Fighting between U.S.-led forces and the Taliban has destroyed or damaged hundreds of houses during a crucial campaign in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province, a human rights group said on Thursday.
The widespread property damage reported by the Afghan Rights Monitor (ARM) in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Afghan Taliban, comes despite a U.S. strategy designed to weaken support for the Taliban by limiting harm to civilians.
Yowser. Sounds like a prime example of how evil America is, huh? A human rights organization is surely ready to nail America for the enjoyment of the Global Left. And civilian casualties are up, too.
Well, put away the vuvuzelas, sparky. There's a reason for the damage and you won't like it:
U.S.-led NATO forces have used aerial bombing to strike Taliban strongholds and to set off mines and homemade bombs sometimes hidden as booby traps in private homes, ARM said in a statement.
Ah, the enemy uses the homes as giant traps to kill us. Puts it in perspective, eh?
And the casualties? Well, this is going to be a buzz kill, too:
In a mid-year report, the United Nations said civilian casualties had spiked by 31 percent in the first six months of 2010 compared to the same period last year, with more than three-quarters of them blamed on insurgents.
The number attributed to foreign and Afghan forces fell sharply, due mainly to a tightening of the rules for aerial engagements, the U.N. report said.
We're being more careful, but the enemy caused 75%. And I bet that even in the 25% where we fired the weapon that killed, that the enemy in a large portion of those used civilians as human shields, making the enemy responsible for those deaths as well.
I know it is more fun to blame America, but ARM might want to shop their report around in the Pakistan frontier areas so that Taliban leaders can read about the error of their ways and repent.
