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水曜日、2008年7月30日
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によって デイヴィッド木 | ワシントン州-米国による毎日の航空攻撃。 そしてアフガニスタンの同盟戦闘爆撃機は米国に従って去年の夏以来ほとんど、倍増していた。 空軍データは、反映する傾向反乱を起した攻撃一般市民の犠牲者についてのまた昇給の心配を高めた。

米国による航空攻撃の成長する信頼。 アフガニスタンの司令官は戦争の間に回転に印を付けるようである。

地上の司令官からの要求に答えて、同盟航空機の余分は過去週500を-そして2,000ポンドの誘導爆弾落とし、空軍毎日の殴打のレポートに従って大砲火が付いている敵軍を、地上掃射するアフガニスタンを渡る日かける68の平均敵の地面ターゲットを打った。

年前に、空軍はアフガニスタンの1日あたりの35回の航空攻撃についての録音だった。

言うことを空軍がである事故死を避ける徹底的な手段取るが航空攻撃からの一般市民の犠牲者は人権ウォッチの研究者の絞りかすGarlascoの米国国防総省の統合参謀のための前の目標とする責任者からの新しく、出版されていないデータに従って1月のどれもから3月の23 60にに、今のところこの月、今年二度打ちつけたあらないことは。

Taliban導かれた反乱者は重要な数で攻撃して、とどまり、米国に従って従来の敏捷なゲリラ戦術で従事するよりもむしろ戦うために。 司令官。

複数の最近の事件では、米国。 そして同盟軍隊は投げられた戦いで戦闘爆撃機が送風に反乱者を現れた後やっと勝った。

空軍力の成長する役割は戦争が推薦された付加的な軍隊より多くを要求することを提案する ブッシュ大統領 そして両方の大統領候補。 それは既に引き攣らせた空軍および海軍からのより人を配置され、より意気地なくされた航空機要求するかもしれない。

そして空軍力のより大きい使用は勝利ローカル忠誠が成功へのキーとして考慮される対立の一般市民の犠牲者で多分、起因する。

去年の秋、アフガニスタンの大統領 Hamid Karzai、米国が代わりを見つけることを、公に要求される航空攻撃からの上昇の一般市民の死者数に答える。 しかし航空攻撃はただ増加した。

同盟司令官はまだアフガニスタンの政府が結婚式に殺した方法の47人の一般市民を言う7月6日の航空攻撃を調査している。

「私達は深く一般市民が害を与えられる事件を」、言った高貴な海軍大尉を後悔する。 マイクFinneyのアフガニスタンの米国が主導する軍の連合のためのスポークスマン。

」勇気をつけられる敵の`

But the Air Force says it is only responding to the intensity of fighting on the ground.

“Let’s face it, the enemy is more emboldened,” said Air Force Maj. Gen. Douglas L. Raaberg, deputy commander of air operations in the region. Raaberg is a B-1 bomber pilot who has flown strike missions over Afghanistan as recently as last week.

“The Taliban, when they have an opportunity to take a stand, they are doing that,” he said in a telephone interview from the region.

Coalition aircraft have doubled the number of hours they spend each day on airborne “armed overwatch” of U.S. and allied convoys and other operations, he said. He acknowledged that strike missions also have doubled as ground commanders increasingly request air support.

To meet the demand, allied air crews are flying more sorties each day, and more U.S. aircraft are on station with the recent diversion of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln from Iraq operations to supporting operations in Afghanistan.

“We are shifting assets as needed to make sure we don’t leave [ground forces] uncovered,” Raaberg said.

But the Air Force has to scramble to meet unexpected demand.

A Taliban attack July 13, for example, nearly overran a remote U.S. and Afghan outpost near the Pakistani border. Insurgents held the upper hand in combat until an Air Force B-1 bomber flew in to drop 2,000-pound bombs, an unmanned Predator fired a Hellfire missile and other strike aircraft dropped bombs and strafed the enemy with cannon. The insurgents retreated, leaving nine American soldiers dead.

“The only reason they weren’t completely overrun was air power, and that’s the first time that has happened” in the Afghan war, said John McCreary, who retired in 2006 as a senior intelligence analyst for the Pentagon’s Joint Staff.

“Coalition ground forces are not winning every battle, but they are winning every battle where they have air support,” said McCreary, who follows Afghanistan closely and still assembles a daily open-source intelligence report.

On July 20, Raaberg was piloting a B-1 bomber over Afghanistan when he was redirected to attack Taliban forces gathering for an assault on a U.S. forward operating base in Kunar province, in eastern Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan.

“They started attacking within half an hour of when I got there,” Raaberg recalled. He said U.S. artillery fired at the enemy, followed by airstrikes, followed by more artillery and more airstrikes, “until we ran out of bombs.”

Defeating such Taliban attacks, he said, is “not so much air [power] saving the day, it’s air combined with ground forces combined with our coalition partners. We’re trying to use everything.”

Analysts who have studied casualty patterns in Afghanistan say that the vast majority are caused, deliberately or not, by the Taliban and other insurgents.

According to Human Rights Watch, a nonpartisan international research organization, 929 Afghan civilians were killed in the fighting in 2006. Of those, 699 were killed by the Taliban and 230 by U.S. or coalition forces, including 116 by airstrikes.

In 2007, 1,633 Afghan civilians died in the fighting, with 950 killed by the Taliban and 434 by U.S. and coalition forces, according to data provided by Garlasco. The rest died under unclear or unknown circumstances, he said.

But while the number killed by U.S. or coalition ground forces stayed about the same, those killed by airstrikes more than doubled, to 321.

A key reason for the increase is that the Taliban are “shielding” their fighters among Afghanistan’s civilian population, Garlasco said.

“They actually go into peoples’ homes, force them to stay there during a battle, force them to build defensive trenches for them - these are true Geneva Conventions violations,” Garlasco said.

Raaberg said the Air Force will not attack insurgents shielding themselves among civilians “and the enemy knows that.”

Unplanned strikes

But Garlasco said the Air Force has not taken as much care with its quick-reaction airstrike missions as it has with those planned in detail and reviewed by intelligence analysts and lawyers at the U.S. regional air operations headquarters in Qatar.

“In their planned airstrikes, they have virtually eliminated the danger of civilian casualties,” Garlasco said. “It is in the unplanned airstrikes that you’re seeing almost all of the civilian casualties.”

Such unplanned missions often involve urgent calls to support U.S. and allied troops who unexpectedly engage in battle. Or an unmanned surveillance plane might find a group of people mistakenly identified by targeters as insurgents.

Raaberg said that for unplanned missions - such as the one in which he participated July 20 - the air command dispatches not just strike aircraft but intelligence and command aircraft, all in close coordination with ground commanders and tactical air controllers.

“It’s a painstaking effort,” he said. If insurgents are mixed in with civilians, “we will wait them out if we can” or ask the ground commander to flush them out.

But U.S. and allied troops in trouble take precedence.

“My hat’s off to the ones on the ground,” Raaberg said.

“There’s nothing more uncomfortable than to hear on the radio mortars and grenades going off. You’ve got to go help them.”

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 at 10:45 pm and is filed under War & Terrorism News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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