Posts Tagged ‘Afghanistan’

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Afghan MP: 500 Civilian Casualties in 5-Day US Operation in Helmand

September 1, 2008

The News International, September 1, 2008
By our correspondent

PESHAWAR: At least 500 civilians were killed or wounded during the five-day US-led troops’ ground and air operation in the Sangin district of Helmand province, a member of Afghanistan’s parliament said on Sunday.

“Foreign forces have been conducting operation in Sarwan Qala area of Sangin district for the last five days in which artillery and aircraft are being used,” Dad Muhammad Khan, member of Wolesi Jirga (lower house of parliament), told Afghan Islamic Press.

“The dead and injured were lying in the area and there is no one to shift the injured. Yesterday, I raised the issue in the parliament but the government has done nothing so far,” he said.

AP adds: Nato says a roadside blast in southern Afghanistan has killed one of its soldiers. A statement by the military alliance says the soldier died of wounds sustained in the roadside bombing Sunday.

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Extraordinary Rendition, Extraordinary Mistake

August 31, 2008

Sangitha McKenzie Millar | Foreign Policy In Focus, August 29, 2008

Mamdouh Habib, an Australian citizen, was living in Sydney with his wife and four children when he took a trip alone to Pakistan to find a home for his family. When Habib boarded a bus for the Islamabad airport to return home, Pakistani police seized him and took him to a police station, where he was subjected to various crude torture techniques, including electric shocks and beating. At one point, he was forced to hang by the arms above a drum-like mechanism that administered an electric shock when touched. Pakistani police asked him repeatedly if he was with al-Qaeda, and if he trained in Afghanistan. Habib responded “No” over and over until he passed out.

After 15 days in the Pakistani prison, Habib was transferred to U.S. agents who flew him to Cairo. When he arrived, Omar Solaimon, chief of Egyptian security, informed him that Egypt receives $10 million for every confessed terrorist they hand over to the United States. Habib stated that during his five months in Egypt, “there was no interrogation, only torture.”  His skin was burned with cigarettes and he was threatened with dogs, beaten, and repeatedly shocked with a stun gun. During this time, he heard American voices in the prison, but Egyptians were in charge of the torture. In Michael Otterman’s book American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond (Pluto Press 2007), Habib said he was drugged and began to hallucinate: “I feel like a dead person. I was gone. I become crazy.” He remembers admitting things to interrogators, anything they asked: “I didn’t care … at this point I was ready to die.”

He was transferred back to the custody of U.S. agents in May 2002. They flew him first to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and then to Kandahar. After several weeks, American agents sent Habib to Guantánamo Bay. Three British detainees who have since been released from the prison described Habib as being in a “catastrophic state” when he arrived. Most of his fingernails were missing and he regularly bled from the nose, mouth, and ears while he slept.

Habib was held at Guantánamo Bay until late 2004, when he was charged with training 9/11 hijackers in martial arts, attending an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, and transporting chemical weapons. A Chicago human rights lawyer took his case and detailed all of Habib’s allegations of torture in court documents. After the case garnered national attention through a front page story in The Washington Post, Habib became a liability for the U.S. government. Rather than have his testimony on the torture he suffered in Egypt become a matter of public record, U.S. officials decided to send him back to Sydney in January 2005 – over three years after seizing him in Pakistan.

Unfortunately, Habib’s case isn’t unusual. There’s substantial evidence that the United States routinely and knowingly “outsources” the application of torture by transferring terrorism suspects to countries that frequently violate international human rights norms. As details of the extraordinary rendition program have emerged, politicians, journalists, academics, legal experts, and policymakers have raised serious objections to the policy. It has captured the attention of U.S. legislators, and both the House and Senate Committees on Foreign Relations as well as the House Committee on the Judiciary have held hearings to analyze the policy and examine related cases. Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE), chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the Democratic vice presidential nominee, expressed concern that “rendition, as currently practiced, is undermining our moral credibility and standing abroad and weakening the coalitions with foreign governments that we need to effectively combat international terrorism.” As the public continues to learn more about the program, calls to end extraordinary rendition have increased, and the next presidential administration will likely be forced to take a stand one way or another on the issue.

Continued . . .

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Afghan official ‘saw bodies of 50 children’ killed in US strike

August 30, 2008

Source: The Daily Star, August 30, 2008

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

KABUL: An Afghan politician told AFP Friday how he had helped dig out the bodies of women and children after US-led air strikes a week ago, reiterating with another official that around 90 civilians were killed.

