KABUL — The number of US drone strikes in Afghanistan rose sharply last year compared with 2011, the United Nations said Tuesday. The increase was a sign that unmanned aircraft are taking a greater role as Americans try to streamline the fight against insurgents while preparing to withdraw combat forces in less than two years.
Drones have become a major source of contention between the United States and countries like Pakistan, where covert strikes on militant leaders have drawn condemnation and allegations of sovereignty infringements as family members and other bystanders are killed.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Pakistan Drone Strike a Diversion
Also see: Timely Truck Bomb
They have not been a prominent issue in Afghanistan, however. While drone attacks have occurred, they have largely been in support of ground troops during operations and have not been singled out by President Hamid Karzai’s administration in its campaign against international airstrikes.
The steep rise in the number of weapons fired from unmanned aerial aircraft — the formal term for drones — comes as US forces become more dependent on such attacks to fight Al Qaeda and other insurgents as combat missions are due to end by the end of 2014.
The UN mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said 506 weapons were released by drones in 2012, compared with 294 the previous year. Five missions resulted in casualties with 16 civilians killed and three hurt, up from just one incident in 2011.
That seems ridiculously low to me.
Related:
"10 civilians, including five women and four children, died in a NATO airstrike Tuesday night.... a NATO airstrike on Oct. 5 in Nangarhar province, near an airport used by US-led international military coalition forces, that the government said killed five civilians."
Related: Ex-Afghan soldier blamed in US death killed in airstrike
Meanwhile four died in a plane crash that marked the Taliban's spring offensive (funded with tens of millions in CIA "ghost money?") that is well underway. The CIA’s money goes to paying off warlords and politicians, many of whom have ties to the drug trade and, in some cases, the Taliban?
Is that taxpayer money well spent, Americans? Hell of a good way to keep a war going, huh?
Georgette Gagnon, the head of human rights for UNAMA, said it was the first year the UN had tried to document civilian casualties from drones....
Drones are highly effective and most nations have given Washington at least tacit agreement to carry out the attacks.
Peter Singer of the Washington-based Brookings Institution noted that the drone program in Afghanistan is run by the Pentagon, and therefore is more transparent than the CIA drone counterterrorism program in Pakistan.
Singer, who has written extensively about drones, said the number of operations in Afghanistan is increasing, but most are performed in support of troops on the ground.
“This is just another sign of how drones are becoming the new normal,” he said.
Then woe for the world in coming years.
UN figures were released as part of its annual report on civilian casualties in Afghanistan....
I was told it was at a 4-year low even as the U.S. death toll rose sharply last month and there was a 24 percent increase in civilian casualties (or more) over the past year to the point where they are soaring again.
Conflict-related violence struck more women and girls last year....
The findings come as the war is reaching a turning point, with international troops increasingly taking the back seat in operations and Afghan government forces in the lead.
The total number of civilian deaths by airstrikes fell for the year after the US-led coalition implemented stricter measures to prevent innocent people from being killed.
The UN said most civilian casualties from drone strikes appeared to be the result of weapons aimed directly at insurgents, but some may have been targeting errors....
Oooops, sorry!
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"US airstrike kills Taliban leader, Afghan children; Kerry eulogizes diplomat slain in suicide attack" by Azam Ahmed | New York Times, April 08, 2013
KABUL — A US military airstrike in eastern Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan killed as many as 18 people, including at least one senior Taliban commander, but also women and children, raising the thorny issue of civilian casualties for the third time in roughly a week.
The attack occurred during a joint mission of Afghan and US special operations forces targeting a high-profile Taliban commander in Kunar Province, Afghan officials said Sunday.
After several hours of fierce fighting with insurgents in the area Saturday, the US forces called in an airstrike to level the home of the commander, Ali Khan, officials said.
In addition to killing Khan and at least four other Taliban fighters, as many as 10 children were killed in the strike, and at least five women were wounded, said Abdul Zahir Safi, the governor of Shigal district, where the attack occurred. Afghan officials believed they were the relatives and children of the Taliban commander.
On Saturday, a suicide bomber attacked a convoy of Afghan and US officials in Zabul Province, killing three US soldiers and two civilians, including Anne Smedinghoff, 25, an American diplomat in the public affairs division of the State Department. Another employee remains in critical condition.
Yeah, get the focus off the dead Afghan kids quick and turn it toward some CIA AID worker.
In an emotional eulogy to the staff and families of the US Consulate in Istanbul, Secretary of State John Kerry talked on Sunday about Smedinghoff, who was originally from Illinois.
