Field guns

Meanwhile, in that other war.

KABUL, Afghanistan, June 23 — Somber, impatient and angry, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan on Saturday accused the United States military and its NATO allies of carrying out “careless operations” that lead to civilian casualties, asserting that “Afghan life is not cheap and should not be treated as such.”

His remarks, made on the front lawn of the presidential palace, came in response to a week in which more than 100 civilian deaths have been reported from airstrikes and artillery fire against the Taliban.

“The extreme use of force, the disproportionate use of force to a situation, and the lack of coordination with the Afghan government is causing these casualties,” he said. “You don’t fight a terrorist by firing a field gun from 37 kilometers away into a target. That is definitely bound to cause civilian casualties. You don’t hit a few terrorists with field guns.”

Mr. Karzai has made these criticisms before in recent months. While his rebuke on Saturday was more irate in tone, he was still vague about his government’s intended recourse if the civilian deaths continue to mount. “Either this cooperation and coordination will be created and applied, or Afghanistan will take its decision in this regard,” he said.

More than 50,000 foreign troops are operating in Afghanistan, the bulk of them Americans. The Taliban insurgency has employed guerrilla tactics that include attacks on police stations, aid workers and schools. The Taliban commonly hide among civilians, and NATO officials insist that it is the insurgents who deserve blame when innocents die.

Late Saturday, there were fresh reports of civilian deaths, this time in Paktika Province along the frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where NATO forces and the United States-led coalition said they had killed 60 insurgents. During the fighting, a rocket landed across the border and hit a house, killing nine civilians, according to a Pakistan Army spokesman quoted by The Associated Press.

There's a great deal of reporting on the anti-insurgent tactics employed by U.S. forces in Iraq -- ever-changing and mostly unsuccessful, to be sure, but at least something we can debate. In Afghanistan, not so much. I suppose that our smaller footprint there and a prevailing sense here at home that we "won" that war in 2002 has much to do with that. So do news budgets stretched thin by covering the war in Iraq and an infrastructure even more damaged than Iraq's making getting reporters in and reports out more difficult.

But I sense that our anti-insurgent tactics in Afghanistan are primarily calling in air support to destroy any farm house or school in which someone identified as Taliban has been spotted. Not the most effective way to win the hearts and minds. And it is a foreshadowing of our tactics in Iraq when the inevitable pull down does finally occur, probably in another couple of Friedman Units.