Air attacks and civilian casualties

NATO seems to have decided that if the Taliban take refuge in compounds or areas where there might be civilians that they will attack them by air and artillery in any event and blame the Taliban for using civilians "as shields". NATO has not changed their policy in spite of Karzai's complaints. It seems that Karzai really is unable to stop the practice even though it will likely make the situation worse for his government. NATO is more concerned about having troop casualties than it is about Afghan civilian casualties. It does not even count the latter as far as I know, mimicking the policy of the US and allies in Iraq.
Al Maliki's censure of US forces is equally as impotent as Karzai. Of course in both places the occupiers prate endlessly about establishing democracy while they do not allow even sovereignty. Maliki specifically gave up any control over US operations in Baghdad some while back.


Civilians Die In U.S.-NATO Air Assault In Afghanistan

By Griff Witte and Javed Hamdard
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, July 1, 2007; A16



ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 30 -- Just a week after Afghan President Hamid Karzai chastised international forces for being "careless," Afghan officials reported Saturday that possibly 100 or more civilians had been killed in a NATO and U.S.-led assault.

The battle in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, which was prompted by a Taliban ambush, began Friday night and continued into Saturday morning, Afghan officials said. It ended with international forces bombing several compounds in the remote village of Hyderabad.

"More than 100 people have been killed. But they weren't Taliban. The Taliban were far away from there," said Wali Khan, a member of parliament who represents the area. "The people are already unhappy with the government. But these kinds of killings of civilians will cause people to revolt against the government."

Another parliament member from Helmand, Mahmood Anwar, said that the death toll was close to 100 and that the dead included women and children. "Very few Taliban were killed," he said.

Spokesmen for the international forces acknowledged that civilians were killed in the battle, though they disputed the numbers. Maj. John Thomas, a spokesman for the NATO force, said the civilian death toll was "an order of magnitude less" than what Afghan officials reported.

Thomas said U.S. ground forces helping to carry out a NATO mission had come under fire by Taliban insurgents using small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. Thomas said the troops responded by firing on insurgents who were shooting from a compound and a network of trenches. U.S. helicopters and NATO bombers were later brought in for support, he said.

Thomas said troops returned to the area after the battle and found what appeared to be civilian bodies among the dead insurgents in the trenches. "This confirms for us again that militants are willing to fire from among civilians," he said.

"We are deeply saddened by any loss of innocent lives," U.S. Army Maj. Chris Belcher, a coalition forces spokesman, said in a statement. "Insurgents are continuing their tactic of using women and children as human shields in close combat."

Karzai has not accepted that argument, repeatedly criticizing international troops for not doing more to protect noncombatants. After a series of particularly deadly incidents in June that Karzai blamed on poor coordination, he told reporters that international troops would have to "work the way we ask them to work."

Violence has increased in recent months in Afghanistan, especially in Helmand. A NATO soldier was killed and another injured in a separate incident in the province Saturday. The force did not identify the soldiers' nationalities.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan on Saturday, three civilians were killed and seven injured when a Taliban rocket missed a NATO base in the eastern province of Kunar.

More than 2,800 people have been killed in violence in Afghanistan so far this year, compared with 4,000 killed in all of last year, according to a tally by the Associated Press. The AP counts hundreds of civilians killed. Slightly more have been killed by NATO and U.S.-led forces than by the Taliban, according to several independent assessments.

Hamdard reported from Kabul

and from Iraq also civilian casualties.....This is from gulfnews..

Al Maliki censures US forces after Sadr City raid kills 26
AP
Published: July 01, 2007, 00:35


Baghdad: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki condemned a US raid yesterday in Baghdad's Shiite Sadr City slum - a politically sensitive district for him - in which American troops searching for Iranian-linked militants sparked a firefight that left 26 Iraqis dead.

The US military said all those killed in the fighting were gunmen.

But residents said eight civilians were killed in their homes and angrily accused American troops of firing wildly during the pre-dawn assault.

Sadr City is the Iraqi capital's largest Shiite neighbourhood - home to some 2.5 million people - making US raids there potentially embarrassing for Al Maliki's Shiite-led government. The district is also the stronghold of the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada Al Sadr, who was once Al Maliki's ally.


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"The Iraqi government totally rejects US military operations ... conducted without prior approval from the Iraqi military command," Al Maliki said in a statement concerning the Sadr City raid. "Anyone who breaches the military command orders will face investigation."

Al Maliki last year banned military operations in Sadr City without his approval after complaints from his Shiite political allies. The ban frustrated US commanders pushing for a crackdown on the Mahdi Army.

Al Maliki later agreed that no area of the capital was off-limits, after US President George W. Bush ordered reinforcements to Iraq as part of the Baghdad security operation.

Also yesterday, the military announced that two American soldiers were charged with the premeditated murder of three Iraqis and with planting weapons on the bodies to cover up the slayings, which took place between April and June near Iskandariyah, 50km south of Baghdad.

23 dead in blast

Staff Sgt Michael A. Hensley from Candler, North Carolina, was jailed on Thursday in Kuwait, facing three counts each of premeditated murder, obstructing justice and wrongfully placing the weapons. Spc Jorge G. Sandoval, arrested at his home in Laredo, Texas, faces one count each of premeditated murder and planting a weapon, the military said.

