Excerpt from an editorial entitled: “Civilian deaths make the problem more complicated”, published by state-owned Afghan newspaper Anis on 7 July
The US-led coalition forces carried out imprecise, careless air strikes for two consecutive days, leaving civilians dead and giving rise to more objections among people.
Though the governors, the heads of the provincial councils and the district chiefs in these two regions confirmed that the air strikes had targeted civilians and that no gunmen had been killed in the strikes, spokespersons for the coalition forces insisted that the two operations were successful in targeting armed opponents.
Such types of operations, which take innocent lives and increase the people’s objection to the coalition forces and their deeds, have considerably increased in the country’s east.
The Americans, who are currently leading the real centre of power in Afghanistan by their spending and strong military force, will soon face new resistance with new motives if they continue such operations and not care even a little about the lives of the people. This is because the people will never listen to the Americans’ statements about the war on terror. Civilian deaths are one of the important and basic reasons behind the people’s discontent and their joining of the Taleban.
Though the Pentagon announced that the Taleban have become stronger than before in the current year and their operations have reached the cities and that the new year will be the deadliest one, the American forces are again carrying out imprecise operations and are not thinking how much civilian deaths increase the people’s general discontent.
The longer such bombardments and killings continue, the more the Taleban will benefit and the innocent people – who are seriously struggling to feed themselves and who do not care much to remain alive – will be harmed.
If the coalition forces continue carrying out operations and killing people based on their own intelligence information and not put the Afghan security forces in the picture, it is impossible to prevent killings. This is because these spies [those providing foreign forces with tip-offs about enemy locations] have a grudge against their tribe and other people in the area and have huge partisan differences and this will have dangerous consequences.
The future will prove that even if they do not join the Taleban, the people will react in a different way and the Americans will then reach the conclusion that they have made a mistake that could have been prevented.
