The Osterley Times: Civilian Deaths Undermine War on Taliban

The amount of civilian deaths caused by US air strikes in Afghanistan are threatening internal support for Karzai's government and causing extreme strain within the Nato alliance. I think most American's have scant understanding of how unpopular this aspect of US military planning was during the initial stages of the Afghanistan war throughout Europe. The United States have never experienced a blitz and therefore have no understanding of how such a policy plays out in places that have.

The Powell Doctrine of using massive air power before employing ground troops is seen throughout Europe as essentially a doctrine of cowardice, as it sacrifices civilians in preference to ground troops. This may play better to an American home audience, but Europeans find it baffling, especially as many Europeans still remember what it was like to be the recipients of such a random force as air strikes.

Karzai has been forced, yet again, to condemn the American and NATO tactics, and even the entire international effort in his country.

Afghan patience is wearing dangerously thin, officials warn.

The civilian deaths are also exposing tensions between American commanders and commanders from other NATO countries, who have never fully agreed on the strategy to fight the war here, in a country where there are no clear battle lines between civilians and Taliban insurgents.

At NATO headquarters in Brussels, military commanders and diplomats alike fear that divisions within the coalition and the loss of support among Afghans could undermine what until now was considered a successful spring, one in which NATO launched a broad offensive but the Taliban did not.

American officials are admitting that they have been forced to use air power more extensively as they simply don't have enough troops on the ground to do the job any other way. However, no matter how precise the US may claim their weaponry to be, it is undeniable that air power carries with it the increased risk of civilian casualties.

The anger is visible here in this farming village in the largely peaceful western province of Herat, where American airstrikes left 57 villagers dead, nearly half of them women and children, on April 27 and 29. Even the accounts of villagers bore little resemblance to those of NATO and American officials — and suggested just how badly things could go astray in an unfamiliar land where cultural misunderstandings quickly turn violent.

The United States military says it came under heavy fire from insurgents as it searched for a local tribal commander and weapons caches and called in airstrikes, killing 136 Taliban fighters.

But the villagers denied that any Taliban were in the area. Instead, they said, they rose up and fought the Americans themselves, after the soldiers raided several houses, arrested two men and shot dead two old men on a village road.

After burying the dead, the tribe’s elders met with their chief, Hajji Arbab Daulat Khan, and resolved to fight American forces if they returned. “If they come again, we will stand against them, and we will raise the whole area against them,” he warned. Or in the words of one foreign official in Afghanistan, the Americans went after one guerrilla commander and created a hundred more.

These are ordinary Afghans who are now rising up to fight against the American army, as they are sickened by the price that they are being asked to pay because the US is unwilling to employ enough troops to lessen the need for such reliance on air power.

In time the US will no doubt seek to portray such people as Taliban, but that excuse simply won't wash, certainly not in western Europe or amongst it's Nato allies. The people of Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9-11 and had nothing to do with bin Laden choosing to base himself in their country. They have spent the past six years under constant bombardment from the US and it's allies and it is unsurprising that they have come to a point where their patience is snapping.

There is a shocking lack of empathy amongst supporters of Bush's War on Terror for the very real price that is being paid by ordinary families in Afghanistan for Bush's decision not to employ sufficient numbers of soldiers to carry out the task that he has assigned them. And whilst I completely understand the logic - that American casualties are deeply unpopular at home - I am left wondering why supporters of this conflict don't seem to understand that the Afghans have a similar attitude to death, and that the horrific amount of civilian casualties they have endured is turning the people of Afghanistan against their supposed "liberators" and against the government of Karzai.

However, it appears that the US is unwilling to change it's tactics.

The subject of civilian casualties was the source of intense discussion on Wednesday in Brussels when the NATO secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, met with the North Atlantic Council, the top representatives of the coalition. But the conversation was less about how to reduce casualties, according to participants, than about how to explain them to European governments, who say their troops are there for reconstruction, not hunting the Taliban or terrorists. “The Europeans are worried about a lack of clarity about who is responsible for the counterterror mission,” said one participant in the debate. “They are worried that if NATO appears responsible for these casualties, it will result in a loss of support” for keeping forces in Afghanistan.

This particular participant in the debate seems to find European distaste for civilian casualties a sign of weakness. Perhaps if American cities had ever experienced the Blitz then he would understand better the collective revulsion that such casualties provokes amongst Europeans.

And therein lies the essential difference between Europe and the US.

Bush talks of his country being at war and many supporters of Bush repeat this fallacy. The US is not at war, it's army is. There are no bombs landing nightly on American cities, there is no food rationing, life in the US goes on as normal and supporters of the war on terror are able to do so whilst paying no personal price.

The same applies to Europe. However, the essential difference is that Bush and his supporters seem to think that any action they take during their war is justified, any price in terms of civilian casualties is a price worth paying for the overall aim of defeating the al Qaeda. European leaders realise that their own populations, having once been the civilians who endured aerial bombardment, will not support their own governments if they attempts to carry out a similar campaign against the people of Afghanistan.

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