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"What causes the documented high level of civilian casualties -- 3,767 [thru December 6, 2001] civilian deaths in eight and a half weeks -- in the U.S. air war upon Afghanistan? The explanation is the apparent willingness of U.S. military strategists to fire missiles into and drop bombs upon, heavily populated areas of Afghanistan."
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| Wired News
Report
Trolling the Web for Afghan Dead In an online report, a University of New Hampshire professor charges that the U.S. military has killed more than 4,000 civilians in Afghanistan and that the U.S. media have largely ignored the toll of the war on terrorism. "This is a serious, timely piece of research that I think really needed to be done," economics professor Marc Herold said. "And since the media didn't do it, I did." Frustrated by the dearth of reports in the American media after the air strikes began on Oct. 7, Herold turned to the Internet to read accounts from the front lines published in the foreign press. For the past three months, Herold has spent 12 to 14 hours a day cruising the Net to compile figures on civilian casualties in Afghanistan, using sources as disparate as the radical Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) and the BBC. He said he discovered that Washington's anti-terrorism campaign has killed an average of 65 Afghans a day, information he charges has been blithely dismissed by the American mainstream press. Pundits such as William M. Arkin, a former Army intelligence analyst and Washington Post columnist, have sought to minimize the importance of civilian casualties, he writes. Arkin did not respond to an interview request for this story.
His analysis, published on the independent news site cursor.org, also contends that the Department of Defense has downplayed civilian deaths in order to maintain popular support for the war effort, an allegation department officials refused to address.
"We don't respond to spurious charges as a matter of policy," said a Department of Defense spokesman. Among his more serious allegations is the accusation that the U.S. government has tried to create a news blackout in Afghanistan. In October, Washington bought exclusive rights to all the commercial satellite images of Afghanistan and pressured the independent Al-Jazeera television station to tone down anti-American rhetoric. The station scoffed at the request and a month later, U.S. missiles destroyed Al-Jazeera's Kabul offices. Herold and Al-Jazeera officials allege the hit was a deliberate attempt to snuff out negative news reports, an accusation a Department of Defense spokesman denied. "We hit an al Qaida facility, we don't know what Al Jazeera was doing there," said Lt. Colonel Dave Lapan. Lapan, who refused to comment on the specifics of Herold's report, said the government has been careful to minimize "collateral damage" and that U.S. forces have carefully avoided attacking targets when civilians are nearby. "There have been allegations of civilian casualties throughout the campaign that are highly suspect," Lapan said. "It's part of a pattern of lies told by the Taliban and the media they control." In a December press conference, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld conceded that accurate casualty figures were hard to come by in Afghanistan and implied that the United States was not responsible for non-military deaths. "We did not start this war," Rumsfeld said. "So understand, responsibility for every single casualty in this war, whether they're innocent Afghans or innocent Americans, rests at the feet of al Qaida and the Taliban."
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