Word: civilianizes
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With 20,000 U.S. troops set to arrive in Afghanistan in the months ahead, some worry that more forces will mean more contact with the insurgents. Western military planners counter that the extra boots on the ground will lessen the dependency on airpower - and the risk of civilian deaths. Nader Nadery, head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, says it's "too soon to judge" whether changes in coalition policy are making a difference since the fighting season in Afghanistan has just begun. However, says Nadery, what's certain is that the Taliban continue to use civilians as human...
...officials have acknowledged that anti-Taliban bombardments were carried out while declining to comment on the extent of civilian casualties. In expressing regret over the incident, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday that the joint investigation would take time to come up with answers. Meanwhile, Gen. David McKiernan, commander of US forces and NATO forces in Afghanistan, moved to cast doubt on the emerging narrative. "We have some other information that leads us to distinctly different conclusions about the cause of the civilian casualties," he said, without providing further details...
This scenario is frustratingly familiar for many Afghans. Last August in Herat province, which borders Farah to the north, Afghan and U.N. officials found evidence that up to 90 civilian had perished in a U.S. operation. The military initially disputed the findings, saying no civilians had died, only Taliban. But after a high-level investigation, widespread protests and heavy pressure from President Karzai, the military revised the civilian death toll to 33. In the aftermath, McKiernan issued a directive that commanders in the field err on the side of caution when fighting near populated areas, opting for disengagement rather than...
...Rajapaksa enjoys overwhelming support for the war among the Sri Lankan public, but the plight of civilians in and near the war zone - 100,000 have fled in the last few weeks - has sparked strong statements from the U.S., the U.K. and France, which have called on the Sri Lankan government to halt the fighting until the 50,000 or so remaining civilians can leave. The LTTE are believed to be using them as human shields, but Rajapaksa has been unmoved by entreaties from Western countries to allow aid agencies to enter the war zone to help them. On April...
...Lanka's budget. This year, the government's total tax revenue, after debt servicing, will not be enough to meet its expected spending. And yet the Sri Lankan government has not only refused to accept humanitarian conditions on aid; it has tightened its position on access to civilian refugees, whom it calls the beneficiaries of "the largest hostage rescue in the world's history." The Army's screening of civilians, for example, in which suspected LTTE fighters are weeded out of the civilian exodus, happens in a sort of no man's land just outside the combat zone, between...