Published on Sunday, February 17, 2002 in the Boston Globe

Published on Sunday, February 17, 2002 in the Boston Globe

Civilian Toll in US Raids Put at 1,000
Bombing Flaws, Manhunt Cited

by John Donnelly and Anthony Shadid

HUKAR KARIZ, Afghanistan - Bad intelligence, errant bombs, and the changing nature of the war in Afghanistan have led to the deaths of a thousand or more civilians in US attacks since October.

A Globe examination of 14 sites bombed by US warplanes - in residential neighborhoods of Herat and Kandahar as well as isolated, abandoned villages such as Chukar Kariz - found that civilian deaths in some attacks exceeded Taliban and Al Qaeda deaths. That, analysts say, calls into question the effectiveness of bombing as the sole strategy to target a relatively small group of individuals.

Along with faulty intelligence and the imprecision of aerial warfare, a large number of deaths can be attributed to the selection of targets in civilian areas. One high-profile example occurred during the war at Tora Bora when a US warplane hit the home of an associate of Osama bin Laden at the suggestion of Afghan commanders who knew he was not there. That attack in Pachir Agam killed an estimated 70 villagers.

The conflict's very nature, analysts said, played a role as well. When the war shifted from the dispatch of the Taliban to the narrower hunt for bin Laden, Mullah Mohammed Omar, and a few top cohorts, the task became more difficult. In at least three such targeted attempts, US bombs killed scores of villagers - many children among them - who had no connection to the top terrorists or their associates.

In past weeks, the Pentagon has faced questions from the media as well as some Afghan officials about the military decisions that resulted in civilian casualties.

General Tommy R. Franks, the commander of the war in Afghanistan, defended the campaign as ''the most accurate war ever fought'' in US history. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has steadfastly maintained that the war has cost relatively few civilian lives.

''If one were to take this activity in Afghanistan and rank it as to the number of civilian deaths'' and the care taken by US forces to avoid them, Franks said, ''I can't imagine there's been a conflict in history where there has been less collateral damage, less unintended consequences.''

But one need look no further back than the estimated 500 civilian deaths in the 1999 Kosovo war to undercut that claim.

The estimate of at least 1,000 civilian deaths in Afghanistan - and perhaps many more - is drawn from accounts of villagers and local commanders, as well as visual evidence, at the 14 sites visited. That information, as well as tallies by nongovernmental groups, accounts for 830 civilian lives lost. Because the 14 sites represent only a small fraction of the total sites targeted by the 18,000 bombs, missiles, and ordnance fired by US forces since October, the total is estimated at 1,000 or more.

The deaths have angered many Afghans. ''How can I convince the Americans that none of Al Qaeda and Taliban are here? You have to be sure,'' said Mawla Jan, as he dug through the rubble of what was once his home along the Pakistani border.

''If I saw any Al Qaeda people, I would shoot them myself.''

Chukar Kariz, Oct. 22

Nasir Ahmad and his family arrived in this small southern village in the evening, along with about 15 other people fleeing the heavy bombing in Kandahar. They brought a generator, and with it powered several lights in the village, which is 15 miles from the nearest electricity line. Some played cards into the evening.

A few were still awake when the bombing started at 2 a.m. Ahmad and about 30 others ran from the village, over an irrigation ditch and took shelter in nearby tunnels, he said. ''We were just families, children, women, and we tried to run out.''

In his family, only he, his wife, and niece Alia survived. Twenty relatives died. The survivors fled the ruins. When US special forces helicoptered in after the bombing, said Mahmood Khan, a local elder, they found just one person alive amid the rubble at ground zero - a badly bruised 2-year-old Alia.

The number killed here ranges from 36 to 52. Ten graves, including those for eight children, were dug here. Twenty more were at a Kandahar cemetery. Other bodies were taken to ancestral villages.

The village is 3 miles from the nearest settlement of cuchis, or gypsies. Nearby elders say they believe the site was bombed because of the lights from the generator. They can find no other reason.

