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US Stops Giving Militant Death Tolls in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON - The US military in Afghanistan has stopped releasing figures showing how many militants have been killed in fighting with US-led forces, officials said Friday.
The US military in Afghanistan has stopped releasing figures showing how many militants have been killed in fighting with US-led forces, officials said Friday. "Indicating the number of insurgents killed has little relevance to impacting the lives of Afghans," Navy Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, seen here in 2008, said in an email to AFP. "Indicating
the number of insurgents killed has little relevance to impacting the
lives of Afghans," Rear Admiral Gregory Smith said in an email to AFP.
"In fact, if that were the only purpose and metric, you would likely only extend the time it takes to bring about an end to the insurgency."
Smith sent an order last month to NATO and US forces blocking the military from releasing details on militant death tolls and providing estimates instead.
"The goal of security operations in an insurgency is to separate the people from the insurgents. Without access to the people, the insurgents lose their main center of gravity," he said.
Smith, who is revamping communications for the US military and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, stressed US-led military operations were not aimed at killing insurgents.
The objective was to "clear areas of insurgency and give the people a chance to reconnect with official forms of governance and to rebuild their lives, socially and economically."
The move comes as President Barack Obama's administration is shifting the US war strategy in Afghanistan toward enhancing the safety of civilians, seeking to stem support for the deadly Taliban insurgency.
Colonel Greg Julian, the outgoing spokesman for US forces in Afghanistan, said he had previously released militant death tolls in order to counter propaganda by the Taliban and its Al-Qaeda allies.
"In the past, I gave specific details of what took place during engagements to counter insurgent lies and exaggerations," he said in an email.
"The insurgent lying tactic is now widely understood and it is far better to focus on the improvements to security and quality of life improvements for Afghans than the number of insurgents killed."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Sunday the US military and its allies must show progress in Afghanistan by mid-2010 to avoid public perception that the conflict has become unwinnable.
Victory was a "long-term prospect" under any scenario and the United States would not win the war within a year, Gates told the Los Angeles Times.
Obama has dispatched 21,000 fresh troop reinforcements to Afghanistan as international forces battle a mounting Taliban insurgency. By year's end, some 68,000 US forces are set to operate in Afghanistan.
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33 Comments so far
Show AllYeah, why tell the truth when you can "estimate" it instead?
It shouldn't be too hard for the military to figure out the kill count. Standard American military operating policy is that if we kill it it's an enemy/insurgent/guerilla/bad guy, even that three-year-old girl over there - she must have had an AK under her dress. That fits in with the military's long-standing SOP of CYA.
The stupidity of the entire operation of American wars there is astounding.
Callow comment.
Or simply put, Afghan deaths are not important. Barbara Bush made a similar comment that when she was asked about civilian deaths in Iraq and she replied that her beautiful mind should not be troubled with such matters - or similar words amounting to same.
The US military doesn't appear to have a strategy in Afghanistan, but whatever poses as one evidently doesn't say they ought to kill XX Afghans per month. The US military can count corpses, keep the results to themselves, and they'll continue to lose. Eventually, they'll realize the Pashtun reproduce faster than the US military can kill them - their population continues to grow. To put it another way, Afghan deaths aren't important as long as the Pashtun tribes can replace battlefield losses.
Pashtun leader Khalid Younis said of the Soviets: "They'll go when enough of them have been killed, so we'll just kill them until they go". I believe the current Pashtun leadership is thinking along the same lines.
Fdoleza
Excellent points. One of my bumper stickers speaks along the same lines with its accurate observation that:
"We Are Creating Enemies Faster Than We Can Kill Them."
fdoleza
Very good points my friend. Though our Marines and other forces are not the Soviets. Remember the Soviets in Afganistan were a second class armed force at that time with terrible equipment and we were helping the Afgans.
Afganistan is very much like Viet Nam in the respect that we will win every battle but lose the "war" I understand that these guys are not anywhere as good as Charlie was, but they don't have to be, the terrain sucks. The Taliband/Afgan's are apparently taking big losses right now, I'd suspect thats why the body count has stopped.
This whole thing is an exercise in futility. Every kid we lose is just a waste, every Afgan lost is a tragedy,the whole thing is such a waste. Look at Iraq and double it for Afganistan.
If you put yourself in an Afgan's place, look at the foreign soldier invading your village, your town, your country....even though you may have met him and liked him....if you could do that, you'd know why we will leave (lose) for sure. As to winning, no one is going to win here.
Pax
[Remember the Soviets in Afganistan were a second class armed force at that time with terrible equipment and we were helping the Afgans.]
Are those the same Soviets that Reagan and the Repub's were ranting about during the 80s? Arguing that they were top of the line, had great equipment, lots of it and due to the quantity and quality of the Soviet equipment that the usa needed to beef up its military spending to prevent them aiding the Nicaraguans in an effort to invade and conquer the usa? Those Soviets?
