Hundreds of Afghan Civilians Killed in U.S. “War on Terror”
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Some Afghans lost their entire families
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WASHINGTON,
July 21 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The U.S. air campaign to
dislodge Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan has claimed hundreds
of civilian lives through a tragic pattern of mistakes, U.S. daily
newspaper, the New York Times reported Sunday, July 21.
The
report was based on reviews conducted over a six-month period of 11
locations where air strikes killed as many as 400 civilians.
The
reviews found that even when genuine military targets were identified,
civilians were sometimes killed as a result of the Pentagon’s use of
overwhelming force.
Pentagon
officials say their strategy has shifted in recent months to increased
use of ground forces to hunt down remaining fighters for the Taliban
and Al-Qaeda, but that continuing air strikes still often have tragic
consequences, according to the Times.
The
report follows a controversial U.S. attack this month on villages in
Oruzgan Province, where air strikes killed at least 54 civilians.
American
commanders however rejected the notion that they may be relying too
heavily on air power.
“We
painstakingly assess the potential for injuring civilians or damaging
civilian facilities, and positively identify targets before
striking,” said Colonel Ray Shepherd, spokesman for the U.S. Central
Command in Tampa, Florida.
Afghan
officials are beginning to demand a greater say in the choice of U.S.
targets, the Times reported.
“We
have to be given a larger role,” Abdullah Abdullah, the Afghan
foreign minister, said in an interview with the newspaper.
“If
things do not improve, well, I will certainly pray for the Americans
and wish them success, but I will no longer be able to take part in
this.”
Meanwhile,
field workers with Global Exchange, an American organization that has
sent survey teams into Afghan villages, told the Times they
have compiled a list of 812 Afghan civilians who were killed by
American air strikes.
The
Global Exchange workers said they expect that number to grow as their
survey teams reach more remote villages.
The
most recent errant strike, around the village of Kakrak in Oruzgan
Province, appears to have resulted from a reliance on faulty
intelligence and the use of sudden and excessive force in trying to
kill people who the American pilots thought were enemy fighters, the Times
reported.
On
July 1, during an operation to hunt Taliban leaders, an American
AC-130 gunship attacked four villages around the hamlet of Kakrak.
American soldiers later found villagers gathering up the limbs of
their neighbors. Local officials counted 54 dead, most of them women
and children, and at least 120 wounded.
The raid on July 1 was the sixth since January that the United States
had carried out to hunt Taliban leaders in southern Afghanistan. So
far, Americans have not detained even a single important Taliban
leader but have killed more than 80 people.
The
larger issue for Afghans is what the Americans were doing there in the
first place, and why they attacked the villages with such ferocity. As
in past cases, they say the Americans relied on bad information, from
an Afghan intelligence official from another
tribe, and that they fired their guns before they were sure whom they
were shooting at, the Times reported.
“The
Americans are not from here and they don’t know our traditions or
our enemies and who has enemies,” said Jan Muhammad, the governor of
Oruzgan Province, who spent three years in jail under the Taliban.
“So they should contact us first and check first.”
“Every
time they say that they will coordinate more,” Mr. Muhammad told the
Times, referring to American commanders. “They killed my
people in Oruzgan, and they said they would not make a mistake again
and that they would contact us first. Then they did it again.”
What
angered Afghans like Mr. Muhammad, and Westerners working in the area,
is what they described as a trigger-happy American approach. No
Americans entered the village before the planes opened fire. Once
called in, the American AC-130 gunship, which employs machine guns and
heavy cannons, strafed four villages.
“Two
questions remain: why they attacked with such force, and what
precautionary moves do they take to differentiate between civilians
and Al-Qaeda and Taliban,” said a Western aid official working in
southern Afghanistan.
“They
attacked quite a big area, four villages, and you cannot just assume
that everyone there is the enemy.”
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