Eyewitness say six women, five men, and four children in the village of Karez Sultan were killed in the strike. Several hundred animals are also said to have been killed there.
By Shapoor Saber in Herat | RAWA News, Feb 18, 2009
Afghans carry body parts of the victims, who the villagers said were killed in an air strike in Gozara district of Herat province west of Kabul, Afghanistan on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2009. (AP photo)
Photo Gallery of US victims in Afghanistan
The Afghan Victim Memorial Project by Prof. Marc
United States forces in Afghanistan claim to have killed up to 15 militants associated with an infamous warlord in Herat province in an airstrike on February 16, but district officials and eyewitnesses say that the dead were a family of Kuchis, or nomads, who were camped out nearby.
“A Coalition forces precision strike targeted Ghulam Yahya Akbari, a key insurgent commander, near Gozara district, Herat province, Monday. Killed in the attack were up to 15 militants suspected of associating with Yahya,” read a press release issued by Lieutenant Commander Walter Matthews of the US Forces Public Affairs Office.
Yahya himself, it seems, was not hurt in the attack, despite an earlier Coalition press release reporting his death.
“They tried to hit me but struck a family of Kuchis instead,” said Yahya, speaking by telephone to IWPR, Tuesday, February 17.
Ghulam Mahboob Afzalzada, district governor of Gozara, insisted the strike had claimed the lives of Kuchis, a nomadic people who shepherd their animals throughout the country.
“Foreign forces, without coordinating the attack with the local government, killed innocent people,” said Afzalzada, speaking from the scene of the attack Tuesday afternoon. “All those killed were civilians.” All are Kuchi nomads.”
Eyewitness say six women, five men, and four children in the village of Karez Sultan were killed in the strike. Several hundred animals are also said to have been killed there.
“There was a [Kuchi] man and his family, including women and children,” said local resident Gul Ahmad, who was standing near the site of the strike Tuesday afternoon.
Speaking by telephone Tuesday morning, Captain Elizabeth Mathias said that US military had no information on civilian casualties. The press release, issued later in the day, said that the Coalition forces were arranging for a combined Coalition and Afghan assessment team.
“There are no official reports of civilian casualties at this time,” said Lieutenant Colonel Rick Helmer, spokesperson for US Forces Afghanistan. “However, when we receive confirmed reports of civilian deaths we take those reports very seriously and investigate them along with out Afghan counterparts. Coalition forces make every effort to prevent the injury or loss of innocent lives.”
Civilian casualties are an extremely sensitive issue in Afghanistan, causing anger among the population and tension with the Afghan government. President Hamed Karzai has become increasingly outspoken in his criticism of foreign troops, who, he says, carry out their operation without sufficient coordination with the Afghan government.
There was a 40 per cent rise in civilian casualties last year, according to a United Nations report on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, released on Tuesday. In all, 2118 civilians were killed, 828 of them by Afghan government or foreign forces. However, said the report, the figures could be much higher.
“UNAMA (United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan) does not claim that the statistics represented in this report are complete; it may be that, given the limitations of the operating environment, UNAMA is underreporting civilian casualties,” read the report.
The UN report also questioned the ability of the military to investigate thoroughly in cases where locals allege that civilians have been killed.
“International forces showed themselves more willing than before to institute more regular and transparent inquiries into specific incidents, although the independence of these inquiries is still questionable,” it said.
Several high-profile incidents last year undermined the credibility of the international forces in reporting civilian casualties. First came an attack in July in Nangahar province that killed 47 members of a wedding party, including the bride.
In August, a bombing in Herat province left more than 90 civilians dead, according to the UN and the Afghan government. In both instances, the international forces claimed to have targeted and killed only militants. Only after many weeks and mounting pressure did they acknowledge that some intelligence mistakes may have been resulting in civilian deaths.
Yahya, who is also known as “Siyawooshan” after his home village in Gozara district, is a controversial figure with a long and colourful history in Herat. He began his fighting career as a jihadi commander associated with Mohamamd Ismail Khan, former “Emir” of Herat and currently minister of power and water management.
At the time of the mujaheddin civil war, in the mid-nineties, Yahya was mayor of Herat, where he earned a reputation for honesty and brutality in almost equal measure. During the Taleban regime, he fled to Iran, returning to battle the Islamists in the Herat area. He became head of the department of public works after the fall of the Taleban, and worked once again with Ismail Khan, until the latter’s appointment to Kabul.
Yahya did not get along with Ismail Khan’s successor in Herat, Sayed Hussein Anwari, whom he accused of unfairly distributing land and positions to the Shia minority.
Sacked by Anwari, Yahya retreated to his native Gozara district and took up arms against the government. For the past two years, he is said to have carried out missile strikes against the UNAMA compound in Herat, the nearby foreign military base and airport.
He is also reported to have supported himself and his men by kidnapping for ransom, including one Indian citizen who reportedly died while in Yahya’s custody.
He has been linked to the Taleban, al-Qaeda, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami faction, but insists he is operating on his own.
While the US forces insist that Yahya is “known to move throughout the mountains in this area, hiding amongst the civilian population to avoid detection”, he is easily accessible to reporters, who call him on his mobile phone to arrange interviews.
Yahya is feared by many and revered by some, according to those who live under his iron rule in Gozara district.
Most ordinary Heratis just want to live in peace.