Actually the Sov's did have a well trained army, the equipment worked and they had a lot of it. The Sov's first mistake with Afghanistan (other than invading it of course) was that the troops they used to invade were from the Central Asian Republics - the 'stan states - and the Soviet forces 'lost' a good deal of their weaponry while invading with conscript troops who didn't want to be there. Their next mistake was to attack the religious beliefs of the locals without being as blood thirsty as their grandparents had been when they fought the civil war of the 1920s (during the 20s the sov's slaughtered anyone who dared pray to any god but Lenin).
As for the Afghans being better or worse than Charlie... Don't forget that Zbigniew Brzezinski helped engineer/encourage the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the hopes that the Sov's would have the same experience there that the usa had in Vietnam. The mountains substituting for the jungles. The Afghani fighters are just as willing to kill and die for their country as the Vietnamese were, what's limiting them is not lack of training but the supply of modern weapons.
But yah, it's a bloody waste of a war. Not that any war is anything other than a waste...
>>Though our Marines and other forces are not the Soviets. Remember the Soviets in Afganistan were a second class armed force at that time with terrible equipment and we were helping the Afgans.
The Mujahadeen state otherwise. They respected the fighting ability of the Soviets far more then of the Americans and said as much in Interviews. In particular their leadership feared the Spetsnaz and the Russian Hind Helicopter.Most Taliban fighters still prefer variants of the AK47 then US made weapons.
Indeed their leadership was demoralized and they were ready to throw in the towel until the US promised them Stinger missiles to deal with the Hind.
The Mujahadeen even offered rewards of 2 million dollars per for the heads of the Russians Major Vitaly Bykov; Captain Sergey Breslavsky; and Major Yuriy Sapalov.
I would point out that when The Soviets were in Afghanistan they controlled a lot more of its territory then the ISAF forces do today.
One must ask, "Who put the Taliban in power in the 1990's?" Yes, the United States and Saudi Arabia, along with help from the ISI of Pakistan.
One must ask, "Why did the Taliban become the enemy of the United States?" The Taliban became the enemy when they gave the oil pipeline contract to Bridas Oil Company of Argentina and shunned UNOCAL.
So, why is the United States so bound and determined to continue the fight against the Taliban? You have not heard a word about the oil pipeline and yet the construction goes on! The Afghan People have no value to "The Power Elite" and the Iraqi people have no value either.....the OIL PROFITS have been wonderful though.
We Don't Do Body Counts ,,, as required by the Geneva Convention.
Obeying the law must be far beneath god's chosen gangsters.
There are "militants" and there is the U.S. "military" which is just holding a bake sale.
They admit in 9 months they expect the public will have had enough of this bull shit.
They admit the war will be a long one, how long they don't care as long as they can show "progress".
Even the military knows this is Viet Nam all over again.
Kabul, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The NATO-led peacekeeping force ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) mistakenly targeted Afghan police forces in Kandahar province, south of Afghanistan, killing two police officers, police chief in southwestern region Ghulam Ali Wahdat said Saturday.
Another "mission accomplished" perhaps?
"The insurgent lying tactic is now widely understood...", .."so, now we can lie without competition. Of course, our lying tactic is "widely understood", too, but it's different...isn't it? It's for the Empire and we are the sainted military. That changes everything. Our game of pretending "militants" are like an evil gang in their own country and are easily distinguished from the general population is a obvious fiction to allow us to kill civilians and not get called on the carpet for it. We learned something from Vietnam anyway. Let the marketing begin!"
"Newspeak, doublethink, thoughtcrime. The Dark Side has taught you well, young Darth."
"US Stops Giving Militant Death Tolls in Afghanistan."
News flash! "An attack by one of our courageous drone pilots has destroyed a huge Afghan wedding party, causing over a hundred deaths. A second missile, directed to the site an hour and a half later may have killed several hundreds more as they tried to dig out possible survivors. Some of them may have been militants or terrorists." AP, IP, UP, WeP.
A prelude to a massive campaign to 'kill 'em all and let god sort it out', perhaps?
It's not genocide if the us does it. Just like it's not torture if it's done by yanks to their many enemies.
How do you know when a military official is lying? Whenever his lips are moving reading an official announcement...
Poet
I feel like Johnny-One-Note lately, but here goes: There is NO specific military strategy or objective in Afghanistan or anywhere else. The objectives are to enrich military contractors and to contribute to general political instability so countries can be picked over for their wealth.
We don't want Mossadeghs or Allendes who want to empower their populations to exercise some control over and get some benefit from their own national resources. Inconveniently, some countries like Vietnam and Afghanistan are complicated and experienced with takeover attempts and will not fall so easily.
