From an interview for the Spring 2009 New Perspectives Quarterly, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the following about civilian casualties in Afghanistan (emphasis added):
I’m surprised that people, after having been bombed many, many times over, with their children and families killed, torn to pieces, still come to me as their president … The international community should correct its behavior, and the Afghan government should begin to be helped to do more … For years we’ve been saying that we need concentration on the (insurgents’) sanctuaries. We were ignored. For years I’ve been saying that the war on terrorism is not in Afghanistan, it’s in the training camps, it’s in sanctuaries (in Pakistan).
Rather than going there, the coalition went around the Afghan villages, burst into people’s homes and…(has been) committing extrajudicial killings in our country. The latest example was the day before yesterday in Khowst, where a man, a woman and a 12-year-old boy were killed. Were they al-Qaida? And even if they were, was there a court order to shoot them down in their homes? And if they were, was the 12-year-old boy al-Qaida, too? Or the woman? And if this behavior continues, we will be in a deeper trench than we are in today. And the war against terrorism will end in a disgraceful defeat.
NATO forces are beginning to take notice. From Reuters (4.17.2009) ,
After years of alienating Afghans by being slow to acknowledge killing civilians, U.S. troops are trying a new tactic: say sorry fast. Commanders acknowledge that soaring civilian death tolls from U.S. and NATO strikes over the past year have cost them the vital support of ordinary Afghans — and a perception that they were reluctant to take responsibility made the situation worse.
In an effort to blunt the damage, they have put in place new drills in recent months — responding more quickly, coordinating their investigations with Afghan authorities, apologising publicly and offering compensation. … Afghans themselves remain skeptical. “Apologies are good things. But the foreign troops should convince the people that there will be no more such incidents,” said Maolawi Hezatullah, provincial council head in Kunar, where U.S. troops killed six civilians this week. “If such incidents continue to occur, there is no point for apologies.”
I agree with Hezatullah. Apologies are an ineffectual tactic. The Taliban capitalize off of each instance of collateral damage by pitting Afghan civilians against NATO forces. Empirically, the Taliban depended on public angst against NATO bombing to boost recruitment during their revival after the 2001 invasion (see background reading).
Apologizing fails because it misunderstands what it means to listen. Listening is more than receiving information. Listening is defined by how one responds to new information. The logic of the apology is that if we publicly demonstrate that we are sorry we prove that we are empathetic and therefore trustworthy. This is laughable. An Afghan citizen doesn’t (and shouldn’t) care about an apology as long as he or she knows that NATO will continue to kill civilians. Instead of issuing a series of apologies, what is needed is a convincing explanation for why those civilians died. Even if it is unpopular, being honest and upfront with the Afghan public is needed in order to undercut the Taliban’s propaganda machine.
The task of a public diplomacy officer in this context is not to apologize, but to explain why the air strike that killed civilians was essential to bring peace to the region. Evidence needs to be presented to the public. Even if this approach fails, it is superior to issuing ineffectual apologies that at best make the United States appear heartless. Apologizing should be reserved for those rare moments when bombings should not have occured.
Further Reading:
- Foxley, Tim, “The Taliban’s propaganda activities: how well is the Afghan insurgency communicating and what is it saying?” SIPRI Project Paper (2007), http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/pmt/exhibits/2996/foxley_paper.pdf
Background Reading:
- Bakhtiyorjon U. Hammidov, “The Fall of the Taliban Regime and Its Recovery as an Insurgency Movement in Afghanistan,” Masters of Military Art and Science Thesis, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (2004), stinet.dtic.mil/dticrev/PDFs/ADA42 8904.pdf
- Canfield, Robert L., “Fraternity, Power and Time in Central Asia,” The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan, ed, Robert D. Crews and Amin Tarzi, Cambridge: Harvard University Press (2008)
- Johnson, Thomas and M. Chris Mason, “Understanding the Taliban and Insurgency in Afghanistan,” Orbis 51.1 (2007)
- Jones, Seth G., “The Rise of Afghanistan’s Insurgency,” International Security 32.4 (2008)
Whose Hearts & Minds 