(Im)Precision of U.S Bombing and the (Under)Valuation of an Afghan Life

Only one dollar is officially spent in "reconstruction" for every ten
dollars spent on achieving U.S. geo-political aims.

US/NATO bombs kill about ten times more Afghan civilians with a ton of our
"precision" bombs than we killed Serbs in 1999. More than 80% of Afghan
civilian deaths today caused by the US/NATO are due to close air support
attacks. They (Afghans) are only worth one-tenth of an Alaskan sea otter
rather than forty camels. We spend ten dollars on the military in
Afghanistan to pursue our geo-strategic aims and less than $1 on
reconstructing the everyday lives of Afghans devastated by thirty years of
war.

Executive summary

The overarching theme of this dossier is to carefully document the very low
value put on the lives of common Afghans by U.S. military and political
elites (along with their many handmaidens in the corporate media).
Highlights include:

1. Exposing three common subterfuges used to rationalize the killing of
Afghan civilians;

2. Pointing out that Afghan civilians killed by U.S./NATO forces' direct
action since January 1, 2006 now outnumber those who perished in the
original U.S. bombing and invasion during the first three months (2001) of
the U.S. Afghan war. The overall human toll is far greater than just those
killed by direct U.S./NATO actions as it includes all those who died later
from injuries, the internally displaced who died in camps, etc.;

3. Documenting that close air support (CAS) bombing is more deadly to Afghan
civilians than was the strategic bombing of Laos and Cambodia;

4. Revealing that CAS air strikes now account for about 80% of all Afghan
civilians who perish at the hands of the U.S. and NATO;

5. Emphasizing that by relying upon aerial close air support (CAS) attacks,
US/NATO forces spare their pilots and ground troops but kill lots of
innocent Afghan civilians. Air strikes are 4-10 times as deadly for Afghan
civilians as are ground attacks.

6. Revealing that Human Rights Watch "counts" at best only 50% of the Afghan
civilians killed by U.S./NATO actions, whereas the figure for the Associated
Press is a mere 33%; moreover neither present verifiable/reproducible
disaggregated data thereby violating a basic tenet of social science;

7. Presenting a unique analysis of compensation/condolence payments made by
the United States in eight countries. The United States spent ten times more
on saving an Alaskan sea otter after the Exxon Valdez oil spill than in
condolence payments to Afghan families for a family member killed by U.S.
occupation forces.

These seven points form part of an interconnected whole - the undervaluation
of Afghan lives - supported by many other indicators, e.g. only one dollar
is officially spent in "reconstruction" for every ten dollars spent on
achieving U.S. geo-political aims.

[img1_us_bomber.jpg]
A U.S. Air Force B1-B Lancer bomber after refueling over Afghanistan
( http://www.af.mil/photos/index.asp?galleryID=13).

[img2_child_burnt.jpg]
The real face of the U.S.'s Afghan air war: children burnt by U.S. bombs at
Lashkargah's Emergency hospital in October 2006 (from Maso Notarianni at
 http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/rawanews.php?id=18). My original dossier on
civilian victims of U.S. aerial bombing was released on December 10, 2001,
see  http://www.cursor.org/stories/civilian_deaths.htm

Photo Gallery of US victims in Afghanistan [1]
The Afghan Victim Memorial Project by Prof. Marc [2]

Senator Obama has staked out a political position by claiming that he will
increase U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan by at least one-third, will
permit U.S./NATO forces to engage in hot pursuit into Pakistan's tribal
areas and increase U.S. bombing and Special Operations Forces raids into
Pakistan. Caesar-like he proclaims that Afghanistan is a "war on terror" we
must and can win. He appears to be completely ignorant that Pashtun
nationalism (Taliban) and Al Qaeda jihad are two very different things. (1)
[11] In effect, Obama proposes to continue and escalate military policies of
the Bush administration if he can draw down U.S. occupation forces in Iraq.
I have argued that these actions are doomed to fail on their own terms, will
cement a deadly alliance between Taliban and radical Islamists, and will
further destabilize a nuclear Pakistan. (2) [11] And whom did Mr. Obama
visit on his very first day in Afghanistan in July 2008? He met none other
than Gul Agha Sherzai, favorite of George Bush's General Dan `Bomber'
McNeill and notorious ex-governor/warlord of Kandahar infamous for his
cruelty, trafficking in drugs, corruption, and pederasty with young boys.
(3) [11] On the following day, he spent time with U.S. occupation forces and
the "mayor of Kabul" who was in his Kabul fortress (and not off mourning
somewhere or on an international junket raising monies). Mr. Obama fails to
admit that recent U.S/NATO aerial bombing has been extremely deadly to
Afghan civilians, which when combined with the negligible value attached to
an Afghan life reveals that U.S. politicians and the military hold little
interest in Afghanistan proper other than in a geo-political sense. (4) [11]
No matter that in Kabul even foreigners speak about being "inside a living
hell." (5) [11] Veteran reporter Kathy Gannon notes that Afghans are fed up
with the U.S. and Karzai. (6) [11] U.S. priorities are further revealed by
the more than ten-to-one ratio of military to reconstruction aid since 2002.
The Senlis Council in its report contrasted military spending vs.
development spending in Afghanistan during 2002-2006 (Figure 1). Another
source, a report released by ACBAR, an alliance of international aid
agencies working in Afghanistan, echoes,

Senator Obama has staked out a political position by claiming that he will
increase U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan by at least one-third, will
permit U.S./NATO forces to engage in hot pursuit into Pakistan's tribal
areas and increase U.S. bombing and Special Operations Forces raids into
Pakistan. Caesar-like he proclaims that Afghanistan is a "war on terror" we
must and can win. He appears to be completely ignorant that Pashtun
nationalism (Taliban) and Al Qaeda jihad are two very different things. (7)
[11] In effect, Obama proposes to continue and escalate military policies of
the Bush administration if he can draw down U.S. occupation forces in Iraq.
I have argued that these actions are doomed to fail on their own terms, will
cement a deadly alliance between Taliban and radical Islamists, and will
further destabilize a nuclear Pakistan. (8) [11] And whom did Mr. Obama
visit on his very first day in Afghanistan in July 2008? He met none other
than Gul Agha Sherzai, favorite of George Bush's General Dan `Bomber'
McNeill and notorious ex-governor/warlord of Kandahar infamous for his
cruelty, trafficking in drugs, corruption, and pederasty with young boys.
(9) [11] On the following day, he spent time with U.S. occupation forces and
the "mayor of Kabul" who was in his Kabul fortress (and not off mourning
somewhere or on an international junket raising monies). Mr. Obama fails to
admit that recent U.S./NATO aerial bombing has been extremely deadly to
Afghan civilians, which when combined with the negligible value attached to
an Afghan life reveals that U.S. politicians and the military hold little
interest in Afghanistan proper other than in a geo-political sense. (10)
[11] U.S. priorities are further revealed by the more than ten-to-one ratio
of military to reconstruction aid since 2002. The Senlis Council in its
report contrasted military spending vs. development spending in Afghanistan
during 2002-2006 (Figure 1). Another source, a report released by ACBAR, an
alliance of international aid agencies working in Afghanistan, echoes,

While the U.S. military is currently spending $100 million a day in
Afghanistan, aid spent by all donors since 2001 is on average less than a
tenth of that - just $7 million a day. (11) [11]

[img3_marc_graph.jpg]

Figure 1. Military vs. Development Aid
(Source:
 http://www.senliscouncil.net/modules/publications/Afghanistan_Five_Years_Lat
er/chapter_05)

In other words, what actually takes place in the realms of the economic and
the social on-the-ground in Afghanistan is at best of marginal concern;
furthermore many point to the ineffectiveness of aid. (12) [3] I shall
argue herein such marginal stress upon improving the everyday life of common
Afghans is paralleled by a callous disregard for Afghan civilians in the
carrying out of military operations (especially close air support strikes)
and a paltry compensation (when offered at all) for innocent Afghans killed
by U.S. or NATO actions.

The Subterfuges Employed by the U.S./NATO to Excuse Killing Innocent Afghan
Civilians

When we assemble the different pieces of the media jigsaw puzzle, clear
patterns emerge. Western victims are presented as real, important people
with names, families, hopes and dreams. Iraqi and Afghan victims of British
and American violence are anonymous, nameless. They are depicted as distant
shadowy figures without personalities, feelings or families. The result is
that Westerners are consistently humanized, while non-Westerners are
portrayed as lesser versions of humanity (from "Militants and Mistakes,"
Media Lens (July 22, 2008)). While Afghans killed by US/NATO forces are
completely invisible as human beings in the U.S. mainstream media, contrast
the efforts undertaken by the same media to give humanity to U.S. troops
killed in Afghanistan, as for example in the Washington Post at
 http://projects.washingtonpost.com/fallen/

A major aim of this report is to provide real figures on Afghan civilians
killed by U.S./NATO actions since 2006, thereby undermining the common claim
that such numbers cannot be gotten. We often hear glib statement about the
"fog of war" or "war is hell" or "we don't do body counts." My numbers are
admittedly under-estimates for reasons discussed herein (an incomplete
universe of recorded deaths, a propensity of the Pentagon and its Afghan
client to label as militants what were civilians, the injured who later die
from wounds, censorship by omission, etc). Not counting or estimating plays
into the hands of those who market the U.S. war in Afghanistan as a "clean"
war, a "precision" war and the like. The latter is routinely trotted out by
the apologists of aerial bombing; "It's sort of the immaculate conception to
warfare," was how Professor of Strategy, Col. (ret. U.S. Marine) Mackubin
Owens at the U.S. Naval War College (Newport, R.I.) described the U.S.
military campaign in Afghanistan in November 2001.

The acknowledging and counting of civilian deaths in modern wars has long
been a highly politicized matter. One need only recall that it took close to
sixty years for the civilian carnage caused in Germany by Allied bombing
(1940-1945) to be openly written about. (13) [11] It took over fifty years
for the slaughter of innocent Korean civilians in the Korean War by U.S.
warplanes to make the pages of mainstream American media. (14) [11] More
recently, an acrimonious debate has raged over the scale of Iraqi civilian
deaths since the U.S. invasion of March 2003, for example pitting Iraq Body
Count against the believers of estimates reported in the Lancet studies (as
at the Media Lens website). (15) [11]

The liberal British scholar of peace studies, Paul Rogers, wrote in a recent
article about Afghanistan

...the impulses of sympathy with these radical forces (Taliban militias, Al
Qaeda forces) are fuelled by the detailed reporting by al-Jazeera and other
media outlets of the many civilian victims of western air-strikes and other
calamities in Afghanistan. This ensures that Muslims across the rest of the
world are becoming as aware of what is happening in Afghanistan as they have
been regarding Iraq since 2003. (16) [11]

A reader in the post-9/11 world might conclude that since reporting of "the
many civilian victims of western air strikes" fuels the Muslim resistance,
the next step is to ignore, disparage or silence such detailed reporting
(which is of course precisely what the U.S. Government has been doing).
Sadly, we have come to live in a post-9/11 culture where silencing the
messenger is acceptable. One recalls the U.S. bombing of the Al Jazeera
office in Kabul on November 12, 2001. For the Pentagon and its many media
boosters, there are good bodies (civilians killed by "our enemy") and bad
bodies (civilians killed by "our" militaries), respectively in the western
mainstream labeled accidental collateral damage and (Afghan civilians
transformed by the click on a keyboard into) "militants" or "insurgents."
During the Yugoslav conflict, Human Rights Watch highlighted civilians
killed by Serbs while neglecting civilians killed by non-Serbs. (17) [11]
Today in Afghanistan, the U.S. mainstream media led by the Associated Press
describes in detail the civilian victims of "Taliban" suicide attacks often
even providing photographs while remaining far more circumspect about the
victims of US/NATO air strikes and never printing photographs. (18) [11]
Counting dead civilians remains a highly politicized exercise.

Two main subterfuges have been used by the U.S. and NATO militaries, the
compliant corporate media and organizations like Human Rights Watch to
excuse the killing and wounding of innocent Afghan civilians. The first is
to express self-righteous anger over "them" killing civilians intentionally
whereas "we" never intentionally target civilians. The second is to assert
that the dastardly Taliban and their Muslim or Arab associates employ
civilians as human shields.

A third means examined elsewhere (19) [11] has been to simply suppress
whenever possible written reports and especially photos of the victims of
U.S./NATO military actions ("bad" bodies) in Afghanistan, all the while
amply publishing stories and photos of Afghan civilians killed by IED's or
suicide bombers ("good" bodies). Photos of civilians whose death was caused
by U.S. or NATO bombs are virtually non-existent. (20) [11] One might call
this censorship by omission. (21) [11] News-magazine photo coverage of the
"war on terrorism" in Afghanistan most often supports U.S. government
narrative and versions of events. (22) [11] The policy of embedding
reporters with U.S. or NATO occupation forces is an obvious attempt at
removing independent reporting which, sadly, most often succeeds.

[Image {4}]

Figure 2. An Afghan woman holds a photo of her family members who were
killed on August 22, 2008, in a U.S. air raid called-in by U.S. Special
Forces. The U.S. military for weeks denied civilians had been killed (photo
by Mohammad Shoaib of Reuters)

U.S. human rights lawyers charged on July 20, 2008, that US military prisons
are "legal black holes" and that force is employed to "shut people up" about
activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Many people in Afghanistan and in Iraq
who have been targeted for detention are local journalists covering the
conflict in their own country," said another prominent US human rights
lawyer, Barbara J. Olshansky.