''People thought it was a safe place,'' Khan said as he walked around the village, where the only sound was visitors' footsteps. ''The US planes must have seen the lights.''

Today, the site is silent, uninhabited; the only motion comes when the wind rustles the bits of fabric that decorate the graves. ''I haven't gone back to the village. I think if I went I would get very, very angry,'' said Ahmad from the Kandahar machine tool shop where he works. ''All my family has died.''

The Pentagon confirmed it bombed Chukar Kariz on Oct. 22. It was a confirmed Taliban and Al Qaeda base, Lieutenant Colonel Petretti Compton, a spokesman for US Central Command, said in an interview last week, adding, ''It was destroyed.''

But Yusuf Pashtoon, an engineer and a top aide to the Kandahar governor, Gul Agha Shirzai, said yesterday that he took a group of about eight US special forces troops dressed in civilian clothes along with relatives of the dead to the site last month for a ceremony in which the Americans apologized for killing innocent people.

''The Americans said they were very sorry about the bombing,'' Pashtoon said.

Then, he said, the soldiers took out a small piece from the World Trade Center and buried it in the village's graveyard.

''They also took a small part of a building in the town, and they said they would bury it in New York,'' Pashtoon said.

Kandahar, Oct. 27

US warplanes in October and November struck several sites inside the city of Kandahar. Some were uncannily accurate, including a bomb that went through the roof of the World Food Program office and destroyed two rooms in which lived Al Qaeda squatters, according to UN officials here. The bombing also destroyed several Taliban ministry offices on Oct. 26 in the Argistan district.

But the next night, Oct. 27, a bomb hit a home of tailors, who lived across the street from the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Five people were killed - two passersby and three brothers inside the house.

Central Command acknowledges that some bombs targeting the ministry failed, and that at least one and possibly two hit adjacent commercial buildings.

''They were hitting the places of the Taliban, but they missed here,'' said Taj Mohammed, 18, sitting on a stoop next to where his family's house once stood. He lost his brothers Agha Mohammed, 19; Bashir, 22; and Saeed Ahmad, 24.

The brothers worked together in a shop in the house. ''Whenever I think of them, I think of us in the shop together,'' Taj Mohammed said.

Every day, he sits near the empty lot. ''We hope the Americans admit they made a mistake,'' he said. ''Up to this day, they did not ask about us, or help us. We need help to rebuild our home. We also need them to apologize for the heads of my brothers who have died.''

Ishaq Suleiman, Nov. 1

The villagers of Ishaq Suleiman, a warren of mud huts perched outside the western city of Herat, had the misfortune of having a Taliban base as their neighbor just a mile away. And the Taliban fighters headquartered there did not hesitate to use the nearby village as cover for their tanks and artillery.

Fearing the consequences, villagers put stones in the streets to keep Taliban vehicles from entering. ''But we didn't leave our houses,'' said Ghaus-u Din, a 45-year-old villager - even when the Americans broadcast warnings to get out. ''If we left, thieves would come and steal all our belongings.''

On Nov. 1, residents say, the bombing began.

Ghulam Nabi said he ran through the smoke trying to find his 12-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter. ''I saw a body in front of me. I went up to it but there was smoke, dust, and it was dark. I went closer and I touched the face and I saw it was a man with a gray beard,'' he said.

''I was running like a madman. Then I saw my wife running toward me. When I got to her, she told me our son and daughter were wounded and they were in another village.''

His brother, 60-year-old Hajji Mohammed, did not survive. His house was wrecked by a bomb that landed in the dirt street outside. Its target was a Taliban truck that villagers say had driven off a half-hour before.

The bombing continued, off and on, for almost two weeks. In all, according to AREA, an Afghan nongovernmental organization funded by the German government that tracked civilian casualties, 12 people were killed and 14 wounded.

Pentagon spokesman Compton, asked about its target, said that even in villages, the trucks and equipment ''were still authorized military targets.''

Khakriz, Nov. 10

Under tall pine trees, families for years have spread out blankets and enjoyed picnics in Khakriz, a village about a two hours' drive northwest of Kandahar. Here people pray at the shrine to Shah Agha, a renowned Sufi mystic.

