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Bekijk Volledige Versie : ''Precisie-bombardementen'' doodden systematisch bevrijdde Afghaanse burgers



Coolassprov MC
06-05-07, 10:19
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18507648/site/newsweek/from/RS.1/

Collateral Disasters
In Afghanistan's lopsided ethos, every civilian death counts against the Americans.

Musadeq Sadeq / AP
Mistaken Identity? Mirwais was only a farmer, his friends insist, but he lost nine family members in a precision U.S. airstrike on his house


By Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau
Newsweek
May 14, 2007 issue - The shopkeepers glower as an American military patrol rumbles past the village bazaar at Afghany, some 80 miles northeast of Kabul. Mohammad Qayam and Ghul Jan are still seething about the precision U.S. airstrike in early March that hit their friend Mirwais's home, less than a mile away. They and other neighbors pulled nine broken corpses from the ruins: Mirwais's grandfather, father, mother, wife and five small children. Mirwais himself and his 7-year-old son were away seeing relatives, the men say; now he has fled into the mountains. Although local officials accuse Mirwais of belonging to the Taliban, his neighbors say he was only a farmer. "We hate the Americans so much now, we don't want to see their faces," says Jan. "They're no different from the Russians."


Most Afghans cheered the fall of the Taliban in 2001, and they appreciate the ways U.S. assistance has improved their lives since then: reopening schools, building roads and bridges, bringing electricity to remote villages. Yet they increasingly resent the unending war, especially its rising toll in civilian lives—and they don't hesitate to blame America and its multinational allies. Anti-U.S. rallies in the towns of Shindand and Jalalabad each drew more than a thousand protesters last week, and Afghan President Hamid Karzai once again declared that his government can no longer tolerate the deaths of so many innocent Afghans. "We are very sorry when the [U.S.-led] international Coalition Force and NATO soldiers lose their lives or are injured," he told a press conference. "It pains us. But Afghan [civilians] are human beings, too."

More than 900 of them died in 2006 alone. Roughly three quarters of that number died in Taliban attacks, nearly half of which "appear to have been intentionally launched" against civilian targets, according to a newly released report from Human Rights Watch. Even in attacks on legitimate military targets, the report found "little evidence to suggest that insurgent forces were in any way seeking to minimize [civilian] losses." Instead, the report said, the objective seemed to be "not merely to harm specific individuals but to generate broader fear among the civilian population." Roughly 230 civilians died in U.S. and Coalition attacks last year, but the report found no evidence that any of those killings were deliberate.

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