“None of these [militant] groups are respecting us,” said Abdul Zahir, 30, a resident of Herat city, speaking for many locals. “The opposition factions kidnap people, and the foreigners kill innocent civilians.”
Shapoor Saber is an IWPR trainee in Herat.
Peace and Justice Post 
Afghanistan, the Next US Quagmire?
February 20, 2009The United States is planning to send an additional 17,000 troops to one of the world’s most battle-scarred nations – Afghanistan – long described as “a graveyard of empires.”
First, it was the British Empire, and then the Soviet Union. So, will the United States be far behind?
“With his new order on Afghanistan, President (Barack) Obama has given substantial ground to what Martin Luther King Jr., in 1967 called ‘the madness of militarism,'” Norman Solomon, executive director of the Washington-based Institute for Public Accuracy, told IPS.
“That madness should be opposed in 2009,” said Solomon, author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.
The proposed surge in U.S. troops will bring the total to 60,000, while the combined forces from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), including troops from Germany, Canada, Britain and the Netherlands, amount to over 32,000.
When in full strength, U.S.-NATO forces in Afghanistan could reach close to 100,000 by the end of this year.
Still, in a TV interview Tuesday, Obama said he was “absolutely convinced that you cannot solve the problem of Afghanistan, the Taliban (insurgency), the spread extremism in that region solely through military means.”
“If there is no military solution, why is the administration’s first set of decisions to continue drone attacks and increase ground troops?” Marilyn B. Young, a professor of history at New York University, told IPS.
She said the uncertainty around Afghan policy seems to be spreading even while the Obama administration announces an increase in troops.
“This is one of the ways events seem to echo U.S. escalation in the Vietnam War,” said Young, author of several publications, including “Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn From the Past.”
On Tuesday, the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released a report revealing that in 2008, there were 2,118 civilian casualties in Afghanistan, an increase of almost 40 percent over 2007.
Of these casualties, 55 percent of the overall death toll was attributed to anti-government forces, including the Taliban, and 39 percent to Afghan security and international military forces.
“This is of great concern to the United Nations,” the report said, pointing out that “this disquieting pattern demands that the parties to the conflict take all necessary measures to avoid the killing of innocent civilians.”
During his presidential campaign last year, Obama said the war in Iraq was a misguided war.
The United States, he said, needs to pull out of Iraq, and at the same time, bolster its troops in Afghanistan, primarily to prevent the militant Islamic fundamentalist Taliban from regaining power and also to eliminate safe havens for terrorists.
But most political analysts point out that Afghanistan may turn out to be a bigger military quagmire for U.S. forces than Iraq.
Solomon of the Institute for Public Accuracy said Obama’s moves on Afghanistan have “the quality of a moth toward a flame.”
In the short run, Obama is likely to be unharmed in domestic political terms. But the policy trajectory appears to be unsustainable in the medium-run, he added.
“Before the end of his first term, Obama is very likely to find himself in a vise, caught between a war in Afghanistan that cannot be won and a political quandary at home that significantly erodes the enthusiasm of his electoral base while fueling Republican momentum,” Solomon argued.
Dr. Christine Fair, a senior political scientist with the RAND Corporation and a former political officer with UNAMA in Kabul, told IPS she is doubtful that more troops will secure Afghanistan.
“Perhaps several years ago more troops would have been welcomed. My fear is that more troops means more civilian losses and further erosion of good will and support for the international presence,” Fair said.
“I would personally prefer a move from kinetics and towards using this increased capacity to help build Afghan capacity,” she noted.
“I also think greater support from the international community for reconciliation is needed. Afghans need to own this process,” said Fair, a former senior research associate with the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention at the U.N. Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington.
However, she said, the international community has legitimate interests in remaining in some capacity to ensure that Afghanistan does not again emerge as a safe haven for al-Qaeda and other international terrorist groups.
Fair also co-authored (along with Seth Jones) a USIP report released early this week, titled “Securing Afghanistan,” which spelled out the reasons why international stabilization efforts have not been successful in Afghanistan over the last seven years.
“Security issues in Afghanistan are extraordinarily complex, with multiple actors influencing the threat environment – among them, insurgent groups, criminal groups, local tribes, warlords, government officials and security forces,” the report said.
Afghanistan also presents a multi-front conflict that includes distinct security challenges in the northern, central and southern parts of the country, the study declared.
In Afghanistan, Solomon argued, the U.S. president is proceeding down a path that can only be too steep and not steep enough.
The basic contradiction of his current position – asserting that the situation cannot be solved by military means yet taking action to try to solve the problem by military means – signifies that Obama is bargaining for short-term wiggle room at the expense of longer-term rationality, he added.
“In a very real sense, Obama is kicking a bloody can down the road, unable to think of any other way to confront circumstances that will grow worse with time in large measure because of his actions now,” he said.
Even while disputing some thematic aspects of the “war on terrorism” at times, Obama is reinvesting his political capital – and re-dedicating the Pentagon’s mission – on behalf of a U.S. war effort that is probably doomed to fail on its own terms, Solomon said.
“Reliance on violence is a chronic temptation for a commander-in-chief with the mighty U.S. military under its command. We’ve seen the results in Iraq – or, more precisely, the people of Iraq and many American soldiers have seen and suffered the results,” he added.
(Inter Press Service)
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