The US-led coalition disputes the number and says only five civilians died along with 25 Taliban. US officials have also reportedly questioned the figure because of a lack of physical evidence.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity to the Associated Press, US defense officials said that the Afghan and UN counts of the civilians killed in the raid were overstated. The sources said that the US administration was pushing for a joint probe into the incident in order to reconcile the conflicting accounts of the incident.

“I saw with my own eyes bodies of 50 boys and girls under 15 years of age,” said Herat provincial councillor Naik Mohammad Ishaq.

“I saw 19 women and seven men. I helped locals to dig them out [of rubble] the first day,” he told AFP.

He said he went to the area of the August 22 strikes in the district of Shindand hours after the attack and he was told that more bodies had been found the day after, taking the toll to 91.

“We lined up the bodies of 76 civilians the first day in the local mosque and the Afghan intelligence department took a video recording as proof that most of them were women, children and all civilians,” he said.

Ishaq said, however, that he did not have pictures of the dead.

The head of a delegation sent by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to investigate also defended the toll figure, similar to one reached by a United Nations team.

“There is no doubt that 90 civilians were killed in the US-led air strike,” said Mohammad Eqbal Safi, the head of the Lower House’s national defense committee.

The team had a list of the names and ages of all those killed, he said, and had interviewed locals and seen eight houses that were destroyed as well as fresh graves.

He claimed body parts – which he said were from civilians – were still at the site when his team arrived two days later.

The 2:00 a.m. strikes had hit people ahead of an event due the following day to mark the anniversary of the death of a fellow villager, Safi said.

“It was public knowledge that it was a gathering for the ceremony and there were no Taliban there.”

Safi said locals believed “agents” had deliberately given wrong information to the US-led and Afghan troops involved in the operation. – AFP

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US: ‘100 Taliban killed’ in Helmand

August 29, 2008
Al Jazeera, Aug 29, 2008

Increasing volence and threats from the Taliban in Helmand has displaced hundreds [GALLO/GETTY]

US-led coalition and Afghan forces have killed more than 100 Taliban in the southern Afghan province of Helmand during three days of fighting, the US military has said in a statement.

The fighting began after patrols came under attack from small arms, rocket propelled grenades and mortars in the southwestern province, the US military said in a statement on Thursday.

The patrols returned fire and called in close-air support, it said.

“Heavy casualties were inflicted during fierce fighting between Afghan soldiers and insurgents, but the exact number of casualties is not known,” the Afghan defence ministry said.

Violence has surged in Afghanistan with more than 2,500 people, including 1,000 civilians, killed in the conflict in the first six months of this year, according to aid agencies.

Mainly British troops have been engaged in fighting with Taliban fighters in Helmand province for three years.

Opium crop

The province is home to two-thirds of Afghanistan’s opium crop, the raw ingredient of heroin, and the site of frequent clashes involving local Taliban fighters.

In the southern province of Zabul a day earlier, 12 Taliban fighters were killed and six wounded by Afghan and US-led soldiers in clashes in the district of Arghandab, the Afghan defence ministry said in a statement.

The ministry also said Afghan soldiers killed 10 Taliban fighters in Helmand’s Girishk district the same day.

One Afghan soldier was killed and another wounded during the fighting, which was part of a larger operation aimed at finding drug traffickers in the area, officials said.

One US-led coalition soldier was killed while on patrol on Wednesday in southern Afghanistan, the US military said in a statement.

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Pakistan’s Flawed Presidency

August 28, 2008

By LIAQUAT ALI KHAN | Counterpunch, August 27, 2008

Pakistan has been unsuccessful in designing a stable presidency. Two competing models vie for approval. Pakistan’s formulaic constitution, borrowed from the legal-political traditions of England and India, establishes a ceremonial presidency subordinated to parliament. The president with few powers is the head of state and represents the unity of the Republic. The ceremonial presidency empowers elected assemblies to run affairs of the state and provinces in accordance with the wishes of the people. It also spawns political cronyism, allowing politicians to freely broker power relations, distribute ministries and governmental offices on the basis of connection rather than competence and, for the worse, use state resources to advance personal and family interests.

The competing model, which Pakistan’s generals as well as American policymakers prefer, institutes a strong presidency – a praetorian presidency – that listens to the armed forces and kow-tows to American interests. Under the praetorian model, the President exercises formidable powers, appoints heads of the armed forces, and can dissolve dysfunctional or discordant elected assemblies. Even the judiciary is made subservient to the President. The praetorian presidency empowers what Pakistanis call the establishment—a congregation of bureaucrats, army generals, advisers, and experts. The praetorian presidency focuses on economy and foreign relations. But it alienates political forces and weakens elected assemblies. Consequently, corruption permeates the state machinery with little or no accountability.

