"An elderly relative of Afghan President Hamid Karzai was shot dead by NATO forces during a botched night raid in southern Afghanistan Thursday, Karzai's brother said, stoking controversy over the war's civilian death toll [...] Last year was the most lethal for non-combatants since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001, with a 15 percent rise in civilian casualties to 2,777, the United Nations said in a report Wednesday".
Night raids are one of the most counterproductive and criminal actions of the Western invaders. General Petraeus' men conduct 20 of them per night since December 2010 and have slaughtered 600 people in that same time period.
This same Reuters piece tells the heartbreaking story of "an 11th grade boy with dreams of becoming a translator [who became] the despairing head of a family of more than a dozen [after] his father and oldest brother were shot dead last August at the start of a midnight assault by NATO-led troops on their house".
If you prefer tales of inadvertant slaughter, there's always the New York Times (02/03/2011): "Nine boys collecting firewood to heat their homes in the eastern Afghanistan mountains were killed by NATO helicopter gunners who mistook them for insurgents. [...] The boys, who were 9 to 15 years old, were attacked on Tuesday in what amounted to one of the war's worst cases of mistaken killings".
If you prefer tales of inadvertant slaughter, there's always the New York Times (02/03/2011): "Nine boys collecting firewood to heat their homes in the eastern Afghanistan mountains were killed by NATO helicopter gunners who mistook them for insurgents. [...] The boys, who were 9 to 15 years old, were attacked on Tuesday in what amounted to one of the war's worst cases of mistaken killings".
Cases like these are innumerable. This war has to stop.
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