Boston Globe Editorial - Costly collateral damage in Afghanistan
Boston Globe Editorial - Costly collateral damage in Afghanistan
Copyright by The Boston Globe
Published: June 21, 2007
Seven Afghan children perished Sunday in a U.S.-led bombing attack on Al Qaeda fighters hiding in a mosque and a madrassa. Survivors of the attack said the Qaeda men beat children who tried to leave the buildings.
A spokesman for the NATO forces apologized for killing the children and tried to explain the error by saying, "We had surveillance on the compound all day and saw no indications that there were children inside the building."
Apportioning blame for the deaths of those children is not a simple matter. And too many other Afghan children have been killed in suicide bombings perpetrated by Taliban and Al Qaeda guerrillas.
Indeed, the United Nations Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, issued a statement Tuesday lamenting the killing of 11 children in a recent suicide bombing in Uruzgan Province, as well as the use of "children as human shields" by "antigovernment forces" in Afghanistan.
Nevertheless, U.S. and NATO troops have an obligation under international humanitarian law to take every possible precaution to protect children and avoid harming noncombatants.
The safeguarding of the innocent is not only a legal and ethical imperative; it is also a basic requirement of a counterinsurgency strategy to deprive the enemy of popular support.
The Taliban and Al Qaeda grasp the value of presenting themselves as defenders of the Afghan people. They distribute pamphlets in which they revile American and NATO soldiers as infidel, terrorist forces of occupation.
When those same forces send planes to bomb a mosque and religious school, killing Afghan children, the Taliban do not hesitate to seize on the tragedy as proof of the validity of their propaganda - even if merciless Al Qaeda interlopers prevented those children from escaping the bombs.
As with previous errors, the failure of American forces to take the utmost care to avoid harming Afghan civilians is making a difficult mission even harder to accomplish than it need be.
Those past errors are apparent today not only in the revival of the Taliban's guerrilla operations, but also in the year-by-year expansion of Afghanistan's poppy crop, the flourishing of corrupt warlords and their private militias, the lack of jobs for the country's youth, and the failure of donor nations to employ Afghans in rebuilding the roads, bridges, and irrigation works destroyed by decades of war.
The requirements for Afghanistan's rehabilitation are what they have been for the past five years: To persuade Pakistan to cease harboring Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters; to give farmers a decent alternative to poppy cultivation; to disarm the warlords' militias; to employ Afghans in rebuilding their nation's infrastructure; and to educate children instead of bombing their schools.
Copyright by The Boston Globe
Published: June 21, 2007
Seven Afghan children perished Sunday in a U.S.-led bombing attack on Al Qaeda fighters hiding in a mosque and a madrassa. Survivors of the attack said the Qaeda men beat children who tried to leave the buildings.
A spokesman for the NATO forces apologized for killing the children and tried to explain the error by saying, "We had surveillance on the compound all day and saw no indications that there were children inside the building."
Apportioning blame for the deaths of those children is not a simple matter. And too many other Afghan children have been killed in suicide bombings perpetrated by Taliban and Al Qaeda guerrillas.
Indeed, the United Nations Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, issued a statement Tuesday lamenting the killing of 11 children in a recent suicide bombing in Uruzgan Province, as well as the use of "children as human shields" by "antigovernment forces" in Afghanistan.
Nevertheless, U.S. and NATO troops have an obligation under international humanitarian law to take every possible precaution to protect children and avoid harming noncombatants.
The safeguarding of the innocent is not only a legal and ethical imperative; it is also a basic requirement of a counterinsurgency strategy to deprive the enemy of popular support.
The Taliban and Al Qaeda grasp the value of presenting themselves as defenders of the Afghan people. They distribute pamphlets in which they revile American and NATO soldiers as infidel, terrorist forces of occupation.
When those same forces send planes to bomb a mosque and religious school, killing Afghan children, the Taliban do not hesitate to seize on the tragedy as proof of the validity of their propaganda - even if merciless Al Qaeda interlopers prevented those children from escaping the bombs.
As with previous errors, the failure of American forces to take the utmost care to avoid harming Afghan civilians is making a difficult mission even harder to accomplish than it need be.
Those past errors are apparent today not only in the revival of the Taliban's guerrilla operations, but also in the year-by-year expansion of Afghanistan's poppy crop, the flourishing of corrupt warlords and their private militias, the lack of jobs for the country's youth, and the failure of donor nations to employ Afghans in rebuilding the roads, bridges, and irrigation works destroyed by decades of war.
The requirements for Afghanistan's rehabilitation are what they have been for the past five years: To persuade Pakistan to cease harboring Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters; to give farmers a decent alternative to poppy cultivation; to disarm the warlords' militias; to employ Afghans in rebuilding their nation's infrastructure; and to educate children instead of bombing their schools.
posted by Carlos T Mock @ 8:19 AM
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