"When the United States detains reporters, photographers, camera operators
and holds them for long period without charge for any offence and without
trials and without any evidence, we know that part of the goal is to just
shut people up," she said. (23) [11]

The mainstream U.S. corporate media led by Fox News largely has sought to
present the Afghan invasion as a simple war of good versus evil. (24) [11]
Texts or images which might have raised questions have been censored. Fox
News has gone far beyond-the-call-of-duty in parroting U.S. military
interpretations (25) [11] but others in the U.S. corporate media have
followed suit, e.g., Laura King of the Associated Press has been a notorious
under-counter of Afghan civilian deaths. (26) [11]

A new twist in Pentagon/NATO news management has recently been introduced.
As of August 2008, the U.S. Air Force no longer releases daily reports about
missions over Afghanistan. On the British side, Britain is funding a surge
in spin doctors in Afghanistan to construct and present pro-NATO/US media
reports. (27) [11]

The intentionality argument is often couched in the language of justifiable
collateral damage, regrettable but necessary. Since the killing was
collateral, it cannot be intentional goes the story. The overarching problem
is the criminal nature of the offensive war first waged by the United States
and Britain upon an entire sovereign country after 9/11. The collective
group of "Afghans" has de facto been targeted for seven years as lives and
countryside have been laid to waste; anyone who opposes the U.S./NATO
occupation is by definition an "enemy" and can be justifiably killed
collaterally. As pointed out by others, "[we] can't possibly judge the
morality of collateral damage while leaving out the question of the war
itself...it is the immorality and illegality of a war that makes collateral
damage a crime." (28) [11]

Least-cost considerations (in terms of U.S. military deaths and U.S.
dollars) by the US and NATO militaries have directly translated into
thousands of Afghan civilian casualties. How? During the initial phases of
the U.S. bombing campaign but still today, U.S. warplanes dropped powerful
bombs in civilian-rich areas with little concern for Afghan civilians. In
effect, I am turning Michael Walzer's notion of 'due care' (29) [11] upside
down: that is, far from acknowledging a positive responsibility to protect
innocent Afghans from the misery of war, U.S. military strategists chose to
impose levels of harm upon innocent Afghan civilians in order to reduce
present and possible future dangers faced by U.S. forces. As I wrote in late
2001,

The absolute need to avoid U.S. military casualties means fling high up in
the sky, increasing the probability of killing civilians:

"........better stand clear and fire away. Given this implicit decision, the
slaughter of innocent people, as a statistical eventuality is not an
accident but a priority -- in which Afghan civilian casualties are
substituted for American military casualties." (30) [11]

But, I believe the argument goes deeper and that race enters the
calculation. The sacrificed Afghan civilians are not 'white' whereas the
overwhelming number of U.S. pilots and elite ground troops are white. This
'reality' serves to amplify the positive benefit-cost ratio of certainly
sacrificing darker Afghans today [and Indochinese, Panamanians and Iraqis]
for the benefit of probably saving American soldier-citizens tomorrow. What
I am saying is that when the "other" is non-white, the scale of violence
used by the U.S. government to achieve its stated objectives at minimum cost
knows no limits. A contrary case might be raised with Serbia which was also
subjected to mass bombing in 1999. But, the Serbs were in the view of U.S.
policymakers and the corporate media tainted ['darkened'] by their prior
'Communist' experience. No instance exists [except during World War II]
where a foreign Caucasian state became the war target of the U.S.
government. (31) [11] The closest example might be that of the war waged by
Britain upon Northern Ireland and, there, the British troops applied focused
violence upon its Caucasian 'enemy.' When the "other" is a non-white
foreigner, the state violence employed becomes amplified. (32) [11]

Today, the aerial bombing in Afghanistan is more related to close air
support called-in by ground forces as a means to defeat the enemy without
having to fight him on the ground and likely suffer casualties. Both
high-level bombing and midnight attack ground attacks served to shift the
burden of casualties upon Afghan civilians. The doctrine that `war is hell'
seeks to transfer any responsibility for the cruelty of war to the enemy.
(33) [11] The U.S./NATO war managers and their handmaidens in the defense
and corporate media establishments dredge out the tired old "intent"
argument. As Edward Herman noted,

...it is claimed by the war managers that these deaths and injuries are not
deliberate, but are only "collateral" to another end, they are treated by
the mainstream media, NGOs, new humanitarians, and others as a lesser evil
than cases where civilians are openly targeted. But this differential
treatment is a fraud, even if we accept the sometimes disputable claim of
inadvertence (occasionally even acknowledged by officials to be false, as
described below). Even if not the explicit target, if collateral civilian
deaths are highly probable and statistically predictable they are clearly
acceptable and intentional. If in 500 raids on Afghan villages alleged to
harbor al Qaeda cadres it is likely that civilians will die in 450 of them,
those deaths are an integral component of the plan and the clear
responsibility of the planners and executioners. As law professor Michael
Tonry has said, "In the criminal law, purpose and knowledge are equally
culpable states of mind." (34) [11]

What also needs to be made very clear is that Afghan civilian casualties are
not accidents or mistakes. They result from careful calculation by U.S.
commanders and military attorneys who decide upon the benefits of an air
strike versus the costs in innocent civilian lives lost. These are
calculated predicted deaths. (35) [11]

Aerial bombing in the name of liberating Afghans will continue with little
regard for Afghan civilians who for the Western politico-military elites
remain simply invisible in the empty space which is an "increasingly
aerially occupied Afghanistan." (36) [11] The compliant mainstream media
perpetuates the myth by serving as stenographer of the Pentagon's virtual
reality. Patrick Coburn of The Independent got it dead-on,

The reaction of the Pentagon to the killing of large numbers of civilians in
Afghanistan, Iraq and now Pakistan has traditionally been first to deny that
it ever happened. The denial is based on the old public relations principle
that "first you say something is no news and didn't happen. When it is
proved some time later, that it did happen, you yawn and say it is old
news." (37) [11]

When details of Afghan civilian deaths finally leak through the US/NATO news
management efforts, a Lt. Colonel at the Bagram Air Base offers "sincere
regrets" or the promise of an investigation and by tomorrow all is
forgotten. They are, after all, just Afghans "we" killed. Theirs are bad
bodies, not good bodies like those on "our" side that were killed.

A myth has circulated since the beginning of the U.S. bombing campaign in
Afghanistan in October 2001. The myth is endlessly repeated by the U.S.
occupation forces, corporate media, the Pentagon, defense intellectual
pundits, Human Rights Watch, the Cruise Missile Left, the humanitarian
interventionists, and even some in the United Nations: Afghan insurgents
hide amongst civilians whom they use as human shields. (38) [11] To begin
with, the assertion is never empirically documented but just merely stated
as a self-evident truth. Secondly, the implication is that an insurgent or
Taliban fighter, resisting the U.S./NATO invasion should stand alone on a
mountain ridge, his AK-47 raised to the sky, and engage in a "fair" act of
war with an Apache attack helicopter or A-10 Warthog and see who prevails.
Should resistance fighters stand out in an open field or on a mountain
ridge? Thirdly, what is conveniently omitted is that the insurgents often
live in the area, have friends and families in the communities, and that
such a local support base is precisely what gives a guerrilla insurgency
(along with knowledge of the local terrain) its classic advantage. (39) [11]
Such local connection means that the insurgents will (unlike the US/NATO
occupation forces) go to great lengths to not put local people in danger.
Purveyors of the line about the "Taliban's execrable tactic of using
civilians as human shields" (40) [11] are either themselves unaware of
classic guerrilla strategy or, more likely, seek to manipulate the general
public's ignorance about the same. Using the language of guerrilla warfare,
can a "fish" swim outside of the "sea"? One recalls the U.S. military's
campaign in Vietnam to drain the sea by creating strategic hamlets
(translate, concentration camps), seeking to deny the Vietnamese resistance
access to sympathetic villagers.

Rather than the "hiding among civilians" story, what is happening is that
civilians figure prominently in the vast numbers of "militants" or
"insurgents" reported killed in US/NATO bombing, as I have documented
countless times in the Afghan Victim Memorial Project. The latest egregious
example involves the slaughter of over 90 Afghan civilians in Azizabad where
for weeks the U.S. military asserted that 30 "Taliban" had been killed and
no civilians. In other words, civilians killed by US/NATO action are being
falsely labeled by the US/NATO as "eliminated militants," which suggests
that my overall count of civilians killed is a gross underestimate. In
addition, no doubt many cases where civilians have been killed by US/NATO
action simply are not reported (censorship by omission). But no matter, for
as Robert Higgs underscores is

...the complete insouciance with which the American public greets reports of
deaths by drones. I do not exaggerate if I say that the general reaction is
"ho-hum." Well, the average American says, that disposes nicely of another
"bad guy." The gratuitous murder of the bad guy's family members, neighbors,
and other innocent persons in the vicinity appears to create no blip on the
average American's moral radar screen. Perhaps Americans do not consider
Yemenis, Afghanis, and Pakistanis to be real human beings whose right to
life we are obliged to respect? (41) [11]

The Magnitude of Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it" - George
Santayana (1905)

The U/S. and U.K. corporate media have been particularly guilty of
censorship by omission - simply not reporting upon the "bad bodies" of those
killed by US/NATO actions. (42) [11] A little reported fact is that the
number of Afghan civilians (43) [11] killed by U/.S. and NATO forces since
2005 exceeds the total recorded during the three months of intensive U.S.
bombing, October 7- December 10, 2001. The following chart presents the
numbers. These numbers underestimate the true human toll because they
exclude the thousands who later die from injuries incurred in a U.S./NATO
attack, those killed in incidents which went un-reported, those who die from
lack of vital resources in refugee camps (44) [11] , etc.

+-------------------------------------+--------------+
|Killed October 7 - December 10, 2001 |2,256 - 2,949 |
+-------------------------------------+--------------+
|2005 |408 - 478 |
+-------------------------------------+--------------+
|2006 |653 - 769 |
+-------------------------------------+--------------+
|2007 |1,010 -- 1,297|
+-------------------------------------+--------------+
|Jan. 1 - August 31, 2008 |573 - 674 |
+-------------------------------------+--------------+
|Sept. 1 -19, 2008 |55 |
+-------------------------------------+--------------+
|Sub-total 2005 - 2008 |2,699 - 3,273 |
+-------------------------------------+--------------+
The nature of the air war in Afghanistan has changed substantially between
2001 and 2006-8. During the last three months of 2001, the U.S. bombing was
part of a traditional military campaign pitting two armies against each
other. As such, the bombing involved large tonnages being dropped; whereas
during 2006-8, the U.S. and NATO bombing involved close air support (CAS)
against a decentralized, highly fluid guerrilla resistance. During the
former campaign some 14,000 tons of bombs were dropped or almost twelve
times the tonnage dropped during the two-and-a-half years (2006 - mid 2008).
Of course, the killing of innocent civilians by U.S. bombing has a long
history spanning the twentieth century. For example, after 58 years recently
released classified documents tell the story of how 93 napalm canisters were
dropped on the little island of Wolmi, South Korea, in September 1950,
incinerating over a hundred residents. (45) [11]

Estimates or counts of civilian deaths caused by the U.S. bombing during
2001-mid 2002 reveal similar numbers. The count by Herold (2002) relies upon
media and NGO reports as well as other written materials and the universe
estimation by Benini and Moulton employing statistical analysis report
3,600-3,900 Afghan civilian deaths. The Benini & Moulton study calculates
civilian deaths from bombing, landmines, unexploded ordnance strikes, from
non-Western ground forces and should hence significantly exceed a count
focused upon deaths directly caused by U.S. aerial bombing or ground
attacks. (46) [11] The Benini & Moulton study based upon canvassing 600
communities covers September 12, 2001 - June 20, 2002, whereas Herold covers
October 7, 2001 - July 31, 2002. Field staff visited all 600 communities
directly affected by fighting (both air strikes and ground combat). Benini &
Moulton calculate 3,994 civilians died from air and artillery bombardments,
shooting, and other violence. (47) [11] In other words, the Herold count of
3,620 civilians killed by U.S. air and ground attacks is close to the
population-based estimate of Benini & Moulton.

Whereas the numbers of civilian casualties resulting from the intense
bombing of 2001 has been determined, it remains a far more difficult
exercise to estimate the magnitude of civilians who perished from the CAS
bombing of recent years. Two major problems exist: unlike in the earlier
period, civilians have died at the hands of U.S. and NATO ground fire and
aircraft strafing raids (especially by the AC-130 gunship, Apache attack
helicopters, Predator drones and the A-10 CAS jet fighter); and secondly,
data provided by U.S. and NATO does not exist making possible an
incident-by-incident reconstruction of bombing versus strafing. What can,
however, be derived are figures which represent orders of magnitudes under
different assumptions (Table 4). Today, the U.S. operates over 90 percent of
all strike aircraft in Afghanistan.

Such reconstruction reveals that U.S. close air support bombing has been far
more deadly for innocent Afghan civilians than the earlier more intense,
traditional bombing campaign of 2001. The following Table 1 presents a
unique summary of the aerial bombing (not strafing) in Afghanistan during
2006-mid 2008, employing data in the Afghan Victim Memorial Project data
base. (48) [11] We know that aerial close air support bombing during 2007
and 2008 took on increasing importance, implying that the relative share of
all civilians killed by bombing attacks has probably been rising. Already
during 2005, the U.S. military began increasing air strikes to 157 from 86
during 2004. (49) [11] The number of CAS strikes in Afghanistan in which
munitions were dropped soared from 176 in 2005, to 1,770 in 2006, and 2,926
in 2007. (50) [11] Elizabeth Rubin noted "that the sheer tonnage of metal
raining down on Afghanistan was mind-boggling: a million pounds between
January and September of 2007, compared with half a million in all of 2006."
(51) [11] US Air Force B1-B's renewed the bombing of Afghanistan on May 6,
2006. (52) [11] U.S. General Dan "Bomber" McNeill performed up to
expectations. (53) [11] The total dropped for 2005 was a mere 60,000 pounds
(or 27.2 metric tons). During the first half of 2008, more tonnage was
dropped than in all of 2007. (54) [11] The rise in CAS strikes paralleled
almost perfectly the number of roadside bombings which numbered 1,931 in
2006 and 2,615 in 2007. (55) [11] Tit for tat.

In effect, the US/NATO forces are relying upon air power in lieu of ground
forces and in so doing causing high levels of civilian casualties which, in
turn, push locals towards the resistance. (56) [11] This is particularly
important in Afghanistan where the culture of revenge has long stalked
Americans there. (57) [11] U.S./NATO aerial attacks turn friends into
enemies. (58) [11] This aspect was emphasized at a 2007 meeting at of the
United States Institute of Peace. (59) [11] Such is simply part of the
age-old wisdom that aerial bombing does not induce surrender, quite to the
contrary. Nothing has changed since the U.S. bombing of Takeo, Cambodia, in
1972, as described by a villager

...based on my experiences during the bombing in Takeo around 1972. The
bombings were [spreading] further into towns and villages. My parents' house
was hit by the bombs, and we had to move to the opposite side of the
country. We had known [that] almost the entire village that survived from
the bombings had joined forces with the Khmer Rouge. (60) [11]

The U.S. Army's counterinsurgency manual FM 3-24 admits that aerial bombing
"can cause collateral damage that turns people against the host-nation
government and provides insurgents with a major propaganda victory." Wing
Commander Andrew Brookes of the International Institute for Strategic
Studies in London noted

Even a 400-pound bomb has ca wide area of blast and you are quite likely to
kill some civilians. Kill a wife, children, mother, or uncle and people
become so angry the terrorist cycle starts all over again. (61) [11]

In addition, bombing destroys homes, orchards, livestock, etc. which fuels
the ire of the bombed.

