3233. U.S. and Afghan Forces Killed More Civilians Than Taliban Did, Report Finds

By David Zucchino, The New York Times, April 24, 2019

Mourning civilians killed in a raid last year by a C.I.A.-sponsored strike force in Khogyani, Afghanistan. Photo: Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times.

KABUL, Afghanistan — For the first time since the United Nations began documenting civilian casualties in Afghanistan a decade ago, more civilians are being killed by Afghan government and American forces than by the Taliban and other insurgents, according to a report on Wednesday.

Civilian deaths attributed to pro-government forces rose in the first quarter of this year even as overall civilian casualties dropped to their lowest level in that period since 2013.

The United Nations said in its quarterly report that pro-government forces were responsible for 53 percent of civilian deaths. But insurgents were responsible for the majority — 54 percent — of civilian casualties over all, even as the number of suicide bombings decreased compared with the same period in 2018, the report said.

During the first three months of this year, military operations escalated as both sides sought leverage in peace talks between the United States and the Taliban in Doha, Qatar. At the same time, there has been a relative lull in insurgent suicide attacks that indiscriminately kill civilians, especially in Kabul, the capital. The city has been a repeated target during the conflict, which is in its 18th year.

“It is unclear whether the decrease in civilian casualties was influenced by any measures taken by parties to the conflict to better protect civilians, or by the ongoing talks between parties to the conflict,” the United Nations report said.

The agency reported 581 civilians killed and 1,192 wounded during the first quarter, a 23 percent decrease in overall casualties compared with the same period in 2018.

Other quarterly numbers may reflect an increasing reliance on airstrikes in a war in which Afghan security forces tend to hunker down in fortified bases rather than mount aggressive assaults against Taliban fighters. When attacked, Afghan forces often call for airstrikes by the American-trained Afghan Air Force to dislodge the enemy.

Aerial operations were the third-highest cause of civilian casualties, killing 145 civilians and wounding 83 during the quarter — a 41 percent increase for those type of casualties compared with the same quarter in 2018. The report attributed almost all of those casualties to American airstrikes.

“A shocking number of civilians continue to be killed and maimed each day,” Tadamichi Yamamoto, the United Nations secretary general’s special representative for Afghanistan, said in a statement. “All parties must do more to safeguard civilians.”

The latest figures provided by the United States military show that American warplanes dropped 790 bombs and other munitions in Afghanistan in January and February. That was a slight decrease from the 847 that were dropped during the same two months in 2018.

Col. Dave Butler, a spokesman for the United States military in Afghanistan, said that the American forces “hold ourselves to the highest standards of accuracy and accountability” and “strive for precision in all of our operations.”

“We reserve the right of self-defense of our forces as well as the Afghan security forces,” Colonel Butler said in a statement. “The best way to end the suffering of noncombatants is to end the fighting through an agreed-upon reduction in violence on all sides.”

The United Nations report said the decrease in suicide bombings in the first quarter might have stemmed from an especially harsh winter. The agency documented just four suicide bombings, all attributed to the Taliban, which caused 178 civilian casualties. That was down from 19 suicide bombings and 751 resulting casualties during the same quarter last year.

The Taliban, the Islamic State and other militants killed 227 civilians and wounded 736 in the first quarter, the report said — a 36 percent decrease compared with the same period in 2018.

The United Nations said pro-government forces killed 305 civilians and wounded 303 — a 39 percent increase from the first quarter of last year, and 34 percent of all civilian casualties for the first quarter of this year.

The report attributed the remaining casualties to crossfire and other causes.

Ground engagements were the single biggest cause of all civilian casualties, accounting for about a third of the total. A single mortar attack by the Islamic State last month in Kabul was responsible for about a fifth of all first-quarter civilian casualties from ground engagements, the report said.

The second leading cause of civilian casualties was improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. In a reversal from previous reporting periods, the majority of IED casualties were caused by non-suicide IEDs rather than those detonated by a suicide bomber, the report said.

