Bombs Away: Afghan Air War Peaks With 1,000 Strikes in October
- By Noah Shachtman
- November 10, 2010 |
- 12:25 pm |
- Categories: Af/Pak
The U.S. and its allies have unleashed a massive air campaign in Afghanistan, launching missiles and bombs from the sky at a rate rarely seen since the war’s earliest days. In October alone, NATO planes fired their weapons on 1,000 separate missions, U.S. Air Force statistics provided to Danger Room show. Since Gen. David Petraeus took command of the war effort in late June, coalition aircraft have flown 2,600 attack sorties. That’s 50% more than they did during the same period in 2009. Not surprisingly, civilian casualties are on the rise, as well.
NATO officials say the increase in air attacks is simply a natural outgrowth of a more aggressive campaign to push militants out of their strongholds in southern Afghanistan. “Simply put, our air strikes have increased because our operations have increased. We’ve made a concentrated effort in the south to clear out the insurgency and therefore have increased our number of troops on the ground and aircraft to support them in this effort,” Lt. Nicole Schwegman, a NATO spokesperson, tells Danger Room.
On the other hand, some outside observers believe the strikes are part of an attempt to soften up the insurgency before negotiations with them begin in earnest. But one thing is clear: it’s a strategy Petraeus has used before. Once he took over the Iraq war effort, air strikes jumped nearly sevenfold.
Next month, the Obama administration is set to review the strategy for the Afghanistan campaign. Petraeus’ newly-aggressive approach will almost certainly part of that examination. It’s a dramatic reversal from Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s strategy, which drastically restricted the use of air power — even when troops came under fire.
But the new general is doing more than launching an expanded air war. He’s also unleashing special operations forces to go after militants on the ground. According to Petraeus’ team, those commandos conducted more than 1,500 operations in 90 days ending October 21. 339 insurgent leaders were killed or captured, as were 3,444 militant footsoldiers.
The ultimate goal of this aggression, ironically, may be a peace deal. The New York Times’ Dexter Filkins is one of several veteran observers of the war that sees the push as “a coordinated effort by American commanders to bleed the insurgency and pressure its leaders to negotiate an end to the war.”
But in the meantime, more innocents are getting caught in the cross-fire. Schwegman emails Danger Room that “while our air strikes have gone up, our incident rate of causing civilian casualties has actually decreased. As you know, our main principle in our counterinsurgency strategy is to protect the civilian population first and foremost.”
According to NATO statistics, however, 49 by-standers were killed or wounded by coalition forces last month, compared to 38 last October. It’s an increase of 30%. The militants’ civilian toll has gone up at a similar rate. But the insurgents have been far more ruthless, far more callous about innocent life. They killed or wounded 322 civilians last month — four times as many as the coalition.
NATO has escalated its air campaign in Afghanistan before — most notably in the early summer of 2008, when coalition aircraft went on 2,366 attack missions. But each rise has been followed by a dip, often because the civilian costs of the air operations grew too high. In 2004, for example, then-commander Gen. David Barno halted all pre-planned air operations after a number of the strikes went awry, slaying innocents. “I was very concerned that if killing local Taliban leaders with airstrikes produced civilian casualties, the tactical benefit would not offset the strategic damage it did to our cause,” Barno later said. After U.S. aircraft killed as many as 97 civilians in a single incident in May 2009, McChrystal imposed his tight guidelines on air power. Whether a similar constriction will happen after this current air campaign remains to be seen.
Photo: USAF
See Also:
- Does Petraeus Mean a Return of Afghanistan Air War?
- New Afghan Air War? Don’t Count On It, General Says
- Petraeus Launches Afghan Air Assault; Strikes Up 172 Percent …
- How the Afghanistan Air War Got Stuck in the Sky
- The Phrase That’s Screwing Up the Afghan Air War
- Spin War Shift: Military Now Bragging About Afghan Air Strikes
- Petraeus Throws Out the Book, Launches Airstrikes
Allied forces have totally and unequivocally defeated
all enemy armed forces in Kandahar worth a tinker’s dam.
What the fuck more do these politicians want from ISAF?
It’s up to the Pashtuns to figure out their own future.
Soldiers are not politicians no matter how hard they may try.
Where the fuck is the leadership man?
Where are you guys?
Yeah because the Pashtuns have been waiting all their life for us to show up and figure out their future for them.
If they have increased air strikes by 50% and civilian casualties have only gone up 30%, they are either being more careful or they are getting luckier. Obviously it sucks to be the collateral damage, but it sucks to live in a war zone.
What’s that flame emerging from behind the RH landing gear in the A-10 photo? Flare?
