Afghanistan Raids Will Continue At Night, According To NATO

KABUL, Afghanistan — NATO will carry out nighttime kill-and-capture raids against suspected insurgents with increased participation from Afghan special forces, the alliance said Monday, after repeated protests by President Hamid Karzai.

The raids have become a flash point for anger over foreign meddling in Afghanistan and whether detention operations will be run by the Afghans or Americans. Karzai has demanded that foreign troops stop entering homes, saying Afghan citizens cannot feel secure if they think armed soldiers might burst into their houses in the middle of the night.

Karzai's office said in a statement that during a National Security Council meeting late Sunday, the president emphasized the need to prevent civilian casualties, saying the casualties and the night raids on homes "have created serious problems."

Last month, Karzai convened a traditional national assembly known as a Loya Jirga that stopped short of demanding a complete end to night raids. Instead, it asked that they be led and controlled by Afghan security forces.

NATO spokesman Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson said that Afghan special forces now take part in nearly all night raids, and their participation is constantly increasing. The raids remain the safest form of operation to take out insurgent leaders, since they account for less than 1 percent of civilian casualties and in 85 percent of cases no shots are fired, he said.

"President Karzai has asked foreign troops to (refrain) from entering Afghan homes and this is exactly where ... 'Afghanization' comes in," Jacobson said, referring to the gradual transfer of responsibility for security to the Afghan army and police. They are due to assume full control in 2014, when foreign forces are set to end their combat role in Afghanistan.

"Speeding up Afghanization is in everybody's interest, (but) we need time to train the special forces," he said.

Adm. William McRaven, who leads the U.S. Special Operations Command, said last week that about 2,800 raids were carried out against insurgent targets over the past year.

Some analysts have questioned the military and political value of the operations, saying that when guerrilla commanders are killed, they are usually replaced by younger and more aggressive fighters less disposed to making any compromise with the government.

The issue also has held up the signing of a security agreement with the U.S. that could keep thousands of American troops here for years beyond the 2014 deadline for most international forces to leave. Remaining American troops would train Afghan forces and assist with counterterrorism operations.

The latest controversy over night raids was sparked by an operation early Saturday on a home in the Ahmadaba district of Paktia province.

The provincial governor condemned what he said was a raid on the home of the local counternarcotics chief. Three men were detained during the operation, including a leader with the Haqqani militant network, which is affiliated with al-Qaida and the Taliban. The coalition said a joint Afghan-NATO force returned gunfire coming from the house.

One woman inside the compound was killed during the operation.

Jacobson said the counter-narcotics chief was released from custody on Sunday.

Separately, Jacobson said that "in recent days" Pakistani officers had been returning to the joint control centers where NATO, Afghanistan and Pakistan share information and coordinate security operations.

A Pakistani army statement later denied this, saying the officers had visited the centers "for consultations only" and then left.

Pakistani liaison officers were withdrawn in November after NATO airstrikes killed 24 Pakistani troops along the border.

Furious over the incident, Islamabad retaliated by cutting the route which NATO uses to transport supplies to its forces in landlocked Afghanistan. It also severed military coordination between the two sides.

Also Monday, two attackers wearing suicide vests were killed when their explosives detonated while they were riding a motorcycle through Dilaram district in western Nimroz province, the Interior Ministry said. There were no other injuries, the statement said.

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Associated Press writers Rahim Faiez in Kabul and Chris Brummitt in Islamabad, contributed to this report.

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Slobodan Lekic can be reached on Twitter at http://twitter.com/slekich

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Comments

[Joe Goforth]

09:52 PM on 12/19/2011

There is no purpose to this endless war. Ron Paul for Pres.

[logicanada]

08:54 PM on 12/19/2011

These night raids are an excellent way to create new enemies to justify more night raids.

[hungryaardvark]

08:02 PM on 12/19/2011

The night raids will continue, and the USNATO will earn more justifiable hatred daily, with eventual blowback. We will call the justifiable blowback "terrorism." And Dumbmericans will accept that explanation as sufficient excuse to start a new war.

[JohnMavis41]

06:29 PM on 12/19/2011

Keep the raids going -- You've almost got Bin Laden -- remember, 'Dead or Alive' -- keep focused, you will get him. Even if it takes a few more years, or decades, you will get him.

[MikeDu]

05:59 PM on 12/19/2011

There's the old saying "To someone with just a hammer for a tool every problem starts to look like a nail." The US used to have lots of diplomatic arrows in its quiver. Moral suasion (that's gone), monetary enticement (that's going), legal justification (that fig leaf blew away 8 years ago), reasoned pragmatic argument (don't make me laugh), then the final resort - violence. We've pretty much run out of money to disburse, besides China has more. Promises of 'alliances' with us sound hollow. *But* we can track a celphone source from the far side of the globe and blow up the house it came from. A $250,000 operation to kill a dirt farmer and his family.

[Bradley Greig Smith]

05:10 PM on 12/19/2011

It's a rather sad commentary on the US that we have so many uniformed armchair warriors.

Not only is the Taliban not Al Quaeda but they were willing to hand over Bin Laden to the international court if we were willing to provide evidence of his guilt. We refused and instead started a war with the Pasthun Tribe. The Taliban is the political and military arm of the Pashtun who number over 50 million people and who have lived in this area for thousands of years. They have never been defeated and they will not be defeated now.

