When is an accidental civilian death not an accident?

Is the criticism fair? Does the military's system of collateral damage assessment work? The success of U.S. efforts to minimize casualties from airstrikes is extremely difficult to judge, since statistics for Iraqi and Afghan fatalities are scarce and hotly debated. In Afghanistan in particular, what is happening on the ground is difficult to assess. The terrain is rough and remote. There are few reliable witnesses or independent assessments of civilian deaths. But it is at least possible that civilian deaths from airstrikes are decreasing even as the tonnage of bombs dropped increases.

A study published in the British medical journal Lancet last October painted a famously bleak picture of spiraling violence in Iraq. The Lancet study came in at the high end of casualty estimates for the war, estimating that 655,000 more Iraqis have died since the invasion than would have died if the occupation had never occurred, and that fully 601,000 of those deaths were violent. The study said 31 percent of the violent deaths were attributable to coalition forces. The study, overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins and derided by the Bush administration as not credible, said the number of violent deaths attributable to coalition forces has increased every year since the invasion. But there was one exception: Compared with 2003 and 2004, the number of reported deaths from airstrikes decreased in 2006.

Anecdotally, U.S. officials also add some caveats to recent civilian casualty headlines. They acknowledge that mistaken intelligence has led to some truly accidental deaths, including the deaths of children. But in other cases, they say, Taliban or al-Qaida sympathizers appear to be delivering inflated reports of civilian deaths. The Taliban also fights among civilians, dramatically increasing the likelihood of civilian deaths when troops call for close air support. (U.S. officials say that during a recent firefight, innocent civilians were forced into a trench alongside Taliban fighters so that any airstrike would result in the significant loss of civilian lives).

The unreliability of civilian casualty numbers from Afghanistan is exemplified by an Associated Press report from Friday, July 27. The AP said that airstrikes in Helmand province, in support of NATO troops, had killed 50 Taliban and 28 civilians. The source was Gereshk district chief Abdul Manaf Khan, who based his claims on reports from villagers. The AP noted that Khan's claims could not be verified because of the remote location -- and that there was apparently no evidence. Though the clashes had started Thursday night, Khan said the bodies had already been buried, even as fighting continued Friday. The article also quoted Malim Mirwali, a member of Parliament for Gereshk, who claimed that more than 40 civilians had been killed in that airstrike.

In a telephone call from Kabul, Garlasco, the airstrike chief turned human rights advocate, said he is trying to get to the bottom of the overall civilian casualty numbers in Afghanistan. According to Garlasco, his research to date shows that the number of civilian deaths reported from airstrikes is inflated.

But one of the hurdles to determining whether the U.S. military is successfully limiting civilian casualties is that the military itself isn't doing a good job of counting. That's why advocates for civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, while applauding the military's steps to minimize civilian deaths, remain skeptical about whether those steps are working.

The military is supposed to go back and review an airstrike using aerial footage and, when possible, conduct an inspection by troops on the ground. But thorough postmortems are rare. The military devotes resources to preventing civilian casualties before munitions are used, the advocates say, but it isn't devoting the same energy to see if its preventive measures are working. "You have to do this collateral damage estimate beforehand," said Holewinski, from the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict. "And afterwards, in order to make sure you did it correctly, you are supposed to do a collateral damage assessment. And that is what they rarely do." Crowder said that the military reviews airstrikes from aerial footage, but admitted that on-the-ground investigations are far from guaranteed. "In some cases, you can't get there in a timely fashion."

And regardless of whether the American measures are effective, human rights activists are well aware that the NATO forces fighting in Afghanistan have tighter rules about collateral damage than the Americans. The statement issued by human rights groups last month, which cited "disproportionate and indiscriminate" air power -- language quoted from the Law of Armed Conflict -- directed most of its venom at "forces or agencies outside NATO command, often American forces in Operation Enduring Freedom."

In an unconventional and complicated arrangement in Afghanistan, roughly 32,000 NATO-led troops are conducting stabilization activities there. Meanwhile, approximately 21,000 U.S. service members are conducting counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan under Operation Enduring Freedom, currently spearheaded by the 82nd Airborne Division and special operations units. Commanders from NATO and Operation Enduring Freedom both call in airstrikes, carried out almost exclusively by U.S. aircraft getting their air-tasking orders from Crowder's shop in Qatar, the Combined Air Operations Center.

NATO forces conduct their own collateral damage estimates for preplanned targets like Taliban leaders. Thomas, the spokesman in Kabul, says NATO forces have adopted a "zero tolerance" policy on civilian casualties for preplanned strikes. This is because the NATO stabilization mission is particularly dependent on the good will of the Afghan people. (And NATO partners are extremely sensitive to civilian casualties.)

Thomas calls the airstrike protocol there "the most strict possible rules for civilian casualties that you could possibly have." Forces there will not carry out a strike "if there is any reasonable evidence or reason to think that there might be a single civilian in a compound or an area."

Even for close air support for troops fighting under the NATO flag, Thomas says, forces go to great lengths to avoid dropping bombs on innocent civilians. "Self-defense trumps everything," he said, noting that close air support is far more prevalent than preplanned strikes. "But even in a self-defense-type situation, the idea is to try to break contact some other way to avoid endangering civilians."

But Thomas also confirms that the standards for civilian deaths are "more strict" for NATO forces than for U.S. forces in Operation Enduring Freedom. "Our job is not a counterterrorism mission," Thomas explained. "That's not the same for other missions going on here or in Iraq."

"Yes, the Taliban are killing civilians," said Garlasco, summarizing the situation. "And yes, the U.S. is doing its darnedest to make sure they don't ... But when it really comes down to it, they are still dropping the bombs, so it is incumbent on them at all times to do their best and follow international law to make sure they are not killing innocent civilians." On whether they are succeeding in preventing civilian deaths, Garlasco said, "I really think they are trying very hard. It's tough."

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