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Civilian Casualties May Surge as Well
WASHINGTON - U.S. President Barack Obama announced Tuesday that he is sending two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan, marking the start of what many believe will be an escalation that will ultimately see the U.S. forces there double.
An Afghan girl cries after being vaccinated at the hospital in Sarkani village, Kunar province, eastern Afghanistan February 7, 2009. (Reuters/Oleg Popov/Afghanistan) There are some 36,000 U.S. troops already in Afghanistan, and the additional 17,000 alone represent a nearly 50 percent increase.
"[T]he situation in Afghanistan/Pakistan demands urgent attention and swift action," Obama said in a statement. "To meet urgent security needs, I approved a request from Secretary [of Defense Robert] Gates to deploy a Marine Expeditionary Brigade later this spring and an Army Stryker Brigade and the enabling forces necessary to support them later this summer."
But an increased U.S. presence will likely result in more combat confrontations. That, in turn, leads to an increased risk to the civilian population of Afghanistan, human rights groups stress.
And those sorts of deaths, injuries and destruction of property have so far been demonstrably destructive to the U.S.-led international effort to stabilize Afghanistan and defeat the violent insurgency being waged by the Taliban and other militant groups.
Some modicum of harm to civilians is likely inevitable as long as massive numbers of foreign troops make war in Afghanistan, but there are steps that the international community can take to minimize the damage that this civilian toll will take on the war effort.
The Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) says that one way to do this is by acknowledging the burden on civilians by, when appropriate, apologising and compensating victims and their families.
In a report released Tuesday, CIVIC said that despite efforts already underway, the international community must do more to ensure that compensation reaches civilian victims of the conflict.
The recommendation is particularly acute as last year's death toll for the conflict shows a staggering increase in civilian casualties. The U.N. reported Tuesday that such deaths were up nearly 40 percent in 2008, to a total of 2,118 civilians killed. As a result, the popularity of the seven-year-old campaign is plummeting among Afghans.
A poll of Afghan public opinion released last week by ABC News, the BBC, and ARD said that a slight majority of Afghans view the U.S. unfavorably. In 2005, by comparison, the U.S. garnered an 83 percent favorable rating.
That news is daunting for Washington and its international allies as they continue to try to win over - or, it seems, win back - the affections of local populations. Winning "hearts and minds" is a central tenet of fighting a counter-insurgency war, as the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is doing there.
The report, "Losing the People: The Costs and Consequences of Civilian Suffering in Afghanistan" (.pdf), puts the outlook in stark terms: "The international coalition in Afghanistan is losing public support, one fallen civilian at a time," reads the first sentence.
As a baseline for all its recommendations, the report insists that "all parties to the conflict in Afghanistan take all possible steps to avoid civilian deaths, injuries and property damage."
But, as with any conflict, sometimes those occurrences are unavoidable. In those cases, said the report, the victims need to be adequately compensated in order to prevent them from turning against the international forces.
The mechanisms for such compensation already exist - payment for a lost relative is usually between 1,000 and 2,000 dollars - but the response of the international forces and community need to be drastically improved, the report noted.
"We just need to get better at programs that already exist, and make sure they're fully funded," said Erica Gaston, a fellow with CIVIC and primary author of the report, discussing her findings Tuesday at the New America Foundation in Washington.
Gaston was in Afghanistan for a year researching civilian casualties and compensation, and interviewed over 143 victims from as wide a range as could be found. For example, some interviewees were families of victims killed in 2001 at the outset of the U.S.-led invasion, while others were families of victims who had been killed as recently as last year.
Sarah Holewinski, the executive director of CIVIC, said that there were two reasons for meaningful compensation: "moral", in which the U.S. needs to live up to its rhetoric about "hearts and minds, humanity and compassion"; and "strategic", as the mission requires civilian populations to side with international forces.
As for specific improvements to the identification and compensation of victims, the CIVIC report recommends better cooperation of different international actors by "sharing databases, establishing mechanisms for civilian referral and identification or other measures that respect confidentiality concerns of both the actor and the civilian."
In addition to identifying victims, there are problems with the mechanisms for delivering compensation.
