In Iraq,, Mosul residents asked to remain in homes and are then bombed

(March 30) Residents in Mosul were instructed not to leave their homes ahead of airstrikes last week that are reported to have killed more than 150 civilians.

The LA Times reports:

Before the start of the offensive, the government air-dropped leaflets and broadcast messages on television urging residents to shelter in place, because camps for displaced people were already crowded and leaders feared that Islamic State fighters would turn a mass exodus into a mass slaughter.

Amnesty International said that the recent spike in casualties suggests that the US-led coalition is not taking adquate precautions to avoid civilian casualties. The US accuses the Islamic State as using civilians as human shields. However, this does not explain the notice given by the Iraq government. No doubt snipers work from roofs of houses containing many civilians but this does not provide a justification for bombing the house which appears to be what happens often. The sniper can be taken out without destroying the house and its inhabitants. It is just more difficult.

The coalition has already acknowledged that the US military was behind a March 17 airstrike on an area of western Mosul. Residents claim that at least 150 civilians were killed. US officials said that an investigation was underway into the incident. The Pentagon said that it was reviewing more than 700 video feeds of coalition airstrikes on west Mosul. Colonel JT Thomas a spokesperson for the US Central Command said that a high priority was being put on investigating the Mosul reports. Donatella Rovera, an adviser at Amnesty International said: “The fact that Iraqi authorities repeatedly advised civilians to remain at home, instead of fleeing the area, indicates that coalition forces should have known that these strikes were likely to result in a significant numbers of civilian casualties. Disproportionate attacks and indiscriminate attacks violate international humanitarian law and can constitute war crimes.” Amnesty also reported that evidence gathered on the ground shows that there was a pattern of US-led coalition airstrikes completely destroying houses with families inside. Faced with tough resistance in western Mosul, particularly the old city area with many narrow lanes that military vehicles cannot enter, there has been increased reliance by the coalition and Iraqi forces on artillery and airstrikes. The UN estimates there are still about 400,000 people in Mosul trapped in the IS held area.

The Amnesty International report cited survivors and eyewitnesses of the airstrikes that killed civilians as saying: “They did not try to flee as the battle got underway because they received repeated instructions from the Iraqi authorities to remain in their homes.” Colonel Thomas said at a Pentagon conference: “In Mosul, there are multiple days of strikes. The numbers of civilian casualties that have been reported variously – one of the things we’re looking at is if some of those numbers are cumulative from different incidents, different engagements, in this highly contested, very ferocious battle that’s going on in Mosul. We know that we were dropping bombs in the immediate vicinity.” He said that the bombs were quite precise. Surely, this means the attackers knew when they were hitting houses that likely contained civilians.

Brigadier General Matthew Isler, a deputy commanding general in Operation Inherent Resolve claimed that coalition aircraft had dropped more than 500 precision guided munitions each week so far in March, even reaching 605 one week. On a typical day:...the coalition flies A-10 Warthogs, Navy F/A-18s, Marine Corps Harriers, French Rafale fighters, Belgian F-16s, British Typhoons, and U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortresses to support the fight, run out of the Combined Air Operations Center. They are supported by dozens of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft — manned and unmanned, and some armed — and six electronic warfare aircraft, as well as tankers providing 430,000 gallons of gas a day to allow fighters and bombers to fly longer.The result of such bombardments on civilians is likely to lead to increased anger among Sunni civilians who will blame the Americans and the Iraqi government for the high death toll. This anger could be used as a recruiting tool by militants to turn them against the Shia-dominated Iraqi government.

Civilian Deaths peak in Iraq in February

It would seem that violence is increasing in Iraq before the upcoming elections. There may be attempts to disrupt the election process itself. The ban on many Sunni candidates probably no doubt is helping to increase the violence. The election process does not seem to be leading to more stability but the opposite. The security situation may even make the US think twice about the withdrawing all its troops. This is from antiwar. com.

Iraq Civilian Deaths Spiked in February
Posted By Jason Ditz

Speaking today at Vanderbilt University, Gen. David Petraeus lauded the security situation in Iraq as “greatly improved,” saying that violence had dropped but serious threats remain.

Yet while the narrative of the improving situation in Iraq is a very popular one, Iraqi civilian deaths actually jumped dramatically over the past month, with 211 civilians killed in February alone, up from 135 in January.

In addition to the civilian deaths, Iraqi ministers say that 141 members of the nation’s security forces were killed, also a major increase over the previous month. Civilian violence mostly centered around Shi’ite pilgrims and Iraq’s small Christian minority.

Violence is expected to continue to rise this month, as militant groups look to disrupt next weekend’s parliament election. Once the election is over, officials are predicting another surge in violence as the various factions bicker over the formation of a coalition government.

