The 92,000 classified documents on the war inAfghanistan posted by Wikileaks and made public on Sunday are already causing a firestorm.
Although I can't claim to have reviewed the tens of thousands of documents myself (Human Rights First will be reviewing them for specific information on detentions at Bagram and the U.S. reliance on private contractors in Afghanistan), the accounts from diligent reporters so far suggest that the documents support the Obama administration's new rules of engagement, which emphasize the importance of keeping civilian casualties to an absolute minimum. While some soldiers in combat have complained about that, the latest reports in these newly-released documents that some U.S. efforts to target insurgents has led to the killing of civilians and stoked Afghan anger suggest that the administration's efforts to limit the use of air power so as not to kill Afghan civilians unnecessarily was the right move. Reducing unnecessary civilian casualties is not only important to compliance with the laws of war, but it's critical to the U.S. counterinsurgency effort. After all, killing Afghan civilians isn't a very effective way to win hearts and minds. The change in the rules also appears to have responded to solid information the military had received about field operations gone wrong.
Many of the failures in Afghanistan reportedly catalogued in the released documents, which do not extend past 2009 and therefore do not reflect the impact of the new rules of engagement, appear to be the result of insufficient investment in securing Afghanistan and preparing the Afghan police and security forces to responsibly assume their appropriate roles in their own country. To the extent that the U.S. military is currently working with NATO forces to train the Afghan police and security forces to improve their practices, these Wiki-released documents support that effort.
Human Rights First has consistently urged the administration to plan for the turnover of U.S. detention operations to the Afghan government by helping the Afghans develop fair and humane detention and justice systems that reflect a commitment to international standards of due process for suspected terrorists. The Afghans need civilian training, support and funding for those efforts,which are critical to allowing the U.S. to withdraw its military forces from Afghanistan responsibly. I plan to take a trip to Afghanistan in the fall to observe first-hand how that transition is proceeding and whether the U.S. and its NATO allies are providing the necessary support and training.
Unfortunately, some lawmakers, understandably concerned about corruption, have responded by voting to block all civilian aid to Afghanistan, which could seriously jeopardize those efforts and the United States' long term goals.
When the firestorm over the latest Wikileaks document dump dies down, let's hope that a responsible transition strategy remains standing.
State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh has promised to produce the Obama administration's legal justification for its increased use of drone strikes to kill suspected terrorists, reports Shane Harris of the National Journal.
ISAF commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal set out a clear marker for what he considers "success" in Afghanistan:
American success in Afghanistan should be measured by "the number of Afghans shielded from violence," not the number of enemy fighters killed, he said.
Unfortunately, according to updated totals from the United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan, Operation Khanjar, launched on July 2, was followed by a severe spike in civilian casualties. The vast majority of these casualties were caused by IEDs and suicide bombings attributed to anti-Kabul-government elements. But, with the spike coinciding so closely with the launch of the ISAF push into Helmand, it's clear that NATO choices continue to feed into a dynamic that has become toxic for civilians.
American success in Afghanistan should be measured by “the number of Afghans shielded from violence,” not the number of enemy fighters killed, he said.
McChrystal is now running around demanding more troops for Afghanistan so he can increase "the number of Afghans shielded from violence."
Yeah, about that:
Check, please.
Warning: The following video contains graphic images.
Since 2001, the US Air Force has dropped nearly 31 million pounds (14,049 metric tons) of bombs on Afghanistan. The UN estimates that US airstrikes alone accounted for 64 percent of the 828 Afghan civilians killed last year. Those numbers practically scream the need to abandon conventional warfare tactics in Afghanistan and dramatically shift US foreign policy to incorporate a more humanitarian approach. Instead, we're seeing the horrific images from IDP camps: refugees who have lost loved ones; parents so desperate they would rather sell their children than watch them starve; children scarred both physically and psychologically. These are the survivors, forced to endure the bleak aftermath of airstrikes as the US escalates this war.
The front page story in the LA Times today examines the US military's seemingly impossible task of reducing the number of civilian casualties in airstrikes like the one that killed up to 140 people in Farah province on May 4. The civilians casualties from that attack, we know from a preliminary investigative report, died because a series of military errors. Had the Afghan forces being trained by the US military not ignored warnings about entering a Farah village, they wouldn't have been ambushed by insurgents, prompting the Marines to call for a strike. And had the pilot of an aircraft not lost site of his target, or had those commanders rethought the need to send in a B-1 bomber strike at a point when those Afghan forces weren't under direct attack, the high number of civilian casualties could have been avoided. Yet as our highly skilled military revisits protocols for conducting airstrikes to minimize mistakes like these in the future, these casualties are the inevitable consequences of conventional warfare.
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