The nomination of Asif Zardari, the widower of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, to contest the presidential election is a disturbing development. If elected, President Zardari would further muddle the models of presidency. Zardari might not use the iron hand of praetorian presidency, as did General Pervez Musharraf, to please the establishment and foreign masters. Under no circumstance, however, will Zardari be the ceremonial president.

Ceremonial Presidency

The ceremonial presidency works best when the president is a non-political, consensus figure enjoying the trust of major political parties. Ideally, the ceremonial president is a person of great stature, unimpeachable character, and favorable reputation. The ceremonial president must not be the head of any political party, nor must the ceremonial president be ideologically inclined toward a certain foreign policy, domestic agenda, or political set up. This apparent neutrality of the ceremonial presidency generates confidence among political forces that the state is open to political diversity and pluralism.

Zardari does not qualify to be a ceremonial president. Though many criminal cases filed against Zardari were fabricated, his reputation is sullied with charges of corruption. His recent conduct to make and break political accords regarding the restoration of judges also leaves the impression that Zardari equates the art of politics with amoral cunningness rather than tough bargaining over controversial issues.

Furthermore, Zardari is politically too powerful to be a ceremonial president. He is the co-chairman of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the party in power. The other chairman is Zardari’s own son. This family hold on the rank and file of the PPP will continue to exist even if Zardari resigns from co-chairmanship. Furthermore, the Prime Minister, a member of the PPP, is unlikely to challenge President Zardari on the theory that the Prime Minster has the constitutional powers to run the country. For all practical purposes, therefore, Zardari will run the country as the top man even if the praetorian presidency is constitutionally dismantled.

Praetorian Presidency

In opposing Musharraf, the PPP was planning to introduce a complex constitutional package in the parliament to cut down powers of the praetorian presidency. Almost all political parties favor restoring the constitution to its formulaic format. This political consensus will now fall apart. If Zardari is elected to be the president, the PPP would most likely withdraw the constitutional package. The constitution, as it stands, confers huge powers on the president. Zardari would want to retain these powers in case the political tide turns against him or the PPP.

Even the United States would prefer that the constitution remains as is, and that the praetorian presidency is not weakened. It is easier for the U.S. to deal with one strong man at the top than with an elected parliament accountable to the people. The U.S. can fight the war in Afghanistan more effectively if Pakistan furnishes its intelligence and armed resources to defeat the Taliban and foreign fighters. Pakistan’s praetorian presidency can deliver these resources to satisfy U.S. interests in the region, including the pressure on Iran. Zardari, a powerful man who cannot overcome the reputation of being a crook, is a godsend for the U.S. In the past, the U.S. has deftly exploited praetorian characters, such as Manual Noriega, Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran, and Pervez Musharraf, for its global interests.

Pakistan under Zardari

Regardless of whether the constitution is restored to ceremonial presidency, Pakistan is in for a rough ride under Zardari. Now that the coalition has split, Zardari’s personal character will be politicized, highlighting his past criminal record. A sullied civilian president will diminish the nation’s confidence in political rule. The insurgents in Pakistan’s tribal areas will intensify their battle against the government, increasing suicide bombings. The war in Afghanistan will spill over the border into Pakistan, as the U.S. daringly strikes the terrorist infrastructure on both sides of the border. Engaged in inter-personal politics, the government will have little time to solve the nation’s basic problems, including shortages of electricity, fuel, and clean water.

Ali Khan is professor of law at Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kansas, and the author of the book, A Theory of Universal Democracy (2003).

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Final straw for Afghan leader after child death toll in air strike hits 60

August 27, 2008

· Karzai orders new rules for all foreign military activity
· 90 civilians killed in worst incident since 2001

Sixty children were killed in air strikes by US-led coalition warplanes in western Afghanistan last week, a UN investigation has found. UN investigators said they discovered “convincing evidence” that a total of 90 Afghan civilians died in the incident.

The toll, potentially the worst since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, could wreck relations between the Afghan government and the Nato-led coalition forces, which were already under severe strain over civilian casualties and strategy in the counter-insurgency against the Taliban.

The government of President Hamid Karzai has ordered that any military operation by foreign forces on its territory will be subject to a new set of rules enforceable under international law.

