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126 thirty-one Civilian Casualties, III I was halfway through my second summer in Afghanistan, and controversy over civilian casualties had calmed down over recent months. There were a number of reasons for this. The first was because President Karzai seemed to be thinking twice before lobbing criticism at the Americans and their international allies in the pre-election climate. And second, because the issue was more than ever a top priority for the international mission, as McChrystal’s report had made abundantly clear. Although most civilian casualties continued to be caused by the insurgents, the concept that the highest possible standards were to be expected from ISAF had made inroads at all levels, as had the idea of a military mission that would be required to take all possible measures to protect civilians and their property while going after insurgents. Outlying command units were issued directives on when to make use of lethal weapons. International and Afghan soldiers were called to account for their actions, making a distinction between strategic intent and tactical necessity. The fallout of an operation on the population had to be considered at every stage of that operation. So everything had to be done to avoid harming the innocent. If necessary, international military personnel were allowed to retreat and break off enemy contact. Air forces were to review their ammunition in order to minimize the impact on the civilian population, and ground commanders were expected to do the same for indirect fire. Now the difficulty was to make sure everything filtered down from high command right to the last soldier. This was the biggest problem, because writing tactical directives is straightforward, while rendering general principles into specific rules of conduct for the troops is trickier. Above all, you had to be sure the rules were then going to be applied. 31-2423-0 ch31.indd 126 6/3/13 1:56 PM Civilian Casualties, III 127 I always asked questions whenever I visited the outposts of Helmand and Kandahar. Once, in August 2009, I asked the platoon commander if and how all this emphasis on civilian casualties had changed the way he was operating. He replied that he’d changed a lot of things, first by making international troops take more risks. When I asked for an example, he told me that until a short time before, if his patrol was hit by enemy fire coming from a house, he would order his men to target a mortar at it. “But now?” “Now, I think that there may be civilians in that house, so I let them keep shooting at us and I tell my troops to turn their vehicle and break contact with the enemy,” he replied, although his expression told me he wasn’t entirely convinced of his reply. obviously, even now there are civilian casualties in Afghanistan, and as long as there’s fighting there, that isn’t going to change. There’s not much to be done about it and we all know it. As long as you’re shooting, all you can do is decrease the problem, but you can’t eradicate it completely. I always think of a sentence, one that echoed through my mind the entire time I was in Afghanistan, something I’d heard on television during one of my first nights in Kabul, watching an old episode of Giovanni Minoli’s Italian documentary series La storia siamo noi. The program was dedicated to Giuseppe Ungaretti, an anti-war poet, and at one point a voiceover read this sentence—a simple, almost trivial line. I’ve done nothing but think about it ever since: “We can’t stop one war by starting another one, and if we could understand this, we could understand everything.” When the words come buzzing back into my mind, I think of Ungaretti , and perhaps I delude myself thinking he is wrong, that his words don’t capture the reality. At the end of the day, I say to myself, the poet’s truth is always abstract, universal, and never corresponds to the hard truth of daily life. The poet’s truth is limpid, as light as literature; that of the ordinary mortal, however, is clouded, and it is as heavy as life. Yes, that was what I thought, almost every night in Afghanistan. in early 2010 the United Nations registered a decrease in civilian casualties thanks to the actions of the international coalition. It wasn’t a lot, not enough to salve...

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