Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

On April 29, the Daily Telegraph described a scene typical of US air assaults on suspected Taliban in Afghanistan.

As the [suspected Taliban] boat reached the shore, Captain Larry Staley tilted the nose of the lead Apache gunship downwards into a dive…By the time the gunships had finished, 21 minutes later, military officials say 14 Taliban were confirmed dead, including one of their key commanders in Helmand.

The mission is typical of a new, aggressive, approach adopted by American forces in southern Afghanistan and particularly in Helmand…Aircrews say they have been told to show no mercy, but to press home their advantage until all their targets have been destroyed…

Using its cannon and then its rockets, the Apache finished off all the Taliban fighters it could find, then launched nail-filled rockets and dropped white phosphorous to destroy the motorcycles and the machine guns. After the shooting stopped, 12 Taliban were confirmed dead. 

Reality Check

Here is from an incident described in very similar terms:

Villagers said the first fighting broke out on April 27, as they had gathered at the bazaar in the central village of Parmakan. Two old men, Adel Shah, 80, who was walking home with some meat and sugar for his family, and Sarwar, 80, who was harvesting poppies, were shot dead by the Americans, said Abdul Zaher, Mr. Shah’s son…

That night, the first airstrikes were carried out, mainly on Bakhtabad, the village at the entrance to the valley, residents said. On April 29, the Americans returned, positioning their armored vehicles outside Parmakan.

Villagers said they thought the Americans were going to raid houses again, and the men gathered to fight. Husi, 35, lives in a house near the school and on the edge of the village. She was alone with her 10 children, and when the shooting started they cowered at the entrance of their walled home, she said.

Then suddenly a plane bombed the five-room house. “When they bombed I just ran,” she recalled as she held her 1-year-old boy. Women and children were pouring out of the village to the river to cross it to safety, she said.

In the panic as they fled, Husi was separated from three of her children, Amina, 8, Tote, 5, and Fazli, 3, who are still missing.

“We ran with bare feet, we left our shoes,” said Sara, a relative and the mother of seven, whose house was also bombed. “I was running and they were shooting at us from the plane,” she said.

Two uncles and two cousins were killed when the house was bombed, she said. “We have nothing, it’s all finished,” she said.

The river was chest-high at the time, and a number of women and children were swept away. Fifty-seven people died over all, including 17 children under 10, 10 women and 14 old men, Hajji Daulat Khan said. Eight people are still missing, including a 21-year-old man, and Husi’s three children.

The bombing of the village so outraged people that they continued fighting the Americans even after the airstrikes…

The airstrikes damaged about 100 homes and a new school built by Italian troops.

Nail-Filled Rockets

Now that we know who these ‘Taliban’ usually are, it is hard no to find the the Telegraph‘s report nauseating.

According to Robbie the Pict, the “‘nail-filled rockets’ from Apache mounted rockets [are] very likely to be our friends from PanAm 103, the Hydra 70s.  Both ‘flechette’ and ‘phosporus’ heads are listed by Hydra salesmen as ‘available options’.”

By using the term ‘nail-filled’, are they hoping to avoid condemnation for the use of a weapon of terror, such as ‘flechettes’?  The other nickname was ‘shipyard confetti’, but it doesn’t make it OK.”

 Endemic Butchery

This is certainly not an isolated incident. NYT adds:

Scores of civilian deaths over the past months from heavy American and allied reliance on airstrikes to battle Taliban insurgents are threatening popular support for the Afghan government and creating severe strains within the NATO alliance…

What angers Afghans are not just the bombings, but also the raids of homes, the shootings of civilians in the streets and at checkpoints, and the failure to address those issues over the five years of war…

One senior NATO official said that “without air, we’d need hundreds of thousands of troops” in the country…

The anger is visible here in this farming village in the largely peaceful western province of Herat, where American airstrikes left 57 villagers dead, nearly half of them women and children, on April 27 and 29. Even the accounts of villagers bore little resemblance to those of NATO and American officials…

The United States military says it came under heavy fire from insurgents as it searched for a local tribal commander and weapons caches and called in airstrikes, killing 136 Taliban fighters.

But the villagers denied that any Taliban were in the area. Instead, they said, they rose up and fought the Americans themselves, after the soldiers raided several houses, arrested two men and shot dead two old men on a village road.

After burying the dead, the tribe’s elders met with their chief, Hajji Arbab Daulat Khan, and resolved to fight American forces if they returned…

On Tuesday, barely 24 hours after American officials apologized publicly to President Karzai for a previous incident in which 19 civilians were shot by marines in eastern Afghanistan, reports surfaced of at least 21 civilians killed in an airstrike in Helmand Province, though residents reached by phone said the toll could be as high as 80…

But it is not only the Americans whose practices are being questioned. NATO soldiers have frequently fired on civilians on the roads, often because the Afghans drive too close to military convoys or checkpoints.

The public mood hardened against foreign forces in the southern city of Kandahar after British troops fired on civilians while driving through the streets after a suicide bombing last year, and Canadian soldiers have repeatedly killed and wounded civilians while on patrol in civilian areas…

The reliance on air power has led to a string of prominent episodes recently involving the deaths of large numbers of civilians…Since the beginning of March at least 132 civilians have been killed in at least six bombings or shootings, according to officials. The actual number of civilians killed is probably higher, since the areas of heaviest fighting, like the southern province of Helmand, are too unsafe for travel and many deaths go unreported and cannot be verified…