March 10, 2011

Afghans are being killed in record numbers as the surge of U.S.-led foreign troops wages a massive new counterinsurgency campaign that has also destroyed thousands of homes and farms.

The worsening tally compiled by the United Nations casts doubts on President Barack Obama’s decision to triple U.S. troop numbers to more than 100,000 in a concerted campaign to win Afghan hearts and minds.

Although the UN report confirms what Canadian and U.S. military commanders have said for years – that the Taliban kill far more civilians – it also makes clear that Afghans blame foreign forces.

There’s "a greater perception by the wider Afghan community that the presence of international forces is responsible for higher levels of insecurity, is the cause for greater numbers of civilian casualties regardless of the perpetrator, and that international forces act with impunity," says the report, jointly compiled and published annually by the UN and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.

Blaming the U.S.-led foreign troops – after a decade of steadily worsening violence and scaled-up combat – isn’t only the view of ordinary Afghans. "Civilian casualties are a main cause of worsening the relationships between Afghanistan and the U.S.," an enraged Afghan President Hamid Karzai said after American attack helicopters killed nine young boys gathering firewood, the latest in a long series of gruesome mistakes that attract huge attention in and outside of Afghanistan. "People are tired of these things and apologies and condemnations are not healing any pain."

Mr. Obama voiced "deep regret" over the deaths, but Mr. Karzai said apologies were insufficient and called foreign forces "merciless."

While the UN blames U.S., Canadian, British and other Western soldiers for only 440 civilian deaths – or about 16 per cent of the 2,777 total – the sharp spike in violence across the country, and especially in the Taliban heartlands of Kandahar and Helmand provinces, made 2010 the bloodiest year since the Taliban were toppled in 2001. The Taliban are blamed for 2,080 civilian deaths, or 75 per cent.

Over all, civilian deaths have nearly doubled since 2007, and killings were 28-per-cent greater in 2010 than the previous year. And those numbers hugely underreport the true scale of the violence. A total of 711 U.S. and allied soldiers were killed in 2010, another record, which included 499 American, 103 British, and 16 Canadian soldiers.

Kabul reported 2,050 Afghan soldiers and police were killed last year. NATO and U.S. officers, who decline to make public the "enemy" body counts, still estimate that the kill ratio is between 10 and 100 Taliban for every Western solider. That suggests between 700 and 7,000 Taliban insurgents were killed last year.

Although civilian deaths caused by foreign troops were reportedly down, most Afghans apparently don’t believe that. The Taliban challenged UN claims that they were mostly to blame.

"Where do they get these numbers from, what sources do they have? Foreign forces are responsible for civilian casualties in bombing and firing," Taliban spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi told the BBC.

General David Petraeus, U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said the surge is working, although he admitted that incidents like the killing of the nine boys "[do] clearly undermine the trust between the Afghan government and ISAF, and more important, between the Afghan people and ISAF." He also predicted even worse violence during the coming summer fighting season. Gen. Petraeus said that in the past three months, more than 3,000 Taliban have been killed or captured.

The UN report also documents widespread and indiscriminate destruction of Afghan homes and fields by foreign soldiers in Kandahar province, where Canadian troops have played a key role in counterinsurgency operation since 2006 and where a major new offensive was launched last year.

Afghan fears that "Kandahar operations would involve the destruction of homes, crops, and irrigation systems were realized," it says, adding that hundreds of homes were destroyed and new roads bulldozed through fields and orchards as foreign troops sought to avoid bomb-infested routes.

The Taliban, meanwhile, increased their own version of precision strikes, targeting hundreds of Afghan officials for assassination, especially in southern provinces such as Kandahar, which is crucial to the battle for hearts and minds. Targeted assassinations more than doubled to 452 in 2010, a grim warning of the consequences Afghans face if they co-operate with foreign forces.