Airstrikes

In the forgotten war.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The United Nations said Tuesday it has found "convincing evidence" that U.S. coalition troops and Afghan forces killed some 90 civilians, including 60 children, in airstrikes in western Afghanistan.

The U.N. said it based its findings solely on the testimony of villagers and meetings with Afghan officials, and did not provide photos or evidence that its investigators saw any graves.

President Hamid Karzai's government, in a harshly worded statement, ordered its ministries of foreign affairs and defense to regulate the presence of foreign troops and try to negotiate an end to "airstrikes on civilian targets, uncoordinated house searches and illegal detention of Afghan civilians."

The U.S. coalition has said it killed 25 militants and five civilians in an operation in Shindand district of Herat province on Friday.

We rely on airstrikes, both because of lack of troop strength in Afghanistan and because of an overall preference to blast "the enemy" to smithereens from on high rather than fighting it out on the ground. The problem is, that in conflicts against a guerrilla insurgency operating in and around civilian areas, airstrikes are a blunt force and can be a mindless one at that.

What isn't said in the AP story though, but had read earlier, was that the airstrike was called in by Afghan troops, along with U.S. trainers. And that the "intel" may have come from a rival tribe.

A presidential aide who declined to be identified said that the Interior Ministry and the Afghan intelligence agency had reported from the region that there were no Taliban present in the village that night. The Afghan National Army, whose commandos called in the airstrike along with American Special Forces trainers, were unable to clarify their original claim, he said.

A spokesman for the Afghan Army declined to comment on Saturday.

A tribal elder from the region who helped bury the dead, Haji Tor Jan Noorzai, said people in the village were gathered in memory of a man who was anti-Taliban and was killed last year, and that tribal enemies of the family had given out false information.

“It is quite obvious, the Americans bombed the area due to wrong information,” he said by telephone. “I am 100 percent confident that someone gave the information due to a tribal dispute. The Americans are foreigners and they do not understand. These people they killed were enemies of the Taliban.”