98 Civilians Killed in 2009 Nighttime Raids in Afghanistan

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Source: Reuters

NATO has admitted that its forces were responsible for the deaths of five Afghan civilians including three women during a botched night-time raid in eastern Afghanistan in February. Two of the women were pregnant, one a mother of 10, the other had six children.

The alliance initially said troops had found the women already killed, bound and gagged, when they entered the compound in Gardez in Paktia province, but later acknowledged that was untrue. NATO is now looking at allegations by Afghan investigators that U.S. Special Forces involved in the raid tampered with evidence at the scene to cover the blunder.

It was another of Afghanistan’s deadly night raids gone wrong, which have so alienated Afghans, and where the risk of killing civilians is perhaps greater than with air strikes. The New York-based Open Society Institute in a report released in February said while casualties linked to air strikes had fallen as part of the new counter-insurgency strategy to protect the population, there has been no noticeable decrease in the dreaded practice of night raids. Indeed night raids are taking place in previously unaffected areas such as Kunduz in the north where a resurgent Taliban have mounted a strong challenge to German forces based there.

(snip)

According to the UN, at least 98 civilians were killed in these incidents in 2009. In terms of creating enemies, you couldn’t do it better than attacking people in their homes at night, Gaston says. “It’s hard to do worse than breaking into some one’s house at night, taking actions that are viewed as violating the women of the household, and hauling family members to unknown detention sites for weeks to months.”

While attacking homes at night, rather than daytime, may add an element of surprise and reduce the risk to pro-government forces, it dramatically increases the chances of indiscriminate use of force against innocent women, children, and men in the house.

Something similar seems to have happened in the latest botched raid in Gardez. Here’s a London Times account of the raid and the allegations of cover-up first written by the newspaper. Here’s the New York Times story.

The conclusion, broadly is, that you tend to lose more than you gain from these raids, the Open Society report says. Just because Afghan forces are involved in the raid or even sometimes leading the operation, it does not absolve the foreign forces. In the eyes of the Afghans whose homes have been violated, it is the foreign forces who are ultimately responsible, the report said. Secondly, often, these raids are based on flawed intelligence as it happened in Gardez when coalition forces went in believing an insurgent was hiding there. As it turned out, there wasn’t any hostile activity going on; just a large family celebrating the Western equivalent of a baby shower.

more: http://blogs.reuters.com/afghanistan/2010/04/06/strangers-at-the-door-afghanistans-deadly-night-raids/

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