Tensions between US and NATO over civilian deaths

The Sun newspaper reports today that a British colonel faces possible charges under section one of the Official Secrets Act for leaking sensitive details of civilian casualties in Afghanistan to a woman from a human rights group.
Lt Col Owen McNally, who has been seconded from his regiment for a year to work with NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, is apparently on his way back to London under guard where he will be questioned by detectives from the Metropolitan Police.
From the few facts that have been made public it would appear that the details being referred to are contained in a report published last September by Human Rights Watch (see here for more information on Rachel Reid, his alleged contact at HRW and here for a strong rebuttal statement from Ms Reid. ).
Their report, Troops in Contact: Airstrikes and Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan, openly acknowledges that NATO and other military officials, particularly from the USA, were contacted. "Human Rights Watch is appreciative of the numerous interviews granted by US and NATO military and civilian officials. In particular we would like to thank the members of the Judge Advocate General Corps, NATO headquarters, Kabul; US military personnel at Bagram Air Base; military planners at the Combined Air Operations Center, Doha; and the NATO Media Operations Center, Brussels."
The report noted a steep increase in the number of civilians killed by US airstrikes and was published just days after dozens of civilians in Azizabad in the west of the country were killed in yet another disastrous bombing (see my previous blog on this subject). Thus in 2006 116 civilians were killed in 13 bombings by Operation Enduring Freedom and ISAF airstrikes. In 2007 this figure had risen to 321 deaths in 22 bombings. And in the first seven months of 2008, excluding Azizabad, 119 civilians had been killed in 12 airstrikes.
However, what was striking about the HRW report is that it contains very detailed information about some of the incidents in which civilians were killed in Afghanistan. For example, it notes: "In one district, a senior British commander asked US Special Operations Forces to leave his district due to the mounting civilian casualties caused when the US repeatedly called in airstrikes to rescue small numbers of special forces during firefights with insurgent forces."
This is, to say the least, an unusual level of detail and it is surprising that the information was handed over voluntarily by the military authorities. Not least because it highlights possible tensions between NATO and US commanders over the use of close aerial support.
This point was reinforced at the end of January this year when NATO decided to publish its own civilian casualty figures. According to NATO spokesman James Appathurai, of more than 1,000 civilians killed last year in Afghanistan, less than 100 were killed by NATO-led forces. He also said that there was no information on civilian deaths for previous years because there was no reliable way of collating them. "We put in a new tracking system last year. Before that we weren't frankly confident in our ability to judge it accurately. You have to understand this is a country where there are no birth certificates, there are no death certificates, people are buried very quickly and this is often in remote areas," he said.
Clearly there is more to this than meets the eye.

Human Rights Watch and The Azizabad Massacre

Last week's letter from Brad Adams of Human Rights Watch to outgoing US Secretary of Defense Robert M Gates will, I hope, be remembered for marking the end of a US military policy that has brought nothing but disrepute to the armed services of that country.
His letter concerns the US night air attack on the small town of Azizabad, near Shindand in the West of the country that took place on 21-22 August last year and which has been the subject of much controversy.
The US military authorities have been accused of a cover-up over the incident in which it is thought around 80 civilians were killed. Initial statements denied any civilians were killed and even after a senior USAF officer was brought in to conduct an inquiry, the military would only accept that around 30 civilians had been killed - as a result of the Taliban using them as 'human shields'. No-one else places any credibility on this story.
In his open letter Adams noted the recent statements from senior military figures that in order to minimise civilian casualties, various tactical directives have been issued that should ensure actions are called off if there is any danger of civilians being killed. Why that was not the case right from the beginning of the conflict is in itself hard to understand.
But leaving that point aside, it is to be welcomed that the Coalition forces have at long last acknowledged the enormous damage done by indiscriminate airstrikes on civilians. The use of airstrikes has grown enormously in the last two years. According to John A Nagl and Nathaniel C Fick, writing in Foreign Policy magazine recently, "In 2005 the Coalition conducted 176 close air support missions in Afghanistan. In 2007 it completed 3,572 such missions." That's a 20-fold increase.
However, HRW is "deeply dismayed" by the investigation by USAF Brig Gen Michael W Callan into the bombing at Azizabad, a summary of which was made public on 1 October 2008. HRW has now investigated that report. Its verdict? "Instead of being an exemplary US investigation derived from a new operational mandate, the Callan Report Summary (the report itself is still classified - Ed) appears to be little more than a return to the discredited inquiries of recent years."
HRW says Callan dismisses the methodology used in the three other investigations - by the UN, the government of Afghanistan and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. It also rejects information provided by villagers, exonerates the US forces of any wrongdoing and places the responsibility for preventable civilian deaths on the Taliban.
This is buck-passing of the worst kind. More to the point, it is the sort of denial that will strengthen the very forces the US military is fighting in Afghanistan. Nothing acts as a better recruitment sergeant than the deaths of innocent civilians.
Let us recall, very briefly, what happened at Azizabad on the night in question. US and Afghan forces entered the town to find a 'high value' target named as Mullah Sadiq. As they approached the village they were fired upon and responded with close air support, including an AC130H gunship (armed with M102 105mm howitzers and 40mm grenades) and an MQ-9 Reaper unmanned drone which at one point dropped a 500-lb bomb. Around 12-14 houses were completely destroyed. Five men were taken into custody, including three Afghan National police and two local residents. Four were released within a few days and the fifth spent three months in Bagram before he too was released without charge.
In the immediate aftermath the US military denied there had been any civilian casualties. A day later they admitted five deaths. The three investigations mentioned above came to very different conclusions: they said between 78 and 92 civilians had been killed, mostly children.
The military only began to change its story when video shot on a mobile phone by a local doctor clearly showed a large number of dead civilians lying in rows in the local mosque. A new inquiry, under Callan, was ordered.
Callan accepted that 33 civilians had been killed, but refused to confirm the higher figures found by the three other inquiries. His report failed to acknowledge an intelligence failure, suggested (without evidence) that the Taliban had used civilians as human shields and judged that the air attack was lawful.
The HRW report addresses all of these points. They note, for example, that five of the men killed were contractors working as security guards for the UK-based Armor Group. Only 15 weapons were found at the site by US forces, of which five were legally registered to the contractors. According to HRW: "The Callan Report Summary says that the presence of a small number of rifles, a box of mobile phones and some mines were evidence that all 22 men killed were 'Anti-government militia'." They strongly dispute this saying evidence on the presence of Taliban fighters is "problematic".
Brad Adams' letter states "The weaknesses in the Callan Report Summary call into question the depth of the Defense Department's commitment to institute reforms that would reduce civilian casualties. We are concerned that unless such reforms are urgently implemented, more unnecessary civilian deaths and injuries will result, generating greater public outrage and hostility towards the presence of international forces."
Azizabad was not the first time that large numbers of civilians have been killed in Afghanistan as a result of poor intelligence or (as may be the case on this occasion) internal Afghan rivalries.
Nothing could be more appropriate for attention by the new Secretary of Defense than he should publish the full Callan Report and take in hand the culture within sections of the military which appears to believe that dead civilians don't count. They do, Mr Secretary, they do.