Posts Tagged ‘killing Afghan civilians’

Killing of 17 Afghan Civilians in US-led operation

January 10, 2009

At least 1,500 civilians were among the 4,000 people killed in the first eight months of 2008

RAWA News, January 8, 2009

A dead civilian
One civilian was killed during a US-led coalition forces operation in Masmo village of Ali-shing district of eastern Laghman province. (Photos: PAN/Najibulrahman Enqalabi)

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday condemned the reported killing of 17 civilians, including women and children, in a US-led coalition operation in eastern Afghanistan, the presidential palace said in a statement. The US military said on Wednesday that their forces killed 32 Taliban insurgents, including an armed female militant, in an operation that targeted a roadside bomb-making network in Alishing district of Laghman province in eastern Afghanistan.

The military statement said that the combined forces fought the 75 militants barricaded in a compound with small-arms-fire, avoiding air support and artillery fire in order to minimize the potential for civilian deaths.

But a statement issued by Karzai’s office said that besides terrorists, “17 civilians including women and children were also martyred in the operation.”

President Karzai condemned the incident and said, “The Afghan government has repeatedly made it clear that we want a quick end to these kinds of incidents.”

Colonel Greg Julian, US military spokesman in Afghanistan, denied there were any civilian deaths.

“We were very clear on that. There is clear evidence that there was no civilian casualty,” he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Afghan government authorities and coalition military officials often differ on numbers of civilians killed in international military operations.

Afghan officials including Karzai repeated their assertion that 90 civilians – mostly children – were killed in a US-led airstrike in Azizabad village in western Herat province in August 2008. The US military finally accepted that around 30 civilians were killed after insisting for weeks that the air raid only left around five civilians dead.

Villagers digging graves for the dead
Dozens of residents of Masmo village are busy digging and arranging graveyard for burial of the victims of US offensive.

Civilian casualties at the hands of international forces have angered the Afghan public and has become a sensitive issue for the government of Western-backed President Karzai.

Karzai has repeatedly warned that increasing civilian deaths would erode public support for his government and would provoke anti-foreigner sentiments in Afghanistan.

Several demonstration have been staged in Afghan cities and rural areas to condemn the killing of civilians by foreign forces.

Unable to seek revenge independently, many Afghan men in southern and eastern Afghanistan have joined the Taliban ranks after losing members of their families in international military operations, according to Afghan officials.

At least 1,500 civilians were among the 4,000 people killed in the first eight months of 2008, according to United Nations officials in Afghanistan.

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Angry Karzai Submits List of Demands Ahead of US Surge

December 19, 2008

Afghan President Tells US to Stop Bombing Villages, Detaining Civilians

Antiwar.com,  December 18, 2008

As high profile incidents of US and NATO forces killing Afghan civilians continue to rise, a furious Afghan President Hamid Karzai has submitted a list of demands to the United States meant to reduce unilateral actions by the international forces against Afghan civilians.

According to Karzai, “part of that list was that they shouldn’t, on their own, enter the houses of our people and bombard our villages and detain our people.” The US has not formally responded to the demands, but officials say they are reluctant to share plans of their attacks with the Afghan government for fear that they will tip off the targets.

Referencing the Khost killings, Karzai said he was concerned that the unnecessary detentions and killings were damaging the legitimacy of his government, and the unilateral actions where harming the rule of law in the nation, asking how the people of Afghanistan could trust the government “if their government cannot protect them.”

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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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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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The killing fileds of Afghanistan: American airstrikes kill 76 Afghan civilians

August 23, 2008

US-led coalition forces killed 76 Afghan civilians in western Afghanistan yesterday, most of them children, the country’s Interior Ministry said.

The coalition denied killing civilians. Civilian deaths in military operations have become an emotive issue among Afghans, many of whom feel international forces take too little care when launching air strikes, undermining support for their presence.

“Seventy-six civilians, most of them women and children, were martyred today in a coalition forces operation in Herat province,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Coalition forces bombarded the Azizabad area of Shindand district in Herat province on Friday afternoon, the ministry said. Nineteen of the victims were women, seven of them men and the rest children under the age of 15, it said.

US-led coalition forces denied killing any civilians. They said 30 militants had been killed in an air strike in Shindand district in the early hours of Friday and no further air strikes had been launched in the area later in the day.

Air strikes took place after Afghan and coalition soldiers were ambushed by insurgents while on a patrol targeting a known Taliban commander in Herat, the US military said in a statement.

“Insurgents engaged the soldiers from multiple points within the compound using small-arms and RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) fire,” it said. “The joint forces responded with small-arms fire and an air strike killing 30 militants.”

A senior police commander in western Afghanistan confirmed the incident but could not say how many civilians died.

“More than 30 people have been killed. I cannot say how many of them are civilians,” General Ikramuddin Yawar told Reuters.

A spokesman for the Defence Ministry in Kabul said US special forces and Afghan troops had been carrying out an operation against a commander named Mulla Sidiq, who was planning to attack a US base in Herat. “Twenty-five Taliban were killed, including Sidiq and one other commander,” said spokesman General Zaher Azimi.

“Unfortunately, five civilians were killed in the bombing.”

Afghanistan has seen a surge in violence this year as the Taliban steps up its campaign of guerrilla attacks, backed by suicide and roadside bombs, to overthrow the pro-western Afghan government and drive out foreign troops.

Meanwhile, soldiers from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) fired artillery rounds into Pakistan from the eastern province of Paktika yesterday in a coordinated attack with the Pakistani military, the Isaf said.

The rounds were fired at militants across the border who the Pakistani military said were preparing to fire rockets at an Isaf base in Paktika, Isaf said in a statement.

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