This week, International
Security Assistance Force-Afghanistan (ISAF) admitted
that U.S.
and Afghan Special Forces killed two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a police
officer and his brother during a February 12, 2010 raid in Gardez. The incident
raises serious questions about whether the recent policy changes on night raids
will meaningfully reduce the harm they cause, or improve oversight of them, as
was intended.
A bare three
weeks before this raid took place, ISAF issued a new tactical directive specific
to night raids. The new tactical directive was intended to reduce the risk
of these incidents happening by setting a higher threshold for night raids to
be authorized and encouraging troops to only use the amount of force necessary
when authorized. The new directive also was intended to improve some of the
issues of oversight and accountability for these raids by improving
coordination between the units carrying out the raids and the commanders in the
area of operations, creating mechanisms for affected families to find out what
happened to those who were detained, and reinforcing to ISAF command the need
for transparency and accountability on these incidents.
What happened on
February 12, and in the weeks that followed, appears to break not only the
letter but the spirit of this new directive. A raid was authorized against what
all sides now agree was an innocent family, raising a question as to how this
raid met the supposedly high threshold for carrying out such actions in the
first place. While it's hard to second-guess what levels of force are
"necessary" in any situation, what is clear is that here the level of force
used against a social gathering left five dead and caused significant property
damage. No one at the scene was left with any means to find out what happened
or why they were targeted.
The ISAF after-report
of the incident erroneously claimed that only insurgents had been killed in the
raid. ISAF personnel later told journalists and independent monitors that the
women "found" dead were killed in an honor killing by the family. If this
family had not been well connected enough to raise a complaint, and if one
journalist had not taken an interest in investigating the incident, this
story might never have been contradicted.
It is troubling
that a raid took place so soon after the new restrictions were released when
all forces, and particularly the Special Operations Forces (SOF) most involved
in these raids, should have been paying the most attention. The incident also
underlines one of the more serious issues that the directive overlooked:
concerns about misinformation.
As noted
earlier in this blog, my organization, the Open Society Institute, recently
carried out a study on concerns with the practice of night raids. Throughout
our research, we persistently heard complaints of families who had been
targeted, men of the household arrested, and then released, without any evidence
of why they were held. Several of the families we interviewed said their houses
were raided not just once but two, three, four, and in one case, seven times.
In each case, they said, they were released either without explanation or with regrets
that, "Sorry, we got the wrong guy." When we have tried to raise these issues
with ISAF the standard response has been an outright denial: when a night raid
is conducted, they claim, there's no mistaken identity. We always get our guy.
The lack of
transparency over these raids and any evidence against the targets has made it
hard to rebut such assertions. But the few well documented cases that have been
exposed, like this one, beg the question of how many other innocent families
are attacked in these raids. Without any meaningful process or accountability,
there's no way to know.
Erica Gaston is a human rights lawyer based in Kabul,
Afghanistan, consulting on civilian casualties issues for the Open
Society
Institute.
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