After the very high level of civilians killed by U.S. and NATO forces during
2007 - some 1,010-1,297 as I report in Table 1 - the rules of engagement
were allegedly tightened in recognition that civilian casualties undermine
support for the US/NATO occupation. (62) [11] On the other hand, the advent
of indisputably greater bombing precision by for example the use of ROVER
(63) [11] technology has encouraged dropping more bombs - in other words,
the overall killing of civilian depends upon the trade-off between greater
precision of a bomb and the extent to which more bombs are being dropped, in
other words it depends upon the risk elasticity of bombing tolerance. Dead
civilians are not mistakes. In my original Dossier, I argued that the
primary cause of high levels of Afghan civilian casualties was due to U.S.
bombing of civilian-rich areas. (64) [11] A further complicating element is
that precision strike weapons create a myth of infallibility, when the
weapons are at best only as good as the targeting data and absence of
adverse disruptive influences. (65) [11] This myth served to allegedly
remove the public's general sense of barbarity associated with aerial
bombing. Naturally a whole new language of war was crafted by the
military-industrial-media complex to oil this transition: surgical,
collateral, precision, etc. (66) [11] Some enthusiasts even spoke of a "new
kind of war" (67) [11] with smaller bombs (68) [11] though at least for
civilians the deadliness of old wars continued.

Table 1. Dimensions of U.S. Aerial Bombing of Afghanistan, 2006 - mid 2008

+----------------------+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
| |2006 |2007 |2008 |
+----------------------+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
|Number of bombs |~1,000^^ |3,572*** |1,853 |
|dropped | | | |
+----------------------+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
|Number CAS strikes in |1,770 |2,926 |2,368 (up through |
|which munitions were | | |Aug.4) |
|dropped | | | |
+----------------------+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
|Tonnage dropped |261**^ |567**^^ |630++ |
|(metric tons) | | | |
+----------------------+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
|Civilians killed by |653-769 |1,010-1,297 |273-335*^ |
|U.S. /NATO actions | | | |
+----------------------+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
|Bombs to kill one |1,3-1.5 |3.5-2.8 |6.8-5.5 |
|civilian | | | |
+----------------------+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
|Civilians |25,019-29,464 |17,777-22,840 |4,317-5,302 |
|killed/10,000 tons | | | |
+----------------------+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
|Civilians |16,763-19,741 |11,911-15,303 |2,892-3,552 |
|killed/10,000 tons at | | | |
|67% ratio* | | | |
+----------------------+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
|Civilians |12,508-14,732 |8,889-11,420 |2,159-2,651 |
|killed/10,000 tons at | | | |
|50% ratio** | | | |
+----------------------+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
*assuming that 67% of civilians were killed by aerial bombing alone
(remainder from strafing, ground fire)

**assuming that 50% of civilians were killed by aerial bombing alone

*** In Iraq during 2007, only 1,447 bombs were dropped. Another source
reported that by May 15, 2007, the number of weapons dropped on Afghanistan
was 929 ( http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,138201,00.html).

^number of close air support strikes in which munitions were dropped

^^ From Cloud (2006), op. cit. reported that by mid-November 2006, American
aircraft had dropped 987 bombs and fired more than 146,000 cannon rounds and
bullets in strafing runs. During the entire period 2001thgrough 2004, a
total of 848 bombs and just over 119,000 bullets were used by aircraft
according to U.S. Air Force data.

*^My figures for 2008 are supported by the Afghan government, rights and aid
groups which say that over 300 civilians have died this year from Western
operations, mostly when air power is called in to get allied troops out of
trouble (from Mark John, "Analysis: Western Forces Hooked on Air Power in
Afghan War," Reuters (July 5, 2008 at 14:31 GMT) at
 http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L05811864.htm

**^ during 2006, the U.S. Air Force dropped 575,500 pounds of bombs
(Benjamin, 2007, op. cit.), or 261 metric tons.

**^^ During 2007, coalition forces dropped about a million pounds of bombs
in Afghanistan, which would amount to 454 metric tons. This figure is
erroneously reported as being for the entire 2007 when it covered only
Jan-Sept.. I have hence adjusted the total to 1,25 mn pounds or 567 metric
tons. Benjamin (2007) said that the U.S. Air Force alone dropped 527,860
pounds of bombs on Afghanistan during the first six months of 2007.

++ I have derived this number as follows. The most popular USAF bombs are
the 500 and 200-pound GPS guided JDAMs and the 500-pound laser-guided bomb.
Assuming each amounts to one-third of all bombs dropped (numbering 1,853
according to Rolfson (2008).

The lethality of war can be assessed using different criteria. For example,
during 2008 to-date some 628-729 Afghan civilians were killed by U.S./NATO
action. During the same period of time, 120 U.S. troops and 104 NATO
soldiers died. For every occupation soldier killed, about three Afghan
civilians are killed by the occupation forces (for 2006, the figure was
3-4). (69) [11]

A way to measure the lethality of aerial bombing is to compare the numbers
of bombs dropped to the number of civilians killed. Table 2 indicates that
in terms of lethality to civilians, the Gulf War was lowest, followed by
Kosovo, with the initial Afghan bombing campaigns being by far the deadliest
for civilians notwithstanding the much greater use of "precision" weapon
systems. (70) [11] Indeed, in 2001 it took only 4-5 bombs dropped to kill
one Afghan civilian; during the first half of 2008, the figure was 9-10
bombs, though by July 2008, an Afghan civilian was killed every 5-6 bombs
dropped (Table 3).

Table 2. Lethality of Aerial Bombing in Different Air Campaigns as Measured
by Number of Bombs to Necessary Kill One Civilian

+-------------------+-----------------+------------------+-----------------+
|Bombing Campaign |(1) # bombs & |(2) # civilians |Bombs to kill one|
| |missiles dropped |killed |civilian, |
| | | |(1)/(2)= |
+-------------------+-----------------+------------------+-----------------+
|Iraq 1991 |250,000 |2,278 |110 |
+-------------------+-----------------+------------------+-----------------+
|Kosovo 1999 |23,000 |1,200 |19 |
+-------------------+-----------------+------------------+-----------------+
|Afghanistan 2001 |12,000** |2,569-2,949 |4.1-4.7 |
+-------------------+-----------------+------------------+-----------------+
|Afghanistan, first |1,853 |273-335* |5.5-6.8 |
|half of 2008 | | | |
+-------------------+-----------------+------------------+-----------------+
*If we assume that two-thirds of the total number of civilians killed
(273-335) during this period died from aerial attacks, the numbers would be
183-224. In Table 6 the number of civilians actually killed in air strikes
is reported at 178-192.

**figure from Global Security for October 7 - December 10, 2001 which
reported 12,000 bombs and missiles dropped during October7 - December 10; by
March 2002, the figure was 21,000 and by mid-September 2002 it was 24,000.

When we focus just upon Afghanistan during the years 2006 until the present
(Table 3), one finds that about every five bombs dropped one civilian died
(though the number was much higher during 2007 when the resistance engaged
the US/NATO in open battles the US/NATO war planes dropped over 3,500
bombs).

Table 3. Numbers of Bombs dropped to kill One Afghan Civilian, 2006-present

+-------------------+--------+------------+----------+----------+----------+
| |2006 |2007 |First half|June 2008 |July 2008 |
| | | |2008 | | |
+-------------------+--------+------------+----------+----------+----------+
|# bombs dropped |1,000 |3,572 |1,853 |646 |515 |
+-------------------+--------+------------+----------+----------+----------+
|# civilian deaths |653-769 |1,008-1,295 |273-335 |49-69 |134-157 |
+-------------------+--------+------------+----------+----------+----------+
|50% civilian deaths|326-385 | | | | |
+-------------------+--------+------------+----------+----------+----------+
|67% civilian deaths| |675-868 |182-224 |33-46 |90-105 |
| | | | |actual |actual |
+-------------------+--------+------------+----------+----------+----------+
|Bombs/civilians |2.6-3.1 |4.1-5.3 |8.3-10.2 |14-19.5 |4.9-5.7 |
+-------------------+--------+------------+----------+----------+----------+
Note: for 2006, I have assumed that 50% of civilian deaths were due to
aerial bombing and firing missiles; during the later time periods when the
air war intensified, I assume that two-thirds of civilian deaths were the
result of bombs and missiles dropped from the air. For 2008, the two-thirds
ratio is an underestimate.

What is striking is that these past two-and-a-half years of close air
support bombing have been more deadly for Afghan civilians than was the
traditional bombing campaign of October 7, 2001 - December 10, 2001, when
14,000 tons of bombs (and 12,000 bombs & missiles) were dropped by U.S. war
planes, which caused an estimated 2,569-2,949 civilian deaths. The figure
then for civilians killed per 10,000 tons bombs dropped was 1,835 - 2,106.
The figures for 2006-mid 2008 are 13,265-16,454 civilians killed per 10,000
tons dropped (derived from Table 1). Lesser tonnage was dropped in recent
years but that which fell from the skies was terribly deadly to Afghan
civilians. Predictably, we find that CAS strikes account for the following
shares of actual total Afghan civilian deaths during 2008:

January - June 2008: 61%
July 2008: 82%
August 2008: 89%
September 1-19: 89% (71) [11]

As I have pointed out, the 2001 ratio (of civilians killed per 10,000 tons
of bombs dropped) made the bombing of Afghanistan about as deadly for
innocent civilians as the bombing of Laos and Cambodia, being the most
lethal of all post-World War II bombing campaigns notwithstanding that the
precision of aerial bombing has increased greatly. (72) [11]

A typical incident amongst the hundreds where US/NATO military bombing
action resulted in the deaths of Afghan civilians chronicled in my Afghan
Victim Memorial Project took place in the village of Jabar, Kapisa Province
on March 6, 2007. U.S. war planes dropped two 2,000-pound bombs killing nine
civilians including three children aged between six months and five years.
Here is how Col. Tom Collins, NATO spokesman described these nine deaths

We didn't know who was in that building, but we saw fighters move into that
area who were legitimate targets. The building was struck and, as we all
know, unfortunately civilians were killed.

Yes, unfortunately all nine members from four generations of a single Afghan
family.

[Image {5}]

Figure 3. Afghan village women walk in the debris of one of the homes which
was bombed by a NATO air strike on Jabar village in the Nijrab district of
Kapisa province, north of Kabul, Afghanistan Monday, March 5, 2007. A NATO
air strike destroyed a mud-brick home, killing nine people from four
generations of an Afghan family during a clash between Western troops and
militants, Afghan officials and relatives said Monday (Source: Musadeq Sadeq
photo, A.P.)

A couple months later, as Ramzy Baroud wrote in His "Firepower Doesn't
Always Win Wars":

The BBC's Alastair Leithead reported on May 31, "Afghans' Anger over US
Bombing" merely details one of many such incidents in which scores of
innocent civilians are killed; such reports are ever more rare since they
are simply not newsworthy - the worth of a news story from Afghanistan is
measured by whether Coalition forces incurred causalities or not. The recent
killings in the village of Shindand in the Zerkoh Valley, Western
Afghanistan was harrowing by any standards. 57 were reportedly killed by
American bombardment; half of the dead were women and children, according to
Leithead; the bombardment also destroyed 100 homes, humble dwellings that
are unlikely to be rebuilt soon. "The bombardments were going on day and
night. Those who tried to get out somewhere safe were being bombed. They
didn't care if it was women, children or old men," said one of the
survivors. But who would believe Mohammad Zarif Achakzai, who fled his mud
house with his family under the relentless bombardment? Brig Gen Joseph
Votel has simply dismissed the reports of civilian causalities. "We have no
reports that confirm to us that non-combatants were injured or killed out in
Shindand," he said. And that is that. (73) [11]

The luckier ones are only wounded by the CAS bombing.

[Image {6}]

Figure 4. Agah Lalai, 25, wounded during the night of May 8, 2007 in an air
strike called-in by U.S. Special Forces upon his village of Gurmaw, north of
Sangin in the Helmand River Valley, lies in a hospital in Kandahar swathed
in bandages (Photo by Anthony Lloyd).

Anthony Lloyd of The Times, reported from Kandahar on May 24, 2007 about the
near obliteration of Gurmaw on the night of May 8, 2007,

Mr Lalai's village, a settlement in the Sarwan Qala valley north of Sangin,
which is patrolled by British troops, was bombed by aircraft on the night of
May 8 after fighting between the Taleban and foreign soldiers. Crawling
wounded from the wreckage of his home, Mr Lalai discovered that his
grandfather, grandmother, wife, father, three brothers and four sisters had
died in the bombing. The youngest victim was 8, the oldest 80. Only Mr
Lalai's mother and two sons, aged 5 and 3, survived. Both boys were wounded.
Yet the forces that wiped out his family were not British, nor those of any
other Nato unit. The airstrikes were called in by American Special Forces
operating with their own rules of engagement on a mission totally devolved
from Nato command in Afghanistan. At least 21 Afghan civilians died in the
bombing of Gurmaw. (74) [11]

Carlotta Gall reported that the toll according to local residents was much
higher involving 56-80 civilians in three houses. (75) [11]

When Lal Zareen, the groom's father, reached the scene of the U.S. terror
bombing of a wedding procession (the traditional Afghan "wara" made up of
mostly women and children) near the village of Khetai on July 6, 2008, he
recounted

I saw pieces of bodies scattered around. I couldn't even make out which part
was which. It was just flesh everywhere. (76) [11]

Fifty-two members of the double wedding party were dead, including the two
brides, both aged 18. (77) [11]

[Image {7}]
47 civilians were killed when US-led coalition forces bombarded a wedding
party in the eastern Nangarhar province on July 6, 2008.

