War crimes and "violence" in Afghanistan

AP/Washington Post:

Taliban militants tortured five abducted policemen in southern Afghanistan and then hung their mutilated bodies from trees in a warning to villagers against working with the government, officials said Sunday.

The discovery of the bodies came as officials said that recent violence and clashes had left at least 63 other people dead across Afghanistan.

The officers had been abducted two months ago from their checkpoint in southern Uruzgan province, said Juma Gul Himat, the provincial police chief. The Taliban slashed their hands and legs and hung the bodies on trees Saturday in Gazak village of Derawud district, he said.

"The Taliban told the people that whoever works with the government will suffer the same fate as these policemen," Himat said. "This village is under Taliban control. There are more than 100 Taliban in this village."

Two tribal elders received the bodies of the policemen on Sunday, he said.

Insurgency-related violence in Afghanistan has soared this year, killing more than 6,000 people, a record number, according to an Associated Press count based on figures from Western and Afghan officials.

The executions followed several days of violence in the country's south which left at least 63 people dead, including 58 militants and two Canadian soldiers.

Also in Uruzgan, police shot and killed two suspected Taliban militants on Sunday as they approached a police checkpoint on a motorbike, Himat said.

In Zabul province, the Taliban ambushed and clashed with an Afghan army patrol Saturday night, leaving 11 suspected insurgents dead and four soldiers wounded, said Qasem Khan, a provincial police official.

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The reporting of this story is so poor. No where in it does the AP describe the Taliban's treatment of their detainees as a war crime or a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Why not? It is a blatant double standard that skews the story and understates the wickedness of the Taliban. If anyone on our side of the war did something like that it would be the lead and convey a since of outrage at the conduct rather than a passive voice. It is just horrible biased reporting on the part of the AP.

Another aspect of the poor reporting suggest that we are losing a war against violence rather than winning a war against the Taliban when the story says "recent violence and clashes had left at least 63 other people dead across Afghanistan." It conflates all casualties to make it look like we are losing. It is misleading to suggest that battles in which the enemy forces are destroyed is just "violence and clashes." That reflects a view of the war that shows an ignorance of warfare in general and an ignorance of the forces battling each other in this war.

Would a reporter describe D Day as involving violence and clashes? He might be accurate, but he would still be misleading. I am not suggesting that the battle and small engagements with the Taliban are on the same scale as D Day, but they are engagements where the enemy is losing, but by twisting the war into one against violence, the AP tries to give the impression that our side is losing. That is a misleading and false narrative that creeps into the AP stories regularly.