KABUL—U.S. Special Operations Forces ordered an airstrike that killed at least 27 civilians in southern Afghanistan and the soldiers may not have satisfied rules of engagement designed to avoid the killing of innocents, Afghan and coalition officials said Monday.
The airstrike Sunday hit a group of minibuses in a remote part of the south near the border between Uruzgan and Daykundi provinces. The area is hundreds of miles from Marjah, where the largest allied offensive since 2001 is now in its second week. But the airstrike nonetheless illustrated one of the major problems for coalition forces as they try to win over civilians in Marjah and across Afghanistan: figuring out who is a civilian and who is an insurgent—and not killing the civilians.
It also underscored the risks of the expanding use of Special Operations Forces, whose primary mission is hunting down Taliban, as the leading edge of the fight against the insurgents. Many Special Operations missions by their very nature emphasize the use of violent force, and coalition officials say they have led to a string of recent successes against valuable targets.
By contrast, operations now being carried out by conventional forces, such as the Marines fighting in Marjah, place a greater emphasis on protecting ordinary people.
Afghanistan's cabinet called the latest airstrike "unjustifiable." Afghan and North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials ordered an immediate investigation into the incident, and both sides dispatched investigative teams to the site, officials said.
A large proportion of the thousands of civilians killed by coalition forces since 2001 have been slain in errant airstrikes, and the anger over such deaths runs deep here.
Afghans can often recite from memory the deadliest coalition mistakes: the bombing of fuel tankers in the northern province of Kunduz in September that killed up to 142 people, many of them civilians; the 2000-pound bomb dropped by a B-1 bomber during a battle in western Farah province in May that left dozens of civilians dead; the November 2008 airstrike on a wedding in the southern province of Kandahar that killed 37 people.
The incidents have repeatedly handed the Taliban propaganda victories. The errant strikes now pose a direct challenge to the counter-insurgency strategy laid out by U.S. Army Gen. McChrystal, the top coalition commander in Afghanistan, and endorsed by President Barack Obama.
The strategy uses conventional forces to protect civilians and emphasizes the role of governance in an effort to win the trust of the Afghan people and wean them from the Taliban. Special Operations Forces are being more quietly employed to go after the middle and upper ranks of the insurgency, in theory presenting them with a choice of giving up the fight or facing the consequences, say NATO officers with knowledge of the effort.
Aware of the fallout caused by civilian deaths, Gen. McChrystal ordered the rules under which airstrikes could be called in tightened when he arrived this past summer. Civilian casualties caused by coalition forces dropped by a third last year. In contrast, the number of people killed by the Taliban and other militants rose by about 40%.
But Gen. McChrystal and Afghan President Hamid Karzai say the number has to come down much further if the coalition and the Afghan government are to prevail over the Taliban and its allies.
The coalition and Afghan forces fighting in Marjah have also accidentally killed civilians since the offensive began after midnight on Feb. 13. So far, at least 19 civilians have been killed in the offensive, along with at least 13 coalition troops and one Afghan soldier, officials have confirmed.
Coalition commanders say they worry the civilian deaths will undermine the operation's ultimate goal – restoring the authority of the Afghan government in the southern town and convincing the people there to throw in their lot with the government and the coalition.
Sunday's airstrike appears to be precisely the kind of incident that Gen. McChrystal and his team were trying to avoid with the new rules.
NATO's Afghanistan task force said its forces believed the minibuses were carrying insurgents who were on their way to attack Afghan and NATO troops. It engaged the minibuses with "airborne weapons," NATO said in a statement, without elaborating.
But when troops went to the scene, they "found women and children," the statement said, not insurgents. The wounded were taken to a NATO facility for treatment.
Afghan officials said 27 civilians were killed. The NATO statement didn't provide additional details on the incident.
A NATO spokesman said he couldn't confirm that U.S. Special Operations Forces called in the strike. But other NATO and Afghan officers said the airstrike was ordered by Special Operations Forces who were carrying out a raid with Afghan soldiers and believed the minibuses carried fresh Taliban fighters sent to help those under attack.
How the soldiers came to that conclusion was unclear.
The NATO investigative team is trying to determine whether the soldiers had satisfied the requirements for calling in an airstrike.
Under the rules, which are classified, airpower is meant to be a last resort for soldiers who can't pull back from an imminent threat or sit it out. Airstrikes are also allowed on targets engaged in clearly predatory action, such a planting a hidden roadside bomb, one of the deadliest threats faced by coalition forces.
Troops calling in an airstrike on a threat that isn't immediate are, when possible, supposed to have secondary confirmation that the target is indeed hostile, such as from a spotter or a trusted informant on the ground.
A NATO officer in Afghanistan cautioned that the investigation is still in its preliminary states. But right now, "it doesn't look like the rules were properly followed," the officer said.
Special Operations Forces missions have recently led to the deaths or capture of a number of senior and mid-level Taliban field commanders. But NATO officers also say a number of recent accidental killings have been the result of Special Operations Forces actions, although they declined to specify which ones.
Afghan officials complain Special Operations Forces are killing and arresting too many civilians in so-called "night raids," a major source of tension between coalition officials and the Karzai administration.
"Nobody has an idea what were they doing there because they don't share anything with the Afghans," said an official at the presidential palace. He added that U.S. Special Operations Forces "arrest people and they raid houses without keeping the Afghans in the loop."
The presidential palace echoed those sentiments in a statement condemning Sunday's air raid. Afghanistan's "council of ministers strongly urges the NATO forces to closely coordinate and exercise maximum care before conducting any military operation so that any possible mistakes that may result in harming civilians … can be avoided," the statement said. Gen. McChrystal apologized to Mr. Karzai, according to a later statement released by the palace.
In the statement released by NATO, Gen. McChrystal was quoted as saying, "I have made it clear to our forces that we are here to protect the Afghan people, and inadvertently killing or injuring civilians undermines their trust and confidence in our mission. We will re-double our efforts to regain that trust."
Meanwhile, a suicide bombing in the eastern city of Jalalabad killed at least 15 people, including a prominent tribal elder, Mohammad Zaman Ghamsharik. Mr. Ghamsharik, also known as Haji Zaman, led the Afghan forces who cornered Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora in 2001 before bin Laden slipped away. Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, a spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar province, confirmed he was among the dead. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing.
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