Afghan Journal
Lifting the veil on conflict, culture and politics
Bring on the tanks, they’ll come to like them in Afghanistan
(File picture of a M1 Abrams tank deployed in Iraq)
The United States is introducing tanks into the fight against the Taliban in the Afghan south for the first time since 2001, but the logic behind the move is still being hotly debated.
One of the reasons advanced is that the arrival of the M1 Abrams tank, propelled by a jet engine and armed with a 120mm gun that can destroy a house more than a mile away, is going to shake up the battlefield. “The tanks bring awe, shock and firepower,” The Washington Post quoted a senior U.S. officer based in Afghanistan as saying. “It’s pretty significant.”
What is even more significant is the end-result that the U.S. military is hoping to achieve by unleashing such firepower in the Taliban stronghold. The aim is not just to destroy the Taliban, but also in a rather convoluted fashion show ordinary Afghans that the government and its Western backers call the shots in the countryside, not the Taliban. Over the past several months, as Wired blog reports the US has already stepped up air strikes, Special Operations raids, and artillery attacks, as part of General David Petraeus strategy to turn the heat on the Taliban with a view to forcing them to sue for peace.
And so while civilian casualties have been avoided, people have lost homes and farms in the U.S. military offensive in the south which clearly has been reshaped into a sustained series of deadly attacks, rather than a big-bang high profile operation of the Marjah type earlier this year. In one operation alone last month, U.S. planes dropped two dozen 2,000-pound bombs near Kandahar, the Post reported. You can imagine the impact of such firepower on the countryside. Trees, crops and huts – everything is going to be swept up under the weight of the assault.
Strangers at the door: Afghanistan’s deadly night raids
NATO has admitted that its forces were responsible for the deaths of five Afghan civilians including three women during a botched night-time raid in eastern Afghanistan in February. Two of the women were pregnant, one a mother of 10, the other had six children.
The alliance initially said troops had found the women already killed, bound and gagged, when they entered the compound in Gardez in Paktia province, but later acknowledged that was untrue. NATO is now looking at allegations by Afghan investigators that U.S. Special Forces involved in the raid tampered with evidence at the scene to cover the blunder.
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