Cultures make countries. Pashtuns have a barbaric, primitive culture. There is no chance of democracy and prosperity breaking out there. To believe that Afghanistan can be fixed if we just kill the few bad seeds is moronic.
Iraq is unfixable for similar reasons.
The real problem lies in the assumption that the Taliban are willing to talk. I’m not aware of any change in their official position that their primary pre-condition for any talks is the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Afghanistan.
@steve_real “Allied forces have totally and unequivocally defeated all enemy armed forces in Kandahar worth a tinker’s dam.”
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I’m not sure where you get that. The obvious tactic every insurgency since Mao has used when faced with a conventional assault is to melt away. That does not equal defeat.
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To use the Maoist terminology, the insurgents are engaged in both Phases 1 and 2, but not in Phase 3, except in very limited circumstances. As such, they don’t openly oppose conventional forces. They may certainly attack them, but they’re not going to allow themselves to be engaged by a conventional force with firepower that can obviously crush an enemy in the open.
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So, just as they did in Marja, they largely went back to being fish in the sea, until conventional operations went elsewhere. At which point they promptly went back to work.
This is the war that never ends,
Yes it goes on and on, my friends.
Some morons started fighting it not knowing what it was,
And they’ll continue fighting it forever just because…
(chorus)
So we get a couple leader to step down and stop fighting us just so the next guy can call them weak and take over? As much as I’d like to see this end well I can’t imagine it working out for more than a few years if that.
“Not surprisingly, civilian casualties are on the rise, as well.”–nice going general…
We’ve always been at war with Eastasia, right?
Sun glint off the airframe. No fire.
Check out my PowerPoint on why terrorists hate us:
http://www.slideshare.net/anarcholibertarian/why-do-they-hate-us
My little sister presented this to her high-school class. Midway through a glitch temporarily stopped it, at which time one girl said, “I was just getting into it!” My sister looked up and saw some of the students jaws were dropped. That made my day!
Don’t bother with Anarcho link, it at best cherry picks and routinely states lies as factual events that can not be contested in order to promote an Isolationist point of view. I have seen religious creeds based on more facts than this piece of garbage. Seriously any high school debate team could not this down with an hour of prep.
Ok i’m sorry. I don’t see how a bunch of people living in caves are really challenging us and other top nations. let’s quit being humane about it and just end it. How many UN laws need to be broken, Lives taken, lives ruined, hell even money spent for somebody at the UN or US to stand up and say Screw these kidnapping, executing civilians bullock sucking little pricks and just do the job.
Take note from past wars. We aren’t suppose to blow a hole in the wall and then help them repair it while we blow another wall down, no that’s not the american way. We blow up the whole building then when there is nothing left and with a job well down then we help repair.
Or let’s sign some crap with Osama saying we will leave your pile of sand alone if you stop killing non-islamic/muslim people.
Sorry for my language I was just venting…..
We’ve always been at war with Eastasia, right?
Who benefits?
Stop and consider just how much all this costs U.S. taxpayers ?
If you own a “bomb factory” (read any defense contractor) you are happy with the war(s) and are reaping a HUGE profit.
Remember, the defense contractor gets PAID no matter what the outcome. Every bomb that is dropped is gone from inventory and must be replaced, adding to the contractor’s profit.
A pointless (and unending) war(s) in far away places is PERFECT for someone who owns the “bomb factory”.
Likewise for anyone who reaps a profit by suppling services to those engaged in the manufacturing, delivering, and/or dropping of said bombs.
The longer this folly lasts, the greater the PROFIT.
These wars are a REALLY good deal for the owners of the military-industrial complex, affiliate civilian contractors, and political servants.
After all, (except for defense contractors) only oil companies, dope dealers, and mineral exploiters REALLY care about what goes on in Iraq and/or Afghanistan.
The interests of the VAST majority U.S. taxpayers are NOT advanced by these antics.
The whole thing makes PERFECT sense (only) if you consider that the POINT of these adventures is to TRANSFER WEALTH from ORDINARY CITIZENS to CORPORATE COFFERS for distribution to the SUPER RICH (and their POLITICAL SERVANTS)
The ROI for ordinary taxpayers is FANTASTICALLY bad. Indeed, the only return is ever increasing DEBT.
The ROI for the MASTERS OF WAR (and their military and political servants) is ALMOST beyond calculation.
Considered from the PROFITABILITY point of view, the war(s) are going VERY WELL and according to plan.
It is just a question of how LONG the military-industrial complex can make it last before (if ever) the U.S taxpayer wakes up.
We’ve always been at war with Eastasia, right?