US kills Afghan civilians in series of incidents

NATO has an image problem in Afghanistan -- and a US soldier who fired a Humvee's machine gun into a crowd of civilians after a deadly suicide bombing on June 16 shows why. Despite the Taliban's quick claim of responsibility for the car bomb attack on a US convoy that left four Afghan civilians dead, people on the street became enraged only after US bullets landed in the crowd, killing one and wounding two. Some 50 to 100 people chanted, "Death to America." Zalmai Khan, Kabul's deputy police chief, and US officials called the shooting an accident, saying the gun inadvertently fired when the soldier shifted it from one side to another. The incident came a day after a meeting of NATO defense ministers stressed the need to avoid civilian deaths. "Generally people believe that the deaths of civilians at the hands of Americans are intentional,–said Mustafa Alani, director of security and terrorism studies at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. "They don't think with all this technology they can keep killing civilians. They believe the US soldier must be more disciplined, and they expect a higher moral level, military discipline, compared to the Taliban." Only days previously, on June 12, an alleged communications breakdown between US troops and Afghan security forces led to an air strike that killed eight policemen, mistaken for Taliban, at a checkpoint in the east of the country. Barnett Rubin, a specialist in Afghanistan at New York University who was an adviser to the 2001 talks that led to the setting up of the Afghan government, said: "The increase in civilian casualties, which the US government and Congress seem not to have noticed, is seriously eroding Afghan support for the NATO and coalition presence. At this point, it is one of the main recruiting tools of the Taliban." Making matters worse, seven children were killed when US-led coalition jets bombed a religious school in southeastern Afghanistan on June 18, prompting hasty apologies and attempts to deflect the blame from the military. "We are truly sorry," coalition spokesman Major Chris Belcher said in a statement. He said there had been no indications that there were children inside the building. The incident came as humanitarian and aid agencies prepared to issue a damning statement about the killing of civilians by NATO and US forces in Afghanistan. In a statement to be released on June 20, they are expected to condemn the "disproportionate or indiscriminate use of force" which has led to more than 200 civilian deaths, including more than 50 women and children, this year.