In Muqdadiyah, 90km north of the capital, police said a suicide bomber blew himself up near a crowd of police recruits, killing at least 23 people and wounding 17.

The US military said it conducted two pre-dawn raids in Sadr City, killing 26 'terrorists' who attacked US troops with small arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs. But Iraqi officials said all the dead were civilians.

NATO faults Taliban for 25 civilians dead

Imagine if criminals held 25 hostages in two houses. The police when fired upon as they surround the houses back off and call in bombers or artillery to simply destroy the houses. What would be public reaction if this were done in Canada or the US?
Imagine too that government officials were not asked to approve this tactic.
Imagine also that if the police were asked how many civilians they have killed using these tactics against criminals they replied: We do not keep statistics on this.
Of course the NATO forces did not know there were women and children in the compound but they made no attempt to find out it seems. In fact I expect they did not want to know. They knew that there were up to 30 insurgent fighters and that was what was important to them.


NATO faults Taliban for 25 civilians dead


KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — NATO accused Taliban fighters Friday of provoking an airstrike that reportedly killed 25 innocents, including three infants and nine women, while a Dutch general charged that insurgents executed villagers during another battle.
The allegations come amid a new surge of criticism over civilian deaths during attacks by foreign forces — a debate that underlines how the five-year-old war against insurgents is also a struggle for hearts and minds among long-suffering Afghans and voters in NATO nations.

President Hamid Karzai and others have long complained that civilian losses in NATO or U.S.-led operations are undermining the effort to stabilize Afghanistan and prevent a Taliban comeback. The deaths are "difficult for us to accept or understand," Karzai said Thursday.

NATO commanders are adamant that the militants — not foreign forces — deserve most of the blame for the toll among civilians, and said the overnight bloodshed in southern Helmand province was just such a case.

An alliance statement said NATO aircraft struck after Taliban fighters attacked troops from NATO's International Security Assistance Force nine miles northeast of the town of Gereshk.

"A compound was assessed to have been occupied by up to 30 insurgent fighters, most of whom were killed in the engagement," the statement said.

Lt. Col. Mike Smith, a NATO spokesman, expressed concern about Afghan police reports that civilians also died in the airstrike. But he said insurgents chose the time and place for their attack, so "the risk to civilians was probably deliberate."

"It is this irresponsible action that may have led to casualties," he said.

The airstrike killed 20 militants, but it also wiped out two civilian families totaling 25 people, including nine women, three babies and a mullah, provincial Police Chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal told The Associated Press.

"NATO was targeting the areas where the (insurgent) fire was coming from ... and two compounds were completely destroyed, and the families living in those compounds were killed," he said.

Military commanders said their forces have to be free to respond to attacks.

"If someone is firing at our troops they have the right to defend themselves and have the right to fire at a position which is firing at them," said another NATO spokesman, Maj. John Thomas. "If the enemy has put themselves in an area where they are firing from among civilians, this is when we sometimes have casualties."

Thomas said NATO forces try to monitor a target from the air and ground for any civilians present. "But in the cases like (Gereshk), when we respond to an ambush or an enemy attack, things move a little bit more quickly," he said.

The police chief said villagers loaded the bodies onto tractor trailers to take them to Helmand's capital, Lashkar Gah, to prove they were innocent victims. But police turned them back, fearing unrest in town, and the bodies were buried in graves near their village, Andiwal said.

It was impossible to verify his account of what happened in the remote area.

Andiwal also said NATO did not consult with Afghan authorities before the airstrike — a demand repeatedly made by Karzai.

"They never talked with us, no consultation, no discussion," Andiwal said.

If confirmed, the casualties in Gereshk would bring the number of civilians killed in NATO or U.S.-led military operations this year to 177, according to an AP tally of figures provided by Afghan officials and witnesses. Militant attacks, including suicide bombings, have killed 169 civilians.

The Gereshk clash followed reports that dozens of civilians died in fighting earlier this week between Taliban militants and Afghan and Dutch soldiers east of Helmand, in Uruzgan province.

NATO acknowledged Thursday that civilians might have died during the three-day battle to repel an attempt by hundreds of militants to seize Chora district.

On Friday, Gen. Dick Berlijn, commander of the Dutch military, painted the militants as murderous desperadoes.

Taliban fighters tried to force villagers to fight alongside them "and killed citizens who refused — they were hauled out of their houses by the Taliban and executed," Berlijn told reporters in The Hague, Netherlands.

"One police checkpoint commander saw two brothers murdered before his eyes by the Taliban," Berlijn said. Another police report "said that eight women were murdered — they had their throats slashed," he added.

He described the police reports as "solid," but offered no independent confirmation.

The Dutch mission in Afghanistan is due to finish in August 2008 and lawmakers and the government will debate in coming weeks whether to extend their mandate.

After weeks of heated debate in parliament last year, the troops were sent with the primary task of rebuilding the war-shattered country, but Berlijn conceded that work cannot always be carried out.

"The motto of our mission is, 'Rebuild if we can, fight if we must,"' he said. "In recent days in Chora, we have fought."