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Escalated Afghan War Brings Escalated Civilian Death
Afghan Civilian Casualties Up 10%: UN
KABUL — Civilian deaths in Afghanistan rose more than 10 percent in the first 10 months of 2009, UN figures showed Tuesday, amid anger over the alleged killing of children in a Western military operation.
The war blighting Afghanistan is now into the ninth year and has escalated over the course of 2009. (AFP/Getty image) Figures
released to AFP by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) put
civilian deaths in the Afghan war at 2,038 for the first 10 months of
2009, up from 1,838 for the same period of 2008 -- an increase of 10.8
percent.
The figures were released a day after President Hamid Karzai launched an investigation into reports that 10 people, most of them school children, were killed in a raid by foreign troops near the Pakistan border.
The UN calculations show the vast majority, or 1,404 civilians, were killed by insurgents fighting for the overthrow of Karzai's government and to eject Western troops.
UNAMA said 468 deaths were caused by pro-government forces, including NATO and US-led forces, and 166 by "other actors".
Civilian deaths at the hands of foreign forces fuel distrust between the Afghan population, the government and US and NATO troops, even though most of the deaths are caused by insurgent tactics such as homemade bombs.
In 2008, a total of 2,118 civilians were killed in the crossfire, the highest such toll since the 2001 US-led invasion removed the Taliban from power and sparked a fierce insurgency by remnants of the regime.
The war blighting Afghanistan is now into a ninth year and has escalated through 2009 as more international troops have been injected into the theatre, leading to more battles with Taliban-led militants.
More than 110,000 foreign troops are battling the insurgency, under US and NATO command, with that figure set to rise to around 150,000 by late 2010 with the arrival of another 30,000 US and 6,800 NATO troops.
The Taliban are increasingly relying on homemade bombs, which exact a horrific toll on civilians and military alike, with foreign troop deaths at a record 507 this year.
Militant leaders rarely claim responsibility for incidents that kill large numbers of civilians, but frequently fan anger by using the civilian casualties as propaganda to sway local opinion against the foreign military presence.
US General Stanley McChrystal, who commands the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has made it a central tenet of his new strategy that civilian casualties should be minimised.
On Saturday in eastern Kunar province, a raid by Western forces is reported to have killed 10 civilians, eight of them school children, Afghan officials said, prompting an outcry from Karzai.
The circumstances surrounding the incident remained unclear with NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) saying they had no knowledge of civilian deaths in Kunar, but Karzai vowed an investigation.
"The president was seriously saddened and angry yesterday over the Kunar province incident," said Karzai's spokesman Waheed Omar.
"More efforts must be made to prevent such incidents," he told reporters, adding that Karzai would raise the sensitive issue at a summit on his country in London next month.
"One of the ways that we think can help prevent civilian casualties is that Afghan security forces should be positioned on the frontlines," he said.
Training Afghanistan's fledgling security forces is a key plank of US President Barack Obama's strategy for drawing down troop numbers, although the police and army suffer from lack of recruits and funding.
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31 Comments so far
Show All"although the police and army suffer from lack of recruits and funding."
and are corrupt.
Everything has been said about the war fiascos. We're just as stuck with this mess as are the Afghans.
We are lucky not to "just as stuck with this mess" otherwise we would be looking at the other end of a gun or the past tense of a bomb.
Indeed. It's silly, say, to claim that "we are just as stuck in this mess as Afghans are", for the reason you state; although also more. We're fortunate to not be the people being fired at with guns, and we're even more fortunate due to not having massive bombs dropped on us and our neighbourhoods, WMDs. We're fortunate for not having DU-treated armaments exploding all around us; more WMDs. Etcetera.
The war is also against us, but we have the non-physically injurious and environmentally destructive, and poisoning, end of it.
How many persons have been killed in the USA as casualties of the strikes in these western wars on Iraq and Afghanistan? ZERO.
We can hardly say them same for Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, and others, against whom the western military machine has been striking for years.
"US General Stanley McChrystal, who commands the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has made it a central tenet of his new strategy that civilian casualties should be minimised."
Well, that's big of him.
Yes General McChrystal, please kill as few innocent children as possible!
Leaving inferred that it's okay if he continues to kill innocent adults?
I disagree. And not only must the U.S. and its allies in all of the war zones cease to kill any innocent people, regardless of ages, the U.S. and its allies must stop their wars and withdraw.
All u.s. troops should be brought home from all foreign lands.
As long as the u.s. meddles with and occupies other nations war will never cease. This includes "contractors", spies, and all agents of discord.
If we didn't threaten them they wouldn't threaten us.
Definitely, and I think another way of referring to "agents of discord" is "agents provocateurs". Maybe there's a slight difference in meaning, but they do provoke; sowing seeds of war and lesser, while nevertheless serious conflicts that bring or cause a lot of pain and misery, say, as well as justifying people who may want to seek revenge against the USA and its allies. And like Mike Prysner of March Foward! says, the USA's enemies are not foreign; they're domestic. Iow, we are our own worst enemies, which is, in part anyway, what your post says.
