Poor intelligence blamed for US attacks in Afghanistan
KABUL, Jan 21: A combination of poor intelligence and a tendency to "shoot first and ask questions later" are to blame for a string of fatal attacks by US troops on civilians in Afghanistan, according to analysts.
In the latest disputed incident, 11 villagers, including four children and three women, were killed in a US bombing raid at the weekend, according to one Afghan official.
"Intelligence here is pretty poor and it's always been pretty poor," a Kabul-based security expert said. He cited the strength of tribal connections as the main reason why good intelligence was near impossible to ferret out.
Beyond that, the US-led coalition has to take into account the ulterior motives of some of the people supplying them with information, he said. "Many, many times now we've got people carrying out personal vendettas or revenge acts or it's motivated by ethnicity."
But as one Western diplomat said, the US-led coalition's habit of "shooting first and asking questions later" has raised eyebrows here, even if it does end in the death and capture of Taliban or Al Qaeda fighters.
"In many armies when there is a doubt, we don't shoot. Obviously this is not the case with the Americans. But every case is a particular case and you cannot accuse them too easily," the diplomat said.
Abdul Rahman, the district chief of Char Chino in Uruzgan where the latest incident took place and who claims to have helped bury the bodies, is more blunt.
"They (the US) never consult with local people and act based on the information given to them by their own spies who know nothing but work only for money.
"Whatever false information they provide, the Americans then go and start bombing," he said. US officials have repeatedly denied such allegations, stressing that any intelligence they receive is checked and confirmed by separate sources.
A US military spokesman has said that ahead of the weekend incident, the coalition had intelligence that a mid-level Taliban meeting was taking place at the compound from which they said five armed men emerged.
"I can't tell you exactly what information led to this operation, I can tell you we have different types of intelligence. We had intelligence that led us to that particular compound," Lt Col Bryan Hilferty said.
According to the US account, troops shot at five armed men before holding fire to avoid injuring non-combatants. The United States has admitted its mistakes in the past, claiming responsibility for the deaths of 15 children in two separate air attacks last month.
But it has not made public the results of its investigations into the civilian deaths caused during military action in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban two years ago.
The United Nations has called for the results of investigations to be made public. Some 53 civilians have been killed by US troops since January last year, if the latest 11 victims are included.
This does not include four Afghan soldiers shot dead in May by US troops guarding the US embassy in Kabul who mistook the men for assailants. In 2002 some 85 civilians were killed by US bombing raids. More than half of them were killed in an air raid on a wedding party in Uruzgan province. The US said the bombing was in retaliation for an attack from the ground.
After last month's bombings in which 15 children were killed, then UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi warned such incidents would increase insecurity in the country and fuel latent Taliban support. -AFP
