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TechnoratiEnough Is Enough
The Afghan government has pleaded for its civilians to be respected. Maybe, after the latest deaths, its calls will be heeded
President Karzai's cabinet demanded on Monday a renegotiation of agreements regulating the presence of international troops in Afghanistan after reports that around 90 civilians had been killed in US-led air strikes in a village in the western province of Herat on Friday.
Karzai had sacked two of his generals the previous day for "negligence and concealing facts" about the killings. His office condemned "the unilateral and imprecise operation which included both ground and air strikes in Azizabad district [which] caused a tragic incident claiming 89 civilian lives including women and children."
The Afghan army was ordered to hand out supplies of food and humanitarian relief to people in the region, but they were confronted by stone-throwing crowds instead.
The cabinet has said the review should focus on the "authorities and responsibilities" of international troops and demand a halt to air strikes on civilians, illegal detentions and unilateral house searches. A government commission which visited the site of the attack on Sunday said that more than 90 civilians, most of them women and children had been killed. Other reports put the death toll at 76, but either way it is one of the deadliest civilian tolls in international military action since the end of 2001.
While the US military are continuing to insist that the attack was on a "legitimate target", other governments with forces in the country are beginning to distance themselves from this claim. Norway, which has been contributing to troops to the Nato-led, UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) since the very beginning, yesterday criticised the killing of civilians.
There are now nearly 70,000 international soldiers from around 40 countries in Afghanistan. About 53,000 are with Isaf, while the remainder are with the US-led coalition, under the banner of Operation Enduring Freedom, which unseated the Taliban. The UN mission is mandated by a resolution extended annually since 2003, that says it should assist the Afghan government in maintaining security. The deal is due to be extended in October and will probably be approved.
The US has a bilateral agreement with the Afghan government which outlines the coalition's operations including counter-terrorism operations, intelligence sharing and training the Afghan security forces. The current agreement was signed in May 2005. The cabinet has called for both agreements to be reviewed and tasked the foreign and defence ministries to negotiate with "officials of international forces". It stated:
The authorities and responsibilities of the international forces in Afghanistan must be regulated through a 'status of force agreement' consistent with both international and Afghan laws. Air strikes on civilian targets, uncoordinated house searches and illegal detention of Afghan civilians must be stopped.
The cabinet statement said the government had "repeatedly" discussed with international troops the issue of civilian casualties in raids and the "harassing" of ordinary people. "Unfortunately, to date, our demands have not been addressed, rather, more civilians, including women and children are losing their lives as a result of air raids," it concluded.
These words say it all; it is difficult to know what to add to a news story like this, except that we can only hope the Afghan government is finally listened to.
12 Comments so far
Show AllRemember Picasso's "Guernica", the 1937 painting that memorialized the saturation bombing of that town? It was considered "monumental", which indeed it is-- a gut-wrenching exposition of a horrific man-made Hell on Earth.
I won't say that Guernica was the FIRST saturation bombing of its kind, lest the learned military historians spring zealously out of the woodwork to turn the discussion into squabbles about 16mm carbolic-acid primers and such. (I just made that up.) But it was certainly one of the first mass-bombings to shock the civilized world-- and even parts of Amerika!
Now, like the Geneva Conventions, "Guernica" has become merely quaint.
If it were painted today, it would be titled "Collateral Damage", or maybe just "Ho-Hum".
True secretarybird, but the rational for the killings have become more flimsy from WWI to the present.
Dresden was an outrage, but it was an anomaly in WWII. This campaign in the Mideast has been one long Dresden from start to finish.
Considering how long the slaughter has been going on isn't it about time to stop?
Has this gotten much coverage in your home town newspaper or on the TV or radio news? Have there been images? Do you have a link to any photos?
I saw an exhibit of Goya's etchings on the Napoleonic invasions of Spain recently. Each etching was small, maybe 6 inches by 7 inches. But they were disturbing. Monstrous scenes of war and the dead bodies of childen and other civilians were the themes running through. Napoleon's troops were shown without sympathy, as dull and brutish, their faces blank or distorted into ugly bestiality.
Can we find a way to expose these pilots to pictures of what their bombings do? Right now they sit in a plane far from the ground and playing a video game.
We have the ability to distribute images far and wide. Goya's work did not make a dent in the war machine, but we have the ability to publicize the Disasters of War through printing and through the internet.
Here is a picture that I cannot forget, perhaps because the little boy looks like one of my children at a tender age.
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/media/IRAQ_ali_hussein_77.JPG
Joe
And something like this barely gets a mention in the mainstream media.
I can't begin to imagine what the response would be if 60 civilians were killed if somebody attacked the pentagon to stop them committing terrorist acts.
Hang on, yes I can.
Poo-tee-weet.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/13/8249/
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." - George Orwell
I guess the next time we want to know why they hate us, we won't have to look far for the answer.
Sorry Conor but dead Afghans, civilian or otherwise, are acceptable collateral damage in today's world. No one can stop the US or Israel from killing civilians as they attempt to expand their empire.
Hoa binh
Correct!! And, I would like some Zionist to explain to me WHY Daniel Pearl's life is worth more than an Afghan child's.
The more civilians killed the more recruits the Taliban will receive. Mission Accomplished!!
I just noticed that Common Dreams sells stickers that say "OUT OF IRAQ NOW" and "ATTACK IRAN? NO", they even have "ATTACK SYRIA? NO", but nothing like "OUT OF AFGHANISTAN NOW".
Why? (Not that the editors of this site ever respond to their readers)
Are the Republicans collecting roast suckling Muslim babies for their convention Barbecues? Maybe all the trophy heads will be mounted in their corporate boardrooms and Evangelical churches. Afghanistan needs to hang these NeoNatoNazis.
Killing civilians is what air-strikes do. From Guernica to Rotterdam, London, Coventry, Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it's what they did. Don't they teach this at staff college or officer training school?