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Afghan War Kills 3 Children a Day: Report
KABUL - Children are the biggest victims of the war in Afghanistan, with more than 1,050 people under 18 years old killed last year alone, according to an Afghan human rights watchdog.
Afghan children watch a US soldier in the mountains of Nuristan Province, December 19. Children are the biggest victims of the war in Afghanistan, with more than 1,050 people under 18 years old killed last year alone, according to an Afghan human rights watchdog. (AFP/File/Tauseef Mustafa) Taliban-linked
militants caused around 64 per cent of all violent child deaths last
year, the Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM) said in a report.
Children were also press-ganged, sexually exploited, deprived of health and education, and illegally detained by all sides in a war that is dragging into its ninth year since the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban regime.
"At least three children were killed in war-related incidents every day in 2009 and many others suffered in diverse but mostly unreported ways," ARM director Ajmal Samadi said.
Children died in suicide attacks and roadside bombings - at the crux of the Taliban's arsenal against U.S., NATO and Afghan troops fighting the increasingly virulent insurgency as it spreads across the impoverished country.
The Taliban "reportedly caused more harm and intentionally abused more children for illegal purposes than pro-government Afghan and international forces," the report said.
"Through a horrible anti-education policy of heinous attacks, intimidation and terror the insurgents deprived hundreds of thousands of children, boys and girls, from education mostly in the insecure south and east of the country."
On the other hand, the Western-backed government has failed to introduce or implement laws to protect children against the abuses of war or "bring alleged criminals and abusers to justice," Samadi said.
ARM called on the Afghan authorities to set up an official child protection body and liaise with the warring parties on child rights.
The report by ARM, an independent rights monitoring group set up in Kabul in 2008, comes after the United Nations said civilian deaths in Afghanistan rose 10.8 per cent in the first 10 months of 2009, most caused by the Taliban.
The United Nations put civilian deaths at 2,038 for that period, up from 1,838 for the same period of 2008, with the vast majority killed by insurgents.
It said 468 deaths were caused by pro-government forces, including NATO and U.S.-led forces, and 166 by "other actors."
ARM released the report as a suspected roadside bomb attack killed four children and wounded more than a dozen in volatile eastern Nangahar province.
Reports that foreign forces killed eight students in Kunar province on December 26 caused widespread outrage, including U.S. flag-burning demonstrations in two cities, though reports of what happened varied widely.
A government investigation found the teenagers were unarmed and killed in cold blood, while Western military sources said the group were armed, opened fire at foreign and Afghan forces, and were killed in self-defence.
Civilian deaths at the hands of foreign forces fuel distrust between the Afghan population, the government and U.S. and NATO troops, even though most are caused by insurgent tactics such as homemade bombs.
The Taliban regularly exploit deaths caused by foreign and Afghan forces, and Western military intelligence officials say the militants have gained the upper hand in a sophisticated propaganda war.
Militant leaders, based largely in Pakistan, rarely claim responsibility for operations that kill large numbers of civilians but routinely exaggerate losses among foreign forces.
The United States and NATO are boosting their troop numbers in Afghanistan to 150,000 over the course of 2010, as part of a new strategy determined to clear and secure insurgent strongholds.
U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan, has ordered civilian casualties be kept to a minimum, yet as more troops pour in, a higher death rate is inevitable, experts say.
58 Comments so far
Show AllBoth Eleanor Smeal and Howard Dean said last summer that we needed to fight the Taliban on BEHALF of women and children. What gives here? Eleanor? Howard? Thoughts?
I don't give a Smeal!
It is Bush's now Obomber's "Bomb them out of their Burqa's" policy
So many so-called progressives like Howard Dean, have to varnish their heck-yeah-I-like-war-too credentials, in keeping with being politically correct enough for their own political money making futures. You know, the mighty Howard Dean that rolled over like a wounded puppy when Obama's "progressives" started pushing back against his Kill the Bill surge. The entire Democratic Party, save Dennis Kucinich are sell outs to the Sickness Industrial Complex, the Terrorism Security Industrial Complex, the Military Industrial Complex, the Media Industrial Complex. It's just so complex to take a principled stand these days for "progressives". (not all progressives, but you get the point right?)
