S. military was making checks.

There was no way of independently verifying the accounts.

The strike late on Saturday hit several villages in the Musa Qala district of Helmand province, a long-time bastion for Taliban guerrillas and the biggest drug-producing region of Afghanistan, the world's leading producer of heroin, residents said.

At least six wounded civilians were brought to a hospital in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of Helmand.

They belonged to the family of Ghulam Mohammad and included three men, two women and a child, said Rahmatullah Hanafi, the head of Emergency hospital where the group was treated.

He said all had shrapnel wounds and one of the women was in a critical condition.

Mohammad said eight of his family members, including children, were also killed in the attack, which he said went on for several hours.

"So far between 60 killed and wounded people have been recovered and there are people who are trapped under collapsed houses," Mohammad told Reuters outside the hospital.

"It was a quiet evening and the bombardment began all of a sudden. Cattle have also been killed," said a family member of Mohammad, called Haji Saeed Mohammad.

"We can't do any thing, can't stay in our villages and can't go anywhere ... it is best for us to be killed all at once than being killed every day," he added.

The U.S. military said U.S.-led coalition troops were conducting an operation in the Musa Qala area. "I understand that there were operations in that area, I don't know if the operations are complete or ongoing," she said.

The British military which has the largest force in Helmand, said there were no air strikes launched in the area.

"There was not an air strike in that area last night. Coalition forces were engaged by the Taliban and there was a contact and a firefight, but no close air support dropped anything," a British military spokeswoman in Helmand said.

RISING VIOLENCE

Civilian casualties are a sensitive case for President Hamid Karzai's government and the Western troops under the command of NATO and the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan.

Already this year, more than 350 civilians have been killed in operations by Western troops in Afghanistan, according to aid groups and Afghan officials.

Karzai has repeatedly urged Western troops to coordinate operations with Afghan forces and avoid civilian casualties because it saps support for his government and the foreign troops.

Karzai's government is under growing criticism for rampant corruption, perceived lack of development and reconstruction, rising insecurity and booming illegal drugs trade.

The latest reported civilian casualties coincide with rising violence in the past 19 months, the bloodiest period since U.S.-led troops and Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban in 2001.

On Saturday, eight Afghan police were killed in a Taliban ambush in Kandahar province while four national army soldiers died in a Taliban attack in Logar province to the south of Kabul, provincial officials said.