Accounts of Afghanistan Fighting Differ!

When there are bombing raids on populated areas it is bound to happen that civilians as well as insurgents will be killed. This type of action may very well turn the population even more against the occupiers. Even if most of the casualties were Taliban the end result could be more enlisted to the insurgent cause. Note that police and Afghan army authorities completely disassociate themselves from the action!


U.S. Says Raids Killed Taliban; Afghans Say Civilians Died


By ABDUL WAHEED WAFA
Published: May 1, 2007
KABUL, Afghanistan, April 30 — United States Special Forces said they killed more than 130 Taliban in two recent days of heavy fighting in a valley in western Afghanistan, but hundreds of angry villagers protested in nearby Shindand on Monday, saying dozens of civilians had been killed when the Americans called in airstrikes.

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The Reach of War
Go to Complete Coverage » The protesters sacked and burned government buildings, said Noor Khan Nekzad, a spokesman for the provincial police. He said none of the demonstrators were injured, but news reports said a number of protesters were hurt as the police and the army moved in to subdue the crowd.

The American military said that the fighting against the Taliban occurred Friday and Sunday in the Zerkoh Valley, near the Iranian border about 30 miles south of the city of Herat, and that the Special Forces called in airstrikes on at least two occasions. An American soldier was killed in the fighting on Friday, the military said, but there were no other reported casualties on the coalition side.

Forty-nine Taliban fighters, including two leaders of the group, were killed in the first bombardment on Friday, and 87 militants were killed in bombing during a second battle on Sunday that raged for 14 hours, the military said in a statement from the United States-led coalition headquarters at the Bagram air base.

But the local residents said that civilians were killed in the bombardment and that some drowned in the river as they fled, according to a local member of Parliament, Maulavi Gul Ahmad. News agencies reported that demonstrators said women and children were among the dead.

Mr. Ahmad condemned the bombing and said that the fighting angered local residents because the Americans raided their houses at night.

“They should not do that,” he said in a telephone interview. “The number that they claim — that 130 Taliban were killed — is totally wrong. There are no Taliban there.”

Raiding houses touches a nerve in Afghanistan, especially in conservative tribal areas, because the local custom dictates that men who are not family members cannot enter the parts of homes where the women stay. Such raids were upsetting local sensibilities so much several years ago that the American forces made an agreement with the Afghan government that they would not raid houses without the presence of Afghan elders or the police. The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission says that the agreement is still in effect, but that American troops do not always adhere to it.

But an Afghan military official, who asked not to be identified, presented a different version of events from that of Mr. Ahmad. He said that the Special Forces had run into trouble on Friday, when they were surrounded by insurgents, and that they requested support from the Afghan National Army.

Afghan Army and police officials denied any involvement in the fighting.

The province of Herat, where the fighting occurred, is usually quiet, but the Zerkoh Valley is populated by ethnic Pashtuns and shares a border with provinces where there are many insurgents

Another US attack kills Afghan civilians

The rest of the article is athttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6418459.stm
Afghans killed 'in new US attack'. This shows the indifference to collateral damage. The standard line is to claim that attackers "cowardly" seek refuge in populated areas. How would the US public react if in the US authorities simply bombed a house to smithereens if a killer was seen fleeing into it? Five women and three children were allegedly killed in this instance. That leaves at most one of the attackers killed.


Nine Afghan civilians have been killed in a bombing raid in Kapisa province, Afghan officials say.
US forces have confirmed carrying out an air strike in the area but say they have no accurate casualty information.

The news comes shortly after US forces were accused of killing 10 civilians during a shoot out on Sunday in Nangarhar province.

Journalists say US troops confiscated their photos and video footage of the aftermath of the violence.

The BBC's Alastair Leithead in Kabul says the international mission to Afghanistan is to help the government and the people. But heavy fighting and suicide attacks have led to the death of thousands of innocent people over the past year.

President Karzai has been critical of the international forces in the past, saying they should do more to prevent civilian casualties.


Nato denial

News of the air strike in Kapisa came first from the province's deputy governor, Sayed Daud Hashimi.






He said the nine dead civilians included five women and three children and that the raid was carried out by Nato forces. Nato have denied any involvement.

But later a US military statement said US-led forces had "dropped two 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) bombs" during an air strike in Kapisa after a Nato base had come under attack.