Heard the same thing early on in the war, used by the Bush propaganda team, lots of progressives parroted it 'cause it made it easy for them to just go on and enjoy their affluent lives and not face the insanity of what the elites are doing with this country and to other countries and etc.
This article believes that the "Western-backed government has failed to introduce or implement laws to protect children against the abuses of war..." The best way that the Karzai government can protect its children is by demanding that the United States and NATO withdraw its forces from its country as quickly and as rapidly as possible. Otherwise more innocent children will continue to be needlessly slaughtered while a war crimes tribunal cries out for Karzai and Obama to be brought to the dock in order to answer charges that they have committed crimes against humanity.
"Small boys are delirious with pride and joy as they fancy themselves thrusting swords into soft flesh and burning and laying waste such homes as they themselves inhabit."-Ernest Crosby [1856-1907], American reformer and author
Karzai and the Taliban have repeatedly requested a Peace Treaty Conference
Obomber refuses to meet for Peace.
Obomber refused a Chavez study committee on Columbian disputes.
Obomber wants war and children are "bug splats" in USA military terms.
The truth of the matter is that we don't know how many guns are pointed at Obama's head. It's not hard to imagine someone saying to him something like: "Gee, we'd sure hate for you to end up like JFK". Bush could have had some guns held at his head too. JFK's exit from the white house showed us what happens to those who don't cooperate with the dogs of war.
It seems that the pentagon has more power than the white house.
2010 is going to be an extraordinary year - giving progressives good cause to cheer for a change. Keep your eyes open. Before too much longer, we the people will hold the reins of power.
:-)
"Man must change or die.
There is no other course."
Maitreya, the World Teacher
http://www.share-international.org
Roho 12:29 --------- For 3,000 years every head of state has had to contend with assassination, coup or rebellion, it is part of the job description.
The difference some heads of state are wimpy figureheads and some are leaders.
Obombers life and his family are not worth one iota more than an Afghan families wellbeing.
What pray tell, points to progress in 2010? If you got a direct line to the goddess please make it a conference call, thanks.
I occasionally tap into Her psi-network broadcasts, and Her message is, "Wake up people of earth and regain your sanity, you are in big trouble."
I hear she even provided inspiration to James Cameron when he was creating Avatar.
If this scenario is true, Obama was well aware of it before he even entertained a thought of running for president. More likely he agreed to cooperate from the beginning. Otherwise he wouldn't be president today.
Since Unka 'Bomb'll still be there then, send his li'l bombos to fight in Iraqiranistan as soon as they're of majority age, "just like Bush's"!
I most noticed that the Taliban are targeting education. Probably (though this is unmentioned in the article) especially targeting girls getting ANY education.
Three children a day. Consider that Congress as you vote for appropriation for this increased occupation. You will be killing even more than three kids a day with the surge. Their blood is on your hands. Try washing that off...
Gary
Well, since Bush and Cheney and their criminal cabal have received impunity for all their war crimes and crimes against humanity there has been no deterrent for Obama and his gang to forgo the myriad crimes that are being committed every day of their tenure! Justice was banished during the Bush debacle and injustice continues on in the U.S. What a great shame the US is and I can only pray for Justice to be restored and the for the war criminals to be brought to justice!
Modern warfare kills mostly civilian non-combatants. Close to 90% of modern war casualties are civilians.
That is why war is terrorism with a bigger budget.
"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it." - Noam Chomsky
The US heavily armed the illiterate Mujahadeen to bleed the Soviets until they got out of Afghanistan, then they walked away. Mission Accomplished.
Later, the thuggish Muslims the CIA used to kill Soviets went on to rule the country with a 14th century Iron Fist. These are now the Taliban, who want the next wave of foreign invaders out of their land.
Consequences are a bitch.
