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While the western media narrative is filled with voting in Iraq and attempts to sort out what Obama’s Afghanistan policy will look like after another 30,000 troops—an increase that is described in an AP report as “a finger in the dike while Obama recalibrates a chaotic mishmash of military and development objectives”—there’s little notice of the continued killing of Afghan civilians by US forces.
Three recent U.S. Special Forces operations killed 50 people—the vast majority civilians, Afghan officials say—raising the ire of villagers and President Hamid Karzai, who set a one-month deadline for his demand that Afghan soldiers play a bigger role in military operations.
“If these operations are again conducted in our area, all of our people are ready to carry out jihad. We cannot tolerate seeing the dead bodies of our children and women anymore,” said Malik Malekazratullah, the Afghan who ranted at the Americans. “I’ve already told President Karzai we are out of patience.”
Afghan officials say an overnight raid Jan. 7 in the village of Masmoot in Laghman killed 19 civilians. A raid in Kapisa on Jan. 19 killed 15 people, mostly civilians. And a second Laghman raid Jan. 23, in Guloch village, killed 16, they say.
In addition to the 50 listed above, three more civilians were killed by US forces Saturday, including two children in Helmand and a tribal elder in Paktia.
After each such incident, American military officials promise that more care will be taken—yet we still read accounts like these from Laghman:
An angry Afghan man with a thick black beard ranted wildly at the U.S. officials, shouting about how their overnight raid had killed 16 civilians in his village. An Afghan elder cried out in grief that his son and four grandsons were among the dead.
"One young boy said his whole family was killed, and now he wants to become a suicide bomber. This is a very negative message," Mashal said. "
These deaths occurred during nighttime raids by US Special Forces—and Afghan officials are asking that Afghan soldiers be included in the teams used—saying:
Afghans soldiers could prevent the kinds of deaths that Abdul Mateen, a village elder from Masmoot, described at the meeting. Mateen said a woman tried to leave the village to escape the battle.
"Then someone shouted at her. Maybe they told her to stop, but she couldn’t understand, so they shot her," Mateen told the group. "So even people trying to get away couldn’t escape."
After years of similar reports from both Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s shameful to see this continued lack of care for the very people we claim to want to "save"—and you would think that even simple self-interest would finally lead military commanders to stop making speeches like Gates’ above—and actually change the rules of engagement. As one member of the Afghan Parliament reminded them after the 16 civilians were killed this week:
“Maybe there were only two or three insurgents in Guloch, but I can tell you that there are thousands now."
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kudos to Freddie Mercury” What the hell we fighting for??????”
Could someone post a link to the Afganistan declaration of war to see what our objectives, over there, are?
And to think somebody ire’s being raised over dead bodies Pleassssse>
Oh, no. Two incidents counts as a pattern.
It’s obvious that we do NOT “want to save” afghans of any stripe in any real way. We’re there so that our military industrial complex can continue to suck up all our tax dollars. It’s that simple.
Creating more “insurgents” is just a fringe benefit that keeps the war going.
Thanks, Siun. Civilian deaths are criminal whether they are in Afghanistan or Gaza. Why can’t the Obama Administration see that?
and each time we torture someone there is the same effect, more enemies
They say counterinsurgency is all about hearts and minds, but the U.S. military knows better.
How to win friends and influence people. The Military is good at influencing. Good influence come with doctors, teachers, engineers, and building stuff. It’s also musch less expesive than the military, who at best are demolition experts.
Strategically the job of the military is to maintain the status quo until the enemy’s economy collapses. Be it a hot war (WW II) or a Cold War.
In an insurgency, there is no “enemy’s economy” to collapse. There is just a civil infrastructure to maintain. The concept of using the military eraly or forst is stupid in the extreme, as the military is a blunt instrument, only to be use when all else is exhausted.
The US has many institutions that are effective, The State Deptartment, USAID, and all the Businesses in the US. Trade, markets, making money, weddings, and births that’s how you make friends and influence people. Not guns, bombs and death.
Some would differ with you on the effectiveness of your examples. The State Dept has been steadily eviscerated by the military. Condi’s big “transormational diplomacy” program was to hire & train people to speak the local languages, and get diplomats out of the embassies. That tells you a lot about how effective the State Dept is. WRT USAID, I think it was Nixon who said that USAID was all about helping Americans. The food program is distinctly devised to help U.S. farmers get rid of excess crops, which get dumped on poor agrarian countries, thus descimating local farmers. And as for U.S. business in foreign trade, do you mean things like United Fruit enslaving local workers, wars that the U.S. has entered to help U.S. do businesses abroad?
There is no clear mission or strategy for our presence in Afghanistan.
I have written before that Petraeus seems to want to buy off some of the local warlords to achieve relative quiet. The problem is that this doesn’t keep the warlords from warring among themselves and so does not achieve quiet. It perpetuates the corruption which riddles all aspects of Afghani society and it continues to leave the door open to the Taliban.
State & USAID institutions need to be brought forward, and the military moved to the background.
They should be promoting our, the US’, interests.
Or can you suggest other institutions who’d do a better job?
Your point seems pretty solid, but I don’t see how you can expect Petraeus to change the nature of Afghani society.
Reducing the level of violence doesn’t seem like a decent first step to you?
There is no question that diplomacy should be done by the State Dept. But I see no sign that will happen. Clinton is as militaristic as any SecDef. Budget is something like $30 billion whereas Defense is $500 billion, excluding wars. Why even Wilkerson, Powell’s chief of staff at State, suggested disappearing the State Dept into the DOD, mistakeningly thinking that a larger part of the defense budget would be allocated to diplomacy, whereas the opposite would occur: defense would appropriate all the diplomacy funds for useless weapons.
My point being, that with such primitive thinking about the issue, I don’t see much chance that State will become effective anytime soon.
One other problem with Clinton: someone pointed out that the two bigish projects that she managed were disasters, her campaign and her medical task force. So it also remains to be seen whether she can even manage the bureacracy.
As for USAID, I’m not that familiar with its history, but I think it’s always been used to help U.S., not “recipient” countries. Experts correct me if I’m wrong.
How do you reduce violence by killing civilians?
My comment was aresponse to Hugh’s misgivings re buying warlords for “relative quiet”.
I didn’t realize that Petraeus was planning to kill civilians.
Reducing the level of violence doesn’t seem like a decent first step to you?
Not if the first step doesn’t work.
Heh. I thought U.S. military killing civilians was what this post was all about, a evidenced in the title:
Siun writes some catchy titles, all right. I like her writing skills, but she overstates things ev’ry now t’then. Not much evidence that our boys over there have been that procreative.
Trying to buy support from Afghanis isn’t going to work for long, that’s damn certain.
However, for right now, Petraeus doesn’t have a lot to work with. Not enough troops, Afghani support, or US non-military resources. Further, we have, long-term, only limited interest in Afghanistan.
What would you suggest as an effective alternative?
Thanks. The numbers make the State department a bargin, in comparison with DoD.
If we shiftet 10% of the DoD budget to help countries, we’d have a lot more friends. If its given to locla politicians though, we’d have another example of the effectiveness of trickle down.
Better to use the money to set up a micro loan bank in each country.
Siun wrote “create”. Not “begat”. :-)
You don’t expect her to get her verbs from the Old Testament do you?