And... another important thing is to keep the American people confused and dependent on the military for employment.
Our dear leaders cannot get over the idea that US military domination of the world is a good thing.
Joe
money money money
Collateral:"accompanying as a secondary fact,similar but subordinate".The words we use to justify killing people;it is almost getting to the point that even writing about it here is getting to be a big chore.The reason I bring up collateral is because they want to hide the fact of killing so many of the people that they were supposed to protect.So now they can go out to where ever and call everyone an insurgent and they then do not have to answer for killing secondary or subordinate peoples that get into the news sometimes.Walls to separate is impractical as in Iraq.Like a poster said before "let God sort them out".I cant imagine a Karma for all this.I'm 73 and cant remember this country not being in a war,shooting or no.That is shitty.Tony
consider also: collateral=descended from a common ancestor.
An Afghan death should only county 0.6 of a death of a US soldier.
These Pashtuns are the children of Alexander and Genghis, may they live long and prosper.
An interesting note originally when the British created the Durand line dividing the Pastuns the British controled part was to revert back to Afghanistan after one hundred years as did Hong Kong to China.
The USA is using hated Northern Alliance Militiamen to police the Pastuns; how will that end support for the Pastun Talibs?
So why in the hell should they count American deaths, if it's only metric. We need to know not only how many militants get killed but also how many Afghan civilians get killed. This is the same crap as in Iraq. It just keeps getting worse.
"Smith . . . stressed US-led military operations were not aimed at killing insurgents."
They do not actually seem to be particular about who they kill.
The real reason they're not doing body counts anymore?
They've run out of fingers and toes.
The death toll of Afghan "militants", and that of Afghan civilians, are not the only death tolls the U.S. military and government hide; they also hide the death toll of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
This is according to the words of a U.S. air infantryman recently enough captured by the Taliban who hold him captive, while treating him evidently very well, though while he, like he says, is afraid of never being able to return home (Idaho), and finding his experience as a captive "unnerving"; but adds a little further into the video recording that the Taliban are treating him well, like a guest, and better, he says, than he's been treated as a guest in the U.S. (where he's from). He doesn't look at all physically harmed, at all, is respectably dressed, not wearing an orange jumper suit, speaks with enough calmness, and this videotape of him and a Taliban spokesman, I guess a spokesman anyway, speaking was filmed July 14th. That Taliban member is sort of like an interviewer, asking the US soldier questions, for what the Taliban want him to speak about, and the questions are actually very good; simple, but very good.
The following article posted July 23rd at Uruknet provides three clips totaling around 22 minutes for the full video recording and I just finished viewing and listening to the first clip.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=56295
Alternatively, the direct links for the three clips are the following, for parts 1, 2 and 3, respectively. The above Uruknet article, however, has a text statement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THmerXtKiqA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSrSJUTEWCs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Att-tlZPcZs
It definitely seems very authentic, as well as honest, with plenty of information we evidently should hear or learn about from US soldiers possessing a lot of this knowledge, first hand.
And this US soldier might be safer to never return to the US after what he says in this video recording. He's not favourable for the US elites' war for "personal gain", rather than for benefiting either country, the US or Afghanistan; he says. That might be just enough to get him into a bit of "hot water" with the US "elites". But he says plenty more that's definitely unfavourable, say, for the US "elites" behind this criminal war. He'd surely be in trouble with them after being released.
I'll download these clips to make sure to have a backup copy of each of them. Perhaps, if not surely, they'll eventually be disappeared from Youtube.
"In fact, if that were the only purpose and metric, you would likely only extend the time it takes to bring about an end to the insurgency."
Unfortunately the USA is still under the imperial system not the metric system.
A CNN recent headline regarding Afghanistan:
"Coalition forces kills 38 Afghan militants"
However with the info the US military wants to provide, the headline would be:
"Coalition forces perform operation against Afghan militants
Result: Such a sterilized reporting of the war (no deaths) that the media won't cover it. Another victory for the US military propaganda machine.
"Indicating the number of insurgents killed has little relevance to impacting the lives of Afghans," Rear Admiral Gregory Smith said in an email to AFP.
Since the lives of Afghans are "impacted" by the deaths of their (civilian)family members and friends, the military ought to report the number of non-insurgent civilians killed.
"Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Sunday the US military and its allies must show progress in Afghanistan by mid-2010 to avoid public perception that the conflict has become unwinnable.
Victory was a "long-term prospect" under any scenario and the United States would not win the war within a year, Gates told the Los Angeles Times."
Above all, let 'public perception that the conflict has become unwinnable' be avoided.
The natural interpretation is that they have not, in fact, killed many people in the Helmand operation. This accords with the tenor of the recent NYT article
..... url: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/world/asia/26marines.html
in which a certain Lance Corporal Hegel is reported as saying "they're not stupid."