Kai Eide, the UN special envoy to Afghanistan who ordered the investigation, said the incident could undermine the faith of the Afghan people in international efforts to stabilise the country.

Military sources said the air strikes last Thursday on the Shindand district of Herat province were carried out not by the Nato force attempting to bolster Karzai’s government, but as part of a parallel US mission targeting al-Qaida and Taliban militants, called Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).

US officials initially said that the air strikes were aimed at a Taliban stronghold and had killed 30 jihadis. An OEF spokesman in Kabul said last night that an investigation into the incident had been launched last Saturday and was still under way.

In his report, Eide said investigators from the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama) found that up to eight houses in the village of Nawabad had been destroyed in the raids and many others damaged.

“Investigations by Unama found convincing evidence, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses, and others, that some 90 civilians were killed, including 60 children, 15 women and 15 men. Fifteen other villagers were wounded or otherwise injured,” Eide wrote.

“This is matter of grave concern to the United Nations, I have repeatedly made clear that the safety and welfare of civilians must be considered above all else during the planning and conduct of all military operations. The impact of such operations undermines the trust and confidence of the Afghan people in efforts to build a just, peaceful, and law-abiding state.”

Humayun Hamidzada, a spokesman for the Afghan president, said Karzai had ordered that all foreign military operations be governed by an internationally enforceable “status of forces agreement”.

“The patience of the Afghan people has run out. We no longer can afford to see the killing of our children,” Hamidzada said.

The incident comes at a fraught time for western forces in Afghanistan, after a week of high casualties and deep splits within Nato on sharing the burden of the Afghan conflict.

Eide was appointed to bring some coordination to the international community’s disparate efforts. But last night he warned that those efforts were in danger of being crippled by public mistrust.

In a harshly worded statement, he said: “I want to remind all parties engaged in the conflict that the protection of civilians must be their primary concern; they must respect their duties under international humanitarian and human rights law to protect the people we are here to serve.”

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American UN envoy’s ties to ‘Mr 10 Per Cent’ are questioned

August 26, 2008

Keith Bedford/Reuters
Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, on August 11, 2008. Khalilzad is facing questions from senior Bush administration officials over what they describe as unauthorized contacts with Asif Ali Zardari, a contender to succeed Pervez Musharraf as president of Pakistan.

International Herald Times, August 26, 2008

WASHINGTON: Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to the United Nations, is facing angry questions from other senior Bush administration officials over what they describe as unauthorized contacts with Asif Ali Zardari, a contender to succeed Pervez Musharraf as president of Pakistan.

Khalilzad had spoken by telephone with Zardari, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, several times a week for the past month until he was confronted about the unauthorized contacts, a senior United States official said. Other officials said Khalilzad had planned to meet with Zardari privately next Tuesday while on vacation in Dubai, in a session that was canceled only after Richard Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South Asia, learned from Zardari himself that the ambassador was providing “advice and help.”

“Can I ask what sort of ‘advice and help’ you are providing?” Boucher wrote in an angry e-mail message to Khalilzad. “What sort of channel is this? Governmental, private, personnel?” Copies of the message were sent to others at the highest levels of the State Department; the message was provided to The New York Times by an administration official who had received a copy.

Officially, the United States has remained neutral in the contest to succeed Musharraf, and there is concern within the State Department that the discussions between Khalilzad and Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister, could leave the impression that the United States is taking sides in Pakistan’s already chaotic internal politics.

Khalilzad also had a close relationship with Bhutto, flying with her last summer on a private jet to a policy gathering in Aspen, Colorado. Bhutto was assassinated in Pakistan in December.

The conduct by Khalilzad, who is Afghan by birth, has also raised hackles because of speculation that he might seek to succeed Hamid Karzai as president of Afghanistan. Khalilzad, who was the Bush administration’s first ambassador to Afghanistan, has also kept in close contact with Afghan officials, angering William Wood, the current American ambassador, said officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter of Khalilzad’s contacts. Khalilzad has said he has no plans to seek the Afghan presidency.

Through his spokesman, he said he had been friends with Zardari for years. “Ambassador Khalilzad had planned to meet socially with Zardari during his personal vacation,” said Richard Grenell, the spokesman for the United States Mission to the United Nations. “But because Zardari is now a presidential candidate, Ambassador Khalilzad postponed the meeting, after consulting with senior State Department officials and Zardari himself.”

A senior American official said that Khalilzad had been advised to “stop speaking freely” to Zardari, and that it was not clear whether he would face any disciplinary action.