The only clear answer to this probllem is to remove our forces from the country.
When you continue a mistake, you simply compound a mistake.
Calling for a 'withdrawal' from Afghanistan does not get to the root of the problem.
That is why this idea has failed continually for 8 years.
The law, the mechanism that drives this insane and DAFT war must be dealt with.
Otherwise, you're spinning your wheels in the sand.
America, the land where they review football plays but not declarations of war.
Public Law 107-40. Read it and weep.
Actually the President can commit forces anytime he deems a siginificant threat to the US to exist. He has the Marines at his disposal.
The War Powers act can certainly be repealed or negated, why don't we do just that? A change of Congress can't hurt.
NO laws, except the one of the "jungle", drive these wars. Corporatism and delusional desire for expanding U.S. empire, power, do; and these aren't based on laws, they're against laws.
The UNSC refused to authorize recourse to war and the U.S. Constitution makes this [supreme law of the land] in and for the USA. After all, no state attacked the USA, but it's a state that the USA and NATO attacked.
The Taliban, contrary to the Bush Jr-Cheney administration lies, offered to hand over Osama bin Ladin twice before the U.S.-NATO launch of war strikes on Oct. 7, 2001, and the Bush Jr-Cheney team rejected (silently) these offers, or I believe they did this secretly, anyway. Maybe they did inform us right away when the Taliban made each of these offers, with the sole condition being that for them to hand over OBL, the Bush-Cheney team needed to provide satisfactory preliminary evidence implicating Osama bin Ladin as leader or a leader of the 9-11 attacks. Of course the Bush-Cheney team couldn't provide such evidence, any at all, or if they could have, then they refused to provide it and have evidently refused to use it so that the U.S. DoJ or Supreme Court would officially or formally charge OBL for the 9-11 attacks, which he remains uncharged for.
No law drives this. It's state gangsterism and terrorism, and the U.S. has no law making the U.S. government a gangster or criminal organisation. Instead, the U.S. has laws prohibiting such conduct and the Constitution (and Bill of Rights) has been either shelved or flushed down sewers, or used for kindling for the President's or VP's fireplace.
Congress hasn't declared war on Afghanistan, but it's what's been going on for over eight years now. Congress authorised recourse to war, but the Taliban had had nothing to do with the 9-11 attacks and offered to hand over OBL on two occasions, which was the demand that Bush made or stated, but refused their offer when they complied on just, totally legitimate grounds. Congress authorised, without evidence, recourse to war or to use of the military to track down and capture the people guilty for or in the 9-11 attacks, certainly Osama bin Ladin and his top aides; but this authorisation became rather ended when the Taliban offered to hand over OBL on entirely legitimate grounds even if the Congress was not informed of the two offers made by the Taliban.
NO laws drive these wars. Rogue actions of government and military officials caused and have maintained these wars, but no laws drove the wars or any of these rogue people, who have only acted against every applicable or relevant law.
We have been able to know since days following 9-11 that the war on Afghanistan was NOT and would never be justifiable. A population wanting revenge does not justify war.
One of the simple ways of knowing that it's always been criminal is to refer to the two related UNSC resolutions, neither of which approves of recourse to war. The resolutions condemn terrorism, but only authorize police-like investigations to determine who the guilty persons were and to then arrest them, at worst kill them, if they put up violent resistance.
See resolutions 1368 (SC Res. of Sep. 12, 2001) and 1373 (SC Res. of Sep. 28, 2001).
http://www.un.org/docs/scres/2001/sc2001.htm
I learned of these resolutions and links, but which didn't work for me, from the following important article, below. With some modifications of the URL's linked in the following article, I was able to find the above SC 2001 Resolutions page, for which the above link or url does work. Clicking on each of the SC resolution links in the above page opens another browser tab or window and then a PDF is automatically downloaded, if you choose to save or view it. The SC resolution links show .html files, but the links only cause PDF downloads.
"September 11, 2001: America and NATO Declare War on Afghanistan
NATO's Doctrine of Collective Security"
by Michel Chossudovsky, Dec 21, 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16573
You'll surely appreciate reading the whole of this article by professor Chossudovsky. It is very important. He explains well enough what NATO and the U.S. actually and gangsterishly did following 9-11 and preceding Oct. 7, 2001. It's the first time that I've read or heard what this article by him says and he's one to know what he's talking about on matters like this; or at least I've never seen or heard anything nearing the level of detail that he provides, anyway. And it's factual history; not speculation.
