[A-List] Afghanistan: the blowback continues

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

2000 on Taliban offensive after bombing bungle
STEPHEN GRAHAM, Kabul
The Herald, December 09 2003

The US military has launched its biggest offensive so far against defiant
Taliban and al Qaeda militants, sending 2000 troops into a vast lawless
swath of south and east Afghanistan.

The operation began as Afghan and UN officials warned that one of the
military's most tragic blunders - the weekend killing of nine children in a
bungled air strike - could drive more Afghans into the arms of the rebels.

Operation Avalanche "is the largest we have ever designed", said Lieutenant
Colonel Bryan Hilferty at the coalition military headquarters at Bagram,
north of the capital, Kabul.

The enemy "isn't going to know when we hit, he isn't going to know what
we're doing."

Hilferty gave no details about the operation.

Taliban fighters have stepped up attacks - particularly against aid workers
and civilians - in provinces near the Pakistani border and in Ghazni and
Zabul provinces south of the capital.

A French UN worker was gunned down last month and three international
workers have been kidnapped in the past weeks.

But Saturday's air strike - which targeted a Taliban militant but also
killed children playing in a village in Ghazni province - highlighted the
risk of a heavy American military hand serving only to alienate Afghan
civilians.

"Every innocent who is killed has brothers, uncles, sisters, and nephews -
and behind them the tribe," said Sadokhan Ambarkhil, deputy governor of
Paktika, one of the most dangerous provinces for coalition troops and their
Afghan allies. "If 10 people are killed, how many people are saddened?"

The warplane attack also was criticised outside Afghanistan. Kofi Annan, the
UN secretary-general, was "profoundly saddened" by the children's deaths and
called for a thorough investigation.

"The fight against terrorism cannot be won at the expense of innocent
lives," said Fred Eckhard, Annan's spokesman.

Seven boys and two girls, the oldest aged 12, died when the A-10 Warthog
tankbuster warplane sprayed a dusty field with 30mm high-explosive rounds in
Hutala, a village 150 miles south-west of Kabul.

The attack also killed a man that US officials said was Mullah Wazir, a
former district Taliban commander suspected of attacking aid groups and
workers on the Kabul-Kandahar road - a top US-funded reconstruction project.

But villagers say the dead man was Abdul Hamid, a labourer in his 20s who
had returned from Iran just days before his death, and that Mullah Wazir
cleared out days before.

Residents and local officials suggested the Americans were fed bogus
intelligence - a suspected cause of earlier deadly bombings of civilians -
and criticised what they called a careless use of military might.

"I don't know why the US forces did this," said Khial Mohammad, the deputy
governor of Ghazni province, where the attack took place.

"Mullah Wazir wasn't there. He's not a famous commander, but he is famous
for smuggling."

Hilferty, the coalition spokesman, said that DNA was taken from the scene to
try to prove the strike had hit its target.

Aware of the damage such incidents can do to their own image, senior
American officers flew into the village to offer condolences and help.

"Such mistakes could make the Afghan people think ill of the coalition,"
Hilferty said. AP