UN Afghanistan Report Shows Double
UN resolution, Perry said if the
Standard In Judging Civilian Casualties
BY SAMUEL SOKOL
ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT
The United Nations’ Afghanistan
Annual Report on Protection of Civilians
in Armed Conflict, issued in January, has
absolved coalition forces of culpability
for the majority of civilian casualties in
the almost decade long allied occupation
of Afghanistan.
According to the report issued by the
United Nations Assistance Mission in
Afghanistan, at least “5,978 civilians were
killed and injured in 2009, the highest
number of civilian casualties recorded
since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.”
Already in 2009 the United Nations
reported that the annually rising death toll
in the war ravaged Muslim nation was
mostly due to suicide attacks and impro-
vised explosive devices placed by insurgent
groups. While there was blame placed on
American forces for unnecessary casualties
amongst the civilian population, the 2009
report explained that the Taliban would
frequently attack coalition forces in dense-
ly populated areas. The report did suggest
that coalition forces keep only a necessary
minimal military presence in civilian
zones, but did not go so far as to blame the
United States army for resultant deaths.
The Afghanistan report stands in stark
contrast to a report recently written by a
United Nations’ investigative team head-
ed by Judge Richard Goldstone, a South
African Jewish judge, which was sent to
conduct a post-mortem on Israel’s
January 2009 incursion into the Hamas
ruled Gaza Strip.
The Goldstone Report, as it is colloqui-
ally known, discusses “eleven incidents in
which Israeli forces launched direct
attacks against civilians with lethal out-
come… in which the facts indicate no jus-
tifiable military objective pursued by the
attack.” These allegations of war crimes
on behalf of the Israeli Defense Forces
have been vociferously protested by
If the Palestinian Authority said
that the earth was flat, an
automatic majority at the United
Nations would vote to confirm it.
Israeli and Jewish leaders. Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called
the report a “strategic threat,” saying that
it hampers the ability of democracies to
fight terrorism and to engage in asym-
metrical warfare.
Ashley Perry, media advisor to Israeli
deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon,
told the Five Towns Jewish Times that
Israel is held to a different standard than
other countries in international forums.
While not speaking about any particular
Palestinian Authority said that the earth
was flat, an automatic majority at the
United Nations would vote to confirm it.
Dan McNortan, UNAMA spokesman in
Afghanistan, refused to comment regard-
ing allegations that the United Nations has
applied a different standard to the coali-
tion forces than it has in judging the IDF.
The United Nations alleged that
Israeli forces engaged in “intentional
attacks against the civilian population
and civilian objects,” in discussing
attacks on Gaza mosques.
While the mission only checked two
mosques, the mission’s military expert,
retired Irish Col. Desmond Travers, stated
with assurance that there was “no evi-
dence that mosques were used to store
munitions.” He said, “Those charges
reflect Western perceptions in some
quarters that Islam is a violent religion,”
ignoring the role that radical political
Islam plays in the worldview of Hamas.
When the IDF produced documentary
5 TOWNS JEWISH TIMES
evidence of weapons being stored in
mosques in the Gaza Strip, Travers said
that he did not believe the photographs,
calling them “spurious.”
One of Hamas’s favorite tactics in fight-
ing Israeli forces is to cause the IDF to
respond to attacks originating from civil-
ian infrastructure such as hospitals and
mosques. Subsequent deaths and proper-
ty damage are then carefully filmed and
distributed to the press by members of
the de-facto Hamas government.
Noted Jewish-American jurist Alan
Dershowitz has spoken out harshly
against Richard Goldstone, calling him a
“traitor” and stating that his report “accus-
es Israel of using Hamas rocket attacks
against its civilians as an excuse—a
cover—for a carefully planned and exe-
cuted policy of deliberately targeting
innocent civilians for mass murder.”
Israel entered the Gaza Strip as a result
of almost a decade of continuing rocket
and mortar fire on its population centers
in the Western Negev desert.
The Israeli Defense Forces recently
issued a counter-report addressing some
of the war crimes allegations. The United
Nations blames Israel, rather than Hamas,
for the conflict, with the United Nations’
report going so far as to suggest Israeli
reparations to the population of the Gaza
Strip, a territory ruled by an internation-
ally recognized terrorist organization.
In the case of Israel, the United
Nations decided, “the incident and pat-
terns of events that are considered in this
report have resulted from deliberate plan-
ning and policy decisions throughout the
Continued on Page 58
TRAVEL SECTION February 19, 2010 57
 UN Report
Continued from Page 57

chain of command, down to the standard

operating procedures and instructions
given to the troops on the ground.”
The United Nations Afghanistan report,
on the other hand, noted that many attacks
on civilian targets originate from forces out-
side of the normal coalition chain of com-
mand. However, the UN stopped short of
saying that attacks on civilians or unintend-
ed deaths because of night bombing raids
were the product of a formal policy deci-
sion to harm non-combatants.
Coalition forces have been given cred-
it for attempting to minimize civilian
casualties in Afghanistan. “International
military forces did take strategic and spe-
cific steps to minimize civilian casualties
in 2009,” according to the United Nations.
“The change in ISAF command, clearer
command structures, and a new tactical
directive have all contributed to the
efforts by ISAF to reduce the impact of
the armed conflict on civilians.”
In contrast, Israeli attempts to warn
civilians before airstrikes with pre-record-
ed telephone calls were dismissed as lack-
ing “credibility and clarity.”
In summarizing its findings, the
Afghanistan Annual Report on Protection
of Civilians in Armed Conflict found the
“ISAF’s declared strategy of prioritizing
the safety and security of civilians is a
welcome development.” By the same
token, the Taliban was blamed for active-
ly attacking Afghan civilians. The report
concludes, “the inability or unwilling-
ness of the armed opposition to take
measures that preempt and reduce the
harm that their tactics entail for civilians
translates into a growing death toll and
an ever larger proportion of the total
number of civilian dead.”
The New York Times reported in 2009
in the name of the United Nations that
“for all the civilians killed at the hands of
the Afghan government and American-led
forces, the Afghan people have more to
fear from the insurgents.” Significantly
more non-combatants have been injured
or killed in Afghanistan by allied troops
than by IDF forces in the Gaza Strip.
The former British commander in
Afghanistan, Col. Richard Kemp, told the
BBC that he did not “think there has ever
been a time in the history of warfare
when any army has made more effort to
reduce civilian casualties and deaths of
innocent people than the [Israel Defense
Forces] is doing … in Gaza.”
A career diplomat with years of experi-
ence at the United Nations confided that
it is no surprise that the United Nations
uses a different standard to judge Israel.
Speaking off the record and requesting to
remain anonymous, he mentioned the
UNHRC’s refusal to condemn the brutal
tactics used by the Sri Lankan army
against Tamil insurgents last year. The
United Nations, he said, referred to the
brutal civil war as an “internal matter.”
Speaking in Dublin, Navi Pillai, the UN
High Commissioner for Human Rights,
called for an investigation of human
rights abuses in Sri Lanka. According to
the BBC, she expressed “disappointment
that the issue of alleged war crimes in Sri
Lanka was not properly addressed at the
Human Rights Council.”
The United Nations’ spokesman in
New York could not be reached by the
Five Towns Jewish Times for comment. ❖
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