The first problem is that the international forces are loath to open themselves up to legal responsibility. In order to facilitate continued compensation, the report takes a diplomatic line that "where necessary, [ISAF and NATO forces should] admit responsibility, thought not necessarily legal fault, quickly and publicly."
No matter the quibbling over the differences between "responsibility" and "legal fault", the panelists Tuesday all emphasised the importance of "redress" for the Afghan victims.
"We did find in our interview that apologies are important," said Gaston, later emphasizing that compensation has become a part of an "unofficial judicial system" in Afghanistan. "Compensation and apologies are expected in Afghanistan... and we have the means of providing them."
Still, while the means exist for delivery in many places, they don't exist in all places. In particular, many of the civilian deaths that anger residents occur because of ISAF and NATO airstrikes that don't discriminate between civilians and military targets. Those airstrikes are often called in exactly because forces on the ground have trouble getting in.
"It is one of the most difficult [issues]," said Gaston, "to provide compensation in these areas."
She said that international forces sometimes give compensation through intermediaries -though she admits this invites corruption - and also set up offices in city centers which people can travel to.
However, the report emphasized that a coherent, unified approach was needed for compensation in order to make it effective and streamline it so that benefits will be realized by the civilian victims of the conflict.
As of now, it said, different programs set up by different actors make up an ad hoc compensation network that sometimes fails to deliver for victims - leaving their physical and emotional scars to fester and potentially turning them against international forces.
"You get the sense that the international community is trying to fly the plane and build the plane at the same time in this challenge," said Eric Schwartz, the executive director of the Connect U.S. Fund, which funded Gaston's work, and a former National Security Council official for humanitarian efforts.
"The issue is kind of complicated," he said, though he did praise Gates's comments about "making amends" from his confirmation hearings as Obama's Defense chief.
"This is largely about leadership," Gaston agreed. If "the tone is set at the top," she said, it could make a great impact on compensation and, therefore, the war effort.
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15 Comments so far
Show AllWell DUH! War is not good for children and other living things, it's said. Collateral damage is still a PC spin for indescriminate slaughter. The Bomb don't care. Put any man or woman in an insanely fearful situation with a gun, and somebody is going to get shot. Where there are no uniforms, everybody is the enemy. We have absolutely no business over there. If we had left the Middle East to the inhabitants, there would have been no 9-11, no USS Cole, no explosion in the parking garage of the WTC, etc. We would have been so much money ahead, we could have afforded Middle East oil at any price. We don't treat the world as equals and that is our problem. We need to barter and trade with the world as equal partners with the same goal: to raise and protect our families. We have universal enemies: Poverty and disease. Why can't the world band together and fight that? The collateral damage would be life.
Read this article again only replace the word Afghanistan with Vietnam.
From the article:
"...the mission requires civilian populations to side with international forces."
Which mission would that be? Saving non-burqa-wearing women from the Taliban? Catching Bin Laden? Or would it have something to do with the industrial West's rampant fossil fuel addiction?
No, really. The underwriters would like to know.
CIVIC is playing directly into the hands of the warmongers--practically acting in an advisory capacity to those responsible for winning the "hearts and minds" of the population.
"Compensation?" For murder? This is a tacit admission that "collateral damage" is permissible. "Well, we're gonna kill a whole mess o' kids, but with enough suitcases full of money..."
This reminds me of nothing so much as the grand old tradition of buying ndulgences in advance of the sin. While I suspect the folks at CIVIC are trying to make the best of an ungodly situation, there's something chilling in this attitude.
What's the going price for a human these days, anyway? Is there some sort of sliding scale?
More on Obama's surge at http://www.nosuppertonight.com
m horan
http://www.nosuppertonight.com
Paul Siemering
Sooo.. the problem with all those dead civilians is it makes it difficult for the u.s. to do all wonderful things it does in Afghanistan? is that it? the families of the deceased won't cooperate anymore? imagine that.
here's an idea:
STOP! DON'T ESCALATE! GET OUT! DON'T SEND MORE TROOPS! EVACUATE!
QUIT! GIVE UP! IT's OVER! YOU LOST!
this war is illegal and obama promised to get us out. of course his zionist handlers say no.