See interviews in video by Alastair Leithead at
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7504574.stm

And what has been the reaction by the U.S. military to such Afghan civilian
casualties? The United Nations? By the Associated Press? By Human Rights
Watch? By so-called defense intellectuals like William M. Arkin? When the
U.N. announced in late June 2008 that the number of civilians killed in
fighting during the first half of 2008 amounted to 698 - 255 killed by
foreign or Afghan troops and 422 by "militants" (with the cause of death of
21 undetermined), the U.S. military's spokesperson in Kabul stated "those
numbers were far, far higher than we would recognize." (78) [11] The
U.S/NATO responses involve first denial and then shifting the blame by using
the human shields argument. More recently, the U.S. military complains about
the Taliban's mastery in manipulating media. (79) [11] The Afghan resistance
is alleged to fabricate stories about US/NATO bombing attacks which it feeds
to either sympathetic or naïve journalists. These stories then are stated
to drive a wedge between foreign forces and the Afghan regime, leading to
"more investigations and crippling operational restraints." As I have
written about elsewhere, it is the U.S. military which has developed a
program to manipulate gullible western media and publics. (80) [11] The
issue is much less that of the sophistication of the Taliban in regards to
media, but rather the blatant lying by the Pentagon and NATO spokespersons.
Moreover, to presume that independent Afghan media and/or wire service
stringers will automatically publish Taliban accounts is insulting. The
reporting of the independent Pajhwok Afghan News is widely praised. Zubair
Babakarkhail of Pajhwok Afghan News has said that he does not feel that the
information provided by the military is any more credible, "The Taliban
makes claims, and the other side also makes claims. We don't believe either
of them." (81) [11]

In 2007, a pro-military website, Strategy Page, proclaimed that the ~1,700
bombs dropped by the U.S. Air Force during 2006 had killed "some 3,000
Taliban fighters" and because of smart missiles and bombs fewer than a
hundred Afghan civilians had perished. (82) [11] In truth, 303-360 Afghan
civilians had perished in 2006 at the hands of the U.S. and NATO (Table 1).

Neither the United Nations nor the Associated Press (A.P.) ever presents
disaggregated data. We are asked to believe summary figures based upon
faith. Such analysis violates a basic tenet of serious research, naming
being able to reproduce the research results. The U.N. and A.P. numbers
cannot and should not be treated seriously. My research available at the
Afghan Victim Memorial Project website indicates that during the first eight
months of 2008, 573-674 Afghan civilians were killed just by U.S. and NATO
actions.

The response of defense intellectual and consultant to the U.S. Air Force,
William M. Arkin, is even less satisfactory. (83) [11] Arkin and his cohorts
had the gall to assert that civilian casualties during the first three
months of the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan totaled 100-350. (84) [11] On
October 21, 2001, William M. Arkin, frequent contributor on military affairs
to major U.S. daily newspapers and faculty member at a U.S. military
university, re-assured the American public that the U.S. bombing campaign of
Afghanistan would generate few civilian casualties because of it being "as
'targeted' as anyone can reasonably expect." (85) [11] Arkin went on,

...U.S. analysts evaluate location and the blast radius of the intended
weapon before the target can be approved. In other words, avoidance of
civilian casualties has become institutionalized even to the point of
rejecting important targets if there is a high probability of civilian harm.
And this is not the Clinton administration.

The scene in the towns and fields of Afghanistan belied the good professor
pundit. Between 35 - 55 innocent Afghans succumbed to U.S. bombs and
missiles on that Sunday. The victims spanned five provinces in five U.S.
bombing attacks:

· 9-18 died in the bombing of the Parod Gajaded neighborhood of Khair
Khana in Kabul;
· a seven year-old girl died in the Macroyan housing project in Kabul;
· 21-32 civilians died in the bombing of a neighborhood in Tarin Kot and
as they tried to flee on a farm tractor in a widely reported attack;
· 3 died in Kandahar city when a U.S. jet targeted six Taliban tanks
hidden under a tree and missed, upending trees and killing three persons
on the nearby road;
· Sardar Mohammed, 20, died from a fractured skull in the village of
Shakar Dara, located in the Kohesafie district, 40 kms. north of Kabul.

Arkin informs us that he spent time in early 2007 as a National Security and
Human Rights Fellow at the Carr Institute for Human Rights at Harvard
University studying whether "there (is) a shred of evidence that airpower is
either responsible for civilian deaths or is deadlier than ground
operation?" And what did Arkin discover while researching at Harvard? First,
that civilian deaths are "collateral" to a legitimate military mission
insofar as the said military unit "takes all necessary precautions to avoid
civilian harm and has `no intention' in killing civilians, the deaths are an
unfortunate part of war - especially this war, because the enemy hides
behind and preys upon the civilian element." He falls back upon the same old
intentionality and human shields arguments. Secondly, Arkin adds that the
alleged visibility of air power with its bombs dropped can be counted and
hence results in distinct reporting about civilian deaths, leading many to
falsely conclude that air power is more deadly for civilians than ground
combat. In fact, Arkin gets it exactly backwards as I will later
demonstrate. Simon Jenkins pointed out that massacres committed by
infantrymen are subject to courts marital. He wrote, "If soldiers enter a
house by the front door and kill civilians inside, then they are hauled
before world opinion and condemned. If a dropped bomb enters the same house
through the roof and has the same effect, it is dismissed as collateral
damage." (86) [11] Lastly, presumably after some months at Harvard, Arkin
concluded "we do not have enough reliable data even to gauge the level of
civilian deaths (at U.S. hands, moreover), let alone the "responsible party
within the U.S. military." In other words, the Harvard Fellow dismisses
outright numbers and accounts compiled by the United Nations in Kabul, the
Associated Press and myself.

For its part, Human Rights Watch (HRW) occasionally issues summary figures
on Afghan civilian deaths. For example, in a report devoted primarily to the
human costs of "insurgent attacks," HRW's Mark Garlasco asserted in passing
that during 2006, 929 Afghan civilians had died - 116 in air bombardments,
114 from foreign and Afghan ground forces and 699 at the hands of the
Taliban. (87) [11] In a later communication, HRW reiterated that during
2006, "insurgents" had killed 699 civilians and foreign forces 300. (88)
[11] In other words, HRW admits US and Afghan forces killed 230-300
civilians. The entries in my Afghan Victim Memorial Project data base for
2006 list 653-769 civilians who perished just at the hands of the U.S. and
NATO alone. Human Rights Watch has an established record of complicity in
America's Afghan war. (89) [11] As regards 2007, Garlasco stated that 434
Afghan civilians died at the hands of NATO or the U.S. (90) [11] , while my
data indicates the number is 1,008-1,295. HRW is continuing its
long-standing tradition of presenting one-third of the truth as the whole
truth, going back to the Kosovo bombing campaign where Arkin in the employ
then of HRW proclaimed some 500 civilians had been killed by the NATO
bombing whereas other independent sources cited figures of 1,200-1,500. (91)
[11] HRW apparently believes that air strikes had killed 119 civilians (to
which another 54 died from fighting on the ground) during 2008 until July
1st, again precisely one-third of the truth. (92) [11] Garlasco asserts (no
disaggregated data provided) that since 2006, 837 innocent Afghans were
killed by NATO/US-led operations (of which 556 by US air strikes) when my
data (Table 3) documents the figures are 1,934-2,399. Moreover, HRW is at
pains to regurgitate the old intentionality canard, underscoring that "there
is no evidence suggesting that coalition or NATO forces have intentionally
directed attacks against civilians." At the very time when U.S. CAS strikes
in Afghanistan during July 1- 18, 2008 had killed an estimated 111-131
civilians, Marc Garlasco had the temerity to announce, "in their deliberate
targeting, the air force has all but eliminated civilian casualties in
Afghanistan," though admitting in immediate targeting precautionary rules
are less adhered to. (93) [11]

The Associated Press fairly regularly has published summary data on Afghan
civilian casualties, though never reveals disaggregated figures which might
allow fact-checking. We are simple asked to believe. As I have argued
time-and-again, for the A.P. truth about civilian casualties comes only
through an American lens. (94) [11] The A.P. uses figures provided primarily
by U.S., NATO and Afghan sources, thereby displaying a bias as severe as
were one to rely upon only Taliban data. The A.P. published figures for the
fist ten months of 2007: US/NATO and Afghan militaries killed 337 Afghan
civilians whereas the "militants" killed 346. These numbers are about
one-third of the true count for 2007. (95) [11] Curiously, once again a
pattern is here at play: in 2002, the AP's Laura King announced that the
U.S. bombing campaign during 2001 had led to the deaths of some 600-700
innocent Afghan civilians; my report indicated the figure was closer to
3,100 (96) [11] (revised downwards now to 2,569-2,949). (97) [11] In 2006,
the A.P. reporter Jason Straziuoso, a good friend and faithful stenographer
of the U.S. military version of events, updated the A.P. count saying that
since February 2002 until May 2006, the A.P. count "based upon figures from
Afghan officials, the coalition and witnesses shows at least 180 civilians
have died during coalition military action." Yes, at least 180! Accounts in
my data bases indicate that during December 11, 2001 - December 31, 2005,
Afghan civilian deaths at the hands of US/NATO forces were 1,349-1,589. On
August 8, 2008, Strasziuso proclaimed that during January through July
according to A.P. figures compiled from coalition and Afghan officials 128
Afghan civilians had been killed by U.S. or NATO forces. (98) [11] He claims
half the figure put out by the United Nations. Karen DeYoung of the
Washington Post, who uncritically cites HRW figures, put the figure killed
by air strikes alone at more than 200 for the first eight months of 2008.
(99) [11] My data for the same period show 444-475.

The United Nations released aggregate figures for the first six months of
2007 and 2008 (Table 4), as well as for eight months of 2008. The latter
numbers are very close to my own for the first 8 months of 2008. U.N.
figures are:

Civilians killed by international and Afghan forces.........577 (2007: 477)
Civilians killed just by air strikes................................... ~
400 (2007: n.a.)
Civilians killed by Taliban and associates.....................~ 800 (2007:
462)
Civilians who died unaccounted for..............................68 (100)
[11] (2007: 101)

My totals reconstructed from disaggregated on the Afghan Victim Memorial
Project website data shows that for the first eight months are: killed by
USNATO action @ 573-674 (mid point at 624) and by air strikes alone @
444-475 (mid point at 460) (Table 5). The U.N. did not say how its human
rights monitors collected statistics on civilian deaths, or discuss its
sources of information or their reliability.

The following Table 4 summarizes available aggregate statistics on Afghan
civilian deaths for the period 2006 - mid 2008. (101) [11]

Table 4. Afghan Civilians Killed during 2006 - _______, 2008

+----------------+---------------+----------------------+------------------+
|Source: |2006 |2007 |Until _____2008 |
+----------------+---------------+----------------------+------------------+
|Human Rights |116 by aerial |434 by US/NATO (321 |119 by air strikes|
|Watch |bombing114 by |from air strikes)950 |until July 1, |
| |ground |by TalibanTotal @ |2008; 54 in other |
| |combat699 by |1,633 |US/NATO attacks; |
| |Taliban | |367 by "Taliban" |
+----------------+---------------+----------------------+------------------+
|United Nations | |First 6 months: |First 6 mos.: 255 |
| | |314 by "allies" |by "allies"422 by |
| | |279 by "militants". |"militants"21 |
| | |For entire year, |undetermined Total|
| | |US/NATO and Afghan |= 698; For 8 mos, |
| | |forces killed 477 |577 killed by |
| | |Afghan civilians |US/NATO and Afghan|
| | | |forces |
+----------------+---------------+----------------------+------------------+
|Associated Press| |Data for |Data for |
| | |Jan.-Oct.31st:337 by |Jan.1-Aug. 26th: |
| | |"allies"346 by |536 by |
| | |"militants" |"militants", 158 |
| | | |by US/NATO, 11 in |
| | | |crossfire |
+----------------+---------------+----------------------+------------------+
|Karen DeYoung of|116 by air |321 by air strikes |200 by air strikes|
|the Washington |strikes only |only |through 8 mos of |
|Post | | |2008 |
+----------------+---------------+----------------------+------------------+
|Marc W. Herold's|653-769 killed |1,010-1,297 killed |Date for Jan. 1 - |
|Afghan Victim |only by US/NATO|only by US/NATO |Aug. 4th: 411-496 |
|Memorial Project|actions |actions |killed only by |
| | | |US/NATO actions |
+----------------+---------------+----------------------+------------------+
|Other reports | |Oxfam (1/2008: 16) |The UN Human |
| | |reports 500-600 killed|Rights rapporteur |
| | |by foreign and Afghan |says foreign and |
| | |forces. Reuters (June |Afghan forces have|
| | |11, 2008) reported |killed "at least |
| | |that more than 520 |200 civilians" |
| | |civilians were killed |during Jan-April. |
| | |during 2007 by foreign|In early August, |
| | |forces alone according|ACBAR reported |
| | |to Afghan rights |that 1,000 |
| | |groups. |civilians had been|
| | | |killed during 2008|
| | | |to-date (260 in |
| | | |July alone). |
+----------------+---------------+----------------------+------------------+
The following presents a graphical image of the various counts of Afghan
civilian casualties mentioned in Table 4. Three counts are comparable: those
of Human Rights Watch (HRW), the Associated Press (A.P.) and Herold. The
United Nations data is only for the first half year of 2007 and 2008. Karen
De Young only lists civilians killed in US/NATO air strikes as mentioned by
HRW. What clearly emerges is that HRW and the AP put out gross
under-estimates, presumably a result of censorship by omission.

[Image {8}]

On September 8, 2008, Human Rights Watch released a report on air strikes
and civilian deaths in Afghanistan. (102) [11] It presented data, decried
the costs of civilian casualties in terms of undermining "international
efforts to provide basic security to the people of Afghanistan" and warned
ominously that such deadly air strikes act as a recruiting tool for the
Taliban. In addition, HRW correctly pointed out that a disproportionate
number of the civilian deaths from air strikes called-in by the nearly
20,000 U.S. occupation troops who operate independently of NATO and who have
far less stringent rules of engagement. Throughout the report, HRW either
directly states or indirectly implies that the Taliban use civilians as
human shields with deadly consequences. HRW says its figures are based upon
"military records, hospital admissions and on-the-ground testimonies."
Indeed, the Economist states that American military figures show civilian
deaths in air strikes rose from 116 in 2006 to 321 in 2007, precisely the
figures cited by Human Rights Watch. (103) [11] Military records, we know,
whether U.S. or Afghan, are notoriously unreliable. Secondly, hospital entry
data is largely irrelevant as Afghans bury their dead soon after the death.
It behooves HRW to tell us about the scope of its "on-the-ground
testimonies"; they might take the Benini-Moulton (2003) study as a model.