In 1979 President Carter armed what was then called the Mujahideen to fight the pro-Soviet government of Afghanistan, with the goal of drawing in the Soviet military into a war they couldn't win. The Mujahideen became what is now called the Taliban. Prior to this the Pasthun were a semi-autonomous people with their own laws and lands. The ignored the borders then just like they do today.

[mamacat]

05:01 PM on 12/19/2011

In their policies, the Taliban are little different from our allies, the Saudis. It is true that the Taliban accepted Al Qaeda's aid in achieving and keeping power, but there is absolutely no evidence that they had any knowledge of, or complicity in, Al Qaeda attacks on the West. The Taliban government even offered to hand Osama bin Laden over to a third party for trial. To have invaded Afghanistan for the purpose of achieving a regime change was not only immoral and illegal, according to the United Nations charter, but it runs counter to our own self-interests.

I have no problem with going in, wiping out the Al Qaeda base camp, and then getting back out, but why are we still there? Bush could have sent troops in to surround and eliminate Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora, something that our commander on the ground requested and was denied permission to do, and we would now have been out of Afghanistan for the last ten years.

We got Osama bin Laden, and Al Qaeda can no longer operate out in the open. So why are we still there?

[Susan Shaffer]

09:27 PM on 12/19/2011

1, iran is next door
2. there is a lot of petrol in this region
3. us is now getting out of iraq

[Bradley Greig Smith]

04:47 PM on 12/19/2011

More death, destruction and misery and for what?

End the war now.

[Gracie fr]

04:09 PM on 12/19/2011

U.S. Special Operations Forces have increasingly aiming their night- raids, which have been the primary cause of Afghan anger at the U.S. military presence, at civilian non- combatants in order to exploit their possible intelligence value. The criteria used for targeting of individuals in night raids and for seizing them have been loosened to include people who have not been identified as insurgents. A military officer said that targeting individuals believed to” know one of the insurgents” is a key factor in planning the raids. “If you can’t get the guy you want,” said the officer, “you get the guy who knows him.” the practice of sweeping up large numbers of civilians – were countered by pressures for “more aggressive detention operations”. And the growth in the number of operations and the statistics on alleged insurgents killed or captured are a key measure of the relevance of SOF units. So you have a number for the killed and/or captured without differentiation. The higher the number, the more successful the operation which remains heedless as to the actual value of the individual…. Not a great way to make friends out of enemies…
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/21/u-s-night-raids-aimed-at-afghan-civilians/
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/03/u-s-night-raids-killed-over-1500-afghan-civilians-in-ten-months/

[mamacat]

05:03 PM on 12/19/2011

We may have gone in to Afghanistan with the intention of accomplishing something good, but at this point it is pretty obvious that a majority of Afghans are just trying to stay alive until we finally leave them alone.

[Gracie fr]

06:27 PM on 12/19/2011

From the beginning, the Afghan mission got off on the wrong foot, one full of outrage and revenge. As soon as the Taliban insurgency began its IED and bombing campaign, ISAF reacted in kind. The lack of cultural knowledge was and still is detrimental to most troop activity. After 10 years of reciprocated hostilities and mutual distrust, the good cause is irrecuperable water over the dam......

[IgnatiusJ]

03:45 PM on 12/19/2011

Karzai- FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF you. I hope you are on the nighty-night target list.

[BlairCase]

02:28 PM on 12/19/2011

If only the Taliban would promise not to operate between dusk and dawn.

[gutenmorgen]

02:13 PM on 12/19/2011

To me who lived in occupied Netherlands during WW2 "night raids" evokes the memory of the thousands of RAF bombers flying over our city at night on their way to night raids in Germany.

[not so sure]

12:43 PM on 12/19/2011

Madness in action. 2800 Night home invasions chasing the Military estimate of about 100 Al Queda in the country despite the overwhelming hatred toward America it causes. So our responce? Throw some more money at our puppet native leader and let some locals come along for the nightly rides. That should calm the populace down, right?
Drone them during the day and invade their homes at night by kicking down doors and killing whatever is inside....and then muse about how ungrateful they are to their occupiers. And Potato head Panetta has the audacity to say he thinks its worth it and we are winning. yeah. Except "we" is MIC.

[terroristmd]

02:39 PM on 12/19/2011

less then 1% civilian casualties are from night missions...they are hardly kicking in doors and killing whatever is inside. You need to either go get eyes on the situation or stop playing call of duty cause thats not what is really happening over there.

[sylvia wadlington]

12:21 PM on 12/19/2011

Take the world war money out of the Middle East and watch how fast it quiets down. When any war is examined closely it's always about some grand ideal, but without money nothing happens.

[CitizenPane]

12:16 PM on 12/19/2011

Look, the President of that country doesn't want us there. "...the president emphasized the need to prevent civilian casualties, saying the casualties and the night raids on homes "have created serious problems." The serious problem is civilian casualties. Or, as we call it, collateral. If a country doesn't want us there then we need to leave. Afghanistan has aligned themselves with Pakistan who don't particularly like us either - drones, bin Laden, cut in funding to their military.
"...Islamabad retaliated by cutting the route which NATO uses to transport supplies to its forces in landlocked Afghanistan. I am not a military strategist but getting supplies to our troops is critical