Without accountability

The war in Afghanistan takes an ominous turn.

KABUL, Afghanistan — A special investigator for the United Nations on Thursday accused foreign intelligence agencies of conducting nighttime raids and killing civilians in Afghanistan with impunity.

The investigator, Philip Alston, would not specify the nationalities of the intelligence agencies. But the descriptions he gave of units operating out of two American bases in southern and eastern Afghanistan suggested that he was accusing the Central Intelligence Agency or American unconventional-warfare units of operating without accountability to the Afghan government or the foreign military command in the country. Afghan forces working with foreign units were not under the control of the Afghan government, he said.

American officials in Afghanistan declined to comment on Mr. Alston’s accusations.

Mr. Alston, who directs a center for human rights and global justice at New York University’s Law School, spoke at a news conference after a 12-day visit to Afghanistan as the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. He reports to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

On Thursday, a suicide bomber killed 14 people and wounded 25, among them police officers and civilians, in an explosion in a town in southwestern Afghanistan. The target appeared to be a convoy of police vehicles, said the provincial governor, Rohul Aman.

Mr. Alston said he had concluded that civilian casualties in Afghanistan were intolerably high, and often could be avoided. The lack of accountability, and the complacency at so many killings by the police and international forces, was staggering, he said.

His comments seemed at odds with claims by NATO that civilian casualties had been greatly reduced in recent months.

International military forces have killed as many as 200 civilians in the first four months of this year, often in aerial bombings, but also in joint operations with Afghan security forces, he said. The Taliban have killed 300 civilians in the same period, he said. The Taliban may be attacking military targets, but 95 percent, probably more, of their victims were civilians, he said, citing figures compiled by the United Nations’ Afghan mission.