Civilian and military deaths at new highs in Afghan war

By James Cogan | WSWS, July 2008

Three Afghan men and 19 women and children were slaughtered on Sunday when US aircraft bombed a wedding party in the remote Deh Bala district of Nangarhar province, in the country’s east close to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The killings were reported by the district governor and confirmed by survivors who were being treated at a hospital in Jalalabad, the provincial capital. Afghan officials have also reported that as many as 12 civilians were killed by air strikes last Friday in the nearby province of Nuristan province.

Following standard operating procedure, the US military has categorically denied that any civilians were killed during the bombing raid in Nangarhar. Captain Christian Patterson insisted to Agence France Presse that “it was not a wedding party, there were no women and children present”. Another spokesman alleged that five to 10 anti-occupation insurgents had been killed.

However, the latest incidents follow the release of a report by John Holmes, the head of United Nations humanitarian affairs operations in Afghanistan, which found that the number of documented civilian deaths has increased by 62 percent this year compared with the first six months of 2007. The agency had recorded a total of 698 civilian fatalities. The UN blamed the actions of US, NATO and Afghan government forces for 255 deaths and anti-occupation insurgents for 422.

The figures are further evidence of the expanding insurgency against the US military and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), and the desperate character of the fighting over recent months. More than six years after the US-led invasion in October 2001, the occupation forces have proven incapable of subduing the armed resistance to their presence and are ever more reliant on air strikes to disrupt insurgent activity.

Guerillas loyal to the former Taliban Islamic regime, which was overthrown in 2001, as well as various tribal militias from both Afghanistan and Pakistan, are taking advantage of the summer months to increase operations across the south and east of the country. The number of attacks on US troops in the eastern provinces has increased by 40 percent this year, according to American commander, Major General Jeffrey Schloesser.

More US and NATO troops lost their lives in Afghanistan in June than in any other month since the country was invaded. A total of 45 soldiers were killed, 27 American, 13 British, two Canadian, one Polish, one Romanian and one Hungarian. The death of a US Army specialist Estell Turner on July 2 in a roadside bombing pushed the overall toll for 2008 to 124 and the total number of US/NATO deaths in the Afghan war to 873. More than half the deaths have been caused by roadside bombs.

The fatalities are only one aspect of the cost of the conflict. As of June 28, 2,167 American soldiers had been wounded-in-action in the Afghanistan theatre. As of June 18, the British military had reported 510 wounded-in-action as well as 1,130 non-battle or disease injuries. The number of Canadian wounded is now well over 350.

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