Taliban try victim offensive after losing battle

LA Times:

A fierce new dispute erupted today over civilian deaths in Afghanistan, with village elders asserting that 22 noncombatants were killed in an American-led raid and U.S. military officials insisting that all 15 dead in the incident, including a woman, were Taliban fighters.

Civilian casualties have emerged as one of the most serious points of friction between Western forces and the increasingly unpopular government of President Hamid Karzai.

The Afghan leader has repeatedly accused foreign troops of failing to safeguard civilians during combat operations, while coalition commanders accuse the Taliban of deliberately putting innocents in harm's way. Karzai's latest public plea for restraint by Western forces came only hours before President Obama was sworn in.

Like many such disputed incidents, the latest one took place in the dead of night in a remote location, and involved the use of airpower by American-led troops.

The raid took place between 3 and 4 a.m. in the Mehtar Lam district of Laghman province, about 40 miles northeast of Kabul, the capital. American and other coalition troops have lately focused on securing several provinces adjoining Kabul, after a series of attacks close to the city last year left many Afghans with the sense that insurgents were tightening a noose around the capital.

A statement by the U.S. military said the early-morning strike targeted a Taliban commander "known to traffic foreign fighters and weapons into the region." As coalition troops approached his compound, they came under fire from "multiple directions" by militants armed with AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, the statement said.

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The woman who was killed was advancing on troops with a rocket-propelled grenade, the American military said. Western forces have occasionally reported encounters with female combatants, though their participation in battle is considered highly unusual.

The dramatically conflicting accounts of the raid by villagers and the military were reminiscent of an August strike in the village of Azizabad in the western province of Herat, which caused an international outcry.

Local authorities, supported by the United Nations, said 90 civilians were killed, most of them women and children. U.S. military officials at first said only militants had been killed in the raid, then acknowledged five civilian deaths.

Later, a high-level American investigation — conducted after video emerged that appeared to corroborate villagers' claims that a number of women and children had died — concluded that 33 civilians had been killed.

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The Taliban have found their best strategy is the feign victimhood. They have been trying it for sometime to inhibit air attacks by our forces. It is also part of their political MO to gain sympathy for noncombatants and its seems particularly successful with President Karzai. The Special Forces may need to start videoing these raids on the enemy.