Most Afghan civilian deaths 'caused by Taliban attacks, not US forces'
Popular fury over the killing of civilians in botched US-led attacks in Afghanistan is unlikely to be assuaged by new figures showing the Taliban are responsible for a vast and growing proportion of innocent deaths.
The annual United Nations report on civilian casualties shows that more than two-thirds of the 2,777 civilians killed last year were the victims of insurgents – a 28% increase on 2009. By contrast Nato and Afghan government forces were responsible for killing 440, a 25% decrease.
More than half of the deaths caused by the Taliban were the result of homemade bombs and suicide attacks.
The report's authors said the "most alarming" trend was a 105% increase in the number of civilians assassinated by insurgents as part of the Taliban's campaign against government officials.
Overall, it was the worst year since the war began more than nine years ago, with the number of civilian deaths up 15% compared with 2009.
But despite growing carnage in a war where both sides have been escalating their efforts as US-led forces prepare to withdraw by the end of 2014, public fury appears overwhelmingly focused on mistakes caused by foreigners.
An airstrike on 8 March that killed nine boys gathering wood on a hillside in the eastern province of Kunar has further stoked widespread anti-foreigner sentiment.
When David Petraeus, the US commander of Nato forces, made a rare public video appearance in which he apologised for the incident, Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, issued a curt rebuke, saying the apology was not sufficient.
Nationwide, the battle for Afghan hearts and minds appears to be confounding efforts by Petraeus, who has ordered his communication staff to highlight insurgent atrocities, to stoke public disgust towards the Taliban.
Thomas Ruttig, director of the Afghan Analysts Network, said that Afghans were unable to condemn the Taliban.
"It is very difficult for them to do anything about it because they are very much aware that eventually these foreign troops will withdraw," he said. "Who wants to criticise them [the Taliban] and then see them come back into power?"
Ruttig, who has worked in Afghanistan for decades, added that the overall surge in civilian victims discredits US claims that the nine-year campaign is showing some signs of success and that the Taliban are on the back foot.
"Afghans do not need statistics to tell them the killing is too much and that the current military strategy is just making their lives miserable."
The US intelligence community has long hoped that a rising tide of chaos and violence, caused by increased Nato operations, would help the military campaign.
According to a US state department cable released by Wikileaks, in December 2008 a top US spy briefed Nato ambassadors that the alliance should put intense pressure on the Taliban "in order to bring out their more violent and radical tendencies".
"This will alienate the population and give us an opportunity to separate the Taliban from the population," the cable concluded.
Steffan de Mistura, the UN chief in Afghanistan, suggested that the Taliban were deliberately resorting to "horror attacks".
"When this happens in the bazaar you start having the feeling that the trend is more on horror attacks to produce a counterweight to the perception the surge is working," he said.
"That may be a military decision but it is affecting in a rather brutal way Afghan civilians."
Officially the Taliban try to limit harm to civilians, aware that this will count against them in their efforts to win public opinion, and they contested the figures of the UN's 2010 mid-year report, which was similarly damning.
The movement publishes strict guidelines on how its fighters should treat prisoners and avoid harming civilians, but recent attacks on targets where civilians were present appear to have ignored those rulings.
There have been two suicide bomb attacks on supermarkets in Kabul, neither of which killed any members of the Afghan security forces but did kill shoppers.
And in February a team of suicide bombers targeted a bank in the eastern city of Jalalabad. Although security force members collecting their salaries were the ostensible target, many of the 40 victims were civilians.
Security camera footage from inside the bank showing an insurgent gunman dressed in police uniform shooting people at point-blank range has caused outrage.
Commercial television station Tolo has been running regular adverts, which the station says are paid for by a third party, showing footage of the attack and arguing that terrorists will go to hell.
The station's director, Saad Mohseni, said he thought there was a rising tide of public anger against insurgents.
"People have had enough of the government's blase attitude towards civilian deaths when the perpetrators are the Taliban or al-Qaida," he said. "The Taliban are responsible for approximately 10 killings a day. Why is the government opting to remain silent?"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/09/afghanistan-insurgents-civilian-victimsMuslims are responsible for the bulk of Muslim deaths. Who'd have thunk it? If these people can't stop killing each other, why should we expect them to actually show tolerance and acceptance towards non-Muslims?
