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.

Afghan Opium - where is the fatwa?

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has just published its winter assessment of the Opium trade in Afghanistan and it makes fascinating and encouraging reading. Opium production is down. The 18 provinces that were opium-free in 2008 are likely to remain so and four others – Badakhshan, Baghlan, Faryab and Herat – could see all poppy cultivation eliminated this spring. Nangahar province is opium free for the first time in anyone’s memory.

Opium cultivation is becoming concentrated in the seven most unstable provinces in the south and south-west, although even in Helmand production may decrease this spring. These seven provinces produce 98 per cent of the country’s opium. In fact Helmand produces more opium than any other region in the world. The UN estimates that about 10 per cent of Afghanistan’s population - around 2.4 million people - is involved in opium cultivation.

The reasons for the drop in production vary. In the north, centre and east of the country it is due to government pressure, higher prices for legal crops and the success of a government propaganda campaign; in the south and east it is due to high wheat prices and a severe water shortage. In the southern region, 21 per cent of village headmen questioned about why they had not planted opium said the reason was because it was against Islam.

Overall, 29 per cent of villages in the south said they would not be cultivating opium, compared to only 15 per cent a year ago. Eighteen per cent of the villages (compared to 29 per cent a year ago) said that they had received a cash advance for growing poppies, although it was not clear who had provided this money.

Despite the fall in production, prices have also fallen by around 20 per cent. This is in part due to massive over-production during the last three years and therefore stockpiles are high – although the location of these stockpiles is unknown. However, as the report notes: “the drugs trade remains a major source of revenue for anti-government forces and organized crime operating in and around Afghanistan. Drug money is also a lubricant for corruption that contaminates power.”

The survey found that the average farm gate price for opium had fallen to $55/kg by November 2008, compared to almost double that in 2006. However, total income for opium farmers totalled around $752 million, compared with about $1 billion the previous year.

Another significant finding is that opium is grown in more than 50 per cent of villages where security is poor, but is not grown in more than 90 per cent of villages where security is good. There is, therefore, a close correlation between opium production and insurgency.

This is the subject of an excellent article by Jacob Townsend, writing in the Jamestown Terrorism Monitor. Townsend is a consultant working with the UN in Afghanistan. He points to several consequences of the recent trends in opium production.

First, he argues, falling prices for opium means the Taliban will be forced to tax non-opium crops more than at present. Second, farmers will have to pay more for their illicit crop to be protected by the Taliban; third, the Taliban will be forced to become more involved in trafficking opium as a way of protecting its income. And fourth, as drug money declines as a form of Taliban income, other sources of funding for the insurgency – for example, donations from the Gulf –will become more evident and thus possibly easier to stop.

Townsend suggests that the nexus between the insurgents and the criminals involved with the opium trade will become even more blurry than it is at present: “a recession in insurgent control will unmask the collusion between local powerholders, opium farmers, and, in many cases, government officials in Kabul.” He argues that next two years - before the opium price rises again - will be critical.

There are several points to make about all these statistics. The first and most important is that the UN has failed to communicate what is happening with the opium trade to the general public. Most people are unaware of the recent successes.

Second, it has not yet been able to persuade enough Moslems that opium cultivation is haram. The truth is that the vast majority of the opium and heroin produced in Afghanistan is consumed locally or in neighbouring countries such as Iran and Pakistan. Its main victims are Moslems. Where are the fatwas? Why has the Taliban not been challenged? It was against opium production when it ruled the country.

Third, it is clear that much of the opium business is being conducted not by the Taliban, but by warlords and criminals who are close to the Karzai administration in Kabul. Is anyone prepared to name and shame?