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Killing of Afghan civilians not ‘accidental’
Killing of Afghan civilians not ‘accidental’
By: Prof James Petras | Published: June 11, 2011
Killing of Afghan civilians not ‘accidental’ | Pakistan | News | Newspaper | Daily | English | Online
The recent rash of civilian killings by Nato forces in occupied Afghanistan raises several basic questions: Why do US – Nato air and ground forces kill so many civilians, so persistently, over such long stretches of time, in regions throughout the country? Why have the number of civilians killed, increased in the course of the conflict? Why do Nato-US airplanes continue to bomb civilian housing and village gatherings and ground troops indiscriminately assault homes and workshops? Why are the pleas of Nato collaborator President Karzai to desist in home bombings go unheeded? Finally, knowing that the killing of civilians, entire families including children, mothers and the elderly alienates the local population and breeds widespread and profound hostility, why do the Nato-US military refuse to alter their tactics and strategy?
Explanations and Excuses for Civilian Killings
Apologists for the Nato killings of civilians are as abundant as their explanations are lacking in substance. Pentagon spokespeople speak of “accidents”, “errors of war”, “collateral damage”; media pundits blame the guerrilla fighters for engaging in warfare in areas populated by civilians; neo-conservative academics and their “think tank” colleagues blame Islamic fundamentalism for converting villagers to their cause and “forcing” Nato to kill civilians in order to create martyrs and to use their deaths as a recruiting device.
These patently superficial explanations raise more questions than answers, or in some cases, inadvertently refute the justification for the entire war. The “error of war” argument begs a more basic question: what kind of war is Nato-US engaged in that constantly finds the guerrillas ‘melting’ into the population, while the occupation breaks down doors and perceives each and every household as a possible sanctuary, or outpost of the resistance? What kind of military relies on high altitude fighter planes and pilotless planes directed from distant command posts to attack population centres, in which commerce, farming and household economies engage the population? Clearly only an army of occupation, an imperial army, is willing to repeatedly sacrifice a multitude of civilians to kill a single or a few suspected combatants. Only a military operating in a hostile civilian environment is going to assume that lodged behind every door of every home there is an “enemy”; that every family is sheltering a combatant; that it is better to “go in shooting” then to risk a bullet in the gut. ‘Accidents of war’ do not ‘just happen’ for an entire decade, covering an entire country. The killing of civilians is a result of a war of imperial conquest against an entire people who resist the occupation in whatever form is appropriate to their circumstance. The pilots and ground troops recognise that they are a hostile alien force, whose presence is commanded from above by generals and politicians dealing with abstract schemes of ‘terrorists-linked to Al-Qaeda that have no relation to the dense web of personal bonds of solidarity between resistance fighters and civilians on the ground in Afghanistan.
By: Prof James Petras | Published: June 11, 2011
Killing of Afghan civilians not ‘accidental’ | Pakistan | News | Newspaper | Daily | English | Online
The recent rash of civilian killings by Nato forces in occupied Afghanistan raises several basic questions: Why do US – Nato air and ground forces kill so many civilians, so persistently, over such long stretches of time, in regions throughout the country? Why have the number of civilians killed, increased in the course of the conflict? Why do Nato-US airplanes continue to bomb civilian housing and village gatherings and ground troops indiscriminately assault homes and workshops? Why are the pleas of Nato collaborator President Karzai to desist in home bombings go unheeded? Finally, knowing that the killing of civilians, entire families including children, mothers and the elderly alienates the local population and breeds widespread and profound hostility, why do the Nato-US military refuse to alter their tactics and strategy?
Explanations and Excuses for Civilian Killings
Apologists for the Nato killings of civilians are as abundant as their explanations are lacking in substance. Pentagon spokespeople speak of “accidents”, “errors of war”, “collateral damage”; media pundits blame the guerrilla fighters for engaging in warfare in areas populated by civilians; neo-conservative academics and their “think tank” colleagues blame Islamic fundamentalism for converting villagers to their cause and “forcing” Nato to kill civilians in order to create martyrs and to use their deaths as a recruiting device.
These patently superficial explanations raise more questions than answers, or in some cases, inadvertently refute the justification for the entire war. The “error of war” argument begs a more basic question: what kind of war is Nato-US engaged in that constantly finds the guerrillas ‘melting’ into the population, while the occupation breaks down doors and perceives each and every household as a possible sanctuary, or outpost of the resistance? What kind of military relies on high altitude fighter planes and pilotless planes directed from distant command posts to attack population centres, in which commerce, farming and household economies engage the population? Clearly only an army of occupation, an imperial army, is willing to repeatedly sacrifice a multitude of civilians to kill a single or a few suspected combatants. Only a military operating in a hostile civilian environment is going to assume that lodged behind every door of every home there is an “enemy”; that every family is sheltering a combatant; that it is better to “go in shooting” then to risk a bullet in the gut. ‘Accidents of war’ do not ‘just happen’ for an entire decade, covering an entire country. The killing of civilians is a result of a war of imperial conquest against an entire people who resist the occupation in whatever form is appropriate to their circumstance. The pilots and ground troops recognise that they are a hostile alien force, whose presence is commanded from above by generals and politicians dealing with abstract schemes of ‘terrorists-linked to Al-Qaeda that have no relation to the dense web of personal bonds of solidarity between resistance fighters and civilians on the ground in Afghanistan.
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