The HRW summary figures for 2006 - 2008 (first seven months) are presented
in Table 5 below. What is immediately striking is the relatively low ratio
of total reported civilian deaths caused by air strike: 50% in 2006, 47% in
2007 and 69% in 2008. By way of contrast, data from Herold's Afghan Victim
Memorial Project as well as commentary from most sources during this period
of time point to a higher proportion of civilians killed by US/NATO air
strikes, e.g. 60-85%. But more importantly, the figures put forth by Human
Rights Watch without the slightest bit of supporting evidence (in the form
of data incident-by-incident), are very low absolute numbers of civilians
killed by US/NATO occupation forces. For example, the HRW figures for
Afghans killed by US/NATO air strikes are only 70% in 2006, 42% in 2007 and
27% in 2008 (first seven months) of those reported by Herold. In other
words, Human Rights Watch carries on its long-established tradition of
reporting a fraction of the truth as the whole truth when dealing with "bad
bodies" (those killed by US/NATO forces).

Table 5. Afghan Civilian Deaths during 2006-8 as Reported by Human Rights
Watch (HRW) and Herold

+-----------------------+--------------+--------------+----------------+
| |2006 |2007 |2008 |
+-----------------------+--------------+--------------+----------------+
|HRW: US/NATO total |230 |(683) |173 (7 mos) |
+-----------------------+--------------+--------------+----------------+
|: air strikes |116 |321 |119 |
+-----------------------+--------------+--------------+----------------+
|HRW: air/total in % |50% |47% |69% |
+-----------------------+--------------+--------------+----------------+
|Herold: US/NATO total |653-769 |1010-1297 |573-674 (8 mos) |
+-----------------------+--------------+--------------+----------------+
|: mid point |711 |1154 |624 |
+-----------------------+--------------+--------------+----------------+
|: air strikes |326-385 (50%) |675-868 (67%) |444-475 |
+-----------------------+--------------+--------------+----------------+
|: mid point, air |356 |772 |460 |
+-----------------------+--------------+--------------+----------------+
|Herold: air/total in % |50% |67% |74% |
+-----------------------+--------------+--------------+----------------+
In his report, Garlasco inveighs that during the past year civilians killed
in air strikes have nearly tripled. This figure is in the ballpark (for the
years 2006-7) and was widely cited even by some critical of the Bush wars.
But, the figure obscures the fact that HRW numbers are only a fraction of
the overall Afghan human toll. Human Rights Watch counts only about 50% of
all Afghans killed as indicated in the following Table 6:

Table 6. Comparison of Recorded Afghan Civilians killed by US/NATO actions

+-------------+----------+--------+-------------+-----------+
|year |HRW total |HRW air |Herold total |Herold air |
+-------------+----------+--------+-------------+-----------+
|2006 |230 |116 |711 |356 |
+-------------+----------+--------+-------------+-----------+
|2007 |683 |321 |1,154 |772 |
+-------------+----------+--------+-------------+-----------+
|2008 (7 mos) |173 |119 |448 |304 |
+-------------+----------+--------+-------------+-----------+
|Total |1,086 |556 |2,313 |1,432 |
+-------------+----------+--------+-------------+-----------+
Note: the figures for Herold are midpoint numbers of the reported range

Measuring the lethality of aerial bombing to the population is a complex
endeavor. Clearly the bombing intensity needs to be related to the civilian
toll as absolute numbers in themselves mean very little. The measure I have
chosen to employ is civilians killed per 10 tons (or 10,000 tons) of bombs
dropped. Obviously, bombing across countries with radically different levels
of urbanization make crude comparisons difficult. The tonnage figures
include bombs dropped on purely military targets. Were one able to tally
only bombs dropped where civilians perished, the ratio of civilians killed
per tonnage would be significantly higher. In 1999, Fred Kaplan noted that
the lethality of bombing for civilians was about equal in Vietnam and
Yugoslavia, namely one civilian died for every ten tons of bombs dropped.
(104) [11] The figures for Laos, Cambodia and Afghanistan (2001) were
appreciably higher (more than double, Table 7).

Table 7. Civilians Killed per 100 Metric Tons of Bombs Dropped

+-------------------+----------------+-------------------+-----------------+
| |Total tonnage |Number of Civilians|Ratio of |
| |dropped |killed |civilians per 100|
| | | |tons |
+-------------------+----------------+-------------------+-----------------+
|North Vietnam, |600,000 |52,000 |8.7 |
|Rolling Thunder, | | | |
|1964-67 | | | |
+-------------------+----------------+-------------------+-----------------+
|North Vietnam, |15,287 |1,318 |8.6 |
|Linebacker II, 1972| | | |
+-------------------+----------------+-------------------+-----------------+
|Laos, 1965-93 |2,400,000 |350-500,00 |14.6-20.8 |
+-------------------+----------------+-------------------+-----------------+
|Cambodia, 1969-73 |2,756,941 |275- 826,000 |11.5-34.4 |
+-------------------+----------------+-------------------+-----------------+
|Iraq Gulf War, 1991|60,624 |2,278 |3.8 |
+-------------------+----------------+-------------------+-----------------+
|Yugoslavia, 1999 |13,000 |1,200 |9.2 |
+-------------------+----------------+-------------------+-----------------+
|U.S. Afghanistan, |14,000* |2,569-2,949 |18.4-21.1 |
|Oct 7 - Dec 10, | | | |
|2001 | | | |
+-------------------+----------------+-------------------+-----------------+
|Iraq, March |6,350 |940-1,112 |14.8-17.5 |
|20-April 5, 2003 | | | |
+-------------------+----------------+-------------------+-----------------+
|U.S Afghanistan |261 |653-769 |250-295 |
|2006 |261 |326-385 |125-148 |
|at 50% | | | |
+-------------------+----------------+-------------------+-----------------+
|U.S. Afghanistan |567 |1,010-1,297 |178-229 |
|2007 |567 |678-869 |119-153 |
|at 67% | | | |
+-------------------+----------------+-------------------+-----------------+
|U.S. Afghanistan |630 |273-335 |43-53 |
|2008, ½ year |630 |183-224 |29-36 |
|at 67% | | | |
+-------------------+----------------+-------------------+-----------------+
Laos's data from  http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/17848; Yugoslavia and
Rolling Thunder data from Kaplan (1999); Cambodia data from Ben Kiernan;
Iraq Gulf War casualties reported by Iraqi civil defense authorities.
*figure is for October 2001 - February 2002

The civilian figures for Afghanistan above are for total civilian deaths
caused by U.S./NATO actions. In order to achieve comparability, the deaths
caused by aerial attacks need to be derived. A conservative estimate would
be that during 2006, half the deaths were caused by aerial attacks and in
2007 and 2008 two-thirds.

Close air support strikes often involve a mix of civilian and military
victims. Table 7 presents derived numbers in the last column for the number
of Afghan civilians killed per 100 tons of bombs dropped. For the U.S. close
air support bombing of 2006-8, I have employed figures in Table 1,
conservatively assuming that one-half of recorded civilian deaths were from
air strikes. The figures probably need to be adjusted downward slightly to
take into account that some Afghan civilians died from strafing runs and not
bombs. Recognizing that the U.S. reliance upon close air support strikes
increased significantly during 2007-8, I will assume that in 2006 half of
all civilian deaths were caused by aerial bombing, but that during 2007 and
2008 the figure is 67%. When one makes these adjustments, the lethality of
close air support air strikes to Afghan civilians as measured by the ratio
of civilians killed per 100 tons of bombs dropped is:

2006: 125-148
2007: 119-153
2008: 29-36

In all three years, the lethality of U.S. bombing in Afghanistan exceeded by
far that recorded in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Iraq (2003) and
Afghanistan (2001). The lethality of CAS strikes to Afghan civilians has
fallen significantly during the first six months of 2008, though no doubt
has risen greatly during July and August. (105) [11] Yet, the figure for
2008 is still in the order of magnitude of those recorded for what are
admitted to have been the terribly deadly U.S. carpet bombing of Cambodia
and the Allied bombing of Germany during World War II. (106) [11]

Disaggregated data for 2006 reveals that 653-769 Afghan civilians died as a
result of U.S/NATO actions. The number of attacks was eighty, meaning that
8-10 persons perished per attack. But this average obscures a bi-polar
distribution: 49 attacks resulted in 1-5 civilian deaths and 20 attacks
killed at least 11 Afghan civilians.

Table 8. The Matrix of Death: Afghan Civilians Killed by US/NATO Actions,
January 1 - July 1, 2008

+-----------------+-------------+----------+-------------+-----------------+
|Total killed by |Men: 54 |Women: |Children: 55 |Undetermined: |
|demographics | |39-41 | |124-184 |
+-----------------+-------------+----------+-------------+-----------------+
|Total by type of |Air: 178-192 |Ground: |Air & ground:| |
|US/NATO attack | |50-80 |44-62 | |
+-----------------+-------------+----------+-------------+-----------------+
|Numbers of |Air: 20 |Ground: 22|Air & ground:| |
|attacks by type | | |2 | |
+-----------------+-------------+----------+-------------+-----------------+
|Average killed by|Air: 9 |Ground: |Air & ground:| |
|attack type | |2-4 |22-31 | |
+-----------------+-------------+----------+-------------+-----------------+
The matrix of death for 2008 constructed in Table 8 indicates that of the
total number of Afghan civilians killed (272-334), air attacks killed
178-192, ground attacks another 50-80, and combined air and ground attacks
44-62. Aerial attacks were 3-4 times as deadly for Afghan civilians as were
ground attacks. Many more children and women are killed by US/NATO attacks
than men. Two-thirds of the fifty-five identifiable children killed died in
air or combined air & ground attacks. Some 57-65% of Afghans killed died
from air attacks as compared with only 18-24% from ground attacks. On the
other hand, not a single US/NATO pilot was killed but 123 foreign occupation
ground soldiers died during January through June 2008. The recent increasing
reliance upon unmanned drones to dispense death and destruction in the
border regions is in a sense the penultimate disconnect between killing them
and saving ours.

The trade-off is very clear: by relying upon aerial close air support (CAS)
and drone attacks, US/NATO forces spare their pilots and ground troops but
kill lots of innocent Afghan civilians. Air strikes are 4-10 times as deadly
for Afghan civilians as are ground attacks. The matrixes of death (Tables 8
and 9) for January-August 2008 couldn't be clearer about this trend:

Table 9. The Matrix of Death: Afghan Civilians Killed by US/NATO Actions,
July and August 2008

+-----------------+-------------+----------+-------------+-----------------+
|Total killed by |Men: 25 |Women: 20 |Children: 47 |Undetermined: |
|demographics, | | | |42-63 |
|July | | | | |
+-----------------+-------------+----------+-------------+-----------------+
|Total by type of |Air: 119 |Ground: |Air & ground:| |
|US/NATO attack | |12-15 |2-20 | |
+-----------------+-------------+----------+-------------+-----------------+
|Numbers of |Air: 9 |Ground: 4 |Air & ground:| |
|attacks by type | | |1 | |
+-----------------+-------------+----------+-------------+-----------------+
|Average killed by|Air: 13 |Ground: |Air & ground:| |
|attack type | |3-4 |2-20- | |
+-----------------+-------------+----------+-------------+-----------------+
|Total killed by |Men: 23 |Women: 23 |Children: 76 |Undetermined: |
|demographics | | | |44-62 |
|August | | | | |
+-----------------+-------------+----------+-------------+-----------------+
|Total by type of |Air: 147-164 |Ground: |Air & ground:| |
|US/NATO attack | |15-16 |4 | |
+-----------------+-------------+----------+-------------+-----------------+
|Numbers of |Air: 8 |Ground: 7 |Air & ground:| |
|attacks by type | | |1 | |
+-----------------+-------------+----------+-------------+-----------------+
|Average killed by|Air: 18-20 |Ground: 2 |Air & ground:| |
|attack type | | |4 | |
+-----------------+-------------+----------+-------------+-----------------+

[Image {12}]

Figure 5. Canadian occupation forces kick down a door in the village of
Pashmul, southwest of Kandahar in September 2006 (photo by Richard Mills for
The Times)

What is a Dead Afghan worth to the United States?

In the very rare instances, when the U.S. military acknowledges that Afghan
civilians wrongfully died or were wounded because of military action, what
monetary compensation (the U.S. military refrains from using the word
compensation, preferring instead condolence) is paid? (107) [11] Rather than
estimating ex ante what might be the monetary value of an Afghan life, I
focus instead upon how much compensation has been paid ex post for a death
caused. (108) [11] Afghans have been seeking compensation from the United
States since early 2002. (109) [11] A particularly egregious case occurred
in the dark of night at 3 A.M on January 24, 2002, described meticulously in
The Afghan Victim Memorial Project:

In the village of Hazar Qadam, Uruzgan Province. Amanullah, 25, was sleeping
when a rocket hit the Islamic school, the Sharzam high school, and U.S.
troops burst into the school spraying it with bullets. He saw his cousin
struggle with U.S. occupation soldiers. But Amanullah fearing for his life,
fled to hide in the village mosque. When he returned he found his cousin
dead with bullets in his neck, stomach and shoulder. Bari Gul also described
how Haji Sana, his brother died. Bari Gul was heading up a group of 18
Afghans who were negotiating disarmament locally. The U.S. occupation forces
beat them, abducted all of them and 9 other civilians, keeping them in
wooden-barred cages and beating them for 2 weeks at the Kandahar base. Allah
Noor, 40, a farmer, suffered 2 broken ribs from the beatings. The masked
U.S. Special Forces troops killed 14 men in one compound, 2 in a second
compound serving as the district office. Villagers later found 2 local men
dead with their hands tied behind their backs with plastic bands stenciled
with the words, "Made in U.S.A.," killed execution-style. The school
courtyard was a graveyard of twisted, shrapnel-shredded vehicles. Its façade
was pocked with hundreds of bullet holes. The floor of one classroom was
marked with bloodstains. "Made in U.S.A."? Bari Gul added, "None of our
friends fired on the Americans because they were asleep." An Uruzgan elder
told TIME (Feb. 2002), "The U.S. must be punished for what they did in this
room, what they did in this place." In June 2003, a participating member in
this deadly U.S. attack upon the schoolhouse, Sgt. Anthony Pryor, of the 5th
Special Forces Group, was awarded the Silver Star medal and was given a ring
made of Afghan lapis lazuli.

