Taliban specifically targeting civilians in attacks

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KABUL, Afghanistan -- Daily attacks against civilian targets on riseInsurgents show growing tendency to spread fear by singling out victims for atrocitiesOn a crisp November morning last year, a white car pulled up in front of a school in southeastern Afghanistan. Three insurgents climbed out and walked into the building, going directly to the staff room and demanding the names of teachers. They found the man they wanted, a 22-year-old who taught English and computer skills, and marched him into a courtyard where children were sitting for exams. In front of the horrified students, they shot him eight times. He died immediately.Civilian deaths are surging in Afghanistan. But the controversy over major incidents such as the alleged U.S. bombing on Aug. 22 of 90 civilians in Herat has overshadowed a steady rise in daily violence inflicted by all sides of the conflict. These smaller but more widespread incidents have transformed broad swaths of the countryside into a land of fear.Recent statistics from the United Nations show at least 1,445 civilians were killed in the first eight months of 2008, up almost 39 percent from the same period last year. About 40 percent of these killings were attributed to the pro-government forces, which includes the well-publicized air strikes but also the new category of night attacks, which have received less scrutiny.But the biggest category was the 55 percent of victims killed by insurgents. Most of those were passersby caught in Taliban bombings, but human-rights officials say the insurgents are also showing a worrying tendency to specifically target civilians."The shift started at the end of last year," said Ahmad Nader Nadery, a commissioner for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. "Now we have more shootings, hangings, beheadings. You hear about every air strike, but the media are not interested in these other things."To focus attention on the smaller killings, the commission has spent three months compiling a detailed report on alleged Taliban atrocities. It's not yet ready for publication, Nadery said, but the early results suggest a pattern of violent intimidation that has reshaped the lives of rural Afghans. In addition to the killing of schoolteachers, the commission has documented attacks on doctors, students, tribal elders, religious leaders, civil servants, day laborers, commercial suppliers, retired security personnel and relatives of anybody who is similarly associated with the government."When a teacher is killed in front of the kids, they stop going to school," Nadery said. "When they kill aid workers, the people stop getting services. It has much broader effects." The Taliban usually threaten their targets, then escalate to violence if the warnings go unheeded. Besides shooting people in the streets, the insurgents also grab captives and torture them, occasionally cutting off ears or fingers. Some people are released with instructions to tell others about their harrowing experiences. Others are hanged or beheaded, and sometimes their families are warned not to attend their funerals.Examples collected by AIHRC researchers in Kandahar show the consequences of these incidents. A 48-year-old man from Kandahar told the researchers about the abduction of a doctor from his village at the end of 2007; he was held nine days and released with a warning to avoid returning to the clinic. The doctor obeyed the insurgents' demands, and six people died in the village during the winter because they lacked medical treatment.In another case, Canada's Provincial Reconstruction Team gave away wheat, oil, blankets and other assistance to 300 families in February of 2008. But a villager told the researchers that Taliban arrived to grab the donations after the distribution trucks left, igniting a dispute with the villagers. The insurgents settled the argument by kidnapping eight men, holding them for 70 hours, and only releasing them when they came under fire by foreign troops.The research also highlighted a dilemma often voiced by civilians who live in war-torn parts of Afghanistan: Faced with such pressure from the Taliban, most people are vividly aware of what might happen if they fail to co-operate with the insurgents, but they're also afraid of attack by Afghan and foreign forces if they do help them.Such concerns have grown after a spate of so-called "night attacks" at the beginning of the year, when helicopters landed near villages suspected of harboring Taliban and elite troops searched the houses, often killing people inside.Philip Alston, the United Nations' special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, attempted to investigate the night attacks during a May 2008 visit to Afghanistan but afterward expressed frustration that no authorities would confirm which military forces were involved."At the highest levels of ministerial responsibility, there is no acknowledged or admitted knowledge of these activities," he said in an interview.One of the cases Alston heard about was a raid in a cluster of villages known as Zangabad, in Panjwai district about 35 kilometers southwest of Kandahar. Several villagers said helicopters landed on the night of Feb. 8 and foreign soldiers killed at least 11 people, including two unarmed 12-year-old boys.Later, a bandaged woman named Habiba sat crying in a hospital bed, wailing that her husband Mohammed Sadiq, 40, and son Jamaludin, 19, had been shot dead and she herself was injured during the raid.Habiba claimed the soldiers were chasing a faulty tip, but other villagers suggested that three Taliban fighters may have been sheltering in a room near the local mosque.Even if the foreign soldiers had a legitimate target in the village, the residents said, ordinary people are still caught between the two sides. Mohammed Hahim, 35, whose brother Habibullah was killed in the raid, threw up his hands in frustration."Maybe the Taliban are coming to our areas, okay," he said. "But what should we do about them?"(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)