More Bad News About Afghanistan War

Just as the Obama administration is trying to argue that the Afghan war is being “won” — we will ignore for now that no one knows what that means — and just as they are asking Congress for more funding for the war, two stories surface that throw doubt on the administration’s optimism.

First, there is the story of the 90,000 leaked military field reports that show, among other things, that Afghan civilians were often casualties in raids by Special Operations forces on supposed Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents during the Bush administration. Furthermore, the leaked reports suggest that NATO forces attempted to cover up some civilian casualties.

Second, a recent new incident has been reported in which a large number of Afghan civilians were allegedly killed in a NATO rocket attack on an insurgent base. The US military disputes the claim, but Afghan President Hamid Karzai, among others, believes it and argues that such attacks undermine the goal of winning the “hearts and minds” of Afghan civilians.

Both stories are covered in a recent Los Angeles Times article (excerpted below);

Karzai says 52 Afghan civilians killed in NATO strike

By Laura King, Los Angeles Times, July 27, 2010

Kabul, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai asserted Monday that up to 52 civilians had been killed by NATO rocket fire in southern Afghanistan, a controversy that erupted just as thousands of leaked military documents depicted a pervasive pattern of underreported civilian deaths and injuries in the course of the long conflict.

Karzai’s claim of civilian casualties last week in Helmand province was sharply disputed by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization force. …

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Most of the documents, from 2004 through 2009, are reports from field-level commanders. Many offer detailed descriptions of lethal encounters between Western forces and Afghan civilians.

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The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, told reporters in London that he believed some of the documents, particularly those involving civilian deaths, could be used as evidence in war crimes cases.

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One report describes the shooting in March 2007 of a villager who ran away from a Western military convoy. It turned out he was deaf and did not hear the soldiers’ orders to stop.

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The Afghan government said the documents underscored what it described as longtime Western inattentiveness.

“Over the years, we have raised the issue of civilian casualties and how harmful these can be to achieving our joint objective of defeating terrorism,” presidential spokesman Waheed Omar told reporters in Kabul, the capital, on Monday.

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The leaked military documents suggest that some civilian fatalities were deliberately covered up …

The latest dispute is a case in point. An undetermined number of villagers were reported killed Friday in a remote part of Sangin district in Helmand province, which has been the scene of near-constant battles between Western troops and insurgents.

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Karzai’s office … issued a statement saying that reports by the National Directorate of Security intelligence agency indicated that a house had been hit by a rocket fired by Western troops, killing up to 52 civilians, including women and children. He and the Cabinet condemned the strike “in the strongest possible terms.”

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The NATO force said a joint investigation by Afghan officials and the Western military had thus far revealed no evidence of civilians injured or killed in last week’s incident. … The statement said six insurgents were killed, including a Taliban commander.

[Read entire story]

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