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Karzai orders NATO to stop airstrikes in Afghanistan
By Joshua Partlow and Javed Hamdard, Updated: Tuesday, May 31, 7:45 AM
KABUL--President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday issued an ultimatum to NATO forces to stop airstrikes on Afghan homes and warned that if they don’t, the Afghan people would drive them out as they have occupying armies in the past.
The demand was the most serious warning to the coalition that Karzai has issued to date. The immediate provocation was a coalition airstrike on Saturday in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province that killed nine civilians, including children. But Karzai’s statement also was the culmination of years of complaints about civilian casualties and aggressive NATO military operations.
“From this moment, airstrikes on the houses of people are not allowed,” Karzai said at a news conference at the presidential palace.
“Afghanistan is an ally, not an occupied country. And our treatment with NATO is from the point of view of an ally. If it turns to the other, to the behavior of an occupation, then of course the Afghan people know how to deal with that,” he said.
Karzai added that “history is a witness how Afghanistan deals with occupiers,” and declared that if NATO airstrikes continue Afghanistan will take “unilateral action.” He did not specify the action but said he will explain that to NATO commanders during a meeting scheduled for Sunday.
Although Karzai has a history of provocative statements, his words on Tuesday raised the confrontation between his government and the U.S.-led coalition to a new level. Karzai has regularly called for an end to civilian casualties, night raids by U.S. Special Operations forces, and all unilateral NATO operations in Afghanistan.
But he has rarely spoken so directly about NATO forces being a potential enemy of the Afghan people.
Rear Adm. Vic Beck, NATO’s director of public affairs, said a team of Afghan representatives of the army, the police and the intelligence service is consulted before authorizing nighttime raids.
Estimates from both NATO and other organizations, such as the United Nations, attribute the majority of civilian casualties to the insurgents rather than NATO forces.
“The insurgents have repeatedly fired on medical evacuation aircraft, carried out suicide attacks in bazaars full of Afghan women and children – and this week attempted to use an Afghan ambulance as a suicide vehicle bomb,” Beck said.
He noted that that Gen. David H. Petraeus , the top commander for the coalition, has “repeatedly noted that every liberation force has to be very conscious that it can, over time, become seen as an occupation force.”
“He has long stated that extending the ‘half-life’ of the period during which an outside force is regarded positively by its partners and the people is very important,” Beck added.
While U.S. and NATO forces have made reducing collateral damage on civilians a top priority, military officials say it is almost impossible to eliminate them entirely, particularly as insurgents fight in and among the population. The deaths last week in Helmand province were such an example.
On Saturday, a U.S. Marine patrol was attacked by five insurgents in the Now Zad district, killing one Marine, according to military officials. The insurgents then went into a walled house and continued to fight until the Marines called in a Harrier fighter jet for an airstrike.
“Unfortunately, the compound the insurgents purposefully occupied was later discovered to house innocent civilians,” U.S. Marine Maj. Gen. John Toolan, the NATO commander in Afghanistan’s southwest, said in a statement.
The United Nations recorded 2,777 civilian deaths last year in Afghanistan, an increase of 15 percent over 2009. Of those, 75 percent were caused by insurgents, while 16 percent were attributed to NATO and Afghan forces, according to the U.N. mission’s latest annual report. Nine percent of the civilian deaths could not be attributed.
In the past two weeks, insurgents bombed a hospital in Kabul and set off explosives near a hospital in Herat. They had never before targeted a hospital, according to a Western official in Kabul.
“When ISAF kills civilians it’s an unfortunate by-product of warfare,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “Whereas the Taliban actively target civilians. It’s the difference between mistakes and war crimes.”
Another NATO spokesman Maj. Sunset Belinsky, called the insurgents “the enemy of the Afghan people. . . they are showing complete disregard for the safety of innocent Afghans.”
Karzai’s call for the end of such airstrikes, a key weapon for NATO forces in Afghanistan, is a test for his authority over foreign troops operating on Afghan soil. His other demands in the past, such as ending Special Operations night raids, have not been heeded entirely but reforms have been made to include Afghans more fully in the process as well as guidance for troops to show more restraint.
Karzai seemed adamant that this time should be different.
“If this is repeated, Afghanistan has a lot of ways of stopping it, but we don't want to go there. We want NATO to stop the raids on its own, without a declaration of an end by the Afghan government, because we want to continue to cooperate," he said. “They must treat Afghanistan as a sovereign nation.”
