Word: nato
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Afghanistan Backlash on Civilian Deaths U.S. and NATO air strikes killed 321 civilians in 2007, three times as many as in the previous year, Human Rights Watch reported, amid a dispute over civilian fatalities in an Aug. 22 attack. New video footage has prompted U.S. investigators to re-examine their initial conclusion that most of the strike's casualties were Taliban. One tribal elder offered to dig up victims' graves to prove their innocence...
...Since then, at least five more U.S. attacks have occurred on Pakistani soil, and more are expected as the insurgency mounts against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. NATO Commander General David McKiernan has blamed Pakistan's inability to stop cross-border militancy for the 40% rise in attacks against U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan along the border with Pakistan. As one U.S. Army officer bluntly put it, "We can't let these guys have safe havens...
...Beyond that, the key lesson of the past is a depressing one. There were no good, costless choices over NATO expansion, much less over Kosovo. A decision to withhold NATO membership from Eastern Europe, and to leave the Kosovars to their fate, would have exposed as hypocrites those who had spent the Cold War taking the high moral ground against the Soviet Union. But sometimes, we have just been reminded, good intentions are not enough to ward off tragedy. That's one reason why it's always worth keeping a volume of Yeats' poetry close at hand...
...yield propaganda gold for the Taliban, which feeds on anti-American rage. "The more people turn against Americans, the more benefits the Taliban get," says Saifuddin Ahmadi, a 52-year-old Kabul cabdriver. In the Afghan capital, anger over civilian casualties is leavened by the knowledge that U.S. and NATO troops may be keeping Afghanistan from plunging into civil war. In the countryside, opinions are stronger. Haji Obaidulla, 65, who lives in Kapisa province, northeast of the capital, says he "would prefer civil war to being killed by American air strikes...
...whom are not above using American firepower in their own feuds. For some observers, the surest way to improve the quality of intel is to put more Americans on the ground--to use more snipers instead of Snipers. But with the U.S. military stretched thin in Iraq--and NATO's allies reluctant to send more forces--it will be many months before more ground troops are in Afghanistan. And having American soldiers in a position to call in strikes is no guarantee that civilians won't be killed. That was made clear in a Sept. 3 cross-border raid into...