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New Study Says U.S. Night Raids Aimed at Afghan Civilians By Gareth Porter* WASHINGTON, Sep 21, 2011 (IPS) - U.S. Special Operations Forces have been increasingly aiming
their night-time raids, which have been the primary cause of
Afghan anger at the U.S. military presence, at civilian non-
combatants in order to exploit their possible intelligence
value, according to a new study published by the Open Society
Foundation and The Liaison Office.
The study provides new evidence of the degree to
which the criteria
used for targeting of individuals in night raids and for seizing them
during raids have been loosened to include people who have not been
identified as insurgents.
Based on interviews with current and former U.S. military officials
with knowledge of the strategic thinking behind the raids, as well as
Afghans who have been caught up in the raids, the authors of the
study write that large numbers of civilians are being detained for
brief periods of time merely to find out what they know about local
insurgents – a practice the authors suggest may violate the Geneva
Conventions on warfare.
A military officer who had approved night raids told one of the
authors that targeting individuals believed to know one of the
insurgents is a key factor in planning the raids. "If you can't get
the guy you want," said the officer, "you get the guy who knows him."
Even when people who are known to be civilians have not been targeted
in a given raid, they have been detained when found on the compound
of the target, on the ground that a person's involvement in the
insurgency "is not always clear until questioned", according to
military officer who has been involved in operational questions
surrounding the raids interviewed for the report.
Raids prompted by the desire for intelligence can result in the
deaths of civilians. The Afghan Analysts Network, a group of
independent researchers based in Kabul, investigated a series of
night raids in Nangarhar province in October-November 2010, and found
that the raids were all targeting people who had met with a local
religious cleric who was believed to be the Taliban shadow province
governor.
Two civilians were killed in those raids when family members came to
the defence of their relatives.
The report notes that many Afghans interviewed said night-time
operations had targeted a number of compounds simultaneously, in some
cases covering entire villages.
In a village in Qui Tapa district of Konduz province, SOF units,
accompanied by Afghan army troops, conducted a raid that detained 80
to 100 people, according to the report. The interviewees said a
masked informant pointed out those people to be taken a U.S. base to
be interrogated.
The idea of using military operations to round up civilians to
exploit their presumed knowledge of the insurgency has a long history
in the U.S.-NATO war in Afghanistan.
The Pentagon official in charge of detainee affairs until the end of
2005 told IPS that concerns about "over-broad detention" in
Afghanistan - meaning the practice of sweeping up large numbers of
civilians - were countered by pressures for "more aggressive
detention operations".
As then head of NATO intelligence in Afghanistan, Canadian Brig. Gen.
Jim Ferron, explained in a newspaper interview in May 2007, "The
detainees are detained for a reason. They have information we need."
It is not clear that civilians actually provide important
intelligence on insurgents, however. The civilian victims of night
raids are family and friends of Taliban fighters and commanders, who
have no incentive to provide information that would make it easier
for SOF units to track them down.
But another factor inclines the Special Operations Forces commanders
in Afghanistan to focus more on people for whom the evidence of
involvement in the insurgency is weak or nonexistent, according to
the new report. After taking heavy losses, in 2010, Taliban
commanders at district level and above are increasingly residing in
Pakistan rather than in towns in Afghanistan where they can be more
easily targeted.
Without those targets on their lists, SOF units in Afghanistan may
have had to choose between going after more civilians or reducing the
number of operations. And the growth in the number of operations and
the statistics on alleged insurgents killed or captured are a key
measure of the relevance of SOF units.
An average of 19 raids per night were conducted during the period
from December 2010 through February 2011, according to data published
by Reuters last February. But a senior U.S. military adviser
interviewed for the report in April 2011 said that as many as 40
raids were taking place in a single night.
A military officer involved in the night raids told an author of the
study that there were no longer enough mid- to high-level commanders
still active in Afghanistan to justify the present high rate of
raids,
and many raids were now likely to be targeting people who are known
not to be insurgents but who might know something about specific
insurgents.
Other officers interviewed for the report denied that contention,
however, claiming there were still plenty of commanders left to
target.
The report suggests that it is dangerous to detain family members in
particular in order to exploit their knowledge of relatives in the
insurgency, because it further inflames an already angry population
across the country.
"If that is the criteria, they might as well arrest all southerners,"
said one Afghan journalist living in Kandahar. "The person who is an
active Taliban is either my uncle, cousin (or) nephew…"
Based on interviews with residents in villages where raids have taken
place in the past several months, the report concludes that
communities "see raids as deliberately targeting and harassing
civilians, in order to discourage communities from providing food and
shelter to insurgents, or to pressure them to supply intelligence on
the insurgency."
Most of those civilians targeted or swept up in night raids are
released within a few days, according to the report. That assessment
is consistent with the revelation, reported by IPS in September 2010,
that roughly 90 percent of the individuals who were said by ISAF in
August 2010 to have been "captured insurgents" were in fact released
either within two weeks of initial detention or within a few months
after being sent to Parwan detention facility.
The authors of the report conclude that deliberately targeting and
rounding up civilians who are not suspected of being insurgents
merely to exploit possible intelligence value "may constitute an
arbitrary deprivation of liberty" and thus "inhumane treatment" in
violation of Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.
The report suggests there is "anecdotal" evidence that the targeting
for the raids has become more accurate.
But that anecdotal evidence appears to be contradicted by other
anecdotal evidence that the targeting has become more indiscriminate
in deliberately targeting civilians.
*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist
specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition
of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the
Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.
(END)
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