#Afghanistan - #Kunduz attack

A DEADLY attack has killed and injured scores in Kunduz, Afghanistan, and has bloodily exposed the dangers inherent in a stepped-up aerial bombardment campaign in the country. The Afghan defence ministry has promised an inquiry, but is also claiming that many militants were killed in the aerial attack. That claim has yet to be independently verified; however, what is already clear is that numerous civilians, many of them children, were killed or injured in the attack. At the time that Afghan helicopter gunships unleashed their weapons on the target, a graduation ceremony for children was being held in the madressah. Whether a horrible mistake was made and the wrong target was attacked or if an intelligence failure meant that an Afghan Taliban target was hit at a moment that produced a high civilian casualty toll may be established in an inquiry. What should be clear, however, is that such risks can never be reduced to zero. Particularly in a chaotic war zone that many parts of Afghanistan are and with the Afghan security forces suffering from a great many deficiencies, the risk of catastrophic mistakes occurring will remain unacceptably high. Foreign forces operating in Afghanistan, including US forces, have also made a number of errors. In October 2015, a US air strike destroyed a trauma centre in Kunduz run by Doctors Without Borders, killing and injuring scores.

There are few lessons that can be learned anew in a war that has gone on for nearly two decades. But it is patently obvious that counter-insurgencies cannot inflict massive damage and destruction on the very people it hopes to rescue from the militants. Shocking attacks, such as the one in Kunduz on Monday, coming so late in a war against the Afghan Taliban can have significant and widespread negative effects on the population. Questions such as whether the Afghan state is any better than the Taliban who terrorise swathes of the population may be asked with fresh urgency among the people. Moreover, the possibility of a spirit of revenge taking hold among the surviving victims and families of the dead and injured could be exploited by the Taliban. There is a reason why previous US administrations have at times hesitated to use indiscriminate weapons in Afghanistan: the risk of a terrible error tends to be greater than the gains of a successful strike. The Trump administration and Kabul should urgently reconsider the new, looser rules of military engagement.