TW: Am posting some negative stuff about AfPak but that is not to say I think we should backtrack (perhaps we should but am just not there yet at all) but it is never easy (but just because it is hard does not make it right). This piece frames the challenges we face. The Taliban have figured out the allied logistics are very vulnerable. Afghanistan is land-locked, try supplying 200K soldiers via crappy roads through hostile territory amidst mountains.
So the Tali pilfer a fuel convoy and then start distributing the fuel for free to the locals. Naturally we are pissed and see the Tali loitering around the trucks so we zap it. Kaboom, but who looks like Robin Hood (especially after the Tali distorts the story but I do not think most locals read much counterfactual reporting) and who looks like the assholes? I certainly do not begrudge our troops, they get stuck between a stinky rock and smelly hardplace without end.
From Dawn:
"The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it was investigating reports of civilian casualties but a German army statement, putting the death toll at 56, insisted that no non-combatants were killed.
'Some 90 people were killed in this incident and most of them are Taliban. It was an ISAF force airstrike,' Mahbubullah Sayedi, a spokesman for the Kunduz provincial government, told AFP.
'A small number of the casualties are local civilians, including a few children who had come to take free fuel,' he added, declining to give any further details.
Baryalai Basharyar Parwani, the police chief for the area in northern Kunduz province, said more than 60 people were killed and wounded, as accounts emerged of horrific injuries.
Civilian casualties during Western military operations in Afghanistan are hugely sensitive and a major source of tension with the government of President Hamid Karzai, who is ahead in the vote count after fraud-tainted elections.
In Yaqubi village, hundreds of people gathered to bury 18 bodies, some of which were burnt so badly the faces were unrecognisable, an AFP reporter said.
'People went to get fuel. The Taliban were distributing free fuel. At this time they were bombed. Eighteen people were killed from our village,' said Azizullah, 45, who like many Afghans goes by one name, at the funeral.
...A German army spokesman told AFP: “We are fairly certain that they were all insurgents, but we are not 100 percent sure.”ISAF said two fuel trucks were stolen at about 10:00 pm Thursday (1730 GMT) and were spotted several hours later on the banks of the Kunduz river.
'After assessing that only insurgents were in the area, the local ISAF commander ordered an airstrike which destroyed the fuel trucks and a large number of insurgents were killed and injured,' a spokeswoman said.
...Around 200 to 250 villagers were believed to have gathered to help themselves from the tankers, said health ministry spokesman Farid Rahid in Kabul.
...'There were 10 to 15 Taliban on top of the tanker. This was when they were bombed. Everyone around the fuel tanker died,' he told AFP in hospital.
...General Stanley McChrystal's predecessor, General David McKiernan, was removed after less than a year on the job after deeply controversial airstrikes that killed dozens of civilians in western Afghanistan."
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/18-airstrike-hits-fuel-truck-in-afghanistan-several+dead-officials-am-01
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