ACLU Releases Navy Files on Civilian Casualties in Iraq war.

This is from the ACLU.
As the article points out there has been a continuing attempt to suppress information about civilian deaths and also investigations of them. Very little of this information manages to percolate into the mainstream press. Watching CNN I find the emphasis is upon the economy and supposed gaffs that either McCain or Obama make in speeches which are then blown into important news by the media with hordes of expert commentators interpreting the importance of these gaffs to the campaign for president! Bread and circuses would be a lot more entertaining.


ACLU Releases Navy Files On Civilian Casualties In Iraq War (7/2/2008)
Public Has A Right To Unfiltered Information About The Human Cost Of War, ACLU Says
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASECONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org
NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union today released thousands of pages of documents related to Navy investigations of civilians killed by Coalition Forces in Iraq, including the cousin of the Iraqi ambassador to the United States. Released today in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the ACLU filed in June 2006, these records provide a vivid snapshot of the circumstances surrounding civilian deaths in Iraq.
"At every step of the way, the Bush administration and Defense Department have gone to unprecedented lengths to control and suppress information about the human cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Nasrina Bargzie, an attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. "Our democracy depends on an informed public and that is why it is so important that the American people see these documents. These documents will help to fill the information void around the issue of civilian casualties in Iraq and will lead to a more complete understanding of the prosecution of the war."
The ACLU obtained documents from eight Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) investigations. One of the files documents the investigation of the death of Mohammed al-Sumaidaie, a cousin of the Iraqi ambassador to the U.S, Samir al-Sumaidaie. In 2006, the ambassador accused Marines of "intentionally" killing his cousin and today's records shed light on al-Sumaidaie's NCIS investigation for the first time. Among the findings uncovered in this file are conflicting accounts of events, questions of credibility, possible command influence issues and cover-ups.
"As these files remind us, many charges of war crimes in Iraq have not seen the light of day," said Michael Pheneger, a retired Army intelligence colonel who is also a board member of the ACLU. "There are many discoveries here that should bring pause to any American who cares about this country and hopes to restore the United States' respected role in the world. It is time to bring the facts about this war into the sunlight and end practices that go against our laws and national values."
Through its FOIA project, the ACLU has made public information on Defense Department policies designed to control information about the human costs of war. These practices include:
• Banning photographers on U.S. military bases from covering the arrival of caskets containing the remains of U.S. soldiers killed overseas; • Paying Iraqi journalists to write positive accounts of the U.S. war effort; • Inviting U.S. journalists to "embed" with military units but requiring them to submit their stories for pre-publication review; • Erasing journalists' footage of civilian deaths in Afghanistan; and • Refusing to disclose statistics on civilian casualties.
Today's documents are available online at: www.aclu.org/natsec/foia/NCIS_log.html
Attorneys involved in this project are Bargzie, Ben Wizner and Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU National Security Project. In a separate lawsuit, the ACLU sued for records concerning the abuse of prisoners held by U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay. To date, that request has resulted in the release of more than 100,000 pages, all of which are available online at:

Death at a Distance: The US Air War

Another excellent article on this matter. Not too much attention is paid to this in the mainstream press but it is crucial to understanding what is going on. In order to minimise casualties the US is carrying out more air operations. Imagine drone operations have been taking place within Pakistan run from Nevada! The use of bombing support in Afghanistan has long been an irritant since it turns civilian populations against the occupiers. Hardly any one seems to remark on the fact that neither the Iraq or Afghanistan air force is functional. This means that all air operations are in US hands (sometimes with allied support).It seems that the US (and others) are intent on keeping both Afghanistan and Iraq from having a significant air force, a force that would seem part anad parcel of any significant military. What it assures is US dominance of the air in these countries for the forseeable future.

Death at a Distance: The US Air War

by Conn Hallinan
Foreign Policy in Focus
According to the residents of Datta Khel, a town in Pakistan's North Waziristan, three missiles streaked out of Afghanistan's Pakitka Province and slammed into a madrassa, or Islamic school, this past June. When the smoke cleared, the Asia Times reported, 30 people were dead.

The killers were robots, General Atomics MQ-1 Predators. The AGM-114 Hellfire missiles they used in the attack were directed from a base deep in the southern Nevada desert.

It was not the first time Predators had struck. The previous year a CIA Predator took a shot at al-Qaeda's number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, but missed. The missile, however, killed 18 people. According to the Asia Times piece, at least one other suspected al-Qaeda member was assassinated by a Predator in Pakistan's northern frontier area, and in 2002 a Predator killed six "suspected al-Qaeda" members in Yemen.

These assaults are part of what may be the best kept secret of the Iraq-Afghanistan conflicts: an enormous intensification of US bombardments in these and other countries in the region, the increasing number of civilian casualties such a strategy entails, and the growing role of pilotless killers in the conflict.

