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More Afghan Civilian Deaths In U.S. War Than Sept. 11
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U.S. air-strikes target highly populated areas
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WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The number of Afghan civilians killed in U.S. bombing since Oct. 7 may be significantly greater than those killed in New York on September 11, a researcher has said, while the estimated death toll of the attacks on September 11 has dropped even further, U.S. media reported.
New York City officials said the estimated number of dead from the attacks on the World Trade Center had dropped to 2,936, CNN reported.
According to the city's Office of Emergency Management, 593 people are confirmed dead, 363 people are listed as missing and 1,980 death certificates have been issued for as-yet unidentified remains of victims, the CNN report said.
Original estimates put the death toll as high as 6,500, CNN said, but the estimate has shrunk as duplicate reports were eliminated.
However, the present estimate, including those killed September 11 at the Pentagon and on the airliners, falls far short of an American academic's estimate of the rising death toll in Afghanistan due to U.S. attacks.
Marc Herold, a professor of economics and women's studies at the University of New Hampshire, says that at least 3,767 Afghan civilians were killed between the start of the U.S. campaign on Oct. 7 and December 10.
"Actions speak," Herold said in his report, released last month, and " the hollowness of pious pronouncements by [U.S. Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld and [National Security Advisor Condoleezza] Rice and the corporate media about the great care taken to minimize collateral damage is clear for all to see."
"The critical element remains the very low value put upon Afghan civilian lives by U.S. military planners and the political elite, as clearly revealed by U.S. willingness to bomb heavily populated regions," he said.
Herold's report is the result of meticulous newsgathering from newspapers and other sources, including the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse (AFP), Pakistani and other Asian newspapers, the BBC and other British media, as well as Afghan news agencies.
It provides a day-by-day account of the specific and regional location of each U.S. attack in which civilians died, the number of deaths, including for each entry the type of weapon used, additional commentary explaining the circumstances and a list of the media sources from which he obtained the information.
For example, on Oct. 7-8 at the start of the war, seven media sources, including the British daily, The Guardian, the Chicago Tribune and two Indian papers, reported that 20 Afghan civilians were killed by at least two cruise missiles that hit the neighborhoods of Qasba Khana and Bibi Mahru in Kabul.
A more widely publicized event -- the bombing of Koram village in Nangarhar province three days later, in which he says between 100-200 civilians were killed in an early morning attack, was also reported by numerous sources.
On November 10, U.S. bombs, killing between 133 and 200 civilians, flattened three villages 70 kilometers northwest of Kandahar; Herold's estimate is 125. The deadly attack was reported by the Arabic network Al-Jazeera, two Pakistani papers and three Western sources.
Several of his entries are unclear as to the exact number of deaths, but leave room for a range. In a radio interview, Herold said that the 3,767 count was "conservative."
"I think that a much more realistic figure would be around 5,000," he said, quoted in a BBC online report on Thursday. "You know for Afghanistan, 3,700 to 5,000 is a really substantial number."
In explaining his process in the report, Herold said that although different newspapers might be using the same wire reports, he counted possible repeats as evidence of veracity and therefore as a separate source.
He also said that as "different sources mention different civilian casualty figures… most of the time, I have chosen the lowest number," emphasizing that he tried to locate first-hand accounts whenever possible.
The Pentagon has repeatedly stressed that U.S. attacks are aimed only at strategic targets, including wherever Al-Qaeda members are known to be and where Taliban forces are fighting.
It has acknowledged some "mistakes" and "regretted" any civilian deaths, and throughout the war has rejected the Taliban's reports of civilian deaths as lies and propaganda, insisting that most of the U.S. attacks have been on target.
U.S. coalition spokesman, Kenton Keith, speaking on the eve of the inauguration of Afghanistan's new interim administration December 22, said that civilian deaths were "regrettable," but insisted that they were unintentional, AFP reported.
Asked whether coalition members would provide compensation for the several thousand civilians killed by U.S. bombing, Keith only said, "The coalition is considering the possibility of providing billions of dollars for reconstruction in Afghanistan."
"It is regrettable whenever any civilians are killed as a result of this action," he said, "but not a single innocent civilian has been killed by the coalition intentionally."
But Herold feels, as he said in his report, that, "Killing civilians, even if unintentional, is criminal."
"It is simply unacceptable for civilians to be slaughtered as a side-effect of an intentional strike against a specified target," he said.
"There is no difference between the attacks on the [World Trade Center], whose primary goal was the destruction of a symbol, and the U.S.-U.K. revenge coalition bombing of military targets located in populated urban areas," said Herold.
"Both are criminal. Slaughter is slaughter."
Secretary General of Amnesty International, Irene Khan, had said that the tragic statements made by the Afghan refugees in Pakistan indicate that the U.S. air strikes on Afghanistan "have caused much higher numbers of civilian casualties than declared."
Khan headed an Amnesty delegation to Pakistan late in December 2001, in a mission designed to improve means of protecting human rights in Afghanistan.
“Many (Afghan) refugees, recently arrived in Pakistan, talked about tragic stories related to the U.S. air strikes," Khan said, in an interview with the French daily newspaper, Liberation. "Definitely, there are a number of civilian victims much higher than declared. It seems that strikes, sometimes, were inconsistent with the size of threat.”
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