[R-G] U.S. Secret Air War Pulverizes Afghanistan and Iraq

[Anthony Fenton]

U.S. Secret Air War Pulverizes Afghanistan and Iraq
by Conn Hallinan
	
September 16, 2007
Foreign Policy in Focus
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=13790
According to the residents of Datta Khel, a town in Pakistan's North  
Waziristan, three missiles streaked out of Afghanistan's Pakitka  
Province and slammed into a Madrassa, or Islamic school, this past  
June. When the smoke cleared, the Asia Times reported, 30 people were  
dead.

The killers were robots, General Atomics MQ-1 Predators. The AGM-114  
Hellfire missiles they used in the attack were directed from a base  
deep in the southern Nevada desert.



It was not the first time Predators had struck. The previous year a  
CIA Predator took a shot at al-Qaeda's number two man, Ayman al- 
Zawahiri, but missed. The missile, however, killed 18 people.  
According to the Asia Times piece, at least one other suspected al- 
Qaeda member was assassinated by a Predator in Pakistan's northern  
frontier area, and in 2002 a Predator killed six "suspected al-Qaeda"  
members in Yemen.



These assaults are part of what may be the best kept secret of the  
Iraq-Afghanistan conflicts: an enormous intensification of US  
bombardments in these and other countries in the region, the  
increasing number of civilian casualties such a strategy entails, and  
the growing role of pilot-less killers in the conflict.



According to Associated Press, there has been a five-fold increase in  
the number of bombs dropped on Iraq during the first six months of  
2007 over the same period in 2006. More than 30 tons of those have  
been cluster weapons, which take an especially heavy toll on civilians.



The U.S. Navy has added an aircraft carrier to its Persian Gulf  
force, and the Air Force has moved F-16s into Balad air base north of  
Baghdad.



Balad, which currently conducts 10,000 air operations a week, is  
strengthening runways to handle the increase in air activity. Col.  
David Reynolds told the AP, "We would like to get to be a field like  
Langley, if you will." The Langley field in Virginia is one of the  
Air Force's biggest and most sophisticated airfields.



The Air Force certainly appears to be settling in for a long war.  
"Until we can determine that the Iraqis have got their air force to  
significant capability," says Lt Gen. Gary North, the regional air  
commander, "I think the coalition will be here to support that effort."



The Iraqi air force is virtually non-existent. It has no combat  
aircraft and only a handful of transports.



Improving the runways has allowed the Air Force to move B1-B bombers  
from Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to Balad, where the big  
aircraft have been carrying out daily strikes. A B1-B can carry up to  
24 tons of bombs.



The step-up in air attacks is partly a reflection of how beaten up  
and overextended U.S. ground troops are. While Army units put in 15- 
month tours, Air Force deployments are only four months, with some  
only half that. And Iraqi and Afghani insurgents have virtually no  
ability to inflict casualties on aircraft flying at 20,000 feet and  
using laser and satellite-guided weapons, in contrast to the serious  
damage they are doing to US ground troops.



Besides increasing the number of F-16s, B1-Bs, and A-10 attack  
planes, Predator flight hours over both countries have doubled from  
2005. "The Predator is coming into its own as a no-kidding weapon  
verses a reconnaissance-only platform," brags Maj. Jon Dagley,  
commander of the 46th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron.



The Air Force is also deploying a bigger, faster and more muscular  
version of the Predator, the MQ-9 "Reaper" -- as in grim -- a robot  
capable of carrying four Hellfire missiles, plus two 500 lb. bombs.



The Predators and the Reapers have several advantages, the most  
obvious being they don't need pilots. "With more Reapers I could send  
manned airplanes home," says North.



At $8.5 million an aircraft -- the smaller Predator comes in at $4.5  
million apiece -- they are also considerably cheaper than the F-16  
($19 million) the B1-B ($200+ million) and even the A-10 ($9.8 million).



The Air Force plans to deploy 170 Predators and 70 Reapers over the  
next three years. "It is possible that in our lifetime we will be  
able to run a war without ever leaving the US," Lt Col David Branham  
told the New York Times.



The result of the stepped up air war, according to the London-based  
organization Iraq Body Count, is an increase in civilian casualties.  
A Lancet study of "excess deaths" caused by the Iraq war found that  
air attacks were responsible for 13% of the deaths -- 76,000 as of  
June 2006 -- and that 50% of the deaths of children under 15 were  
caused by air strikes.



The number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan from air strikes has  
created a rift between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the  
United States.



"A senior British commander," according to the New York Times, has  
pressed U.S. Special Forces (SF) to leave southern Afghanistan  
because their use of air power was alienating the local people. SFs  
work in small teams and are dependent on air power for support.



SFs called in an air strike last November near Kandahar that killed  
31 nomads. This past April, a similar air strike in Western  
Afghanistan killed 57 villagers, half of them women and children.  
Coalition forces are now killing more Afghan civilians than the  
Taliban are. The escalating death toll has thrown the government of  
Hamid Karzai into a crisis and the NATO governments into turmoil. "We  
need to understand that preventing civilian casualties is crucially  
important in sustaining the support of the population," British  
Defense Minister Des Browne told the Financial Times.



It has also opened up the allies to the charge of war crimes. In a  
recent air attack in southern Afghanistan that killed 25 civilians,  
NATO spokesman Lt. Col Mike Smith said the Taliban were responsible  
because they were hiding among the civilian population.



But Article 48 of the Geneva Conventions clearly states: "The Parties  
to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian  
population and combatants."  Article 50 dictates that "The presence  
within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within  
the definition of civilian does not deprive the population of its  
civilian character."



The stepped-up air war in both countries has less to do with a  
strategic military decision than the reality that the occupations are  
coming apart at the seams.



For all intents and purposes, the U.S. Army in Iraq is broken, the  
victim of multiple tours, inadequate forces, and the kind of war Iraq  
has become: a conflict of shadows, low-tech but highly effective  
roadside bombs, and a population which is either hostile to the  
occupation or at least sympathetic to the resistance.



It is much the same in Afghanistan. Lord Inge, the former British  
chief of staff, recently said, "The situation in Afghanistan is much  
worse than many people recognize...it is much more serious that  
people want to recognize." A well-placed military source told the  
Observer, "If you talk privately to the generals, they are very  
worried." Faced with defeat or bloody stalemate on the ground, the  
allies have turned to air power, much as the U.S. did in Vietnam.  
But, as in Vietnam, the terrible toll bombing inflicts on civilians  
all but guarantees long-term failure.



"Far from bringing about the intended softening up of the  
opposition," Phillip Gordon, a Brookings Institute Fellow, told the  
Asia Times, "bombing tends to rally people behind their leaders and  
cause them to dig in against outsiders who, whatever the  
justification, are destroying their homeland."





Conn Hallinan is a Foreign Policy In Focus columnist.