The Continuing Agony of Afghanistan's Civilians

"We were going to the bride's house for the henna ceremony, some of us were outside the home and some inside [when] suddenly the battle began ... "
"We told the security forces that we were not members of the Taliban. But both sides ended up killing civilians."
Mohammad Salim, 30, Musa Qala, Afghanistan

"[Our U.S. forces joined with Afghan forces in the operation, conducting] precision strikes against barricaded terrorists firing on Afghan and American forces."
"[There were] targeted precision strikes [but] we assess the majority of those killed in the fighting died from al Qaeda weapons or in the explosion of the terrorists' explosives caches or suicide vests."
"[The U.S. is] fighting in a complex environment against those who intentionally kill and hide behind civilians, as well as use dishonest claims of non-combatant casualties as propaganda weapons."
Col. Sonny Leggett, spokesman, U.S. Forces in Afghanistan

Afghans transport the body of a woman who was killed during a raid conducted by Afghan special forces, in the southern Helmand province, on Sept. 23, 2019. (Abdul Hadi / AP)

"The locals are trapped in a war between the Taliban and the U.S. and Afghan forces."
"We told the Taliban, 'don't settle foreign militants near our houses,' we told the Afghan government, 'don't target us if militants live in the middle of our houses, that is not our wish or our fault."
"We can't stop anyone. Don't kill us.'"
Local resident

Perhaps it is inevitable. In any kind of war civilian life is fraught with danger. In Afghanistan's long agony trying to fend off the Taliban with the help of American and NATO forces not much seems to have been accomplished through a UN mandate from 2013 to oust the Taliban. Afghan civilians living in the one-third of the country controlled by the Taliban are at their mercy. And they are at the mercy of the Afghan military targeting the Taliban. To make things even more complex, both al-Qaeda and Islamic State have their own militias stationed in that godforsaken country.

Afghans started out considering the Taliban their heroes, as mujaheddin, fighting on their behalf against the Soviet occupation of the country. When the Russians finally left, knowing that the savage fighting of the war lord militias and the mujaheddin had succeeded in routing them, the field was left wide open for the mujaheddin forces to transform themselves into what is called the Taliban; religious 'scholars' whose fundamentalist reign in the country was every bit as brutal as that of the Soviets, exchanging ideology for theocracy.

There is no such thing as a 'precision' target when fighters deliberately ensconce themselves within crowded civilian populations as shields, a practise widely seen from Hamas in Gaza to the Taliban in Afghanistan, and in fact, a favourite tactic with Islamist jihadists anywhere. While the 'precision' attack can take out members of terrorist groups, the fallout inevitably victimizes ordinary civilians trying to live their lives and not become another sacrifice to the tyranny of violence under the banner of 'liberation'.

On Monday, a joint raid by the U.S. military and the Afghan government forces on a Taliban hideout took the lives of an estimated 40 civilians, a wedding party in a  house adjacent to a building used by the Taliban. Days previous to that an American drone strike again aiming to hit the Taliban ensconced among farmers, killed 32 workers harvesting pine-nuts. On this latest occasion, according to Afghan officials, a house used by the Taliban to train suicide bombers located next to the bride's home saw both come under fire during a commando assault in the Musa Qala area of Helmand province.

Mohammad Salim carried the bodies of cousins and other relatives from the house decorated for the wedding of his sister-in-law, to a nearby burial ground. Celebration transformed to mourning. Twelve children were among the 40 killed at the wedding site. "A foreign terrorist group actively engaged in organizing terrorist attacks" was the target, according to a senior Afghan Defence official. A warehouse of military equipment was also destroyed in the raid.

As a defence ministry official explained, a foreign militant detonated a suicide vest, killing himself and those standing in close proximity, including a woman. "We are aware that civilians were injured in the attack", his understatement made clear. And according to Col. Leggett, most of the dead civilians had been struck by the gunfire of the foreign fighters; alternately from explosives caches or suicide vests being detonated.

The 40 dead civilians are balanced, one supposes in the minds of the military, with the strike killing four senior Taliban commanders and the Taliban shadow governor of Musa Qala, succeeding in bringing to twenty-two the total number of Taliban killed, and another fourteen taken prisoner. The heavy toll on civilian life merits a mental shrug; that's life and death in Afghanistan.

Afghan villagers carry a dead body on a stretcher outside a hospital in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, following an airstrike, September 23, 2019. U.S. and Afghan officials were looking into reports that 40 civilians, including children, were killed in an airstrike that hit a wedding celebration in southern Helmand province. Getty