BTW, here is what Afghan children look like:
http://www.veteranshour.com/88888888888090med.jpg
http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/images/icons/portfolio/borges/15.jpg
http://www.afghan-web.com/gallery/maria/cimg5885_small.jpg
Actually USA military involvement began before any Soviet intervention.
USA involvement was designed to draw the Soviets into a quagmire, just as Laden openly states that is also his strategy.
USA armed the Landlords and Fundamentalists that were rebelling against the new socialist Afghan government that was inplementing Womens Civil Rights and Agrarian reform.
Thats correct the USA destroyed the Afghan government that was implementing Womens CIVIL Rights.
Then the Soviets invaded and replaced the reformist head of state with their own puppet.
A very important point that rarely gets mentioned.
From Wikipedia: >>In 1978 the United States began training insurgents in,and directing propaganda broadcasts into Afghanistan from Pakistan. Then, in early 1979, U.S. foreign service officers began meeting insurgent leaders to determine their needs. According to the then US Secretary of State Zbigniew Brzezinski, CIA aid to the insurgents within Afghanistan was approved in July 1979, six months before the Soviet Invasion. According to Brzezinski, aid to the insurgents was begun under the Carter administration, with the intention of provoking Soviet intervention and was significantly boosted under the Reagan administration, which was committed to actively rolling back Soviet influence in the Third World. The Mujahideen belonged to various different factions, but all shared a similarly conservative Islamic ideology, to varying degrees.<<
See also Afghanistan Online: http://www.afghan-web.com/
Gary
This article breaks my heart. I love children. I love all children. What is really sad to me is that the children are suffering from all sides of this conflict. They suffer at American hands because we have troops over there. They suffer from their own government who fails to protect them and they suffer at the hands of the taliban.
As a Catholic I believe in God. I believe that someday we all are going to be judged by our actions that we did while on the earth. I remember the readings during mass. Jesus loves children. He even said that we must become like little children. I believe that we as a nation will be judged by how we treat the children of the world. If we as a nation by our actions cause the suffering and death of children than we will be judged for the lack of love, care, and protection that were given the children. I know I am not explaining this very well. I am just a woman who tries to live my Catholic faith the best I can. We all fail and make mistakes and I believe that we can correct our past mistakes and move foward in life.
Instead of increasing a war that is causing such suffering and deaths of so many children; why can’t we change our policy and bring real aide and help to the people there? Why can’t we follow in the example of Mother Theresa who reached out and help the poorest of the poor and sick in India? Why can’t we instead of killing the children build hospitals to help the children? Instead of allowing the children there to be denied an education by the taliban; we give the people who live there and who want to fight their own fight against taliban the tools they need to win?
I just think that there is a better way to help the children and the people who live there than what our policy continues to be.
You are quite right, we should be building schools, except the Taliban blow them up and kill the children. Security of some kind (preferably from a stable and strong central government) of security is needed before humanitarian efforts can take place. Hard to build a new water system with IEDs blowing up the trucks bringing in supplies.
So security, alas, must come first in many regions. Then the genuine "nation-building" can take place.
And the children can walks to school and drink clean water instead of death coming from the sky.
Gary
If the projects were built by honest brokers the Resistance would not destroy them.
The Taliban has no problem with schools for boys, and at times allows schools for girls.
A lack of civil rights is not a justification for bombing, invasion and occupation.
Or was it justified to bomb the USA when Blacks lacked civil rights?
"I just think that there is a better way to help the children and the people who live there than what our policy continues to be."
--------------
And there is! Charity starts at home. Since you're a devout Catholic, your church and your pope (the wealthiest religious institution in the world) could do wonders for the Catholic children of Gaza, for example. But do they? Would they? Now, there's a case for a hundred helping hands doing more than a thousand praying lips!
Sally Struthers should do a commercial..."For only 3 children a day, you can help grease the skids of the jugernaut that is our gas pipleline, and ensure it gets the attention it needs...only you can help!"
I know what youre trying to say, but please try saying it another way because Sally was a great actress and great human being.