The United Nations attributed 529 casualties to the deliberate targeting of civilians. Addressing the Taliban, the Islamic State and other insurgent groups, the report said that “the deliberate targeting of civilians — including government officials — is prohibited under international law and constitutes a war crime.”

Other leading causes of civilian casualties were targeted killings (9 percent of the total), explosive remnants of war such as land mines or unexploded rockets (7 percent) and search operations by pro-government forces (6 percent).

A Taliban spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

The United Nations reported in February that 2018 was the single deadliest year for Afghan civilians since the agency began documenting casualties in 2009. Almost 4,000 civilians died that year, including a record number of children. The 2018 report attributed 63 percent of civilian casualties to insurgent groups and 24 percent to pro-government forces.

The first-quarter drop in overall civilian casualties came after reports of initial progress at the latest round of peace talks in Qatar last month. Under a tentative framework reached by American and Taliban negotiators, the American military would withdraw from Afghanistan in exchange for a pledge by the Taliban not to allow terrorists to operate from Afghan soil.

About 14,000 American troops are currently in Afghanistan. About half are regular troops who train Afghan security forces, while American Special Operations forces work with Afghan commandos to conduct counterterrorism raids against Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.

2776. #MeToo Movement: Facing Extreme Harassment, Some Afghan Women Risk Speaking Up

By Rod Norland and Fatima Faizi, The New York Times, December 10, 2017

Afghani women protest against sexual harassment in Azadi (Freedom) Street in Kabul

KABUL, Afghanistan — “You’re ugly, Maryam, everyone says so, but I guess you’re a virgin so when you’re ready to have sex, let me know and I will be glad to …” Her male co-worker, writing on her Facebook account, finished the sentence obscenely.

It was 10 a.m. on a normal day in the life of an Afghan working woman. The journalist Maryam Mehtar, 24, said she had already that morning been harassed or assaulted at least five times: in the bus to work, on the street waiting for the bus, by a man who grabbed her buttocks, by another man who asked how much she charged and by a young boy who said she had a “pretty vulva.”

Finally, in the relative safety of her own office, she opened her computer to read the Facebook offer from one of her colleagues to deflower her.

Emboldened by the uprising of women in America and Europe against sexual harassment, a few particularly courageous Afghan women are speaking out, too, in the face of a problem long just accepted as commonplace and unsolvable.

“Most of my friends are silent,” said Ms. Mehtar, who works for the Afghan news agency Sarienews. “They think if they talk everyone will blame them, and they’re right.”

Ms. Mehtar is one of the few Afghan women willing to name and shame her abusers, something most are afraid to do — and not just because of fear of public humiliation.

When women speak up, they take a big risk, said Shaharzad Akbar, 30, who works as an adviser to President Ashraf Ghani and says she was sexually assaulted when she was an intern early in her career. “In Afghanistan, women can’t say they faced sexual harassment. If a woman shares someone’s identity, he will kill her or kill her family. We can never accuse men, especially high-ranking men, without great risk.”They fear not only the vengeance of the abusers, but sometimes even that of their own families, Ms. Akbar and others said.

Zubaida, 26, was a police officer whose superior groped her breasts and demanded sex. She quit her job, but does not dare give her own full name or her abuser’s. “If I said his name, definitely he would kill me or one of my family members,” she said. Worse, if it became public, she said she would fear that her own family members might carry out an honor killing against her.

Even rape victims are sometimes killed by their own relatives, who believe the shame attached to rape is worse than the suffering of the rape victim.

“In Afghanistan, we are both the victim and the criminal,” Zubaida said. “I can’t even tell my own family that I quit because of sexual harassment. Western women are so lucky.”

One 31-year-old woman, who feared that she and her children could be killed if her name were used, had returned to Afghanistan after years of living in Iran. She had done well in school there, and as an educated woman she quickly found work, first in a provincial government office in Ghazni Province.

