11 March 2011, NYT: Cousin of Afghan President Is Killed in NATO Raid
10 March 2011, NYT: Taliban Causes Most Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan, U.N. Says
28 February 2011, NYT: Afghan Team Says NATO Killed Civilians in Strikes
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/world/asia/13afghan.html
March 12, 2011
Afghan Leader Questions U.S. Military Operations
By ROD NORDLAND
KABUL, Afghanistan -- President Hamid Karzai on Saturday appeared to call for NATO and the United States to cease military operations in Afghanistan, but then issued a clarification saying that he was referring only to specific operations that had caused civilian casualties.
In an emotional speech on Saturday in the eastern city of Asadabad, in Kunar Province, the Afghan president told relatives and neighbors of civilian victims that he sympathized with their plight. "With great honor and with great respect, and humbly rather than with arrogance, I request that NATO and America should stop these operations on our soil," he said. "This war is not on our soil. If this war is against terror, then this war is not here, terror is not here."
Mr. Karzai's remarks were made at a memorial service for the victims, in the presence of local officials as well as the second highest ranking American general in Afghanistan, David M. Rodriguez. "Our demand is that this war should be stopped," Mr. Karzai said. "This is the voice of Afghanistan."
Whether his remarks were premeditated, taken out of context or just an emotional overstatement, his speech was another symptom of a deteriorating relationship between the Afghan president and the United States military command.
American officials were angered by Mr. Karzai's remarks, said one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the dispute with the Afghan president. Officially, NATO refrained from any direct response. But a spokesman, who said he could speak only on the condition of anonymity because of orders from superior officers, said the NATO force in Afghanistan "shares President Karzai's concern about civilian casualties, and we will continue working to reduce civilian casualties to an absolute minimum."
A few hours after the speech, Mr. Karzai's spokesman, Waheed Omer, said the president's remarks had been in the context of two recent cases of civilian casualties in Kunar Province, one of which NATO conceded had killed nine children in error. In the other case, Afghan officials maintained that 65 civilians had been killed, [1] but NATO officials still insist the victims were insurgents, although an investigation is under way.
The president had meant that such operations leading to civilian deaths should be stopped, Mr. Omer said. "Civilian casualties have been a great source of concern to the president and people of Afghanistan and a big reason behind the current disagreements between our government and the international forces," Mr. Omer said in a statement, which he described as a "clarification" of the speech.
"Afghans have lost their patience and cannot tolerate irresponsible operations that result in civilians' losing their lives," Mr. Omer said.
The speech was made after Mr. Karzai visited survivors of the air raids in Kunar. When he was shown a 1-year-old child whose leg had to be amputated, he wept openly, along with many in the crowd around him.
Later Saturday, Mr. Karzai's office issued a video recording of his speech that officials said showed he had not called for an end to NATO's operations in Afghanistan. The segment calling for that was followed by, "Yes, we do want friendship with them; we do want the strategic relationship from them, whatever they want from us we are ready."
The recording ended after that, and included only five minutes of a half-hour-long speech that was strongly critical of Afghanistan's coalition allies.
A statement from NATO's International Security Assistance Force, although issued in response to Mr. Karzai's speech, made no direct reference to it.
Although civilian deaths in Afghanistan increased last year to 2,777, or a 15 percent increase, three-fourths were caused by the insurgents rather than coalition forces, according to a recent United Nations report [2] on protection of civilians.
The most recent case took the life of the president's cousin, [3] who was shot in the house of his uncle during a night raid in the village of Karz in Kandahar Province.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/world/asia/28afghan.html
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/world/asia/10afghanistan.html
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/11/world/asia/11karzai.html