In 1979, Andrew Young was forced to resign as the American ambassador to the United Nations over his unauthorized contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Administration officials described John Negroponte, the deputy secretary of state, and Boucher as angry over the conduct of Khalilzad because as United Nations ambassador he has no direct responsibility for American relations with Pakistan. Those dealings have been handled principally by Negroponte, Boucher and Anne W. Patterson, the American ambassador to Pakistan. Both Negroponte and Patterson served as the United Nations ambassador.

“Why do I have to learn about this from Asif after it’s all set up?” Boucher wrote in the Aug. 18 message, referring to the planned Dubai meeting with Zardari. “We have maintained a public line that we are not involved in the politics or the details. We are merely keeping in touch with the parties. Can I say that honestly if you’re providing ‘advice and help’? Please advise and help me so that I understand what’s going on here.”

This is not the first time Khalilzad has gotten into trouble for unauthorized contacts. In January, White House officials expressed anger about an unauthorized appearance in which Khalilzad sat beside the Iranian foreign minister at a panel of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The United States does not have diplomatic relations with Iran, and a request from Khalilzad to be part of the United States delegation to Davos had been turned down by officials at the State Department and the White House, a senior administration official said.

Continued . . .

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The antiwar movement and the “good war”

August 26, 2008

Eric Ruder argues that the antiwar movement needs to respond clearly to the growing focus of U.S. military might on Afghanistan.

Socialist Worker, August 22, 2008

U.S. paratrooper on patrol in Afghanistan's Paktika province (SoldiersMedia)U.S. paratrooper on patrol in Afghanistan’s Paktika province (SoldiersMedia)

ON ONE day in mid-August, Taliban forces in Afghanistan carried out their most serious attack in six years, mounting an all-night strike on a U.S. military base in the eastern province of Khost and a fierce assault on French forces east of the capital.

The Khost offensive targeted one of the largest foreign military bases in the country and was eventually repulsed, but the attack on French forces by 100 Taliban insurgents killed 10 French soldiers and wounded 21 more. Together, the attacks are the latest expression of the growing confidence and competence of the Taliban and the growing ferocity of the fighting in America’s “other war.”

Since the beginning of July, 70 coalition troops have been killed in Afghanistan, compared to just 31 U.S. troops killed in Iraq during the same period. Already this year, 192 NATO troops have been killed in Afghanistan, compared to 232 killed in all of last year, which itself was the deadliest for NATO troops since the war began in 2001.

At the same time, other developments in and around the region–the resignation of Pakistan’s ex-president Gen. Pervez Musharraf and the Russian thrashing of Georgia’s U.S.-backed military–have illustrated starkly that a new balance of power is taking shape, dealing a setback to U.S. ambitions.

This makes the stakes for the U.S. in Afghanistan higher than ever–and simultaneously places new demands on the U.S. antiwar movement.

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SINCE 2003, the antiwar movement has anchored itself in opposition to the U.S. war on Iraq, which was generally understood as a “war of choice” undertaken by the Bush administration. But the movement has been at best muted in its criticism–and at worst actually supportive–of the U.S. war on Afghanistan as a “legitimate” targeting of al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden following the September 11, 2001, attacks.

But in fact, the U.S. didn’t invade Afghanistan to “bring the perpetrators of 9/11 to justice” or to “liberate Afghan women from the Taliban.”

In truth, the U.S. had long sought an accommodation with the Taliban. As one U.S. diplomat put it in 1997, “The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis. There will be Aramco [the oil consortium], pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that.”

From the time that it took office, the Bush administration had been negotiating with the Taliban to enlist it as a regime friendly to U.S. interests and able to provide a bulwark against Russian and Chinese influence. At one point in negotiations, U.S. representatives tired of the slow pace and threatened Taliban officials, saying “either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs,” according to a book by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie.

When the 9/11 attacks happened, it became the perfect rationale for imperial aggression that the U.S. had already contemplated.

The material and geopolitical interests that underpinned the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan are the subject of increasingly blunt discussions within the foreign policy establishment.

As Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 1999 to 2001, wrote in the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs:

As the war enters its eighth year, Americans should be told the truth: it will last a long time–longer than the United States’ longest war to date, the 14-year conflict (1961-75) in Vietnam. Success will require new policies with regard to four major problem areas: the tribal areas in Pakistan, the drug lords who dominate the Afghan system, the national police, and the incompetence and corruption of the Afghan government.