On her first week at work, the director of her department threw her over a piece of furniture and tried to sexually assault her; she fled the office and quit. In Kabul, she went to buy a plot of land from the government, and the director of the department began sending her nude photographs of himself and asking her for sex, mostly via Facebook messages.

The harassment many of them face extends even to Afghan employees of international and Western institutions, according to numerous women interviewed for this article.

One woman gave up on government employment after repeated harassment and started her own nongovernmental organization. She began applying for grants from the United Nations, the United States Agency for International Development and various Western embassies.

“Every time the same thing: The Afghan staff would say, ‘I’ll approve your proposal, if you have sex with me,’” she said, asking that her name not be used because she still hopes to find a grant and does not want to anger potential donors. “Everyone thinks that those women who work outside the home are whores, and Afghan men can say and do anything they want with them.”

Women in the media are particularly frequent victims, in part because they have public profiles, and often use social media with their real identities. That often attracts men who hurl sexual abuse at them with abandon — often not even bothering to disguise their names. The abuse frequently includes sexually explicit photographs.

When Ms. Mehtar posted on Facebook her view that “Afghan women are not safe even in their own homes,” she was deluged with a mixture of hate mail and sexually abusive comments. She received hundreds of Facebook and Twitter messages — which she has archived. One came from an Afghan writer named Jalil Junbish, who described himself as an authority on women’s rights. It read: “You’re a whore and have had sex with many men.”

Contacted by Facebook Messenger about the abuse, Mr. Junbish not only confirmed that it came from him, but repeated his accusation. “Maryam is a whore,” he replied to a female Afghan reporter for The New York Times. “Why are you her friend?” He added, “You’re a whore, too.”

When the reporter contacted Mr. Junbish by telephone, he confirmed that the Facebook account was his own, but he then claimed that it had been hacked by someone else who sent the abusive messages.

The Afghan entrepreneur Hamid Samar this year came up with the idea of starting a television station, Zan TV, pitched at millennials. All of the on-air personalities, newscasters and producers are young women, 35 to 40 of them, with far fewer men behind the scenes (although they are the ones in charge). Some American officials enthusiastically praised the idea, and the station is seeking American funding.

Within only a few months, however, rumors began to circulate that many women were complaining of sexual harassment at the station, and there was a wave of resignations, according to two women who said they were among those who quit because of that. They were interviewed in the past week on the condition of anonymity because they feared being unable to find another job if they spoke out.

Mr. Hamid, the owner, said sexual harassment was not tolerated at Zan TV. “Zan TV is a safe place for women,” he said. “Families trust us and send their daughters outside to work for us, and we never break their hearts.”

Sulieman Samar, the public relations coordinator for Zan TV, and a brother of the owner, denied that there had been any resignations over harassment. “Everyone who works here signs contracts promising not to sexually harass anyone,” he said. “Sexual harassment is wrong.”

In one of the country’s most outrageous cases, last month, an Afghan air force colonel was accused of demanding sex from a subordinate. The woman secretly videotaped his assault on her, with his face and identity clear. Posted on Facebook anonymously, that video and a more explicit second one went viral in Afghanistan.

Maj. Gen. Dawlat Waziri, the spokesman for the defense ministry, said that Col. Ghulam Rasoul Laghmani had been detained and was under investigation, but so far no one has formally accused him of harassment. General Waziri said the authorities had been unable to find the woman, whose identity in the video is unclear.

The Afghan government has made some efforts to combat sexual harassment, which is widely seen as one of the main reasons the country has never been able to meet its goals to recruit female police officers and soldiers, who are still less than 1 percent of the security forces.

Recently, the Ministries of Interior and Communications jointly set up hotlines to report sexual harassment, with separate numbers for women (989) and men (999). Since the interior ministry is in charge of the police, many assumed the hotlines were for reporting problems with police officers.

A woman who answered the 989 number said that was not their role; they handle only phone harassment cases of the heavy-breathing type. “If a policeman harasses you,” the hotline operator said, “you should slap him, or ask other women to slap him. We can’t help you.”