Deaths do them part
Nothing illustrates the double standards Washington applies to the issue of civilian casualties in conflict zones more sharply than the contrast between its high moral ground on Sri Lanka and its apologetics for Monday’s airstrike on two villages in Farah province that killed more than 100 innocent men, women, and children — easily the worst such incident since the start of the Afghan war in October 2001. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said the U.S.  220;deeply, deeply regrets” the loss of civilian lives but U.S. military commanders on the ground have questioned the assumption that the U.S. was to blame for the Farah incident. There is no indication at all that the Pentagon intends to re-evaluate its deadly use of close air support in skirmishes with the Taliban. Statistics collated by Professor Marc Herold of the University of New Hampshire demonstrate the correlation between civilian casualties and the use of air power. His carefully verified data indicate that the number of Afghan civilians killed in U.S.-NATO military actions between January 1 and April 8, 2009 was around 200. He predicts that the civilian casualties will rise markedly under President Barack Obama’s ‘surge.’ The use of ground troops in combat operations against the Taliban tends to reduce civilian deaths but at the cost of a higher number of occupation soldier lives. Reliance on air-dropped ordnance helps the U.S. minimise its own casualty rate but the resentment the mounting civilian toll causes means the American body bag count will only increase in the long run.
Given the civilian casualties, the unpopularity of the occupation and the political regime it spawned, and the resurgence of the Taliban, the odds are loaded against Mr. Obama’s ‘AfPak’ strategy. Even from the military point of view, a sensible via media is not a surge of American boots on the ground — but an adequately staffed, trained, and equipped Afghan national army that can effectively take on the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The small change provided so far for strengthening the Afghan army is the weakest element in the U.S. strategy. That said, Washington also needs to maintain the pressure it is exerting on Islamabad to keep up its side of the operations against the Taliban. As extremists make inroads into the NWFP and elsewhere, Pakistan has been paying a heavy price for taking the fight against terrorism lightly. It will take more than a photo-op with the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan for Mr. Obama to rescue the desperate situation. Deadly force is being used west of the Durand Line, where its effects are counterproductive, while to the east, the fight against militant extremists is being handled with kid gloves. Monday’s horrors suggest that it may all end in a debacle for Mr. Obama’s surge and his plans for eliminating the Taliban