A new directive from NATO’s top commander in Afghanistan orders coalition forces to avoid night raids when possible, but to bring Afghan troops with them if they must enter homes after dark.
The coalition released details of General Stanley McChrystal’s new policy on Friday — changes that are meant to cut down on the storm of complaints from Afghan people.
Though McChrystal’s order falls short of the complete ban on night raids sought by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, it does reflect new sensitivities by NATO at a time when the coalition is pursuing a strategy of gaining Afghan public trust in a bid to rout Taliban extremists.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Meanwhile, the Red Cross yesterday condemned the use of booby trap bombs by the Taliban in an area of southern Afghanistan that has been so heavily mined people are afraid to leave their homes.
The bombs — known as improvised explosive devises (IEDs) — are also preventing refugees from returning to the area of Helmand Province where US Marines have led 15,000 troops in an assault against the Taliban, it said.
In an unusually strong statement, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the use of IEDs — the main weapon in the Taliban arsenal — was “completely unacceptable.”
The Marjah farming area has been so heavily laced with IEDs that civilians are largely confined indoors and the sick and injured cannot be evacuated for help, it said.
People who fled the area before and during the assault, launched on Feb. 13, feared returning along heavily mined roads to villages where commanders and residents have said the bombs are planted in fields, hanging from trees and even embedded in the walls of houses.
“Improvised mines and other explosive devices are posing a deadly threat to civilians in Marjah,” Reto Stocker, head of the ICRC in Kabul, was quoted in a statement as saying. “They make it almost impossible for people to venture out or to evacuate the sick and wounded, who therefore receive little or no medical care.”
The use of mines and the lack of any measures to protect civilians “runs counter to the most basic principles of international humanitarian law,” the statement said. “Any use of these weapons, which are prohibited in the country under the Mine Ban Convention just as they are in 155 other countries, is completely unacceptable.”
Operation Mushtarak (“together” in Dari) is slowly winding down as resistance from the Taliban, who for years controlled the area with drug traffickers, NATO and Afghan commanders said this week.
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