In These New Times

US has put Afghan civilians ‘in greater danger’

Friday 28 August 2009

Morning Star

Afghan civilians are less secure now than at any time since the Taliban regime was toppled by a US-led invasion and Western-backed warlords in 2001, Amnesty has warned.

The London-based human rights group cited Tuesday’s lorry bombing in Kandahar which killed 43 people and a NATO ground and air assault on a clinic in Paktika province yesterday.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said that Taliban commander Mullah Muslim was being treated at the clinic in Sar Hawza after being injured in a firefight on August 20, the day Afghanistan went to the polls to elect a new president.

NATO said that its troops had fired on the clinic following fierce resistance by militants.

Its air and ground assault destroyed the clinic and killed many Afghans inside.

But the military bloc claimed that a US Apache gunship had only been called in after the troops had ensured the clinic had been “cleared of civilians.”

One US soldier and 12 Taliban were killed in the attack, according to military sources.

Amnesty called on NATO to launch a “transparent and credible” investigation.

Amnesty Asia-Pacific director Sam Zarifi said: “If the Taliban used the clinic as a shelter to fire from, they’ve committed a serious violation.

“But if they were using the clinic for health care, NATO forces had no business firing on the clinic, even if they had cleared out civilians from the facility.”

Mr Zarifi observed that “the bottom line in this incident is that another clinic in Afghanistan is now not working – a tragedy for a country that already suffers from horrifically low rates of access to health care.”

Paktika MP Khalid Faroqi fumed: “It is an offence to shoot on a hospital like that.

“The international forces should have higher standards than the insurgents.”

A US military spokeswoman ruled out any probe into the incident.

Lieutenant Commander Christine Sidenstricker said: “The protection that sites like hospitals and clinics and mosques have ceases to be true when we’re being fired on from them.”

She added that the air strike had only been called in as “a last resort.”

She said: “When the helicopter fired on the clinic, it ended the conflict. There’s value to bringing that to a close.”