Didnt take long for Israel to claim booby traps-despite another news story about them shooting the animals in the cages for fun-but whoever is telling the truth(we know Israel doesnt)the great thing about a story like this is that the innocent victims here are the captive animals.
Whether Israel is to blame or the Palestinians, the zoo animals are caught in the middle.
Being caged up and then left to be blasted or starve to death. If humans cant guarantee their care, they shouldnt in cages.
This is why humans arent managers of Nature(it should be obvious but I still here fools--i.e. hunters, zoos, etc who claim humans need to be stewards-as if that were possible). Humans need to be in the cages.
To entertain reopening it while Israel holds the keys and bombs it annually would be to create even more victims.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7897385.stm
Scenes of damage at Gaza's zoo, museum and beach
By Aleem Maqbool
BBC News, Gaza
Hundreds of Palestinian schoolchildren used to come to the Gaza Zoo every week, but not now.
Tanks rolled through the area during the Israeli offensive. Much of the zoo was badly damaged, most of the animals died.
Cage after cage lies empty. Ostrich feathers are strewn close to a crater in the ground, beside the mangled steel bars of what was the birds' pen.
The burnt carcass of a camel by its former enclosure is one of the few sets of remains that have yet to be taken away.
"Some were killed in air strikes," says the zoo's manager, Emad Qassim, "but some of the animals were shot dead."
The burnt carcass of a camel at Gaza Zoo
The camel's remains are almost unrecognisable
"Thank God our two lions survived, but we used to have over 400 animals and birds, now there are just 10 left."
Many of the animals died of starvation.
The zookeepers say that for more than two weeks, Zeitoun, the southern suburb of Gaza City where the zoo is located, was simply too dangerous to access because of the presence of troops and tanks.
During the conflict the Israeli army released footage from the zoo in which soldiers pointed to what they said was a fuse running along one line of cages.
The white cable led out of the compound to the school next door, a building the soldiers said had been booby-trapped by militants.
That is why troops carried out their attack here, the army said.
In the 22 days of the offensive, which Israel says was a response to rocket fire from Hamas, Gazan authorities and human-rights groups say 1,300 Palestinians died, hundreds of them children. Thousands were injured.
Many had their homes damaged or destroyed, but other aspects of the territory's infrastructure were affected too.
That includes those places, like the zoo, where people in Gaza could go to escape the considerable troubles of daily life here.
"To be humane is to be cruel, vicious and unrestrained, like humans.
To be inhumane is to be compassionate, restrained, moderate, like non humans."
If someone blew up my house and killed my wife and kids, then came up and said, "Sorry about that, we were supposed to blow up the house next door. Here's a thousand for the wife and a special today, the two kids for twenty-five hundred. Have a nice day." I'd gut the sonovabitch where he stood, and I'm supposed to be civilized!
Every time I read stories like this (Iraq is full of them) I feel like puking. We have no business there, and how do we judge the worth of a human life? How can we take away someone's love and future, then hand them some cash and go on our way, slaughtering in the village down the valley?
What does that thousand cover? Perhaps we killed another Ghandi, another Mother Theresa, perhaps a sage or a scholar or a doctor that could invent a cure for our ills. But no, I forget, they are just a bunch of ignorant tribesmen who should be grateful for the cash.
We used to at least try to do some good in the world, but now only for cash or oil or whatever strikes our fancy, and then only to the wealthy and powerful. The commoners can take their thousand a head and shut up (or perhaps we'll kill them, too.)
Obviously the New York Times has its smart moments every year and every day. At the same time Gore Vidal's statement remains true: "The New York Times never met a well it didn't want to poison." The worst two examples in the past centennium are A. the Times' failure to sufficiently honor critics of the Iraq war before it happened and B. the Times' failure to sufficiently honor critics of the Iraq war after it happened.
These latter critics are, first and foremost, "the Winter Soldiers," a group of men and women who orginally bought into Bush's war (otherwise, how could they have enlisted in the volunteer Army?), but who changed their view by 180 degrees once they participated in the war first-hand.
The term "Winter Soldiers" comes from Thomas Paine writing in his first Crisis paper, where he also applied the terms "sunshine patriots" and "summer soldiers" to a certain group within the Revolutionary War forces.
