Scores more civilians die

"Local people who telephoned the BBC said that as many as 50 to 80 civilians had been killed" in an air attack in Gerishk district of Helmand province. Reports indicate that some 30 Taliban fighters perished as well.

Media reports differ on the circumstances of the attack. A US Air Force Major says that ISAF (NATO) troops called for close air support after being attacked. Other reports say it was a joint US/Afghan army convoy which initially came under Taliban fire. Britain is the lead country in the ISAF mission in that province, though Canadian troops have operated there on several occasions.

Deutschland aus (ein wenig)

German parliamentarians are considering pulling out some 100 special forces troops in Afghanistan who are there under the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom. Public opinion in Germany is opposed to the Afghan mission.

Germany currently has some 3000 soldiers in northern Afghanistan operating as part of NATO's ISAF forces as well as several surveillance jets recently added to the NATO project. The mandates of both those deployments will come up for renewal this fall. Thus the move to pull out the special forces could be an attempt to play to public opinion in order to keep the main body of troops in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, IWPR reports on German aid workers pulling out of the northern Kunduz province after the German PRT advised them that the area is too dangerous due to Taliban attacks.

US troops shoot four civilians

"KABUL, June 29 (Reuters) - U.S. soldiers killed four civilian members of the same family during a raid on Friday in Afghanistan's eastern province of Nangarhar". (link here)

The province of Nangarhar has seen several similar incidents in recent months, which have resulted in large protests while polling shows that 52% of Nangarharis want the US out of the country.

As for NATO forces, on June 24 NATO air strikes killed 10 civilians in Pakistan, after reportedly chasing insurgents from Afghanistan across the border. The Pakistani government condemned NATO. (That same day saw one civilian killed by troops following a suicide attack in Helmand as "NATO troops opened indiscriminate fire on locals who were trying to run away from the area."link here)

IWPR reports from Afghanistan

Two items from the Institute for War and Peace Reporting give some insights to what's happening on the ground in Afghanistan.
From Kabul, Hafizullah Gardesh writes:

It has been a difficult few weeks for President Hamed Karzai. Not only has his attorney general publicly accused a former interior ministry official of attempting to kidnap him, his law officers have tried and failed to search the home of a former Kabul police chief, and a high-ranking military official is engaged in a violent dispute with a governor in the north.

The piece is worth reading in full, as the stories it relates are emblematic of what is occurring in Afghanistan. Take the one about Attorney General Sabat: Famous for ordering a violent raid on Tolo TV a couple months back (prompted by the station airing a sound-byte of the A-G taken, so he said, out of context), Sabat alleges that he was beaten by militia men operating under General Jurat, himself a former official of the interior ministry.

Now, warlords with private militias are pretty common in Afghanistan, especially in "lawless" rural areas; however, this incident occurred just 20 minutes outside Kabul. And this warlord isn't a run-of-the-mill warlord, but an entrepreneur: the general, having been fired from his post with the interior ministry, formed a private security company.

As it turned out, the Attorney General, having retured to Kabul, sent some military troops to arrest General Jurat, but Jurat's supporters succeeded in keeping the soldiers from entering Panjshir Valley to make the arrest. The A-G chose not to pursue the matter any longer.

General Jurat's penchant for business is a sign of the times just as much as his Panjshir Valley proto-state. The Afghan government has been on a privatization binge for the past year or so, and has lately been contemplating membership in the World Trade Organization. In fact, joining the WTO is planned out as a development benchmark in the Afghanistan National Development Strategy, inked in Bonn in January 2006 with Canadian participation.

Oxfam has weighed in on the WTO bid, advising against it: "Liberalising the Afghan economy too soon could undermine vital efforts to reduce poverty and suffering," according to Matt Waldman, Oxfam's policy and advocacy adviser in the country. (See the report here, in pdf.)

So if the Canadian government is so intent on assisting development in Afghanistan, will we hear calls from Ottawa for a re-think on free trade being bestowed on the country? Doesn't seem very likely.

Also from the Institute for War and Peace Reporting is a very interesting blog entry by Jean MacKenzie, who is by now a veteran reporter on Afghanistan. Her account of a visit to Helmand (which is, not coincidentally, the hotspot of both the opium industry and the insurgency) is eye-opening.

The area is racked with violence, and MacKenzie is shocked by what she is told by her Afghan colleagues:

I, like most Westerners, assume the violence is associated with the resurgent Taleban. Daily reports of battles and bombings reinforce the fear, and when speaking with my journalist colleagues, I expect them to lay the blame squarely at the feet of the fundamentalists.

"Oh, no, it's not the Taleban," they tell me. "It's criminals."

... Out of two dozen reporters, not one was willing to blame the Taleban.

... On this trip, more than even before, I realise how intertwined the Taleban are with the local population. I wonder why we call them "insurgents" – suggesting that they have come in from the outside - when they are at least as likely to be next-door neighbours, relatives or colleagues.

'Operation Torture'

- Here is the eyewitness account of alleged US torture in Afghanistan by German embeds Wolfgang Bauer and Karsten Schoene.

- Echoing US statements made yesterday, NATO spokespeople say bombing and strafing runs "would not be something we would be looking to change at this point."

