NATO spokesmen in Afghanistan have never been slow to condemn the resulting slaughter when the Taliban explodes car or truck bombs in crowded city streets. The script is predictable, involving expressions such as the “heartless murder of women and children”, “without a care for innocent lives” and a “cowardly terrorist act”. Just so. But what, in essence, is the difference between a Taliban terror attack which kills blameless people who are unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the death of blameless people in an assault by NATO warplanes or CIA drones on Taliban leaders and their units? Just such an attack took place on Saturday in the village of Shultan in Kunar province in the east of Afghanistan, in which 11 children and at least one woman were left dead. In essence both are horrifically similar. The Taliban does not always seek to target Afghan police or army units or NATO troops or foreigners working in the country. NATO, however, insists that it is always acting on reliable intelligence that insurgents and high-value Taliban or Al-Qaeda leaders are present at a location, before it launches its strike at the target. NATO also insists that it goes the extra mile, and then some, to avoid what the Americans call “collateral damage.” But the assumption still seems to be if there is a choice between killing a top insurgent leader and sparing the lives of women and children, who may be the family, friends or neighbors of the target, the assault will go on. It is almost as if NATO's military planners are working on the basis that by loving or merely even knowing a wanted terror leader, ordinary Afghans make themselves guilty by association. As moral arguments go, this is a colander of the first order. It can hold no water whatsoever. And unfortunately, time and again NATO further undermines its already weak position by refusing to respond quickly to allegations, often backed up with TV or video footage, that yet more ordinary people have perished in deadly bomb or missile explosions. Yes of course it is necessary to verify what has happened and, if need be, mount some sort of inquiry into what went wrong. But the human response, of which NATO seems incapable, ought to be “Yes, on the face of it, is does look as if something has gone badly wrong here. We will look into it.” Instead, what sometimes comes close to a complete denial, rubs salt into the wounds of grieving local communities and almost certainly helps boost support for the insurgency. Thus when NATO killed 18 wedding guests last June in Logar province, south of Kabul, believing they were hitting a Taliban gathering, the alliance spokesmen came close at first, to almost denying that this had in reality been a wedding. Subsequent investigations by both NATO and the Afghan government established that this was not, as was initially suggested, a top level Taliban conference staged to look like a wedding party. None of this is in any way supposed to excuse the equal heartlessness of terrorist bombers, who generally do not even pretend to regret their slaughter of innocents. However, it is important for NATO chiefs to recognize that Afghans consider terrorist acts to flow from alliance bombs, rockets and drones, every bit as much as from insurgents. Like it or not, each shares an immoral equivalence.