Kerry said Smedinghoff had previously served in Venezuela and assisted him during his recent trip to Afghanistan. He deplored the ‘‘harsh contradiction’’ of her death, which occurred as the Americans were bringing books to a school in Kandahar.
‘‘The folks who want to kill people — and that is all they want to do — are scared of knowledge,’’ Kerry said. ‘‘They want to shut the doors, and they don’t want people to make their choices about their future.’’
At a news conference in Istanbul, Kerry described Smedinghoff as ‘‘a selfless, idealistic woman who woke up yesterday morning and set out to bring textbooks to school children, to bring them knowledge.’’
‘‘Anne and those with her,’’ Kerry said, ‘‘were attacked by the Taliban terrorists who woke up that day not with a mission to educate or to help, but with a mission to destroy. A brave American was determined to brighten the light of learning through books, written in the native tongue of the students she had never met, whom she felt it incumbent to help.’’
Related: The Kerry Chronicles: Kicking Around Afghan Women
Saturday was the deadliest day for the United States in the last eight months of the war in Afghanistan. Six Americans died in the convoy bombing and a separate attack in eastern Afghanistan.
I've bailed on U.S. casualties.
The last American diplomat killed on the job was J. Christopher Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya. Stevens and three other American died in an attack Sept. 11 in Benghazi, Libya. No one has yet been brought to justice in the attack.
Related: Slow Saturday Special: CBS Assists Benghazi Cover-Up
Army General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Sunday that he is optimistic that the Afghan army will hold its own against the insurgency as Western forces leave. He said Afghans will be in the lead throughout the country by May or June.
The deaths of Afghan civilians in NATO strikes have long been a sticking point....
Civilian casualties at the hands of foreign forces have dropped dramatically since then, though such strikes bring intense anger among the Afghan population when they happen....
The civilian death toll on Saturday added to two incidents in Ghazni Province in the past eight days, when four police officers were killed during a NATO airstrike and two children died in a helicopter attack.
A spokesman for the coalition forces said all of the allegations of civilian casualties remain under investigation. And military officials reiterated that all three recent strikes were called in by international forces rather than Afghan troops.
US military commanders have insisted that airstrikes can be crucial to protecting soldiers’ lives, especially as Afghan forces increasingly take the lead on security operations this year.
And those lives are so much more important than some poor Afghan peasant and their families.
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"US, Taliban to blame for 17 die in Afghan airstrike" by Rahim Faiez | Associated Press, April 14, 2013
KABUL — Both Taliban insurgents and the US military were to blame for an airstrike a week ago that killed 17 people, including a dozen children, during a fierce battle in eastern Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai said Saturday.
Karzai made his comments after an Afghan investigation into the April 6 attack raised the civilian death toll from 11 to 17, including 12 children, four women, and one man. An American civilian adviser was also killed during the fighting.
The Afghan report says the US strike occurred after the Afghan intelligence service came under attack by militants during an operation to arrest two insurgent commanders in the Shigal district of Kunar Province. The area is a major infiltration route for insurgents from sanctuaries in northwestern Pakistan to Afghanistan.
The US-led coalition has confirmed that it launched airstrikes in Kunar Province that day but it has not confirmed civilian casualties, saying the investigation is ongoing.
Afghan forces came under fire with heavy and light weapons as they were about to leave the area.
It was in that fighting that the American was killed, causing the Americans to call for air support to move the body from the area at the same time houses believed to be containing suspected insurgents were bombarded for hours from the air, the report said.
It said most of the houses were made of wood and mud and collapsed under the shock of the airstrikes, causing the deaths.
The scene is unfathomable to me as I imagine missiles slamming into those things.
The death of Afghan civilians caught in crossfire has been a major point of contention between international forces and the Afghan government. Earlier this year, Karzai banned his troops from requesting coalition airstrikes following another deadly airstrike in Kunar.
While he said that airstrikes on residential areas were unacceptable, he also strongly condemned insurgents for taking cover in civilian houses during the battle.
Karzai also ordered government officials to offer immediate help to the families who were harmed in the attack, the statement said.
The investigation was conducted by a government delegation sent from Kabul that worked with area tribal elders.
Afghan forces have been increasingly taking the lead in combat operations as international forces move to complete their withdrawal by the end of 2014. But US and other foreign troops still participate and provide air support as they try to clear areas of insurgents and prepare the Afghans to take control.
In other violence, Taliban militants fired rockets at the coalition-controlled section of the airport Saturday in Jalalabad, 78 miles east of Kabul, damaging a helicopter.