This above article illustrates yet again that NO laws ever have driven the war on Afghanistan; or any of the GW[of]T wars. This state lawlessness, outlaw-ness, gangsterism, rogue'ry (or -ness or 'ism), ... and corporatism is the driver of the criminal wars and the bogus related national or police state laws established in the USA as well as in, affecting anyway, some of the countries of its war-ally governments; like the Patriot Act, "You're either with us, or you're an enemy combatant (or on their side), so to the terrosist watch list your name gets addded, and maybe to prisons you get confined, without habeas corpus, etcetera, as we please and dictate" (paraphrased), f.e.
And the above applies with mechanism, wherein you wrote, "The law, the mechanism that drives this insane and DAFT war must be dealt with", I disagree about "mechanism". Only people are the drivers.
Like with the Sith Lord in Star Wars, no law drove him; his greed and delusional desire for power, dominion, did.
And we obviously aren't short on or lacking "Sith Lords" and "Darth Vaders" in our world, today. Not in the West, anyway. CTV (Canada) has been airing the Star Wars series, starting with the more newly produced episodes I, II and III, airing IV, which is the original 1977 "Star Wars", tonight, and the first three, which basically show a senator clearly being or becoming the Sith Lord and how Anakin or Anarkin (spelling?) Skywalker becomes Darth Vader, remind me of our political leaders and their behind-the-scenes rulers, or whatever you want to call them. In a sense, it's difficult to consider them rulers, because their instrumental politician "friends" are necessary and do have the human ability to refuse; just that they refuse to refuse, or maybe like Darth Vader, they are first and unwittingly suckered into doing the bidding of the corporate "Sith" lords, and then, as they become ever more "Darth Vaders", while nevertheless retaining some awareness of the distinction, between the dark and good, they can't bring themselves to give up serving (and profiting or "benefiting" from) the dark.
In the end, the dark side loses, but "man" are there ever a LOT of casaulties along the way.
I hadn't seen episodes I, II and III before this weekend, but the senator who is the "Sith" Lord was suspect as of either episode I or II. We see his political "charm", smiles, playing "mister nice guy", how he tries to insert himself where and when he could be absent without it being a problem; he just has this need, one subtly acted, to be busying himself with telling the queen what should she do and not, etcetera. This is suspect conduct; it too likely is just an act, covering up malicious intentions.
In the U.S., we have elected politicians, and the unelected ones, in the officer corps of the military, judiciary, etcetera. Not all military, judiciary, ... officials play politics, but when it comes to the military, it seems that the ones who eventually speak out in honest and important terms only do so after retiring; instead of listening to the words of wise and important "whistleblowers", aka "lamp lighters". If it wasn't for their damn pensions, etcetera, then they would speak out sooner, I hope, but either way, regardless of their reasons for delaying, they make themselves (silently) complicit until they do speak out. It's better late than never, but late clearly often is a "sorry matter".
Another aspect that stood out with episodes I, II and III is the fact that the "Sith" Lord senator pretended to care about real democracy, peace, ..., wanting to establish a cosmological empire of these qualities, when it's clear that he can only be ENEMY of these sociopolitical attributes. This of course also reminds of the corporatist, fascist, ... regime that we live under today and of which the "Sith" lords and sub-lords only want to work on expanding.
When first beginning to view Star Wars, the series, we might not expect such reminders, but the definitely come for me.
.
..."In reality, the chief rationale for pouring more troops into Afghanistan derives from a determination to restore the credibility of American arms, badly tarnished in Iraq. Thanks to Petraeus' rediscovery of counterinsurgency doctrine, road-tested in Surge I, U.S. forces ostensibly won a belated but significant triumph. Surge II could show that Iraq was no fluke"
....Andrew J. Bacevitch
This was also one of the major reasons for the Israeli massacre of Gaza...
Since the surge "success" involved bribery and no application of new weapons except possibly newly designed EID Sweeping vehicles I would say it was not an arms showcase.
The surge in Afghanistan is in response to the increasing number of Afghan freedom fighters violently resisting occupation.
Gaza was very much a weapons showcase, among other atrocities, showcasing new exotic ways to slaughter civilians.
White Phospherous, (not brand new, and also used in Fallujah, but not showcased)
Molten metal cluster pellets (what's the acronym?)
glenn ford
Willie Pete is certainly not new, but is insidious and should be outlawed. Period!
"Molten metal cluster pellets (what's the acronym?)"
HYLYFMUTLT is the correct acronym. Have You Lost Your Fucking Mind Using Things Like This?
No different than cluster bombs in the end, except more immediate.
I remembered its DIME, the high mass exotic molten metal that cauterizes limbs as it removes them or just kills you if it hits your torso.
A military tactic used widely in Vietnam, 22 cal. sized bullets so enemy is wounded and becomes a long term care burden to opposition,
All weapons of war should be outlawed.