Less than ten days after the attack, CIA agents visited the village to pay
condolence. Bari Gul whose brother was a member of a local disarmament
commission and was slaughtered by the U.S. Special Forces, was given ten
$100 bills. (110) [11]

[Image {13}]

Figure 6. Bari Gul with his ten $100 bills (photo by Qudratullah Ahmady for
NPR)

Five-and-a-half years later, the U.S. military stated it intended to pay
$90,000 in compensation to the families of at least 16 victims killed in an
air strike in Tulokhan west of Kandahar on May 21/22, 2006. The U.S.
military said 16 civilians had died, but rights groups like the Afghanistan
Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) insisted the number was 37.
However, U.S. Col. Tom Collins added the caveat that compensation would only
be paid when security improved in the area. (111) [11] In the night of April
17/18, 2006, U.S. soldiers shot and wounded three women and a newborn in
Khost Province when the women were on their way home in a vehicle after one
of them had given birth to a baby in a nearby clinic. The family of Gardez
Khan was given compensation in the amount of 80,000 Afghanis (or $1,600).
(112) [11]

On March 4, 2007, U.S. Marines were hit with gunfire and went on a shooting
rampage killing and injuring scores of Afghans in Nangarhar Province. The
U.S. Army later apologized to the affected people and offered a "condolence"
sum of $2,000 to each affected family. (113) [11] In July 2007, families of
25 victims of a NATO air strike during June on the Alam Khan village,
Gereshk district of Helmand Province, were awarded compensation in the
amount of 2.2 million Afghanis (or $50,000), or $2,000 per dead relative.
(114) [11] The villages demanded that the NATO troops be punished for
killing ordinary citizens. On September 27, 2007, a U.S. bombing raid killed
49 persons in Uruzgan. The families received 100,000 Afghanis ($2,000) for a
dead relative and 50,000 Afghanis ($1,000) for those injured. (115) [11] On
the other hand, the family of a 13-year-old boy who was killed by U.S.
troops' gunfire in Kabul in March 2006, received $4,000. In March 2007, the
U.S. military offered $2,000 in compensation to the family of Alexander
Ivanov, a truck driver who was killed by U.S. troops' gunfire at the
entrance of the U.S. Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan. (116) [11]

Condolence payments to Iraqis slain by U.S. occupation forces vary from $500
- $5,000 with the variation accounted for by the degree to which the death
of a high-profile victim might have an impact on U.S.-Iraqi relations. (117)
[11] A typical case is that of Ali Kadem Hashem who in 2003 watched his wife
burn to death and his three children die after an American missile hit his
home. Almost a year later, M. Hashem received $5,000 in a stack of crisp
$100 bills (or $1,250 per victim) and an "I'm sorry" from a young captain.
(118) [11] Or take the case of Said Abbas Ahmed who was given $6,000 after
an American missile killed his brother, his sister, his wife and his six
children. He received $1,000 for each dead family member; Abbas commented,
"Are we not worth more than a few thousand?" (119) [11] A U.S. official in
2007 is quoted in a U.S. Congressional Hearing making the astounding claim
that compensation should be modest lest "this could cause incidents with
people trying to get killed by our guys to financially guarantee their
family's future." (120) [11]

The U.S. military gives at most $2,500 condolence payment (not compensation
which would admit wrong-doing) for a death and half that for an injury.
Canadian per person condolence payments to Afghans since 2006 range from
$1,100 - $ 9,000. (121) [11] British compensation aside from being totally
sporadic and arbitrary are paltry: of the 1,289 claims filed by Afghan
civilians, just 397 were settled and less than 150,000 pounds has been paid
in compensation to civilians injured or killed in the intense fighting in
Helmand. (122) [11] Mirwais Ahmadzai who leads the AIHRC says these
compensation figures are far too low. He pointed out that the "blood price"
for a killing under Afghan customary law is more than ten times the U.S.
offer. (123) [11] According to Afghanistan's current Islamic penal code, a
person who mistakenly kills an individual should pay Islamic compensation
("Diyat") equivalent to the price of forty camels to the affected family -
or roughly $25,000. (124) [11]

The London-based Global Commons Institute reported (1995) that the cash
value of a statistical life in the EC or the USA was ~ $1'500'000 per head,

Centre for the Social and Economic Research of the Global Environment
(C-SERGE) based in the UK has already published a valuation of the lives to
be lost. In a recent research paper it stated that the cash value of a
"statistical life" in the EC or the USA is $1,500,000 per head, but in
"poor" countries such as China, it is only $150,000. (The disparate figures
are derived from peoples' ability-to-pay for damage insurance). In global
cost/benefit analysis, this means therefore these economists discard a real
Chinese life ten times more easily than a real life in the EC or the USA.
(125) [11]

I propose to compare compensation paid by the U.S., military to Afghan
civilians to other instances of compensation. The following Table 10
describes a dozen such cases:

Table 10. The Monetary Value of Life Paid in Compensation Measured in PPP
$'s

+--------------------+-----------------+------------------+----------------+
|Victim's nationality|in nominal $'s |GDP PPP$'s/GDP US |in PPP US $'s |
| | |$'s ratio | |
+--------------------+-----------------+------------------+----------------+
|of Americans 1988* |$1'850'000 |1.00 |$1'850'000 |
+--------------------+-----------------+------------------+----------------+
|of WTC victims 2002 |$1'800'000 |1.00 |$1'800'000 |
+--------------------+-----------------+------------------+----------------+
|of Italians 1998 |$1'900'000 |1.09 |$ 2'071'000 |
+--------------------+-----------------+------------------+----------------+
|of Japanese 2001 |$1'440'000 |0.70 |$1'010'000 |
+--------------------+-----------------+------------------+----------------+
|of Chinese 1999 |$150'000 |4.58 |$687'000 |
+--------------------+-----------------+------------------+----------------+
|of South Koreans |$162'500 |1.7 |$276'250 |
|2002 | | | |
+--------------------+-----------------+------------------+----------------+
|of Iranians 1998 |$132'000'000/290 |2.5-3 |$125,172 |
+--------------------+-----------------+------------------+----------------+
|of Indians (Bhopal) |$3'200 |5.01 |$16'032 |
|1984 | | | |
+--------------------+-----------------+------------------+----------------+
|of Afghans @ |$3'300 - $5'000 |~4** |$13,200-$20,000 |
|lifetime earnings***| | | |
+--------------------+-----------------+------------------+----------------+
|of Afghans @ US |$2000 |~4 |$8'000 |
|military | | | |
+--------------------+-----------------+------------------+----------------+
|of Afghans @ Diyat |$25,000 |~ 4 |$100,000 |
+--------------------+-----------------+------------------+----------------+
*average compensation paid to 270 victims of the 1988 Lockerbie, Scotland,
Pan Am Flight 103 disaster [see Amanda Ripley, "WTC Victims: What's A Life
Worth," Time (February 6, 2002)). The value for victims of airplane crashes
into World Trade Center is from Beverly Eckert, "My Silence Cannot Be
Bought," USA Today (December 19, 2003). In 1984, in United States court
cases, awards for a person negligently killed were $500'000. Recent
estimates used by the Environmental Protection Agency have been $ 6.1
million [see the excellent paper by Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heinzerling,
"The $ 6.1 Million Question" [Medford, MA.: Global Development and
Environment Institute Working Paper No. 01-06, Tufts University, April
2002], available at:  http://ase.tufts.edu/gdae). A comprehensive
bibliography on the Economics of Disasters and Valuation of Life may be
found at  http://www.geo.umass.edu/courses/geo510/economics.htm. The figure
for Bhopal is from  http://www.iced.org.au/files/iced/bhopal/injustice.html

**the Afghan ratio of 4 is estimated on basis of GDP data and it is close to
that for Pakistan where prices are similar, a ratio of 4.25 in Pakistan. The
Afghan and Pakistani economies have been very tightly linked monetarily.

***an average Afghan earns about $300 a year and life expectancy is in the
low 40's.

The incidents listed illustrate recklessness admitted to by the United
States. These include the terrible Union Carbide chemical leak in Bhopal,
India in 1984; the downing in 1988 of an Iran Air A300 Airbus by a US
warship causing 290 civilian deaths (126) [11] ; the low-flying U.S. Marine
EA-6B jet severing two cables of an Italian ski-lift on February 3, 1998,
killing 20 skiers from six nations (within a year and threatened with an
international lawsuit, the U.S. settled paying for 3/4 of the $40 mn
compensation) (127) [11] ; and in November 2002, the U.S. Government paid
out $13 mn to the families of those killed when a U.S. Navy submarine had
struck a Japanese fishing vessel in Feb. 2001. At 11:45 P.M. on May 7, 1999,
a U.S. B-2 bomber deliberately dropped three JDAM 'smart' bombs upon the
Chinese Embassy in New Belgrade. (128) [11] Three young Chinese journalists
were killed and 23 other persons in the embassy were wounded. Four months
later, the United States agreed to pay $ 4.5 million in damages to the
families of the deceased and to the injured. This amounts to about nominal
$150'000 per victim. On July 22, 2002, a little over a month after a U.S.
armored vehicle in South Korea struck and killed two South Korean teenagers,
the U.S. military offered $162'500 in compensation to each family. (129)
[11]

The data in Table 10 reveals that the West 'values' life in direct
proportion to a nation's level of average material development. Afghanistan
figures at the bottom along with the victims of Bhopal. When presented in
PPP $'s a clear hierarchy is revealed: Euro-Americans are worth most
followed by East Asians whereas Central/South Asians figure last. Were an
Afghan compensated for according to the traditional practice of the Diyat,
the amount would approach that paid out (in PPP $'s) by the United States to
the family of a victim of the Iranian Airbus shooting-down. Instead, the
U.S., military distributes a condolence payment one-fifteenth the amount
offered the family of an Iranian victim. Approximately US $ 80'000 was spent
on the rehabilitation of every sea otter affected by the Exxon Valdez oil
spill, (130) [11] that is, ten times the condolence amount offered by the
U.S. military to the family of an Afghan killed.

Bombs away! US/NATO bombs kill about ten times more Afghan civilians with a
ton of our "precision" bombs than we killed Serbs in 1999. (131) [11] They
(Afghans) are only worth one-tenth of an Alaskan sea otter rather than forty
camels. We spend ten dollars on the military in Afghanistan to pursue our
geo-strategic aims and $1 on reconstructing the everyday lives of Afghans
destroyed by thirty years of war (132) [11] For (most) Americans, Afghans
truly are lesser versions of humanity. Lest we forget, what did "America" do
for Afghans when its geo-strategic goal of defeating the Soviets was
achieved in 1989? America cut and ran.

Conclusion: Obama's Afghanistan as a Surreal Hunting Estate

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and
expecting different results" - Albert Einstein

Candidate Obama, his Clinton era advisers, and sadly all too many others
fail to recognize a web of inter-connected, persistent constraints, or given
realties. One might label them as the "five cannots": US/NATO cannot send
400,000 combat troops to garrison Afghanistan's towns, hamlets and
countryside (133) [11] (which is a pre-condition for reconstruction to win
hearts and minds (134) [11] ); the US/NATO cannot impose a powerful central
government upon Afghanistan (135) [11] ; the US/NATO cannot neutralize the
very effective least-cost weapons of choice of the Afghan resistance (IED's
and suicide bombers); the US/NATO cannot seal the Afghan-Pakistan border and
hence will not eliminate the vital sanctuary so necessary to a guerrilla
movement); and lastly, the Pakistan government has never been able to
dominate its vast tribal borderlands and there is no reason to believe such
will change. Those who choose not to understand these "five cannots"
advocate change in a vacuum. The present military impasse begets a political
solution and the abandonment of any nation-building fantasy. (136) [11]

The perceived poison of a foreign occupation, the rampant corruption, the
all-too-frequent desecration of Islam by the occupiers, the sheer folly of
the US/NATO seeking to extend the writ of a central government into the
Pashtun tribal regions (137) [11] , the spiraling count of civilian deaths
has shifted the Afghan struggle towards being a war of national liberation.
The presence of foreign forces is furthermore according to the United
Nations' senior expert on Al Qaeda, providing the glue with which Osama bin
Laden's Al Qaeda network is bonding support in the region. (138) [11] Anatol
Lieven of King's College (London) puts things aptly. Afghanistan is

Becoming a sort of surreal hunting estate, in which the U.S. and NATO breed
the very terrorists they then track down. (139) [11]

No matter that in Kabul even foreigners speak about being "inside a living
hell." (140) [11] No matter that veteran reporter Kathy Gannon notes that
Afghans are fed up with the U.S. and Karzai. (141) [11] No matter that
Karzai and U.S. bombs have transformed what was once a backward looking
Taliban primarily espousing sharia into a thriving modern movement of
resistance and national liberation. (142) [11] No matter that
anti-Americanism is spiraling in Pakistan as U.S. raids take place. (143)
[11] Obama and McCain propose dusty death without end in Afghanistan. (144)
[11]

Marc W. Herold is Associate Professor of Economic Development, Dept. of
Economics, Whittemore School of Business & Economics, University of New
Hampshire

Footnotes:

1- Emphasized by Simon Jenkins, "Stop Killing the Taliban - They Offer the
Best Hope of Beating Al-Qaeda," The Times (June 22, 2008 at
 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/simon_jenkins/article418
7504.ece

2- See my "More of the Same Packaged as Change. Barack Obama and
Afghanistan," Counterpunch (August 6, 2008) at
 http://www.counterpunch.org/herold08062008.html

3- Details on this sordid individual may be found in "Gul Agha Gets His
Province Back," New York Times Magazine (January 6, 2002) at
 http://www.petermaass.com/core.cfm?p=1&mag=74&magtype=1

4- This point is made in detail in my book, Afganistan Como un Espacio
Vacio. El Perfecto Estado Colonial del Siglo XXI (Madrid: Foca, ediciones y
distribuciones generales S.L., 2007), 312 pp.

5- Aunohita Mojumdara, "Inside a Living Hell," The Hindu (July 20, 2008) at
 http://www.hindu.com/mag/2008/07/20/stories/2008072050020100.htm

6- Kathy Gannon, "AP Impact: Afghans Fed Up with Government, US," Associated
Press (September 5, 2008) at  http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=331772

7- Emphasized by Simon Jenkins, "Stop Killing the Taliban - They Offer the
Best Hope of Beating Al-Qaeda," The Times (June 22, 2008 at
 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/simon_jenkins/article418
7504.ece

8- See my "More of the Same Packaged as Change. Barack Obama and
Afghanistan," Counterpunch (August 6, 2008) at
 http://www.counterpunch.org/herold08062008.html

9- Details on this sordid individual may be found in "Gul Agha Gets His
Province Back," New York Times Magazine (January 6, 2002) at
 http://www.petermaass.com/core.cfm?p=1&mag=74&magtype=1

10- This point is made in detail in my book, Afganistan Como un Espacio
Vacio. El Perfecto Estado Colonial del Siglo XXI (Madrid: Foca, ediciones y
distribuciones generales S.L., 2007), 312 pp.

