Top commander in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal has issued strict new guidelines on air strikes, to keep civilians from getting killed. "It is literally how we lose the war or in many ways how we win it," he recently said.
But many in the Air Force see the civilian casualty problem may be more a product of media hype and Taliban human shielding than of errant U.S. bombs. "It is curious that it appears there is more ink spent on casualties from air attacks than there is on the criminality and violation of the ethical tenets of Islam that occurs daily as a result of Taliban actions*," writes* *Lieutenant General David Deptula, the Air Force's **Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance. *
Deptula e-mailed me last night, in response to my story on the American air war. Here's what he wrote...
First, the number one cause of civilian casualties in Afghanistan is the Taliban -- not air power. Human Rights Watch has verified that the Taliban kills three to four times more civilians than ISAF [NATO's International Security Assistance Force] air and ground forces combined. More often than not, these deaths are deliberate. Because the Taliban cannot directly affect Allied force application from the air, they try to accomplish the same effects by purposely mingling with non-combatants and civilians in an attempt to draw attacks on those positions. This is done to create the conditions where Allied commanders put restrictions on themselves to limit the most effective instrument of power that causes the Taliban their greatest concern.
The reason that there is so much public focus on air power and casualties is that every air-delivered weapon is filmed. We know where every weapon was aimed, and where it hit. That is not the case with the Taliban, or surface-to-surface fires. Air power is the most accurate means of large-scale force application compared to other means such as mortar and artillery fire. Over 95% of the weapons we have delivered from Predators hit exactly where they were aimed, for instance.
There are some folks at Georgetown’s Security Studies Program who are doing work on this subject. Looking at the available polling data, they have some surprising results in the Afghan reactions to civilian casualties. Basically, there appears to be an almost complete lack of indication to support the conventional wisdom, popularized in the media, that air attacks have been provoking deep hostility toward the U.S. and the Kabul government. Air power is not threatening to pull the rug out from under OEF-A [Operation Enduring Freedom - Afghanistan]. Instead, when Afghan people were polled about the reasons for their growing disillusionment with Kabul, insecurity and corruption overwhelmingly dominated their complaints; “too many innocent people being killed” barely registered. Intuitively, that makes sense in a country of a thousand villages separated by thousand of mountains and valleys, where tribal institutions are the paramount determinant of communication -- not the *International Herald Tribune *or the New York Times, or CNN or Twitter...
The conclusion of the initial research is that while civilian casualties from bombing are presumably hurting rather than helping, there is little reason based on the admittedly limited data available in open source to expect that drastically reducing the civilian casualty issue would produce game changing results on the political battlefield. And if doing so depended on seriously constraining military operations such that there was a significant increase in Afghans’ insecurity (or Allied causalities), it would likely be a counterproductive exchange.
It is curious that it appears there is more ink spent on casualties from air attacks than there is on the criminality and violation of the ethical tenets of Islam that occurs daily as a result of Taliban actions. The international community must hold the Taliban accountable for their criminal actions regarding the intentional use of placing civilians in harm's way. The tactics that the Taliban are employing in this regard are in violation of the international Laws of Armed Conflict--the tactics that the Allied air forces are using to apply force from the air are not. Your article yields great insight into the care that is taken by the Air Force and Allied ground forces to ensure the minimal loss of life--on both sides--as the ISAF seeks to achieve peace in the region.
*Correction: I left out the final two paragraphs in my original posting of Deptula's note. Also, in my introduction to his message, I left the impression that the Georgetown findings were his own. That wasn't the case. And I apologize for the errors. *
[Photo: USAF]
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- McChrystal: Afghan War Needs More Troops, Strategy Shift
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