'Afghanistan: Becoming Iraq'

- CBC's On the Map, in the last week of their one-month trial run (don't worry they are returning in November), had another feature on Afghanistan, interviewing author Ann Jones about women's rights.

- The Editorial Board of the Seattle-Post Intelligencer warns, "If we're not careful, Afghanistan could turn into another Iraq for us."

- 78 per cent of Poles are opposed to their soldiers' occupying Afghanistan, with 81 per cent opposed to occupying Iraq.

- Yet another 'Record opium crop' in Afghanistan.

- U.S. General rejects the recent ACBAR report on civilian casualties, says bombing and strafing runs "are good -- they work."

- Two German journalists say they witnessed U.S. soldiers abuse detainee; NATO launches an investigation.

- Labatt's Blue is now in on the 'support the troops' bandwagon; they have launched a 'Canada Day Program to Recognize Canadian Troops Overseas' in conjunction with the Canadian Forces Personnel Support Agency (CFPSA), aka Department of Defence. The Labatt's website flashes special commemorative photos of the CF as part of their "Message [to the troops] in a Blue Bottle" campaign.

- German defense minister in Washington to talk to Hadley and Gates about Afghanistan.

To 'Support' or 'Not Support' the Troops? That is (/is not) the question

The 11th turn-around by Toronto's Mayor and Council to continue putting yellow "Support the Troops" ribbons on emergency vehicles has released a torrent of media commentary on the question.

As noted in an earlier post, this furor has spilled over into several cities across Canada: Fredericton, Ottawa, Edmonton, London, and Vancouver have all seen the issue come to the fore.

During a ceremony in Edmonton last Thursday Conservative MP Laurie Hawn handed over 30 'support the troops' decals to a couple of City Councilors who are seeking to pass a motion that will "adorn the city's emergency vehicles" with them. Hawn, who sits on the Standing Committee for Foreign Affairs and International Development (FAAE), made a revealing comment about the yellow ribbons/'support the troops' 'movement':

"This is something we need to do and we need to spread it across the country."

And, the Journal reported:

"Hawn said he has sent letters to all members of Parliament asking that they do the same in their own cities and said he expects a positive response."

If the yellow ribbons/'support the troops' frenzy is part of the latest Conservative political ploy, Harper's recent assertions that "he wants a consensus among Canadians, not just parliamentarians, about the country's future role in Afghanistan" should be taken with a tablespoon or so of salt.

- The mainstream discourse has given little space to the viewpoint that rejects the 'support the troops' mantra altogether. With that in mind, here are a couple of essays in this vein by Liddell and Hoenig. And, in their Sunday edition, the Ottawa Citizen did publish one letter to the editor, 'Support our troops' message is a way to suppress dissent,"a portion of which states:

"No matter what anyone says, these "support our troops" stickers and banners are a jingoistic meaningless way to suppress dissent against this unnecessary aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq. (Canada is in Iraq too, with soldiers on exchange with U.S. units, but who could blame you for not knowing it?) "Support our troops" echoes the propaganda of totalitarian, militaristic regimes."

Civilian deaths...

ACBAR, the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, released a Statement on the Conduct of Military Operations (pdf) this week. In it, they "strongly condemn" military operations by foreign forces "in which disproportionate or indiscriminate use of force has resulted in civilian casualties."

Then they quantify civilian deaths, finding "since the beginning of 2007 international and Afghan government forces have been responsible for the deaths of a minimum of 230 civilians including at least 60 women and children."

ACBAR doesn't provide an estimate of civilian deaths attributable to insurgents, however the Associated Press has done that. They report that "militants killed 178 civilians in attacks through June 23", while in their estimate "Western forces killed 203".

'Scud Stud' on Afghanistan

Veteran Canadian journalist Arthur Kent has produced numerous short documentary pieces on Afghanistan, which are worth checking out, on his regularly-updated website, SkyReporter.com.

Report on media

The Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute has a new report on Afghanistan and the media: The Information Gap: Why the Canadian Public Doesn’t Know More About its Military (pdf), by Sharon Hobson. As part of her research, Hobson interviewed several Canadian journalists who have reported on Afghanistan.

Excerpts:

A few reporters ran afoul of the military's guidelines and were ejected from the base [Kandahar Air Field], although the exact nature of their infractions was not always made clear.

...the public affairs officers dealing with the embedding program were happy with what they had accomplished. One public affairs officer (PAffO) commented that embedding created a pro-military bias and positive news stories. But as he also noted, “measuring embedding on the basis of press clippings is an error. The real success is the growth of understanding in the media.

...Scott Taylor, editor of Esprit de Corps magazine, listened to General Hillier's complaints about the press and decided to look into his accusations that the media was not giving a balanced view of the mission.
Taylor talked to Senator Colin Kenney, Chair of the Senate Defence Committee, who told him he'd asked for information on development projects but had received nothing from the DND. “They have a map showing the location of each and every one of our casualties,” said Kenney, “but they have nothing which shows the schools built or the wells which they've dug? I find that difficult to comprehend.”Next Taylor went to the DND photographic website, “Combat Camera,” ... The search for images of wells drew a blank, and any pictures of ’roads’ invariably showed combat convoys rather than construction crews.” Taylor concluded that “DND was equally to blame for emphasizing the same negative issues that caused Hillier to denigrate the media.”