On the night of Nov. 10, several families had checked into a row of small guest houses near the shrine. Then, around 9 p.m., on a hillside about a half-mile northwest of the village, Taliban antiaircraft fire shot at US planes overhead, several villagers said.

The response was almost immediate. US bombs and cruise missiles flew into the village, destroying more than two dozen homes and shops. Villagers said they ran south into the desert, stumbling in the night.

Days later, when they returned, they found much of the village in rubble and pieces of bodies everywhere. A US cruise missile still lies undisturbed in the middle of one home. The toll, which Afghan reporters erroneously first said was 300 dead, was about 70 killed, according to villagers, who provided a nearly complete list of names.

''We spent the whole next day collecting parts of bodies,'' said Baran, a hotel owner who like many Afghans uses one name. ''We saw heads, feet, everything.''

Among the dead were a shopkeeper, a driver, two bakers, a farmer and his family, several unemployed men and their families, more than two dozen visitors, and 19 relatives living in the house of Aji Shah Mohammed, a wealthy businessman, villagers said. It took 16 days to retrieve some of the bodies, as many were buried by falling mud bricks. Still missing are two men and a woman.

Villagers said no members of Al Qaeda or Taliban leadership lived in Khakriz; the Taliban's central office also was bombed, a half-mile from the row of shops and homes hit, but the local Taliban leader escaped, they said.

Bekhere, Dec. 20

Much attention has been paid to the bombing attack on a convoy in Paktia province that the US military said carried Taliban leaders - but that survivors said carried tribal elders en route to the inauguration of the interim prime minister, Hamid Karzai.

Less attention has been paid to what happened that same day to a cluster of homes nearby, and the village, about 6 miles away.

Ten minutes after hitting the convoy, warplanes struck a house on a hill where members of the Khan family were gathered.

''Everybody was climbing up the mountains, trying to hide,'' said Musa Khan, 22, who watched what happened from the field where he was tending sheep and goats.

Twelve people were killed - Khan's four brothers and three sisters, plus two cousins and three aunts.

By 3 a.m., the attack was broadened to the village of Bekhere, a half-hour drive away along a riverbed in a sheltered valley. It lasted until noon. Villagers say 63 people were killed; an Afghan nongovernmental group that tracked casualties in the region put the number at 44.

The village was targeted, residents say, because the convoy stopped in front of it, trying to leave the valley by another road. The route, they say, was snowed in, forcing the convoy to turn around and go back out. They blame the headlights for bringing on the attack.

As for the hillside homes, said Khan, there were no Al Qaeda or Taliban forces hiding there. ''We are just poor people,'' said the young shepherd, whose home stands split by a 20-foot crater.

Compton, the Pentagon spokesman, describes the area as ''an active staging and coordinating base for Al Qaeda activities and preparations for escape from Afghanistan.''

Zhawar Kili, Jan. 4-15

The bombing of a vast complex of caves tucked in a dusty ravine near the Pakistani border was the last sustained attack in the US air war. If villagers are right, it also represents a defining example of the failure of US intelligence.

They say that by the time the US bombs fell, the base was effectively abandoned - by Arabs before the air war even began, by Afghans within days of the first air assault.

Yet the bombs rained down on what the Pentagon continued to call a ''a staging point for escaping Al Qaeda members'' - as well as on the civilians dangerously exposed in villages perched atop the cliffs that sheltered the base. At one point during the attacks, the bombing was so fierce that villagers embarked on a 20-mile trek through ravines and over hilltops to Khost. By loudspeaker, they pleaded in the market for help in digging out the dead.

The task of counting the dead will be long and perhaps impossible.

Among the obstacles: Imposing mountains and regions cut off in winter mean many sites remain beyond reach. Impassable roads make that task harder. Muslims bury their dead quickly - by tradition before sundown on the day of death - making a tally difficult days after bombs land.

The Pentagon has investigated few cases and has insisted it will not track the numbers of civilians killed. The Afghan government is unwilling and unable to conduct its own investigation.