I wouldn't waste time with the text you quoted from AFP, but the reason for the troop surge is not about an arms or weapons showcase. The surge is to try to reinforce U.S. and ally power on the ground there and for the same reason that the war was commanded to begin with; global dominance, economically, most certainly including for or over natural resources that are profitable, but also to contain or try to contain Russia and China, so to be dominant over these two military and economic powers.
If the surge was for a weapons showcase, then I'd be expecting this not from weapons used by ground forces, but from air power or aerial weapons, f.e. However, even this would still be done, if it was done, to make the MIC "elites" richer, which in turn also means enriching the financial industry, and the above reasons about global dominance, which can be gained, as Dr Peter Dale Scott well explained, through only making the keeping the region very unstable.
Evidently, the AFP writers either don't realise what the war is really about, or they, and AFP, wittingly write to deceive readers, when saying bs like you quoted from the article. AFP is not a reliable source of information and views, if it doesn't publish views anyway, and it does sometimes (of often?) lie or distort things or realities.
But I really wouldn't waste my time commenting on this. Hmmm; just did that. Oops.
It's great how UN reports get interpreted & twisted for political advantage. In the Toronto Star (a liberal rag) there is an article about how many fewer casualties have been caused by the Coalition forces!!(And of course more casulties caused by the Taliban/terrorists)Cheers anyone! Shan't we toast the New Year a liddle wee early!?
The article's from AFP, NOT the Toronto Star. But I otherwise agree. I do not believe that the Taliban are always, if ever, guilty of killing more Afghan civilians than US and NATO forces are; as is OFTEN reported against the Taliban. Taliban members or groups being where there are civilians and the US and/or NATO then using this as an excuse for bombing or attacking in such areas, killing many civilians in the process, while treating them as expendable, disposable "colateral damage" outcomes that are "just part of (the business of conducting) war", is a far cry from the Taliban being guilty of or for these civilian deaths. Nope, it's then the US and/or NATO, whichever of the two directly caused the deaths of these civilians and destruction of their homes, etcetera, that are guilty; not the Taliban.
Whenever agency or msm news reporters write about the Taliban supposedly killing many more Afghan civilians than the US and NATO do or have, all this does is "help" to drive continued support for the war among human dumb animals of the West's populations; in the USA anyway. And it's valid to believe this about this AFP article, for it is certainly suspect.
The Taliban strategically want to drive support for themselves among Afghans; instead of wanting to do the opposite. And they'd surely be careful to avoid harming Afghan civilians; I believe. It would not make sense for them to act any other way.
Certainly more civilian deaths, the woman and children can't shoot back. Easy 'kills' they are.
To the MIC, yes, but also to private contracting firms, including the mercenary ones, for, and if I recall the numbers correctly, even more contractors are being sent than U.S. military troops, who are supposed to be around 30,000.
Perhaps the mercenary firms are treated by most people as part of the MIC, which I normally think of as the manufacturers of weapons and related systems, tech. But reconstruction and other services contractors? I wouldn't think of them as forming part of the MIC even if they profit from war. Big Oil and Gas profit from war, but aren't part of the MIC. Banksters profit from wars, but aren't part of the MIC. Etcetera.
If it costs $1mn per year per U.S. soldier in any of these wars, and contractors make MUCH more than troops do, and we add the profit margins of their employers, then WHOAH. It's BIG MONEY, COST.
"2009: INCREASED TROOPS BROUGHT MORE AFGHAN CIVILIAN DEATHS"
Does anyone still imagine that this is not the intent?
The intent? I don't know. It might mean needing to pay whatever Afghan government there'll be once (and if) the pipelines become operational less money, maybe, but your question is about a very speculative "theory".
We do know, however, that they don't care about killing, that is, murdering civilians.
The intent is profit/power.
It's that WAR IS TERRORISM, stupid!
"The UN calculations show the vast majority, or 1,404 civilians, were killed by insurgents fighting for the overthrow of Karzai's government and to eject Western troops."
"Training Afghanistan's fledgling security forces is a key plank of US President Barack Obama's strategy for drawing down troop numbers, although the police and army suffer from lack of recruits..."
----------------------------------------
If China invaded and occupied the United States, I bet they would also have trouble finding collaborators to join the "security forces". And when traitors looking to go along to get along sign up for the new police or army, I bet that would lead to more "civilians killed by insurgents".
I wonder if they would choose some ex-Walmart executive that was fluent in Chinese to be their puppet "President" ? And assign him a few hundred Chinese Special Forces bodyguards to keep him alive in the new USA Capitol of Bentonville, Arkansas ?
Yup, the Nazi's had plenty of trouble with those murderous "insurgents" in Vichy France, as well. Why can't people just obey their new Rulers and be peaceful, law abiding citizens in their new, conquered country ?
war is peace
Has anyone considered the possibility that the CIA, Blackwater, et al are responsible for many of those bombings, especially the Mosgues? Naw, we wouldn't do anything like that, would we?