It seems that the biggest, darkest & vilest bit of humanity is concentrated in the pentagon. We're in desperate need of some politicians (like Dennis Kucinich) who can see that we need to shut the military industrial complex down. It is the biggest threat to the survival of mankind.
With all the nuclear weapons in the world, how much longer will the patience of our brothers overseas last? How much longer til somebody sets off a nuclear bomb in the US, and then the monsters in the pentagon retaliate, and are retaliated against, etc etc until all life on Earth is destroyed?
:-/
"Man must change or die.
There is no other course."
Maitreya, the World Teacher
http://www.share-international.org
SOMETHING like real evidence for these outrageous charges please. Not that I doubt the possibilities of you being right. I just would like some proof.
And please something better than the 9-11 "truthers" offer as "evidence."
Gary
PS try using capitals and paragraphs. Makes for easier reading and greater credibilty. You aren't texting messages on your iphone now.
I'm curious as to what Truther-evidence you allude to, that you have issues with. I'm here to help you!
mcchrystal again! the butcher of baghdad, the deceiver of the tillman family, and the enemy of red cross access to his torture camps, is at it again! this time, he's unleashed his state- sponsored terrorism on the second poorest country in the world, namely afghanistan. the taliban didn't do 9/11, but offered to turn usama over to an international court if bush and his henchmen would just make a probable casuse showing of usama's involvement in that bloody deed. bush wouldn't do it, and usama slipped out of afghanistan for the hills of pakistan, where he roams today. i guess if there had been a trial, there would have been no war. just like in iraq, if bush had just let the international inspections continue, there would have been no war, because the inspectors would have found no w.m.d.s. see how circumventing the international framework has mired this nation into two wars that together will eventually cost us 2 trillion dollars? i am being conservative here, as it will probably cost much more. but, i think that our dictator consciously chose war over peace because of reasons of economics and power. we are just a hammer looking for the next nail to smite, as we have nothing to offer but our killing machine. with our reeking of debt and social disorganization, the only thing that the u.s. can export to the world is force, on which we've surely cornered the market.
johnny u, what's your aversion to capitals and paragraphs? never the less your write:
"see how circumventing the international framework has mired this nation into two wars that together will eventually cost us 2 trillion dollars? i am being conservative here, as it will probably cost much more. but, i think that our dictator consciously chose war over peace because of reasons of economics and power. we are just a hammer looking for the next nail to smite, as we have nothing to offer but our killing machine."
I can only agree and add that the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars to private contractors and government agencies, specialized not only in security but in the arts of manipulation of information, deceit, brainwashing, assassination, electronic surveillance etc. depends on the relatively amazing success of a mission by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab an apparently mentally challenged Nigerian student son of a rich Nigerian banker who was studying in London and became suddenly radicalized and was used to commit a “terrorist act”.
Conveniently this young man, according to the prevailing scenario given by authorities, and repeated ad-in-finitum by the main stream media, met and was “corrupted” by or came under the influence of, the same “extremist” radical Muslim cleric Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, as the Ft. Hood gunman Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan the Army psychiatrist who is accused of randomly killing 13 in Texas. This cleric apparently has such unmistakable connections to past terrorist plots that his e-mail exchanges with the American medical officer should have triggered an all-out investigation, yet it was immediately confirmed by the Yemeni authorities that he met in Shabwa, Yemen, with the Christmas bomber Abdulmutallab. (Everything fits, you see) It seems that reading or listening to this cleric’s speech alone is clear evidence in US courts of terrorist links…. Has anyone asked the question after the last suicide bombing of CIA in Afghanistan, how many double or triple agents does the CIA have? Do these guys know which side they are on, on which days of the week????
Now, lets be serious for a moment; a global organization that can use any tricks, not least mind altering drugs, hypnosis and torture to manipulate people and cause assassinations; who commonly use acts of terrorism to be framed as the act of some nebulous extremist groups headed by radical religious fanatics….. Conveniently the American military, political and foreign policy reaction (to mess about in another country’s, namely Yemen’s sovereignty), as well as the media spin given to these “attacks” fit perfectly with the geo-political scenario of an expanded War on Terror, a term now out of favour but really still effective in application.