11- Reported in Oxfam International, "Major Donors Failing in Afghanistan
due to $10 bn Aid Shortfall," Oxfam.org (March 20, 2008) at
 http://www.oxfam.org/en/news/2008/pr080325_donors_failing_afghanistan. See
also John Hemming, "Afghan Aid `Ineffective or Inefficient'; Military
Spending Dwarfs Development," Reuters (November 20, 2007) at
 http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/ISL28902.htm

12- As I have long argued, most recently in "An `Empty' Buffer," Frontline.
India's National Magazine 25, 13 (June 21 - July 4, 2008): 62-64 at
 http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2513/stories/20080704251306200.htm

13- In the magisterial book by Jorg Friedrich, Der Brand (Munich: Propylaen
Verlag, 2002), 592 pp.

14- As in Choe Sang-Hun, "Korean War's Lost Chapter: South Korea Says U.S.
Killed Hundreds of Civilians," New York Times (August 3, 2008) at
 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/world/asia/03korea.html?_r=1&partner=rssus
erland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

15- See Neil Munro and Carl M. Cannon, "Data Bomb," National Journal
(January 4, 2008) at
 http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/databomb/index.htm

16- Paul Rogers, "Afghanistan: on the cliff-edge," OpenDemocracy (August 28,
2008) at
 http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/afghanistan-the-edge-of-calamity

17- For an analysis, see Edward S. Herman, David Peterson and George
Szamuely, "Human Rights Watch in Service to the War Party: Including a
Review of `Weighing the Evidence: Lessons from the Slobodan Milosevic Trial'
(Human Rights Watch, December 2006)," ZNet (February 25, 2007) at
 http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/HRW_Yugoslavia.html. For a
broader critique of Human Rights Watch, see also Michael Barker, "Hijacking
Human Rights," ZSpace (August 3, 2007) at
 http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/14804

18- I have elaborated upon this in "Truth about Afghan Civilian Casualties
Comes Only through American Lenses for the U.S. Corporate Media [our
modern-day Didymus]," in Peter Phillips and Project Censored [eds], Censored
2003: the Year's Top 25 Stories [New York: Seven Seas Publishing, 2002]:
265-294. Some reporters for the mainstream press have been able to maintain
their independence, e.g., Kathy Gannon of the Associated Press, Carlotta
Gall of the New York Times, etc.

19- Ibid.

20- For such photos which upset the mainstream narrative, one needs to go to
peace activists or Central Asian sources, see for example Maso Notarianni,
"Burnt Children after a NATO bomb attack. Their disfigured faces are the
real face of war," PeaceReporter.net (October 31, 2006) at
 http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/rawanews.php?id=18

21- After John Pilger, "Censorship by Omission," in Phil Hammond and Edward
S. Herman (eds), Degraded Capability. The Media and the Kosovo Crisis
(London: Pluto Press, 2000): 132-140.

22- Michael Griffin, "Picturing America's `War on Terrorism' in Afghanistan
and Iraq. Photographic Motifs as News Frames," Journalism 5, 4 (2004):
381-402 and Barbie Zelizer, "Death in Wartime: Photographs and the `Other
War' in Afghanistan," The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics
10, 3 (2005): 26-55. As open as the Vietnam War was to photo journalists, as
closed are America's more recent wars. Further discussion in Michael Kamber
and Tim Arango, "Who Controls Images of Iraq War's Carnage," New York Times
(August 2, 2008) at
 http://www.startribune.com/world/26196639.html?location_refer=World:highligh
tModules:4

23- "US Military Jails `Black Holes', say US Reporters for Afghan Reporter,"
Agence France Presse (July 21,2008) at
 http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=
94304

24- Jim Rutenberg, "Fox Portrays a War of Good and Evil, and Many Applaus,"
New York Times (December 3, 2001) at
 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E6D6113DF930A35751C1A9679
C8B63

25- See Glenn Greenwald, "The Government, the Media and Afghanistan,"
Salon.org (September 11, 2008) at  http://www.commondreams.org/print/32265

26- See my "Dead Afghan Civilians: Disrobing the Non-Counters," Cursor.org
(August 20, 2002) at  http://www.cursor.org/stories/noncounters.htm

27- Nick Meo, "Britain Pays for a Surge of Spin Doctors in Kabul to Counter
Taliban Propaganda," The Telegraph (September 13, 2008) at
 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/2827216/Britain-p
ays-for-surge-of-spin-doctors-in-Kabul-to-counter-Taliban-propaganda.html

28- Michael Mandel, How America Gets Away with Murder: Illegal Wars,
Collateral Damage and Crimes against Humanity (Ann Arbor: Pluto Press,
2004): 49

29- Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical
Illustrations [London: Allen Lane, 1977]: 156.

30- John MacLachlen Gray, "The Terrible Downside of 'Working the Dark
Side'," The Globe & Mail [October 31, 2001]: R3.

31- The Spanish-American War does not qualify as it was waged on the land of
Afro-Cubans.

32- Herold (2001), op. cit.

33- Argued in Nicholas J. Wheeler, "Dying for `Enduring Freedom': Accepting
Responsibility for Civilian Casualties in the War against Terror,"
International Relations 16, 2 (2002): 205-225 available at
 http://ire.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/16/2/205

34- See Edward S. Herman, "`Tragic Errors' in U.S. Military Policy.
Targeting the Civilian Population," Z Magazine 15, 8 (September 2002) at
 http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/War_Peace/Tragic_Errors_Military.html

35- Mark Benjamin, "When is an Accidental Civilian Death not an Accident?"
Salon.com (July 30, 2007) at
 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/07/30/collateral_damage/

36- Dahr Jamail and Tom Engelhardt, "An Increasingly Aerial Occupation,"
Antiwar.com (December 14, 2005) at
 http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=8255

37- Patrick Coburn, "The US Strategy for Afghanistan Won't Work," The
Independent (September 15, 2008) at
 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/patrick-cockburn-the-us-st
rategy-for-afghanistan-wont-work-930874.html

38- Incidentally, the same myth was applied to Hezbollah in Lebanon in July
2006. As Normal Finkelstein argues, Alan Dershowitz has repeatedly alleged
in numerous op-ed pieces that Israel typically takes "extraordinary steps to
minimize civilian casualties," while Hezbollah's typical tactics were to
"live among civilians, hide their missiles in the homes of civilians, fire
them at civilian targets from densely populated areas, and then use
civilians as human shields against counterattacks." No evidence is ever
presented to substantiate such claims of using human shields. No mention is
made of Israel using such indiscriminate weapons as cluster bombs fired by
artillery or dropped by aircraft (see Norman Finkelstein, "Descent into
Moral Barbarism. Should Alan Dershowitz Target Himself for Assassination?"
Counterpunch (August 12/13, 2006) at
 http://counterpunch.org/finkelstein08122006.html). See also Mitch Prothero,
"The `Hiding Among Civilians' Myth," Salon.org (July 28, 2006) at
 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/07/28/hezbollah/

39- An excellent factual account making this point based upon interviews
with Taliban in Kandahar may be read in Alex Thomson, "New Breed of Taliban
Replaces Old Guard," The Telegraph (September 17, 29008) at
 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/2971811/New-breed
-of-Taliban-replaces-old-guard.html

40- Written by the liberal Peter Bergen of the New America Foundation in
Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann, "Does Killing Afghan Civilians Keep Us
Safe? Western air strikes target terrorists, but innocents are caught in the
crossfire," Los Angeles Times (September 12, 2008) at
 http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-oe-bergen12-2008sep
12,0,7970275.story

41- Robert Higgs, "So, the President May Kill Anybody He Pleases, Right?"
LewRockwell.com (September 15, 2008) at
 http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs88.html

42- see "Some Matter More - When 47 Victims are Worth 43 Words," Media Lens
(July 22, 2008) at
 http://www.medialens.org/alerts/08/080722_some_matter_more.php

43- I include in this count, those Pashtuns killed in the Pakistani border
areas by U.S. forces, e.g. in cross border air or ground raids

44- Jonathan Steele, "Forgotten Victims. The full human cost of US air
strikes will never be known, but many more died than those killed directly
by bombs," The Guardian (May 20, 2002) at  http://www.rawa.org/civilian3.htm

45- Choe Sang-Hun, op. cit.. Survivors estimate 100 or more South Korean
civilians were killed.

46- Aldo A. Benini and Lawrence H. Moulton, "Civilian Victims in an
Asymmetrical Conflict. Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan," Journal of
Peace Research 41, 4 (2004): 403-422.

47- Benini and Moulton, op. cit.: 411

48- in mid-2007, Eliza Szabo had sought to calculate the numbers of civilian
casualties in Afghanistan, but discovered that the topic was largely ignored
and data was scarce, see her "Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan. Fatal
Neglect," Counterpunch (July 20, 2007) at
 http://www.counterpunch.org/szabo07202007.html

49- "Pentagon Boosts U.S. Air Strikes in Iraq, Afghanistan," Chinaview.cn
(March 17, 2006)

50- From Anthony H. Cordesman, "US Airpower in Iraq (OIF) and Afghanistan
(OEF): 2004-2007" (Washington D.C.: Center for International and Strategic
Studies, December 13, 2007)

51- Elizabeth Rubin, "A Bloody Stalemate in Afghanistan," International
Herald Tribune (February 25, 2008)

52- Bruce Rolfsen,"B-1Bs Join the Battle in Afghanistan," Air Force Times
(May 18, 2006)

53- Richard Neville, "Bomber McNeill, the Faceless Pol Pot of the Sky. Is
This Man a Psychopath?" Counterpunch (July 11, 2007) at
 http://www.counterpunch.org/neville07112007.html

54- Bruce Rolfson, "Afghanistan Hit by Record Number of Bombs," Air Force
Times (July 18, 2008)

55- CAS figures from Leon T. Hadar, "Losing Afghanistan" (CATO Institute,
July 29, 2008) at  http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9569

56- Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann, "Losing Afghanistan, One Civilian
at a Time," Washington Post (November 19, 2007) and also Ira Chernus,
"Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan: NO Coincidence," Global Research
(September 23, 2007) at  http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/02/2234/

57- Pointed out in Scott Baldauf, "Culture of Revenge Stalks U.S. in
Afghanistan," Christian Science Monitor (January 14, 2003) at
 http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20030114&slug=reven
ge14

58- See for example Ezatullah Zawab and Hafizullah Gardesh, " `Just Flesh
Everywhere': Air Attacks Turn Friends into Enemies," The Keene Sentinel
(August 3, 2008) at
 http://sentinelsource.com/articles/2008/08/03/opinion/columnists/free/id_316
838.txt

59- a lead organization espousing humanitarian imperialism which also
lamented the increasing sophistication of the Taliban in manipulating media
"by providing inflated numbers of civilian casualties immediately following
air strikes" (Details in Alexander Thier and Azita Ranjbar, "Killing
Friends, Making Enemies: The Impact and Avoidance of Civilian Casualties in
Afghanistan" (Washington D.C.: USIP Briefing, July 2008) at
 http://www.usip.org/events/2008/0229_afghanistan.html

60- Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan, "Bombs over Cambodia: New Light on the US
Air War," Z Magazine (May 12, 2007) at
 http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/15442

61- Charles V. Pena, "Using air power kills Insurgents, but can create new
ones," Copley News Service (January 15, 2008) at
 http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2109

62- Thom Shanker, "Rules Protecting Civilians Hamper Airstrikes in
Afghanistan, Military Says," International Herald Tribune (July 23, 2008) at
 http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/23/asia/afghan.php

63- The Remote Operated Video Enhanced Receiver (ROVER) technology connects
a pilot with a forward air controller on the ground who communicates with
each in real time by voice and image. This has reduced the time to direct a
pilot to a target from 45 minutes earlier by voice to less than a minute.
The advent of GPS-guiding systems has reduced the error range of the guided
bombs. For further detail see Michael Puttre, "Satellite-Guided Munitions,"
Scientific American (February 2003): 66-73.

64- see "A Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States Aerial Bombing of
Afghanistan: A Comprehensive Accounting [revised]," Cursor.org (March 2002)
at  http://www.cursor.org/stories/civilian_deaths.htm

65- Hunter C. Keeter, "Precision Strike Weapon Advances Create Mythology of
Infallibility," Navy League of the United States (July 19, 2004) at
 http://www.navyleague.org/sea_power/jul_04_19.php.

66- These matters are beautifully covered in Tom Engelhardt, "The Middle
East and the Barbarism of War from the Air," Tom Dispatch (July 28, 2006) at
 http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0728-24.htm. The entry of military
discourse into our general language is explored in Stuart Thorne, The
Language of War (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2006).

67- Colin McInnes, "A Different Kind of War? September 11 and the United
States' Afghan War," Review of International Studies 29, 2 (April 2003):
165-84

68- Frank Colucci, "Small Precision Bombs on Fast Track," National Defense
Magazine (June 2004) at
 http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/issues/2004/Jul/Small_Precision.htm

69- Further analysis in my "Relative Lethality. Survival Odds for Civilians
and Occupiers in Afghanistan and Iraq," Cursor.org (January 6, 2006) at
 http://www.cursor.org/stories/relativelethality.html

70- In 2002, Scott Peterson noted that "by one estimate, the number of
civilians killed per bomb dropped may have been four times as high in
Afghanistan as in Yugoslavia," see his " `Smarter' Bombs Still hit
Civilians," Christian Science Monitor (October 22, 2002) at
 http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1022/p01s01-wosc.htm

71- These are point estimates derived from data in Tables 6 and 7 and from
the Afghan Victim Memorial Project.

72- As for example in my "Urban Dimensions of the Punishment of Afghanistan
by US Bombs," in Stephen Graham (ed), Cities, War, and Terrorism. Towards an
Urban Geopolitics (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004): Table 17.2 on p.
316.

73- Ramzy Baroud, "Losing Afghanistan: Firepower Doesn't Always Win Wars,"
Counterbias (June 9, 2007) at  http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=81

74- Anthony Lloyd, "Afghans Blame NATO, the Invited Peacekeeper, for
Civilian Deaths," The Times (May 24, 2007) at
 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article1832241.ece

75- Carlotta Gall, "Afghans Say Civilian Toll in Strikes is Much Higher Than
Reported," New York Times (May 11, 2007) at
 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/world/asia/11afghan.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

76- Ezatullah Zawab and Hafizullah Gardesh, " `Just Flesh Everywhere': Air
Attacks Turn Friends into Enemies," The Keene Sentinel (August 3, 2008) at
 http://www.keenesentinel.com/articles/2008/08/03/opinion/columnists/free/id_
316838.txt

77- from the excellent report with video footage by Alastair Leithead,
"Afghan Survivors Tell of Wedding Bombing," BBC News (July 13, 2008) at
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7504574.stm

78- Stephen Graham, "UN Official: Afghan Civilian Deaths up 60 Percent,"
Associated Press (June 29, 2008) at
 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080629/ap_on_re_as/afghanistan

79- Sean D. Naylor, "Insurgents in Afghanistan Have Mastered Media
Manipulation," Armed Forces Journal (April 2008).