Major Adam Wojack, a coalition spokesman, confirmed in an e-mail that the air base came under fire by rockets or mortar shells and said one civilian helicopter was damaged. No coalition aircraft were damaged and no casualties were reported, he added.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said militants fired three rockets at the air base ‘‘and reports show one American helicopter was destroyed and other damage was caused.’’
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Related:
"International military officials are investigating two episodes in which as many as 11 Afghan civilians may have been killed in what appeared to be US-led military actions. Four women, one man, and five children between the ages of 8 and 13 were killed. Sometimes other US government agencies rather than the military use special commandos."
Gee, I Can not Imagine which Agency they are talking about.
"Afghans accuse United States forces of killings" by Rahim Faiez | Associated Press, June 05, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan — Hundreds of Afghans blocked a major highway south of Kabul on Tuesday, carrying freshly dug-up bodies they claimed were victims of torture by US special forces and demanding the Americans be arrested, officials said.
Did they still have their feet?
A spokesman for the US-led military coalition said the allegations are false.
The three bodies were dug up Tuesday morning near a former US special forces base in Nirkh district, according to Attaullah Khogyanai, the provincial governor’s spokesman.
Six other bodies were unearthed there in the past few weeks.
Khogyanai said an investigation was underway but that it was too soon to say if the three were among at least nine people who villagers say disappeared into American custody and were never seen again.
The United States has repeatedly denied accusations that people arrested by special forces in Wardak Province died in American custody. However, villagers accuse the Americans and their Afghan partners of intimidation through unprovoked beatings, mass arrests, and forced detentions.
‘‘We are absolutely confident, based on the investigations that we have done, that neither US nor coalition forces were involved in any unlawful deaths there,’’ coalition spokesman Colonel Thomas Collins said Tuesday.
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Feels like I have been commenting about this for years -- probably because I have been commenting about this for years (frown).
Related: Coalition tries to ease Afghan angst
How can they when it keeps on happening?
See:
Mob attacks male doctor, female patient in Afghanistan
Bombing in Kabul kills 2
Taliban kill 12 Afghan civilians, aid workers
Taliban deny role in attack on Red Cross Afghan offices
And if that doesn't convince you of those icky Taliban and our need to stay maybe this will:
Women’s rights legislation is stymied in Afghanistan
Never mind the women and children obliterated in airstrikes and their rights.
Taliban attack kills at least 44 at compound in Afghanistan
Attacks in southern Afghanistan kill at least 18
Bomb kills 9 Afghan children, 2 US troops
Attack on Indian consulate kills nine Afghan civilians
Taliban abduct 11 foreigners after copter lands
Taliban announce on Twitter the killing of election official
Taliban attack on NATO base kills 7
A total of 19 people were killed and 63 wounded in the assault and in three other attacks around the country?
"Roadside bomb kills 17 villagers in Afghanistan" by Mirwais Khan and David Rising | Associated Press, July 10, 2013
KABUL — A roadside bomb struck a motorcycle-drawn cart carrying adults and children between two villages Tuesday in western Afghanistan, killing all 17 people on board, a grim reminder of the dangers facing Afghan civilians ahead of the 2014 withdrawal of foreign combat troops.
International troops have pulled back into a largely advisory and training role as they try to prepare Afghan soldiers and police to take over their own security.
That effort has been marred by attacks by Afghan troops or insurgents disguised in their uniforms.
In the latest so-called insider attack, an Afghan soldier opened fire on Slovakian troops in the southern city of Kandahar, killing one and wounding six others.
The roadside bomb that struck the cart was aimed at stopping a joint patrol of Afghan soldiers and police that was pursuing a group of Taliban militants in the western province of Herat, local police Lieutenant Sher Agha said.
But the bomb exploded next to the cart carrying the villagers, killing 12 women, four children, and a man, Agha said.
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Of course, when the occupiers do it, it is a mistake.
"NATO says 2 boys killed accidentally
KABUL — International forces accidentally killed two Afghan boys during an operation in southern Afghanistan, the US-led coalition said Saturday. Marine General Joseph Dunford, the commander of United States and allied forces in Afghanistan, offered his ‘‘personal apology and condolences to the family of the boys who were killed’’ and said the coalition takes full responsibility for the deaths."
Or it didn't happen at all:
NATO denies role in deadly airstrike
NATO denies 3 killed in airstrike
3 civilians killed in anti-NATO plot
NATO mistakenly kills five Afghans
Yeah, but they were only checkpoint cops.
"Coalition copter crashes; 1 killed
KABUL — A coalition helicopter crashed in the Daman district of southern Afghanistan Saturday, killing one member of the US-led coalition and injuring another in what was the second deadly air crash in the country in a week, NATO officials said. A spokesman for the coalition, said that there was no enemy activity in the area when the helicopter went down and that the cause of the crash was being investigated (AP)."