According to Associated Press, there has been a five-fold increase in the number of bombs dropped on Iraq during the first six months of 2007 over the same period in 2006. More than 30 tons of those have been cluster weapons, which take an especially heavy toll on civilians.

The U.S. Navy has added an aircraft carrier to its Persian Gulf force, and the Air Force has moved F-16s into Balad air base north of Baghdad.

Balad, which currently conducts 10,000 air operations a week, is strengthening runways to handle the increase in air activity. Col. David Reynolds told the AP, "We would like to get to be a field like Langley, if you will." The Langley field in Virginia is one of the Air Force's biggest and most sophisticated airfields.

The Air Force certainly appears to be settling in for a long war. "Until we can determine that the Iraqis have got their air force to significant capability," says Lt Gen. Gary North, the regional air commander, "I think the coalition will be here to support that effort."

The Iraqi air force is virtually non-existent. It has no combat aircraft and only a handful of transports.

Improving the runways has allowed the Air Force to move B1-B bombers from Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to Balad, where the big aircraft have been carrying out daily strikes. A B1-B can carry up to 24 tons of bombs.

The step-up in air attacks is partly a reflection of how beaten up and overextended U.S. ground troops are. While Army units put in 15-month tours, Air Force deployments are only four months, with some only half that. And Iraqi and Afghani insurgents have virtually no ability to inflict casualties on aircraft flying at 20,000 feet and using laser and satellite-guided weapons, in contrast to the serious damage they are doing to US ground troops.

Besides increasing the number of F-16s, B1-Bs, and A-10 attack planes, Predator flight hours over both countries have doubled from 2005. "The Predator is coming into its own as a no-kidding weapon verses a reconnaissance-only platform," brags Maj. Jon Dagley, commander of the 46th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron.

The Air Force is also deploying a bigger, faster and more muscular version of the Predator, the MQ-9 "Reaper" – as in grim – a robot capable of carrying four Hellfire missiles, plus two 500 lb. bombs.

The Predators and the Reapers have several advantages, the most obvious being they don't need pilots. "With more Reapers I could send manned airplanes home," says North.

At $8.5 million an aircraft – the smaller Predator comes in at $4.5 million apiece – they are also considerably cheaper than the F-16 ($19 million) the B1-B ($200+ million) and even the A-10 ($9.8 million).

The Air Force plans to deploy 170 Predators and 70 Reapers over the next three years. "It is possible that in our lifetime we will be able to run a war without ever leaving the US," Lt Col David Branham told the New York Times.

The result of the stepped up air war, according to the London-based organization Iraq Body Count, is an increase in civilian casualties. A Lancet study of "excess deaths" caused by the Iraq war found that air attacks were responsible for 13% of the deaths – 76,000 as of June 2006 – and that 50% of the deaths of children under 15 were caused by air strikes.

The number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan from air strikes has created a rift between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United States.


"A senior British commander," according to the New York Times, has pressed U.S. Special Forces (SF) to leave southern Afghanistan because their use of air power was alienating the local people. SFs work in small teams and are dependent on air power for support.

SFs called in an air strike last November near Kandahar that killed 31 nomads. This past April, a similar air strike in Western Afghanistan killed 57 villagers, half of them women and children. Coalition forces are now killing more Afghan civilians than the Taliban are. The escalating death toll has thrown the government of Hamid Karzai into a crisis and the NATO governments into turmoil. "We need to understand that preventing civilian casualties is crucially important in sustaining the support of the population," British Defense Minister Des Browne told the Financial Times.

It has also opened up the allies to the charge of war crimes. In a recent air attack in southern Afghanistan that killed 25 civilians, NATO spokesman Lt. Col Mike Smith said the Taliban were responsible because they were hiding among the civilian population.

But Article 48 of the Geneva Conventions clearly states: "The Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants." Article 50 dictates that "The presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilian does not deprive the population of its civilian character."


The stepped up air war in both countries has less to do with a strategic military decision than the reality that the occupations are coming apart at the seams.

For all intents and purposes, the U.S. Army in Iraq is broken, the victim of multiple tours, inadequate forces, and the kind of war Iraq has become: a conflict of shadows, low-tech but highly effective roadside bombs, and a population which is either hostile to the occupation or at least sympathetic to the resistance.

It is much the same in Afghanistan. Lord Inge, the former British chief of staff, recently said, "The situation in Afghanistan is much worse than many people recognize...it is much more serious than people want to recognize." A well-placed military source told the Observer, "If you talk privately to the generals, they are very worried." Faced with defeat or bloody stalemate on the ground, the allies have turned to air power, much as the U.S. did in Vietnam. But, as in Vietnam, the terrible toll bombing inflicts on civilians all but guarantees long-term failure.