© The Washington Post Company
By Joshua Partlow and Javed Hamdard, Updated: Tuesday, May 31, 7:45 AM
KABUL--President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday issued an ultimatum to NATO forces to stop airstrikes on Afghan homes and warned that if they don’t, the Afghan people would drive them out as they have occupying armies in the past.
The demand was the most serious warning to the coalition that Karzai has issued to date. The immediate provocation was a coalition airstrike on Saturday in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province that killed nine civilians, including children. But Karzai’s statement also was the culmination of years of complaints about civilian casualties and aggressive NATO military operations.
“From this moment, airstrikes on the houses of people are not allowed,” Karzai said at a news conference at the presidential palace.
“Afghanistan is an ally, not an occupied country. And our treatment with NATO is from the point of view of an ally. If it turns to the other, to the behavior of an occupation, then of course the Afghan people know how to deal with that,” he said.
Karzai added that “history is a witness how Afghanistan deals with occupiers,” and declared that if NATO airstrikes continue Afghanistan will take “unilateral action.” He did not specify the action but said he will explain that to NATO commanders during a meeting scheduled for Sunday.
Although Karzai has a history of provocative statements, his words on Tuesday raised the confrontation between his government and the U.S.-led coalition to a new level. Karzai has regularly called for an end to civilian casualties, night raids by U.S. Special Operations forces, and all unilateral NATO operations in Afghanistan.
But he has rarely spoken so directly about NATO forces being a potential enemy of the Afghan people.
Rear Adm. Vic Beck, NATO’s director of public affairs, said a team of Afghan representatives of the army, the police and the intelligence service is consulted before authorizing nighttime raids.
Estimates from both NATO and other organizations, such as the United Nations, attribute the majority of civilian casualties to the insurgents rather than NATO forces.
“The insurgents have repeatedly fired on medical evacuation aircraft, carried out suicide attacks in bazaars full of Afghan women and children – and this week attempted to use an Afghan ambulance as a suicide vehicle bomb,” Beck said.
He noted that that Gen. David H. Petraeus , the top commander for the coalition, has “repeatedly noted that every liberation force has to be very conscious that it can, over time, become seen as an occupation force.”
“He has long stated that extending the ‘half-life’ of the period during which an outside force is regarded positively by its partners and the people is very important,” Beck added.
While U.S. and NATO forces have made reducing collateral damage on civilians a top priority, military officials say it is almost impossible to eliminate them entirely, particularly as insurgents fight in and among the population. The deaths last week in Helmand province were such an example.
On Saturday, a U.S. Marine patrol was attacked by five insurgents in the Now Zad district, killing one Marine, according to military officials. The insurgents then went into a walled house and continued to fight until the Marines called in a Harrier fighter jet for an airstrike.
“Unfortunately, the compound the insurgents purposefully occupied was later discovered to house innocent civilians,” U.S. Marine Maj. Gen. John Toolan, the NATO commander in Afghanistan’s southwest, said in a statement.
The United Nations recorded 2,777 civilian deaths last year in Afghanistan, an increase of 15 percent over 2009. Of those, 75 percent were caused by insurgents, while 16 percent were attributed to NATO and Afghan forces, according to the U.N. mission’s latest annual report. Nine percent of the civilian deaths could not be attributed.
In the past two weeks, insurgents bombed a hospital in Kabul and set off explosives near a hospital in Herat. They had never before targeted a hospital, according to a Western official in Kabul.
“When ISAF kills civilians it’s an unfortunate by-product of warfare,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “Whereas the Taliban actively target civilians. It’s the difference between mistakes and war crimes.”
Another NATO spokesman Maj. Sunset Belinsky, called the insurgents “the enemy of the Afghan people. . . they are showing complete disregard for the safety of innocent Afghans.”
Karzai’s call for the end of such airstrikes, a key weapon for NATO forces in Afghanistan, is a test for his authority over foreign troops operating on Afghan soil. His other demands in the past, such as ending Special Operations night raids, have not been heeded entirely but reforms have been made to include Afghans more fully in the process as well as guidance for troops to show more restraint.
Karzai seemed adamant that this time should be different.
“If this is repeated, Afghanistan has a lot of ways of stopping it, but we don't want to go there. We want NATO to stop the raids on its own, without a declaration of an end by the Afghan government, because we want to continue to cooperate," he said. “They must treat Afghanistan as a sovereign nation.”
© The Washington Post Company
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