NATO seeking to cut Afghan civilian casualties – they told Reuters

about time…..

BRUSSELS, July 30 (Reuters) – NATO plans more restrained tactics in its war against Taliban guerrillas, including smaller bomb loads on aircraft, in an effort to cut civilian casualties, the alliance’s head said in an interview published on Monday.
The Financial Times said NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer had acknowledged that mounting Afghan civilian casualties had hurt support for NATO, and had said commanders had ordered troops to hold off on attacks in some situations where civilians were at risk.
“We realise that, if we cannot neutralise our enemy today without harming civilians, our enemy will give us the opportunity tomorrow,” the paper quoted him as saying in an interview.
“If that means going after the Taliban not on Wednesday but on Thursday, we will get him then.”
De Hoop Scheffer said that while it was impossible to avoid civilian casualties entirely, NATO was “working with weapons load on aircraft to reduce collateral damage”.
More than 330 civilians have been killed in operations involving foreign troops in Afghanistan this year, according to Afghan officials and Western aid workers.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has warned that the casualties could damage support for the presence of foreign forces in his country.
The Financial Times quoted a NATO diplomat as saying that using smaller bombs could cut civilian casualties. “If you put a 250 kg bomb rather than a 500 kg bomb on the plane, that could make a huge amount of difference,” the unnamed diplomat said.
The paper quoted other NATO officials as saying the alliance would increasingly leave house-to-house searches to the Afghan army to avoid confrontations.
Violence has surged in Afghanistan in the past 18 months, the bloodiest period since U.S.-led troops overthrew the Taliban’s government in 2001.

Warlord gives up arms for politics

The Afghan warlord Hekmatyar gives up armed conflict and goes in for politics

written by Enrico Piovesana, taken from PeaceReporter.

“The Hezb-i-Islami members (the Islamic Party, editor’s note) have stopped brothers’ killing and have chosen politics instead. Americans, like English and Russians in the past, will be off. Now we must join to build a system in tune with Islam and start a political commitment in order to guarantee a quiet living and peace to our Muslim citizens”. With this statement, broadcast by a private Afghan TV, the jihad veteran Gulbuddin Hekmatyar announced his permanent abandonment of armed conflict in favour of political commitment.

A foretold turn. The decision of this powerful warlord – one of the most important, bloodthirsty and fickle characters of the recent Afghan history – has been around for months.
Already last March, during a video interview granted to Associated Press, Hekmatyar announced his permanent break-up with Talibans the almost complete stop of armed conflict and to be open to dialogue with Karzai, at the condition that the Karzai government would define an ultimate date for the withdrawals of foreign troops. Furthermore, between May and June his party, already regularly registered and with about thirty militants elected in Parliament, started opening bases all over the country – Kabul, Jalabad and Herat have been the first – and resumed the publication of its newspaper, the Shahadat (Martyrdom) with the editorial staff based in Peshawar (Pakistan).

A political challenge to Talibans. Hekmatyar, who has his strongholds in eastern provinces and in those around Kabul, tried since 2002 to build a common front with Talibans who are active in southern provinces around Kandahar. But mullah Omar always refused flatly and so during 2006 he tried to compete with the “Koranic students” playing the al Qaeda’s ace – during May 2006 he declared he received orders from Osama bin Laden – and calling the Afghan people to jihad. A disastrous strategy: for Hekmatyar’s militias was by then impossible to compete with the Taliban’s military power. Hence the decision of Hezb-i-Islami’s leader to bring the challenge to his everlasting rival, mullah Omar, on political grounds leaving his Talibans to carry out the country “Liberation” and hoping to be able to present himself as future leader of a super-Islamic, but not Taliban, Afghanistan.

Also a personal issue. Hekmatyar, who is as good as the Talibans when it comes to fundamentalism and disdain for human rights, is competing with mullah Omar since when Pakistan and US intelligence services, after having generously financed him during the anti-Soviet jihad in the 80s, decided to bet on the Talibans instead of Hezb-i-Islami to take control of Afghanistan. On February 14th, 1995, mullah Omar’s army attacked and harshly defeated Hekmatyar forces that were besieging and bombing Kabul from his strongholds in Charasayab and Maidanshahr.
Hekmatyar escaped to Iran where he stayed until 2002, when he was expelled by the government as a troublesome visitor. An humiliation that “the engineer” – as he was named after because his academic studies before the war – always wanted to be redeemed from, trying to steal the scene to mullah Omar. Without ever succeeding.

30 or 120 deads?

My google alerts this morning told me that the victims of a NATO raid were 30. Apparently, local people counted 120 deads.

Written by Cecilia Strada, taken by Kabul – 120 dead, say villages’ people, perhaps more, in the most violent NATO air raid. The massacre took place in Ghor, in the southern province of Helmand.
A nurse of the NGO Emergency said that this could be the worse massacre of civilians of the last years of the war. He said: “That were people escaping, they fired on people escaping.”
He added: “It happened in our district, in Ghor village, close Hayderabat”
“Friday, people of Ghor saw british troops arriving, and saw the movements of soldiers. They feared the would be squeezed between NATO and Taliban fights, they took cars, tracks and burubakhair, and they left. However, while they were leaving nato planes arrived and started bombing. They fired on the cars – it was a massacre of 120 deads.”
Civil victims have been confirmed by a spokesman of NATO, who told to be very sad by the dead of civilians who are always trapped between non moral Taliban military actions and NATO answers.
Lask week Grishk distric was theatre of another massacre. NATO raid had killed 25 people, 9 women and many children.
Emergency’s nurse said: “They were all civilians too. People from the closest village had taken them on cars to show them in the capital town of the district. They wanted to show them what NATO bombs do.”
However, Afghan soldiers had stop them and did not allow them to reach Grishk.
One of the people from the village took a video and gave it to TV; in the night everyone allover the country could see that massacre.”

Even in Kabul people are commenting about todays facts. An old guy, Said, said: “Hanim, teflin, baba!They were all women and children!All civilians under the bombs”
“Now Karzai will say some words just to protest a bit, good just for TV, till a new massacre will take place.”