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Flaws in US air war leaving hundreds of civilians dead

US Marines prepare for a transfer-of-authority ceremony at the US military base in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Saturday. PHOTO: AP

The US air campaign in Afghanistan, based on a high-tech, out-of-harm's way strategy, has produced a pattern of mistakes that has killed hundreds of Afghan civilians.

On-site reviews of 11 locations where air strikes killed upward of 400 civilians suggest that American commanders have sometimes relied on mistaken information from local Afghans. Also, the Americans' preference for air strikes instead of riskier ground operations has made it harder to discover when the intelligence is wrong.

The reviews, over a six-month period, found that the Pentagon's use of overwhelming force meant that even when true military targets were located, civilians were sometimes killed. The 11 sites visited accounted for many of the principal places where Afghans and human-rights groups claim that civilians have been killed.

Pentagon officials say their strategy has evolved in recent months away from air strikes to the use of ground forces to hunt down remaining fighters of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Since then, air power has been deployed in mostly a supporting role; still, the effects have often been disastrous.

The US attack this month on villages in Oruzgan Province, where air strikes killed at least 54 civilians, has crystallized a sense of anger here that threatens to undermine the good will the US gained by helping to dislodge the Taliban. That anger is threatening to frustrate America's ability to hunt down Taliban and al-Qaeda forces that still survive.

For the first time, Afghan leaders are demanding a say in how air raids are conducted. They are even hinting that if the mistakes continue, they may limit future US military activities.

"We have to be given a larger role," said Abdullah Abdullah, the Afghan foreign minister, in an interview. "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."

The Pentagon often relies on warlords and other local Afghans whose loyalties are unclear in a country riven by decades of war and tribal rivalries. Its critics say that such information is inherently unreliable and that the Pentagon has too often launched military strikes without a full understanding of what it is they were targeting.

But US military commanders insist they take pains to ensure that civilians are spared, often verifying their targets with several sources of information. In many of the cases cited here, they insist that they struck valid military targets. In many cases, despite evidence on the ground, they denied that civilians were killed.

Indeed, the US commanders reject the notion that they may be placing too much reliance on Afghan warlords for information, or too much reliance on air power to carry out their strategy.

"We painstakingly assess the potential for injuring civilians or damaging civilian facilities, and positively identify targets before striking," said Colonel Ray Shepherd, chief spokesman for the US Central Command in Tampa, Florida, in an interview.

Nonetheless, US officials acknowledged that the botched strike in Oruzgan has strained relationships with the Afghan government. They said that since the raid, they have changed their procedures.

"We want to ensure that coordination with Afghan leaders is complete prior to an action," Shepherd said.

Marla Ruzicka, a field worker with human-rights group Global Exchange in Afghanistan, said the most common factor behind the civilian deaths has been a US reliance on incomplete information to decide on targets.

"Smart bombs are only as smart as people on the ground," Ruzicka said. "Before you bomb, you should be 100 percent certain of who you are bombing."

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 excessive force in trying to kill people that the US pilots believed were enemy fighters.

On July 1, during an operation to hunt Taliban leaders, an American AC-130 gunship attacked four villages around the hamlet of Kakrak. US 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.

US pilots fired on Kakrak after Special Operations forces on the ground reported seeing antiaircraft guns firing at the plane, military officials said. According to the villagers, there were two engagement parties that night, and some of the men were firing their guns in celebration, an Afghan tradition. The Americans said their planes had been fired on, but the villagers deny aiming at anything.

"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."

What angered Afghans and Westerners working in the area, is what they described as a trigger-happy US approach. No Americans entered the village before the planes opened fire. Once called in, the US AC-130 gunship, which employs heavy-caliber machine guns, and cannons, strafed four villages.
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