80- See my essay, "Grab News Headlines, Isolate Bombed Area and Stonewall:
U.S. Military's Virtual Reality about Afghan Civilian Casualties. A Case
Study of the U.S. Assault upon Hajiyan" (May 28, 2006 revised) at
 http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold/Grab%20News%20Headlines%20essay%20%20May%2
02006.pdf

81- Mentioned in Aunohita Mojumdar, "Taliban's War of Words Undermines
Afghanistan's Nation-Building," Christian Science Monitor (July 29, 2008) at
 http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0730/p04s01-wosc.html

82- Making Every Bomb Count in Afghanistan," Strategypage.com (March 15,
2007) at  http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htairfo/articles/20070315.aspx

83- William M. Arkin, "Obama's Facts and Afghanistan's Casualties,"
Washington Post (August 15, 2007) at
 http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2007/08/obama_on_civilian_casual
ties.html

84- From Beau Grosscup, The Politics and Ethics of Aerial Bombardment (Kuala
Lumpur and London: SIRD and Zed Books, 2006): 151.

85- William M. Arkin, "Civilian Casualties and the Air War," Washington Post
[October 21, 2001]. A listing of Arkin's Dot.Mil columns can be found at :
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/columns/dotmail[/url]. On Arkin's
defense of the U.S. Special Forces raid on Hazar Qadam, see Bill Berkowitz,
"Bombs 'r' Us. Cluster-Bombing Afghanistan and the Critics of the 'War on
Terrorism'," WorkingForChange [February 27, 2002] at
 http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=12795

86- Simon Jenkins, "This Aerial Onslaught is War at its most Stupid," The
Guardian (February 7, 2007) at
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/feb/07/comment.politics

87- Human Rights Watch, "The Human Cost: The Consequences of Insurgent
Attacks in Afghanistan" (Washington D.C.: Human Rights Watch, April 2007): 2
at  http://www.hrw.org/reports/2007/afghanistan0407/1a.htm. The HRW report
was widely commented upon by the U.S. corporate media, e.g., Alisa Tang,
"Report: Insurgents Killed 669 Afghans," Associated Press (March 16, 2007).

88- Mentioned on Ron Synowitz, "Afghanistan: U.S., NATO Forces see Backlash
over Civilian Casualties," Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty (June 19, 2007)
at  http://www.rferl.org/articleprintview/1077207.html

89- Marc W. Herold and David Peterson, "La complicidad de Human Rights Watch
con la Guerra de Afganistan," Rebelion.org (Madrid) (April 5, 2008) at
 http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=65576

90- in David Wood, "Afghan Air War Grows in Intensity," Baltimore Sun (July
28, 2008)

91- In my "Is One-Third of the Truth, the Whole Truth? Counting by Human
Rights Watch" (Durham, N.H.: manuscript, Department of Economics, University
of New Hampshire, July 28, 2008) at
 http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold/HRW.doc

92- Candace Rondeaux, "U.S. Airstrikes under Scrutiny in Afghanistan," The
Seattle Times (July 25, 2008).These figures are repeated in Mark Townsend,
"UK Denies Money to Wounded Afghans," The Observer (August 10, 2008) at
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/10/afghanistan.humanrights

93- Shanker, op. cit.

94- Herold (2002), op. cit.

95- See Herold, Marc W., "Newspeak of the AP Reporting on Afghanistan and
its Silence about 1,000 Afghan Civilians Killed by the US/NATO so far in
2007," RAWA News (December 2, 2007) at
 http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/rawanews.php?id=355

96- See my "Dead Afghan Civilians: Disrobing the Non-Counters," Cursor.org
(August 2002) at  http://www.cursor.org/stories/noncounters.htm

97- For a critique, see my "Counting the Dead. Attempts to Hide the Number
of Afghan Civilians Killed by US Bombs are an Affront to Justice," The
Guardian (August 8, 2008) at
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/aug/08/afghanistan.comment. On February
11, 2002 the Associated Press released its counter-study (tom ine), boldly
reassuring an increasingly alarmed public: "Hundreds lost, not thousands".
Its astonishingly low figure of 500-600 was reached "by examining hospital
records, visiting bomb sites and interviewing eyewitnesses and officials."
The report was beset by methodological problems. Most Afghan deaths are not
recorded in hospital records because people are buried immediately; no
details were given of interview methods or which bombing incidents were
included; many bomb attacks were not reported; and Afghan officials have
been shown often to seriously underestimate civilian casualties.

98- Jason Strasziuso, "Death Toll Spike for U.S. Military, Civilians in
Afghanistan," Kansas City Star (August 8, 2008) at
 http://www.kansascity.com/news/world/story/738694.html

99- Karen DeYoung, "Only a Two-Page `Note' Governs U.S. Military Policy in
Afghanistan," Washington Post (August 28, 2008): AO7 at
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/27/AR2008082703
628.html

100- Killed in crossfire. From Stephanie Nebehay, "Killings of Afghan
Civilians Sharply Up, U.N. Says," Reuters (September 16, 2008) at
 http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LG539811.htm. The totals for the
first seven months were: 2007 @ 1,040 and 2008 @ 1,445.

101- The Human Security Report Project (HSRP) at the School for
International Studies, Simon Fraser University, provides useful compendia on
Afghan civilian casualties, see
 http://www.afghanconflictmonitor.org/civilian.html

102- "`Troops in Contact' Air Strikes and Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan"
(New York: Human Rights Watch, September 8, 2008) at
 http://hrw.org/reports/2008/afghanistan0908/

103- "Mournful Wake," The Economist (August 28, 2008) at
 http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12009906

104- Fred Kaplan, "Bombs Killing More Civilians Than Expected," Boston Globe
(May 30, 1999): A33. The NATO bombing campaign is described in W.J. Fennick,
"Targeting and Proportionality during the NATO Bombing Campaign against
Yugoslavia," European Journal of International Law 12, 3 (2001): 489-502.
Fennick also employs the measure of civilians killed per tonnage dropped.

105- no data on bombs dropped has been published by the U.S. Air Force for
these months, but the numbers of total civilian deaths caused by in air
strikes has soared: 119 during July and 147- 164 during August.

106- The U.S. and British dropped 1,996,036 tons of bombs upon Germany
during World War II, killing an estimated 600,000 Germans, or 30 civilians
per 100 tons of bombs dropped. During the first four months of 1945, Allied
bombing of Germany was unprecedented: 180,000 tons of bombs were dropped,
killing 119,000 persons giving a ratio of 66 per 100 tons dropped.

107- I examined this question years ago in "The Value of a Dead Afghan:
Revealed and Relative," Cursor.org (July 21, 2002) at
 http://www.cursor.org/stories/afghandead.htm

108- The dominant mainstream approach nowadays estimates the value of a
"statistical life": the amount of money needed to compensate people for
additional risk of death. Researchers point out that statistical valuation
does not mean that the value of life varies across nations, but rather that
the willingness to pay for increased safety (or lower mortality risk)
varies. A rare cross-country study carried out in 1991 used a figure of
$700,000 - $1,500,000 for the statistical value of life in developed
countries, $300,000 for middle-income countries and $150,000 for low income
countries (Samuel Fankhauser, "Global Warming Damage Costs: Some Monetary
Estimates" (London: Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global
Environment (CSERGE) working paper 92-29, 1992): 17-18). For an excellent
survey of the literature, see W. Kip Viscusi and Joseph E. Alday, "The Value
of a Statistical Life: A Critical Review of Market Estimates Throughout the
World," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 27, 1 (August 2003): 5-76.

109- Carlotta Gall, "Shattered Afghan Families Demand U.S. Compensation,"
New York Times (April 8, 2002): A11

110- Details in Peter Symonds, "Afghan Villagers Killed, Prisoners Beaten in
US Military 'Mistake'," Rense.com [February 16, 2002] at
www.rense.com/general20/milMistakeAL.htm[/url]

111- "US Offers to Pay for Strike on Afghans," Al Jazeera.net (August 16,
2006)

112- "Coalition Compensates Firing Victim's Family," Afghan Islamic Press
(November 5, 2006)

113- Jon Tracy, "Sometimes in War, You Can Put a Price on Life," New York
Times (May 16, 2007) at
 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/opinion/16tracy.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
&oref=slogin

114- mentioned in Pajhwok Afghan News (July 5, 2007)

115- Mentioned in Rory Callinan, "Afghanistan's Mounting Civilian Toll,"
Time (November 21, 2007)

116- "Family of Kyrgyz Civilian Killed by U.S. Serviceman Offered
Compensation," Associated Press (March 12, 2007)

117- Lili Hamourtziadou, "The Price of Loss. How the West Values Civilian
Lives in Iraq," Iraq Body Count (November 12, 2007) at
 http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/beyond/the-price-of-loss/ and also
Bernd Debusmann, "The Price of an Iraqi Life - $500 to $8 million," Reuters
(October 17, 2007) at
 http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USL16267303

118- Jeffrey Gettelman, "For Iraqis in Harm's Way, $5,000 and `I'm Sorrry',"
New York Times (March 17, 2004): 1.

119- idib

120- Debusmann (2007), op. cit

121- Tom Blackwell, "Ottawa on the Hook for Harm to Afghans; Compensation
for Accidental Deaths, Injuries," National Post (April 23, 2008) at
 http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/uselection/timeline/story.html?id=466
785

122- Townsend (2008), op. cit.

123- Conor Foley, "A Counterweight to a Failing State," The Guardian (July
18, 2008)

124- "Afghan Civilian Death Compensation Scheme," Sanjar (October 14, 2007)
at
 http://sanjar.blogspot.com/2007/10/afghan-civilian-death-compensation.html.
The matter of homicide in Islam is examined in Sayed Sikander Shah,
"Homicide in Islam: Major Legal Themes," Homicide in Islam: Major Legal
Themes," Arab Law Quarterly 14, 2 (1999): 159-168.

125- Aubrey Meyer, "The Unequal Use of the Global Commons" (Nairobi: AGCI
paper for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group 3,
July 18-23, 1995) at  http://www.earthscape.org/p1/mea03/

126- The incident is examined in historical context by Linda Greenhouse,
"Washington Talk: International Relations; The Roots and Rudiments of
Compensation to Foreigners," New York Times (July 13, 1988) at
 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE6DB1038F930A25754C0A96E9
48260

127- Further details in W. Michael Reisman and Robert D. Sloane, "The
Incident at Cavalese and Strategic Compensation," American Journal of
International Law 94, 3 (July 2000): 505-515.

128- See Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting [FAIR], "Action Alert: U.S. Media
Overlook Expose on Chinese Embassy Bombing" (October 22, 1999) at
www.fair.org/activism/embassy-bombing.html[/url]. For photos of this
criminal attack, see
 http://www.warfacts.org.yu/massacres/ambasadaphotos.html

129- "U.S. Offers Koreans Compensation," Newsday (July 22, 2002).

130- Capture and rehabilitation costs for sea otters alone was 18.3 million
dollars Assuming that 222 otters were saved (the maximum possible), costs
exceeded $ 80 000 per animal (from James A. Estes, "Catastrophes and
Conservation: Lessons from Sea Otters and the Exxon Valdez," Otter
Specialist Group vol. 7 (February 1992): 1-43).

131- The Yugoslav figure for 100 tons of bombs dropped was 9.2, whereas that
in Afghanistan during 2006-8 was 68-101.

132- As I have argued in "An `Empty' Buffer," Frontline. India's National
Magazine 25, 13 (June 21 - July 4, 2008): 62-64 at
 http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2513/stories/20080704251306200.htm

133- Occupation forces Commander McNeill has said himself that according to
the current counterterrorism doctrine, it would take 400,000 troops to
pacify Afghanistan in the long term (from Ulrich Fichtner, "Why NATO Troops
Can't Deliver Peace in Afghanistan," Der Spiegel (May 29, 2008) at
 http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-556304,00.html

134- The umbrella organization ACBAR (Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan
Relief) reported 463 insurgent attacks during May and 569 in June 2008.
Nineteen aid workers have been killed this year. The result has been greatly
scaled back aid and relief efforts ("Record Afghan Unrest Hampering Aid
NGOs," Agence France Presse (August 1, 2008) at
 http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h9LKPSwMVEzC25r7wQ4-XuOkz4sw).

135- see Johnson and Mason (2008), op. cit

136- As Gerard Chaliand, veteran geo-strategist of so-called asymmetrical
wars, put it recently, "victory is impossible in Afghanistan...Today one
must try to negotiate," because the Taliban control much of the local power
in the south and east of the country (Immanuel Wallerstein, "Afghanistan:
Shoals Ahead for President Obama," Middle East Online (August 1, 2008)). See
also Leon Hadar, op. cit.

137- Johnson and Mason (2008), op.cit: 54

138- Mark Townsend, "UK Campaign in Afghanistan `Aids al-Qaeda'," The
Observer (September 14, 2008) at
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/14/alqaida.military/print

139- Anatol Lieven, "The Dream of Afghan Democracy is Dead," The Financial
Times (June 11, 2008) at
 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f25de8f4-37b1-11dd-aabb-0000779fd2ac.html

140- Aunohita Mojumdara, "Inside a Living Hell," The Hindu (July 20, 2008)
at  http://www.hindu.com/mag/2008/07/20/stories/2008072050020100.htm

141- Kathy Gannon, "AP Impact: Afghans Fed Up with Government, US,"
Associated Press (September 5, 2008) at
 http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=331772

142- Constable argues that this neo-Taliban is operating a parallel
government; see Pamela Constable, "A Modernized Taliban Thrives in
Afghanistan. Militia Operates a Parallel Government," Washington Post
(September 20, 2008): AO1.

143- Owen Bennett-Jones, "Turning to the Taleban in Pakistan," BBC News
(September 20, 2008) at
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7623097.stm

144- the words are from Ian Bell, "A Letter to America: You Cannot be
Serious," Sunday Herald (September 14, 2008) at
 http://www.commondreams.org/print/32355



----
End notes:
[1]  http://www.rawa.org/s-photos.htm
[2]  http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold/memorial.htm
[3]  http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2008/10/06/the-imprecision-ofus-bombing-and-the-under-valuation-of-an-afghan-life.html#note