They always say that even if it was shot down.
A time bomb left behind?
They want us to leave!
WTF is with the link?
They always say that even if it was shot down.
The suicide attack was in the district of Spin Boldak in Kandahar Province in one of the nation’s most violent areas. The district is a major infiltration corridor for Taliban fighters from Pakistan as well as a smuggling route for weapons and narcotics."
"Afghanistan blast kills 7 civilians after raid" Associated Press, January 14, 2013
KABUL — An explosion Sunday killed seven Afghan villagers as they tried to pull bodies of dead insurgents from the rubble of a village mosque after a night raid by NATO and Afghan troops, officials said. Four insurgents and an Afghan soldier were also reported killed in the operation.
Night raids have long been a contentious issue between Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, who says he does not want coalition troops in villages, and the NATO alliance, which says they are key to capturing Taliban commanders.
Even though Sunday’s deaths came hours after the troops left, locals were quick to protest against the US troops that operate in the area.
A time bomb left behind?
‘‘Death to America!’’ one man shouted as he shook his fist in an Associated Press video. The villagers displayed the bodies of the dead wrapped in blankets and sheets.
The predawn operation in Sayd Abad district was aimed at capturing a Taliban fighter who had holed up in a village, said Wardak Province spokesman Shahidullah Shahid.
The international and Afghan forces captured the militant but came under attack from insurgents.
Oh, I forgot to provide the link?
"1 dead in bombing of Afghan security agency; Taliban claim responsibility" by Azam Ahmed | New York Times, January 17, 2013
KABUL — Suicide bombers riding in minivans struck the headquarters of the Afghan intelligence agency Wednesday, detonating a powerful car bomb and raising questions about how insurgents could pull off such a bold attack in one of the most heavily guarded areas of the city....
I can answer that: Islamic extremists = covert western intelligence agency false flag operations.
Sadiq Sadiqi, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said six insurgents mounted the attack from the first minivan, with the first bus exploding in front of the agency’s gate. The second vehicle, which contained five armed fighters, was stopped by guards at the gate before it could be detonated and all the insurgents were killed, Sadiqi said.
The Taliban later claimed responsibility for the attack.
The attack came as coalition forces speed up the pace of handing over security to Afghan forces. The United States has promised to withdraw its combat forces by 2014, a deadline that has left many Afghans worried about security.
They want us to leave!
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Also see: Suicide bombers attack Kabul police
"Suicide bombers attack Kabul police" by Heidi Vogt | Associated Press, January 21, 2013
KABUL — Taliban insurgents wearing suicide vests attacked the Kabul traffic police headquarters before dawn Monday, police said, and eyewitnesses heard numerous explosions while a gun battle was still raging four hours later.
Police officer Mirza Mohammad said at least one insurgent blew himself up at the entrance to the compound and a number of others wearing suicide vests entered the building. Another police officer said at least three attackers entered the building and two were killed. The officer, who could not be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said a gun battle was taking place inside the three-story building.
Explosions could be heard inside the building.
A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the attack in a text message to the Associated Press.
Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqi said the assault began with a suicide car bombing near the building.
‘‘Still there may be one or two inside the building, but we are not sure,’’ he said, adding that four Afghan police commandos were wounded. Sediqi said there were no civilian casualties in the attack.
The area has been surrounded by Afghan security forces, he said.
A unit of NATO special forces that trains Afghan police was at the scene but not taking part in the operation.
Hmmmmmmm!
It was the second insurgent attack inside Kabul in less than a week. On Wednesday, six Taliban suicide bombers attacked the gates of the Afghan intelligence agency, killing one guard and wounding dozens. Security forces killed all the attackers.
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WTF is with the link?
"Taliban suicide bombers kill three Afghans; Attack targets police trainers" by Amir Shah | Associated Press, January 22, 2013
KABUL — An attack by Taliban suicide bombers killed three police officers in the Afghan capital Monday and signaled that insurgents are determined to keep fighting despite overtures of peace from the United States and the Afghan government.
The nine-hour assault on the traffic police headquarters, which sent heavy black smoke over Kabul, was the second such attack in the heart of the snow-covered capital in six days.
Related:
It came a week after the Afghan and American presidents agreed that the Taliban should open a political office in the gulf state of Qatar to facilitate possible reconciliation with the hard-line Islamic group. And it occurred just days after Pakistan announced it would release more Taliban detainees to help jump-start the fragile peace process....
Related: Taliban Peace Talks Wasted My Time
And then the drone strike hit and killed the prospect of peace once again.
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