As President Obama studies his next move in Afghanistan, he would do well to consider a United Nations report released Saturday that described 2009 as the worst year for civilian deaths since the war started in 2001.<\/p>\n
The report, the Mid-Year Bulletin on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict in Afghanistan, said 1,500 civilians had been killed in attacks by both the Taliban insurgents and Afghan and international forces up to the month of August.<\/p>\n
The report also showed that the number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan has been increasing each month since 2005. Although, for the first time, Taliban forces were blamed for the majority of the deaths \u2013 about 68 percent \u2013 U.S. and allied forces were blamed for the rest. Airstrikes, for example, killed 200 civilians between January and June of this year.<\/p>\n
Previously Taliban attacks had been more precise, limiting civilian deaths, but in the past year, more of their actions have been indiscriminate and the civilian death toll has been rising.<\/p>\n
But it is the U.S. – and allied-caused civilian deaths that have sparked the most anger from the Afghan people and from within the Afghan government. No one expects much from the Taliban. On the other hand, the United States and its allies are supposed to be there to help and protect the people. Orwellian excuses about \u201ccollateral damage\u201d do little to ease the situation.<\/p>\n
Obama\u2019s top commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, spoke of winning hearts and minds in the country when he recently unveiled his report calling for more troops to fight the Taliban and help stabilize the Afghan government. But the rising death toll among civilians will do just the opposite. <\/p>\n
Obama is currently weighing two major options on Afghanistan: increase the number of troops, which likely will increase the number of civilians killed in the conflict; or to narrow the focus of the war by targeting Al-Qaida, which would shift most of the combat to mountainous regions bordering Pakistan and into Pakistan itself.<\/p>\n
The latter move might actually start winning the hearts and minds of Afghans. Increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan won\u2019t do that. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As President Obama studies his next move in Afghanistan, he would do well to consider a United Nations report released Saturday that described 2009 as the worst year for civilian deaths since the war started in 2001. The report, the Mid-Year Bulletin on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict in Afghanistan, said 1,500 civilians […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[157,26,44,43],"class_list":["post-167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","tag-afghanistan","tag-al-qaida","tag-taliban","tag-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryjohnsononline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryjohnsononline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryjohnsononline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryjohnsononline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryjohnsononline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryjohnsononline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryjohnsononline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions\/170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryjohnsononline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryjohnsononline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryjohnsononline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}