18 months after cutting back on air strikes, NATO is all-but-bragging about killing insurgents from the skies. In a stream of press releases, the military alliance in Afghanistan is boasting about the air-induced demise to 12 insurgents in the past 10 days. It's the latest move in a spin war with the Taliban about civilian casualties, one that contrasts the air strikes' "precision" with the insurgents' "barbarism."

Reporters woke up this morning to an emailed report from the International Security Assistance Force Joint Command (yeah, those guys) about a "successful" air strike in Kandahar. The strike occurred Monday in an "open, unpopulated field" following an intelligence operation to track a supposed Taliban commander named Zulmai. "After careful planning to ensure no civilians were present, coalition aircraft engaged the insurgents, killing Zulmai and another insurgent, and wounded the other," the press release reads.

Zulmai has company. The day before, in Helmand Province, Qari Hazrat, whom NATO identifies as a local insurgent commander, died with three colleagues in an air strike "while they were driving down an isolated road." (Sounds like Task Force ODIN's eyes in the sky were watching that road.) And the day before that, NATO aircraft followed a motorcycle driven by a man believed to be a leader of the Taliban-aligned Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in Kunduz Province and took him out. (NATO notably doesn't claim to have verified the guy's identity.) The hit occurred "after verifying insurgent activity and ensuring no civilians were present."

Two other strikes – one in the Zormat district of Paktia Province, the other in after an attack on a huge base in Khost – killed five other insurgents. In both cases, NATO assured, "No civilians were wounded or killed."

But that str8-killa-no-filla message isn't the only one NATO wants out. The other release reporters received this morning was about a roadside bomb attack in Kandahar that killed an official responsible for coordinating religious pilgrimages. "Criminals continue to attack Afghan civilians and government officials showing a total disregard for human life and the peaceful people of this country," an IJC officer, Colonel Rafael Torres, said in the release.

Torres is big on that "total disregard for human life" formation when describing the insurgency. He's used permutations of it in seven prepared statements since July 12. That's shortly after General David Petraeus arrived in Kabul to take over the Afghanistan war. His explicit orders, provided in his July 28 counterinsurgency guidance, are to reframe civilian casualties as a problem for the Taliban, not the U.S.-led coalition. It's the same play Petraeus ran in Iraq, highlighting al-Qaeda's finger-chopping excesses. "Hang their barbaric actions like millstones around their necks," Petraeus told his troops in July.

Any reporter on Petraeus' press list can verify that NATO is undertaking precisely that initiative. McClatchy reviewed 300 NATO press releases in the first month after Petraeus took command. A full quarter of them "have focused on Taliban attacks and other acts that harmed or endangered civilians." WhenI interviewed Petraeus two weeks ago, I began a question by noting that the United Nations recently found the Taliban to be responsible for more Afghan civilians than NATO. "Vastly more," Petraeus interjected.

The air war in Afghanistan may not have changed altogether much since generals David McKiernan and Stanley McChrystal restricted air strikes in response to Afghan outrage over civilian deaths. It still focuses heavily on intelligence-gathering missions. But the Taliban's own civilian killings have emboldened Petraeus not just to restore air strikes as an offensive weapon, but to call attention to them as well.

At least until civilians die in the inevitable botched strike. Petraeus' orders are to be "first with the truth," meaning to acknowledge mistakes when they happen. That could easily spur a retrenchment of the P.R. push on air strikes. And it's also worth asking whether journalists, not Afghan civilians, are the target. NATO puts out information in Pashto and Dari, but some 80 percent of Afghans can't read; most don't have internet access; and presumably a small fraction of those who do sign up for the latest press releases. Until they do, air strikes will continue to speak louder than media offensives.

Credit: Noah Shachtman

See Also: