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星期三， 2008年7月30日
谈论这个报告在RINF论坛 >

由 大卫木头 | 华盛顿-每日空袭由美国。 并且联盟的战斗机轰炸机在阿富汗从去年夏天几乎加倍了，根据美国。 空军数据，反射的趋向增加了叛乱攻击，而且对平民受害者的培养关心。

对空袭的增长的信赖由美国。 战争其间，司令员在阿富汗看上去标记轮。

反应请求从地面司令员，联盟的航空器过去星期打了敌对地面目标每68乘一天横跨阿富汗，下降500 -和2,000磅制导炸弹和扫射敌军与炮火的平均，根据空军每日罢工报告。

一年前，空军是录音大约每天的35空袭在阿富汗。

虽然空军采取什么它认为是详尽的措施避免意外死亡，平民受害者从空袭今年两次有尖，从无在1月到23在3月到60到目前为止这个月，根据新，未出版的数据从人权观察研究员果渣Garlasco，一个前瞄准的院长为五角大楼的联合职员。

Taliban被带领的叛乱者在重大数字攻击并且停留战斗而不是参与传统闯祸后逃走的游击战术，根据美国。 司令员。

在几个最近事件，美国。 并且联盟的队伍在被投的争斗战胜，在战斗机轰炸机显示由疾风决定叛乱者之后。

空军实力的增长的角色建议战争比另外的队伍将要求更多被推荐 布什总统 并且两个总统候选人。 它也许要求供以人员的和怯弱的航空器从一个已经被透支尽力的空军和海军。

并且对空军实力的更加巨大的用途可能导致平民受害者，在赢取的地方忠诚被认为成功的钥匙的冲突。

去年秋天，阿富汗总统 Hamid Karzai反应上升的平民死亡人数从空袭，公开地被要求美国发现一个选择。 但空袭只增加了。

联盟的司令员仍然调查阿富汗政府在他们的途中认为杀害47个平民到婚礼的7月6日空袭。

“我们深深后悔所有事件，平民被危害”，说皇家海军上尉。 麦克Finney，美国的一位发言人-被带领的军事联合在阿富汗。

被鼓励的敌对`’

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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