These events, just like 9-11 or the Cole incident etc. etc., are put down to incompetence and bad coordination of the intelligence agencies, yet again. The only thing that is more unbelievable than this whole bad “TV reality” type story and all the spin is the unfathomable depths of gullibility of people who want to believe that the tentacles of Al Qaida are at the root of all evil and that the good guys, those humble and fallible CIA (the originators of Al Qaida) and the branches of HLS are all doing their very best to protect Americans and the world from the scourge of “terrorism”, but it is just the mountain of data they have to process is so big….. Perhaps they need a bigger buget????
How desperate is the USA and its pathetic administration and president to make up these cheap TV scenarios straight out of Hollywood and expect us to swallow them whole to justify wholesale murder and imperial colonialism around the world.
As the expression goes in Glasgow when someone tries to sell you an unbelievable story line; “Pull the other one Jimmy, it’s got bells on.” How many times will people fall for the same old trick before they wake up?
Al Qaida is the CIA and you are being lied to. You were lied to yesterday, about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, about North Korea, about the cold war, about Vietnam, about Cuba, about Chile, about Nicaragua, about Panama, what makes you believe they are telling you the truth today?
Jeevee
GREED HAS COST THIS COUNTRY PSYCHOPATHIC INSANITY!!!
HEAR! HEAR!
"Other actors" in the "theatre," like this is a play.
"U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan, has ordered civilian casualties be kept to a minimum, yet as more troops pour in, a higher death rate is inevitable, experts say."
Isn't it supposed to be the other way around, when more troops are called for to "keep the peace," so shouldn't they be claiming there will be a lower death rate?
Where are the pro-lifers when they are needed?
They support postpartum abortion.
1,050 Afghan people under the age of 18 killed last year and thousands of children killed in Iraq, but nor a peep from the churchinsanity, bible thumpers! They go insane over the unborn but could care less about the born. That has to be the epitome of hypocrisy!
Seems like you don't get it PR. If 'we' good Christians don't proliferate, who's gonna kill the brown heathens then? We have to multiply so they can die like flies. It's the philosophy of the pro-lifers for war crowd.
Obama does not make war on children.
Please.
Sorry if that was oblique.
I assumed everyone was familiar with Adolf Hitler's famous quote:
"I do not make war on children"
Oh, I think we got what you meant, Sanctuary. The backlash was aimed at Jim Glover. No doubt he's running low (or high) on meds. Unless he was being sarcastic, in which case, oops!
Well, Now I do... that is a hoot.
never mind
That is almost correct.
Every bomb drooped, tank cannon shot, drone and missle sent has a new ARPA chip that disables the weapons if children are present at or near the targeted kill zone.
So Obama does not make war on children, he makes war on whatever some paid informant still trusted by military says is an enemy target.
But children are safe because of the ARPA chips
Oh, wow! How very decent and considerate of Obomber! Now I understand why he won a Nobel Peace Price.
BTW, are they allowing the use of computers at mental institutions now?
As long as you keep us entertained, I understand you may continue.
In Sacramento motorist run over and killed an average of five people per month last year. I wonder when they will make being a pedestrian illegal. There are even sighs that warn people that even though there are laws against it you might get run over by crossing a street. This is a violent society, it was created in violence and not much has changed. Aint it awfull.
If you attend any kind of protest against Israhell and in favor of Palestine, being a pedestrian earns you a free trip to jail.
True story, I'm not making that up.
I believe that can and does happen as if the very movement of walking is considered a form of disobedience. Still, there are not enough jails to house everyone that walks with a purpose.
Yes, and to limit even the children's cost of the war to "3 children a day" would be a very soft way of looking at it .
When you consider all the birth defects of children, including American Soldier's children born just from the Depleted Uranium weapons this 3 is a small number. Add all the children who die from the lack of food water and health care, I think the number would be hundreds every day....
The Obama war plan is to make this look like a softer war now.
Just a guess, but how far off am I?