An August 21 New York Times editorial makes the case even more plainly:

More American ground troops will have to be sent to Afghanistan. The Pentagon’s over-reliance on air strikes– which have led to high levels of civilian casualties–has dangerously antagonized the Afghan population. This may require an accelerated timetable for shifting American forces from Iraq, where the security situation has grown somewhat less desperate.

NATO also needs to step up its military effort. With Russia threatening to redraw the post-Soviet map of Europe, this is not time for NATO to forfeit its military credibility by losing a war. Europe does not have a lot of available ground troops either. But it needs to send its best ones to Afghanistan and let them fight.

Afghanistan’s war is not a sideshow…Washington, NATO and the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan must stop fighting it like a holding action and develop a strategy to win. Otherwise, we will all lose.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama is already promising to implement precisely this plan, calling himself a “strong supporter of the war in Afghanistan” and pledging to withdraw forces from Iraq in order to send at least two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan.

Continued . . .

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Pouring Gas on the Afghanistan Bonfire

August 26, 2008

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grind forward with their terrible human toll, even as the press and many Americans play who gets thrown off the island with Barack Obama. Coalition forces carried out an airstrike that killed up to 95 Afghan civilians in western Afghanistan on Friday, 50 of them children, President Hamid Karzai said. And the mounting bombing raids and widespread detentions of Afghans are rapidly turning Afghanistan into the mirror image of Iraq. But these very real events, which will have devastating consequences over the next few months and years, are largely ignored by us. We prefer to waste our time on the trivia and gossip that swallow up air time and do nothing to advance our understanding of either the campaign or the wars fought in our name.

As the conflict in Afghanistan has intensified, so has the indiscriminate use of airstrikes, including Friday’s, which took place in the Azizabad area of Shindand district in Herat province. The airstrike was carried out after Afghan and coalition soldiers were ambushed by insurgents while on a patrol targeting a known Taliban commander in Herat, the U.S. military said. Hundreds of Afghans, shouting anti-U.S. slogans, staged angry street protests on Saturday in Azizabad to protest the killings, and President Hamid Karzai condemned the airstrike.

The United Nations estimates that 255 of the almost 700 civilian deaths in fighting in Afghanistan this year have been caused by Afghan and international troops. The number of civilians killed in fighting between insurgents and security forces in Afghanistan has soared by two-thirds in the first half of this year.

Ghulam Azrat, the director of the middle school in Azizabad, said he collected 60 bodies after the bombing.

“We put the bodies in the main mosque,” he told the Associated Press by phone, sometimes pausing to collect himself as he wept. “Most of these dead bodies were children and women. It took all morning to collect them.”

Azrat said villagers on Saturday threw stones at Afghan soldiers who arrived and tried to give out food and clothes. He said the soldiers fired into the crowd and wounded eight people, including one child.

“The people were very angry,” he said. “They told the soldiers, ‘We don’t need your food, we don’t need your clothes. We want our children. We want our relatives. Can you give [them] to us? You cannot, so go away.’ ”

We are in trouble in Afghanistan. Sending more soldiers and Marines to fight the Taliban is only dumping gasoline on the bonfire. The Taliban assaults, funded largely by the expanded opium trade, are increasingly sophisticated and well coordinated. And the Taliban is exacting a rising toll on coalition troops. Soldiers and Marines are now dying at a faster rate in Afghanistan than Iraq. In an Aug. 18 attack, only 30 miles from the capital, Kabul, the French army lost 10 and had 21 wounded. The next day, hundreds of militants, aided by six suicide bombers, attacked one of the largest U.S. bases in the country. A week before that, insurgents killed three foreign aid workers and their Afghan driver, prompting international aid missions to talk about withdrawing from a country where they already have very limited access.

Continued . . .

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Afghanistan Anti-US demonstrations in Afghanistan

August 25, 2008

Euronews, 24/08 09:33 CET

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Angry protests have broken out in Afghanistan following the deaths of scores of civilians in an air attack by US-led coalition forces on Friday. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has condemned the air strike.

The father of some victims said the coalition forces should come and see that all those killed were children and not Taliban.

The US military said only armed Taliban militants were killed in Friday’s attack in Shindand district of Herat province. Province police official, Ekramuddin Yawar put the number of dead following the coalition operation at 76.

Hundreds of angry villagers have reportedly attacked Afghan soldiers with stones who were bringing aid to the families of those killed in the attack.The United Nations says nearly 700 civilians were killed in the first six months of this year, the majority of them by Taliban militants.

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