A US spokesman, Lt Col David Accetta, said the Nato base had come under rocket attack and that "two men with AK-47s" were seen leaving the scene of the rocket attack and entering a compound," the Associated Press news agency reports.

"These men knowingly endangered civilians by retreating into a populated area while conducting attacks against coalition forces."

Local people say that the coalition forces then bombed a mud-brick home, killing nine members of the same extended family.



The news came shortly after President Hamid Karzai had condemned an incident on Sunday in which US forces were accused of firing indiscriminately at civilians in the eastern province of Nangarhar.

US bombing campaing intensifies in Afghanistan

Bombing avoids coalition casualties but it is most likely to increase civilian casualties (collateral damage as it is euphemistically misnamed). This quite possibly leads to resistance and creation of more jihadists as family members are killed and need to be avenged. This is from USA today.

Bombing campaign intensifies in Afghanistan




By Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY
SEVILLE, Spain — The Pentagon is ramping up its bombing campaign in Afghanistan as it plans a major offensive against the resurgent Taliban in the spring.
Close-air-support missions flown by U.S. Air Force pilots increased nearly 80% in the first five weeks of 2007 compared with the same period last year, records show. The Air Force plans to send in dozens more precision bomb-targeting systems that allow troops on the ground to call in airstrikes within a few hundred yards of their own position.

That technology, called ROVER (Remotely Operated Video Enhanced Receiver), allows troops on the ground to share video with pilots in attack aircraft so they both see the target simultaneously, said Lt. Col. Greg Harbin, one of the lead officers on the Air Force ROVER program. He plans to deliver 50 systems to coalition forces in Afghanistan in March.

Along with increasing the effectiveness of airstrikes, the systems will reduce the number of "friendly fire" incidents that have strained relations between U.S. and allied militaries, Harbin said.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said NATO allies agreed Thursday on an Afghan strategy that includes fighting the Taliban, developing the government and economy and training and equipping the Afghan army.

The Taliban gains strength each spring, Gates said. The fundamentalist Islamic movement ran Afghanistan until it was ousted by U.S. and allied forces in October 2001.

"It's important we knock that back," Gates said of the Taliban's resurgence. He spoke to reporters after meeting in Seville with defense ministers from NATO countries.

Last month, President Bush asked Congress to spend $10 billion in Afghanistan over the next two years — $8 billion to train and equip Afghan security forces and $2 billion to fund reconstruction projects. The Pentagon also announced Jan. 25 that 3,200 U.S. soldiers with the 10th Mountain Division will stay in Afghanistan four more months to bolster the force there.

There are about 21,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan: 13,000 of them work with NATO troops in the International Security Assistance Force; 8,000 train Afghan troops and mount counterterrorist operations.

Two NATO nations, Denmark and Lithuania, agreed Thursday to bolster their small contingents in Afghanistan.

Franz-Josef Jung, Germany's defense minister, questioned the need to send more troops to Afghanistan.

"I do not think it is right to talk about more and more military means," Jung said. "When the Russians were in Afghanistan, they had 100,000 troops and didn't win."

Gates said some NATO nations lifted restrictions on how and where their troops are used. He did not provide specifics on the restrictions, also called caveats.

The caveats placed on allied troops have stymied U.S. efforts to counter the Taliban insurgency. Some restrictions involve a refusal to fight in bad weather or in certain parts of the country, said a November report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

Gen. James Jones, who heads the U.S. European Command, asked Germany last fall to send troops to southern Afghanistan to fight the Taliban, but Germany declined, according to the report.

NATO asked France, Turkey, Italy and Spain to send troops to the south, but they, too, declined. The countries said that they had committed troops to peacekeeping forces in Lebanon or that their own areas of responsibility in Afghanistan remained "restive," according to the CRS report.

Though the report noted that problems with caveats remain in Afghanistan, it said the Netherlands had increased its fighting role despite the move's unpopularity with Dutch voters.

Coalition nations have been involved in friendly-fire incidents in which their troops have been killed by U.S. or other forces.

Harbin, the Air Force officer, said the ROVER system can prevent incidents such as one in which a U.S. pilot mistakenly fired on a British convoy in Afghanistan, killing one British soldier. Other friendly-fire incidents include four Canadians being killed in 2002 and one Canadian killed last September.

The Air Force has loaned 12 ROVER systems to British troops.

Posted 2/8/2007 8:50 PM ET