USAF General assessment of casualties in Afghanistan

LTG David Deptula, USAF, weighs in on the casualties in Afghanistan and the fact that they are overwhelmingly caused by the Taliban and AQ.

First, the number one cause of civilian casualties in Afghanistan is the Taliban — not air power. Human Rights Watch has verified that the Taliban kills three to four times more civilians than ISAF [NATO's International Security Assistance Force] air and ground forces combined. More often than not, these deaths are deliberate. Because the Taliban cannot directly affect Allied force application from the air, they try to accomplish the same effects by purposely mingling with non-combatants and civilians in an attempt to draw attacks on those positions. This is done to create the conditions where Allied commanders put restrictions on themselves to limit the most effective instrument of power that causes the Taliban their greatest concern.

The reason that there is so much public focus on air power and casualties is that every air-delivered weapon is filmed. We know where every weapon was aimed, and where it hit. That is not the case with the Taliban, or surface-to-surface fires. Air power is the most accurate means of large-scale force application compared to other means such as mortar and artillery fire. Over 95% of the weapons we have delivered from Predators hit exactly where they were aimed, for instance.

There are some folks at Georgetown’s Security Studies Program who are doing work on this subject. Looking at the available polling data, they have some surprising results in the Afghan reactions to civilian casualties. Basically, there appears to be an almost complete lack of indication to support the conventional wisdom, popularized in the media, that air attacks have been provoking deep hostility toward the U.S. and the Kabul government. Air power is not threatening to pull the rug out from under OEF-A [Operation Enduring Freedom - Afghanistan]. Instead, when Afghan people were polled about the reasons for their growing disillusionment with Kabul, insecurity and corruption overwhelmingly dominated their complaints; “too many innocent people being killed” barely registered. Intuitively, that makes sense in a country of a thousand villages separated by thousand of mountains and valleys, where tribal institutions are the paramount determinant of communication — not the International Herald Tribune or the New York Times, or CNN or Twitter…

By: Brant