"The Winter Soldiers" were the tough ones who stuck things out; 200 years later the self-named "Winter Soldiers" re-appeared in the form of modern American Army who were willing, often at great cost, to speak out on what they had seen and experienced in Vietnam.
Their testimony resulted in a Pulitzer Prize for New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh with his lead stories about the Mylai massacre. Comes the Iraq war, the Times was not interested in creating a new Pulitzer Prize winner. More important to them was maintenance of the stereotype of anti-war activist as fruitcake. (See the recorded appearance of lead Iraq writer Michael Gordon on "Democracy Now" where he accused moderator Amy Goodman of "knowing nothing about journalism." Gordon's partner in fomenting a sure lead-up to the Iraq war was reporter Judith Miller, who lost her Times' job-- Gordon, a male, was spared).
And so, the Times summarized the four days of Winter Soldier testimony in Silver Spring, Maryland with about ten column inches placed inside (i.e., not on the front page).
There is no reasonable way one cannot call this behavior "suppression" of the Winter Soldiers given the huge play the Times gave identical testimony in the Vietnam war.
Let's discuss just one point in all such testimony: the fact that within modern war American soldiers never can know who the enemy is, that the definition changes almost daily, that ultimate judgment is often relegated to the soldier himself. (Did you know that an American soldier now has the powers of a Superior Court judge-- do you believe that he has the same training, capacity and protective system upon which to draw?)
Brian Turner, the first major poet to emerge from the Iraq War, recently read and spoke before a crowd of 300 in Winston-Salem, NC. He brought up the subject of soldiers not knowing who the enemy is.
He, by coincidence, did know who the Winter Soldiers were but now will study their testimony. The crowd at large had no idea who the Winter Soldiers were.
My personal conclusion is that America, as seen in this crowd who had come to hear a poet express sometimes beautifully the most horrible aspects of the Iraq war, still lives in a bubble of ignorance when it comes to that war. (Thank you, the New York Times.)
I have to ask, have President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Assistant Richard Holbrooke (the first person to publish my journalism by the way) heard and absorbed the Winter Soldiers testimony? Has one of these three individuals ever mentioned the Winter Soldiers? If so, please tell me, and where.
As Turner suggested, the Winter Soldiers may be "the most patriotic of all American citizens."
Their testimony (including their personal film) concerns incidents of American murder of innocents, often the testifyer's own, under orders in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
And the question of American soldiers shooting and blowing up of civilians is huge in Afghanistan. Will the addition of 17,000 troops ameliorate this situation? Is this issue larger than any other now concerning the United States and Afghanistan? Are we qualified at all to be in Aghanistan? Are we any different from the forces occupying this country in the past? And what exactly makes us think that our fate there will be any different?
Barack, Hillary, and Dick-- please start with studying the extent of American brutalization of locals. The best source of information, I would suggest, is the Winter Soldiers. And please REPORT BACK.
P.S. To hear and watch Winter Soldiers testimony, put the words "Winter Soldiers" in any search engine.
Gee, I'm so glad that Obama has brought change to the U.S.
I just knew he'd be a man of his word, all those eloquent words he gave us in the Primaries, how the U.S. was going to change direction. What he meant was he was going to move the troops east from Iraq to Afghanistan!
Same old, same old! Humans just can't rid their minds of the notion that war is good, that war is necessary, that being a military superpower is the zenith of human achievement.
War shows us how primitive humans are, how vile!
Neo-humans condemn all war and those who profit from it.
www.dangerouscreation.com
Why are we in Afghanistan?
by Senator Fritz Hollings on Huffington Post.
I keep asking the question, "Why are we in Afghanistan?" No one has a good answer. A few without television respond, "To get Osama." But everyone agrees that he is somewhere in Pakistan. Then the answer is: "As President George W. Bush said, 'to spread democracy.'" The Brits tried to spread democracy for years. The Russians tried to spread communism for years. But democracy must come from within. I helped liberate Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, sixty-eight years ago and they have yet to opt for democracy. We liberated Kuwait eighteen years ago and they have yet to opt for democracy. In the Muslim world more important than freedom and democracy is tribe and religion. We have made the good college try for over seven years and now should realize that we are not going to teach warlords to like democracy and grow cotton instead of poppies.
