Civilian Casualty Investigations Take Time

Outrage over the killing of 10 Afghans, including eight schoolboys, during a joint operation by international and Afghan security forces in the northeastern province of Kunar on Dec. 26 continues to grow in Afghanistan and in the progressive blogosphere.

On AfterDowningStreet.Org, David Swanson wrote that "Dragging children out of bed and killing them is not a freak blip in the course of a war. It is war reduced to a comprehensible scale."

Compelling words, but we don't know if that's what actually happened. Not yet.

The news stories being used to back up the claim that eight children were roused from their sleep, handcuffed and shot in cold blood all cite the same two sources that are actually just one source: the head of a delegation chosen by President Hamid Karzai and dispatched to Kunar on Dec. 29, and the statement Karzai's office released when the delegation returned less than two days later.

There are a few problems with this.

As I wrote in my last post about the Kunar killings, investigations into civilian casualties in armed conflict take time -- or at least they should -- and require the expertise of forensic scientists (usually with special training in ballistics), lawyers, police detectives, and human rights investigators.

Karzai sent a delegation of ministerial officials and members of parliament. There are no indications any of the aforementioned necessary experts were included. Even if they were, two days is not enough to carry out a thorough investigation.

Civilian casualties are politically combustible, and can inspire more violence. In the future, members of the press should be responsible in their reporting and explain the qualifications (or lack thereof) of investigatory delegations, instead of just printing stuff like this from the Times (London), which simply repeats the presidential press release.

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, the UN Assistance Mission and NATO are all carrying out investigations. So far, the only details of the Dec. 26 incident the UN is willing to confirm are that 10 people died, and eight were indeed local students. This should not be extrapolated to conclude that the scenario described by the presidential delegation, based on its very short, non-expert investigation, is absolutely what happened. It's simply too early to tell.

What we do know is that eight adolescent and teenage boys died horrifically nine days ago. Regardless of the circumstances, this is a tragedy; depending on the circumstances, it's possibly also a war crime. But until we have the final reports, we should resist the urge to draw conclusions.

[Photo: Wikicommons public domain]