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War, War, War See other War, War, War Articles Title: US uses "scorched earth" to minimise casualties troops are employing a controversial new tactic of blowing up houses and in some cases razing Afghan villages they believe have been mined by the Taliban. The tactic, which has evolved over the past few months, has provoked unease among human rights groups and even among some soldiers carrying out the destruction but is understood to have been approved by General David Petraeus, the overall Nato commander, in December - even though it appears at odds with rules of engagement he outlined last year that urged his troops to "treat the Afghan people and their property with respect". Estimates suggest that hundreds of Afghan homes, which typically house dozens of people in extended family groups, have been affected. The Times understands that in one case the abandoned village of Tarok Kalache was razed by more than 20 tonnes of rockets and bombs after being deemed a "Taliban tactical base". Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar. End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar. In an apparently separate incident 40 walled homes in the village of Khosrow were flattened with a barrage of 25 rockets. Other similar incidents have been reported. US Marines in Sangin destroyed a densely housed strip 100 metres wide on either side of the road into the Wishtan area of the town earlier this month to prevent insurgents using the buildings as cover. Allied forces say that the change in tactics - from defusing mines in situ to destroying entire, albeit seemingly empty, property - is in response to the numbers and density of Taliban booby traps left in some areas. The improvised bombs are the Taliban's most effective weapon and casualties among some US forces since last year's surge in troop numbers have been among the highest of the Afghan war. The level of destruction has raised concerns about the potential to lose rather than win hearts and minds among the Afghan population. "Families are caught between insurgents on the one hand rigging their homes and the military on the other blowing them up," said Sarah Holewinski of the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, which is attempting to gather data on the levels of destruction. "Regardless of military victory, home by home, the civilians are obviously the ones losing out. It appears they are being compensated for their destroyed property ... but that says nothing about whether this level of destruction is necessary. "What are civilians supposed to do in this war? No matter which way they turn, they're in a losing position. Military officials have told me they want to clear and hold these towns, so that the civilians can rebuild. That may work long-term but my concern is that in the near term, families are being left, quite literally, out in the cold. They have every reason to be angry." A recent account of the destruction of Tarok Kalache described the unease of the commander tasked with obliterating the village, even though his unit had lost large numbers of men killed and wounded attempting to clear similar settlements in the Arghandab Valley. "I literally cringed when we dropped bombs on these places," Lieutenant-Colonel David Flynn told Paula Brodwell, a researcher at the Harvard Centre for Public Leadership, in a paper she recently published in the American periodical Foreign Policy. "Not because I cared about the enemy we were killing or the homemade explosives destroyed, but I knew the reconstruction would consume the remainder of my deployed life." The report claims that one village elder who "in a fit of theatrics" had accused US forces of ruining his life, appeared somewhat mollified when $US1million of rebuilding work on the village began earlier this month. However, the US commander admitted difficulties establishing what property was owned by which family and giving the villagers a sense of "ownership" in the reconstruction. He was also constrained by US Army rules that limit compensation payments to Afghans to $US10,000. One diplomat, who did not wish to be identified, said that the responsibility for the destruction lay with the Taliban. "The insurgents changed tactics by filling compounds and villages with booby traps on a large scale. Instead of putting IEDs [improvised explosive devices] on roads, they focused all their efforts in turning villages into giant booby traps to try and kill as many coalition troops as possible." "A decision had to be made: did we try to defuse all the bombs and risk losing soldiers in the process or blow the booby traps up and then rebuild the homes? They are only made of mud walls," the source said. "The new blowing-up tactic is unpleasant but necessary. But it's not controversial because there's no one inside the compounds, and the houses can be easily rebuilt," the source said. Abdul Qadeer Noorzai, an engineer and the chief of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in Kandahar, said that there had been confirmed destruction in Arghandab and Spin Boldak districts and that homes "haven't been rebuilt yet." But he said that his office had not received direct complaints from villagers. The Times
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The relationship between morality and liberty is a directly proportional one. "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." - Ben Franklin
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