NATO airstrikes killed Afghan civilians in two provinces, local officials reported Monday, and at least two dozen others died when floods swept through villages in a third province.
The extent of the alleged civilian casualties from NATO airstrikes in recent days in Badghis and Helmand provinces was not immediately clear. A spokesman for NATO-led troops in Kabul said the coalition was aware of the allegations of civilian casualties in the provinces but had no immediate comment.
When a Taliban squad that attacks NATO forces is composed of members of a single extended family (which as an entity obeys the will of its dominant male(s)) and that Taliban squad conducts it operations out of or in the vicinity of the other members of the extended family, that whole extended family becomes part of the support element of that Taliban squad.
The senior males running that extended family made that decision to place their extended family on the ‘front-line,’ NATO didn’t make that decision.
Consider, too, that the Taliban…….as do most other radical Islamic groups…….often use schools and family weddings and other family gatherings, from within which they conduct their raids against what they deem to be valid targets, and when they are hit by retaliatory raids, innocent cvilians are indistinguishable from the Taliban fighters themselves; claiming afterwards of indiscriminate killing of unarmed civilians. This is guerilla warfare at its worst.