Now some answer to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for Al Qaida. I called the State Department after 9/11, and it reported Al Qaida in forty-five countries, including the United States, but not Iraq. Now we have spread Al Qaida to Iraq and determined to have Al Qaida grow in Afghanistan. What we can't understand is that we are creating terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Taliban were our best friends in Charlie Wilson's War -- the only war we've won since World War II. I helped Charlie on the Senate side. I didn't know what was going on, but he was getting Israel to send Stinger missiles to Muslim Pakistan to shoot down the Russians. Now we are determined to turn our former friends into enemies and destroy Pakistan. Yesterday I read an article that it won't be long before charging President George W. Bush with war crimes for killing civilians in Pakistan with drones. Now the same charge could be made against President Obama. Five years ago, I was in Pakistan to learn that Osama bin Laden had a sixty percent approval rating and President Bush was at ten percent. I wouldn't advise an America to walk the streets of any city in Pakistan today. We are ruining Pakistan. Finally, I'm given the answer, "to stabilize Afghanistan." The best way to stabilize is to get out. It became a matter of conscience for me years ago. I always remember the Wartime Prayer found in Eleanor Roosevelt's papers:
"Dear Lord, lest I continue my complacent way, help me to remember that somewhere, somehow out there, a man died for me today. As long as there be war, I then must ask and answer, Am I worth dying for?"
Why are we killing GIs to spread terrorism?
The premise of this article, that the U. S. SHOULD be in Afghanistan, is completely unsubstantiated. Perhaps there'd be no need for compensation if the U. S. simply weren't there dropping bombs and attempting to provoke a pre-determined outcome of some other country's affairs. We owe a huge debt to the Afghanis, like the Iraqis, most of Latin America, Vietnam, the Philippines, N. American indigenous cultures, etc., but the only way to make lasting amends is to CHANGE U. S. foreign policy and stop contributing to the bloodshed that occurs wherever American imperialism waves its g$dd$mned flag.
CIVIC may be attempting to make the best of the onerous and completely unnecessary circumstances, but where's the outrage about an ad hoc group having to make "amends" for the excessive brutality and murder by the world's most powerful, and utmost terrorist, nation? F****K!!! Obomya and the rest of the murdering American imperialists. They all deserve to suffer the fate of Afghani and Iraqi children - starved nearly to death then ripped to shreds by shrapnel. G$DD$MN Murderers to hell.
The following video isn't necessarily related to the actual war, the fighting in Afghanistan, but is definitely related when we consider, f.e., the huge amounts of money supposedly for reconstruction, etc., and the FALSEHOOD, the LIE when the, f.e., Canadian govt, the politicians, and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) spokes-people claim to Canadians that the mission there for Canada is humanitarian when hardly anything could be further from the truth; although we also see that again about the Canadian govt in its criminally complicit conduct with respect to protecting and promoting, so also encouraging, the extremely or totally criminal Israeli govt, as well as the U.S. govt.
Humanitarian, the Canadian govt wants Canadians to believe to be their govt's purpose in all of this. Have a little view of what the humanitarian-ness of the western govts really consists ... NOT of in Afghanistan. The fuller details in terms of text are in the Uruknet article, but the video, and even if it's not long, is very ... to the point and provides considerable detail.
"Video: No help for Afghan child labourers", by AlJazeeraEnglish, Feb 17 2009
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m51864
The video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydVjpMYdpWM , 2:29, and it's a packed 2:29.
Al Jazeera sourced. It seems they are the only media outlet reporting the TRUTH as to what goes on.
A good many Canadians "get it" that we are being lied to. As to exactly WHERE the money for reconstruction goes to? I have not a clue.
Unfortunately, the conversations and discussions here are not seriously held in the halls of our congress. If they are, it appears they are muted by the dollars donated by the military/industrial lobby. Our military are not fighting for our rights and freedoms here at home. If they were, they would be fighting the security guards at all the major corporations who lobby congress for their own gains. One day they might be battling blackwater, or some other private army for hire. But, they have ceased long ago fight for our rights and freedoms here at home. They are not being threatened by some outside force, they are being taken from us from within.