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Video shows casualty victims in Afghanistan

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 12:14pm

Not a good day to be working at the press office of the Department of Defense. This morning, The Times of London released a video that purports to show civilian casualties in Afghanistan -- dozens at least -- from an American air raid in late August.

The Pentagon has insisted that civilian casualties in the attack were limited to the single digits, even as both the Afghan government and the United Nations put the number above 90. In a blog post last week, I wondered if this was a problem of counting methods -- deciding who is a civilian and who is a fighter.

That's a hard case to argue after watching the video [WARNING: graphic]. The Times says that a doctor shot the mobile-phone film the morning after the air raid. In the clip, casualties overcrowd a room filled equally with grieving men and women. The corpses include children. The chaos and pain of the moment is palpable.

As Human Rights Watch explains in a report released today, this is a serious problem -- and not just for America's reputation in Afghanistan. Civilian deaths, of which HRW says there were 321 this year, could easily provoke an even larger humanitarian crisis:

In every case investigated by Human Rights Watch where airstrikes hit villages, many civilians had to leave the village because of damage to their homes and fear of further strikes. People from neighboring villages also sometimes fled in fear of future strikes on their villages. This has led to large numbers of internally displaced persons. 

Hopefully, all this will be enough for Pentagon officials to reconsider their story. Until now, they have claimed that the incident began after forces came under fire while going after Mullah Sadiq, a Taliban commander. While the U.N. called upon civilian and government witnesses to verify its 90-something number, the Pentagon has pointed to retired Lt. Col. Oliver North, a Fox News correpondent who was indicted (but later cleared of charges) for his involvement in the Iran-Contra affair, to back its claim. A new investigation has been promised.

Last week, Major Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, the commander of troops in eastern Afghanistan, addressed the growing concerns with promises that Americans are avoiding casualties at all costs. He also complained:

The enemy routinely exaggerates the number of civilian casualties as propaganda, just pure and simple. They use lies and deceit as an asymmetric strategy."

All the more reason to have a transparent, indpendent investigation. With due respect to the general, the importance of ending civilian casualties -- or at least owning up to them -- is something we cannot exaggerate enough.

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Real or Not? and does it matter?

by scorad on Fri, 09/12/2008 - 1:46pm

So a few things strike me about this video. Besides the obvious sadness of it, the skeptic in me wonders if there's anything in the video that could be used to verify the place and time of its recording and give us confidence of its veracity. I don't see any, so it's very possible that its just more Taliban propaganda.

On the other hand, it doesn't really matter whether it's really a video from the aftermath of this particular strike. It's getting wide enough distribution that many will believe it. Given the Pentagon's evasions and distortions on civilian casualties in the past, I can't say I blame anyone for doubting their story.

And here we get to the heart of our current failure in Afghanistan. The locals should have every reason to welcome us and help in the fight. We are fighting a brutal fanatic group which has brought nothing but suffering to these people. We on the other hand, are offering them self rule and relative economic prosperity. Yet, we can't seem to get past that first rule of winning over a stranger.

Don't blow them up.

I've been living in Kabul

by TomR on Fri, 09/12/2008 - 3:49pm

I've been living in Kabul for a while. Either mercifully, unfortunately, or simply as a matter of fact, not as a member of the media. I've heard the various reports about this incident, including one from a client of mine, who says that the victims here were actually one of his construction crews. I am in no better position than the Afghan government, the US government, or the UN to verify the affects of this attack. It's important to realize though, that in some very important ways, the Afghan government, the US government, and the UN are in no better position than me to certify the nature of the victims in this attack either. Little reported at the time, and either consequently or coincidentally not so relevant, are reports that the specific airstrike, performed by the US was called in to that location by the Afghan army.

As for the nature of the struggle, I agree that the current enemy in Afghanistan is a brutal and inhuman organization. But I think we fail ourselves, and our countrymen, regardless of our country, if we dont dig a little deeper and understand the history.

When the Russians were chased out, the armed warlord groups fought for power. By all accounts, those fights were not materially cleaner, better or more just than war under the Russians. It was in fact the outrage at the behavior of these warlords that brought the taliban, formerly a student organization (as the name implies, in arabic) into active and violent public prominence. The camaign of the Taliban, directed as it was against injustice, created of course only the particularly abhorent form of injustice that a fundamentalist regime can. Nevertheless it is important and relevant to remeber that they came into power because of the tacit support, or at least non-opposition, of a people tired of the excesses of their rulers.

When the west decided to invade Afghanistan with a force not capable of doing so, but rather by relying on the warlords, we cast our lot with that same ruling class, which, in some ways had already been rejected. While the government worked well and was widely suported in the first few years it has since become little more than institutional corruption rising to the highest levels. While the west believes that this government is the only viable goverment to support (and it may be right) the government no longer has the support or credibility of the people, and unfortunately the greater part of the western energy and resources dedicated to afghanistan suffer because they are funnelled into this imperfect regime.

What exists in reality in Afghanistan right now is very similar to the circumstances that originally caused a group of students to take arms and resist. And this is the fundamental problem. Afhganistan was, by all measures a failed state. The west has not yet established a capacity to create a viable state fom a failed one, and Afhganistan is no different.