Afghan leader again demands NATO end airstrikes

The demand was the most serious warning to the coalition that Karzai has issued to date. The immediate provocation was a coalition airstrike Saturday in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand Province that killed nine civilians, including children. But Karzai’s statement also was the culmination of years of complaints about civilian casualties and aggressive NATO military operations.

“From this moment, airstrikes on the houses of people are not allowed,’’ Karzai said at a news conference.

“Afghanistan is an ally, not an occupied country. And our treatment with NATO is from the point of view of an ally. If it turns to the other, to the behavior of an occupation, then of course the Afghan people know how to deal with that,’’ he said.

Karzai added that “history is a witness how Afghanistan deals with occupiers,’’ and declared that if NATO airstrikes continue Afghanistan will take “unilateral action.’’ He did not specify the action but said he will explain that to NATO commanders during a meeting scheduled for Sunday.

Although Karzai has a history of provocative statements, his words yesterday raised the confrontation between his government and the US-led coalition to a new level. Karzai has regularly called for an end to civilian casualties, night raids by US Special Operations forces, and all unilateral NATO operations in Afghanistan.

But he has rarely spoken so directly about NATO forces being a potential enemy of the Afghan people.

Rear Admiral Vic Beck, NATO’s director of public affairs, said a team of Afghan representatives of the army, the police, and the intelligence service is consulted before authorizing nighttime raids.

Estimates from both NATO and other organizations, such as the United Nations, attribute the majority of civilian casualties to the insurgents rather than NATO forces.

“The insurgents have repeatedly fired on medical evacuation aircraft, carried out suicide attacks in bazaars full of Afghan women and children — and this week attempted to use an Afghan ambulance as a suicide vehicle bomb,’’ Beck said.

He noted that General David Petraeus, the top commander for the coalition, has “repeatedly noted that every liberation force has to be very conscious that it can, over time, become seen as an occupation force.’’

“He has long stated that extending the ‘half-life’ of the period during which an outside force is regarded positively by its partners and the people is very important,’’ Beck added.

While US and NATO forces have made reducing collateral damage on civilians a top priority, military officials say it is almost impossible to eliminate them entirely, particularly as insurgents fight in and among the population. The deaths last week in Helmand Province were such an example.

On Saturday, a US Marine patrol was attacked by five insurgents in the Now Zad district, killing one Marine, according to military officials. The insurgents then went into a walled house and continued to fight until the Marines called in a Harrier fighter jet for an airstrike.

“Unfortunately, the compound the insurgents purposefully occupied was later discovered to house innocent civilians,’’ Marine Major General John Toolan, the NATO commander in Afghanistan’s southwest, said.

The United Nations recorded 2,777 civilian deaths last year in Afghanistan, an increase of 15 percent over 2009. Of those, 75 percent were caused by insurgents, while 16 percent were attributed to NATO and Afghan forces, according to the UN mission’s latest annual report. Nine percent of the civilian deaths could not be attributed.