"Far from bringing about the intended softening up of the opposition," Phillip Gordon, a Brookings Institute Fellow, told the Asia Times, "bombing tends to rally people behind their leaders and cause them to dig in against outsiders who, whatever the justification, are destroying their homeland."

Reprinted with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus.

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.

Controversy surrounds civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The use of air support in urban or town operations is bound to cause civilian casualties. The aim is to avoid casualties to US or allied forces. I wonder sometimes if the use of bombing is not to punish civilians in areas where insurgents are in control. If you provide support or cover for the insurgents you are fair game. Apparently this includes children.


Controversy surrounds military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan following civilian casualties
US air strike in Afghanistan leaves 7 boys dead and Afghans angry, while continued violence in Iraq takes a toll on the civilian population.
By Dan Murphy
Civilian casualities in Afghanistan and Iraq have many accusing US and coalition forces of causing unnecessary deaths.

A US airstrike on an alleged Taliban position that killed seven Afghan boys on Sunday is the latest source of controversy over who is to blame, according to several media sources.

Agence France-Presse reports that the White House says that the boys were being used as "human shields" by Taliban forces, which bear the responsibility for their deaths.

"Certainly we grieve for those who are lost," said White House spokesman Tony Snow. "We also understand that as a matter of tactics, the Taliban and other terrorists sometimes also try to transform innocents into human shields."

US forces called in the airstrike on the religious school in eastern Afghanistan because they believed it was being used as an Al Qaeda and Taliban staging ground. The New York Times quoted a US military spokesman as saying they didn't know there were any children inside, but it noted that Afghan anger at civilian casualties is rising.

The death of the children on Sunday may well add to the crescendoing anger many Afghans feel about civilian casualties from American and NATO military operations. More than 130 civilians have been killed

in airstrikes and shootings in the past six months, according to Afghan authorities.

The deaths of the children are not an isolated incident, The Washington Post reports. The paper quotes the head of the provincial council of Uruzgan, Mulvi Hamdullah, as saying that 50 civilians had died during intensified NATO operations in the area. A US military spokesman said the operations had claimed an equal number of insurgent lives.

There has been rising anger in Afghanistan toward international forces for not doing more to protect noncombatants.

Opinion writer Mathew Yglesias in an article for The Guardian of England, says the US may well eventually lose in Afghanistan if more care isn't taken to avoid civilian casualties.

A headline like seven Afghan children killed in airstrike, which I read in Monday's New York Times, can't help but make you angry. Angry about the dead children, of course, but also angry about the knowledge that there are bound to be others out there angrier over their deaths than I am. They'll have brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors, uncles and fathers, mothers, and cousins. Many of them, naturally enough, will become America's enemies. And with enough such enemies, we'll lose in Afghanistan.

The Los Angeles Times reports that anger is also being directed at Afghanistan's US-backed President Hamid Kharzai (free registration required).

Accidental civilian deaths at the hands of coalition troops have become a highly emotional issue in Afghanistan. The country's pro-Western president, Hamid Karzai, has appealed repeatedly for greater caution in military operations in civilian areas, but public anger at his government is growing as well.


Civilian casualties are also on the rise once more in Iraq, though media reports indicate that is mostly because of local death squads and insurgent bombings. On Tuesday, 75 Iraqis were killed by a truck bomb at a Shiite mosque in Baghdad, the Associated Press reported.

On Monday, fierce fighting in Maysan Province, south of Baghdad, left at least 30 people dead, most of them alleged Shiite militants, The Independent reported.

But the paper also quoted a local official as saying many of the dead were civilians.

Maysan provincial council member Latif al-Timimi said 16 "residents" were killed and a woman and child were among another 14 wounded.

"Most of the dead were killed in bombings as they were sleeping on the roofs of their homes. Those killed were residents and not linked to any political party," he said.

Timimi said the council decided at an emergency meeting to demand an apology from British and Iraqi forces, and to suspend work for three days.

McClatchy reports that the US military denied there were civilian casualties in the Maysan operation. But it also quotes a member of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army as saying the US military's stated purpose – to stop members of the Mahdi Army involved in smuggling weapons from Iran – was based on false pretenses, and that at least half of the casualties were civilians.

Ahmed Shaybani, a Sadr official who was released from U.S. detention in March in hopes that he would be a moderate voice in the movement, condemned the raids. He denied that anyone was involved in smuggling Iranian weapons and said local men had fought off invading "Iraqi forces and occupation troops." They were celebrating their victory in the streets when U.S. aircraft hit the crowd, he said. Shaybani put the death toll at 34. He said only 16 were Mahdi Army militiamen