A report released by no less an authority than the United Nations on Monday made startling revelations about horrifying attack on a Madrasa (Seminary) in near the northern city of Kunduz last month resulting in high numbers of child casualties.
The report said that rockets and heavy machineguns fired from Afghan government helicopters killed and wounded 107 boys and men attending a religious ceremony. Pertinently, the incident that took place on April 2, at Laghmani village of Kunduz district had prompted the UN to launch an investigation. According to the UN report, based on interviews with over 90 witnesses, the helicopters swooped down, firing rockets and .50 calibre machineguns into a crowd attending a “dastar bandi’ ceremony in Laghmani village, Dasht-i-Archi.
The UN report also underlined the risks of a new strategy intended to break a stalemate with the Taliban. “A key finding of this report is that the government used rockets and heavy machinegun fire on a religious gathering, resulting in high numbers of child casualties,” the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said. It said 36 people, including 30 children, were killed and 71 wounded and there were questions “as to the government’s respect of the rules of precaution and proportionality under international humanitarian law”. Investigators verified 107 victims, but had received victims’ lists from various sources indicating over 200 casualties, the report said, noting that it did not claim to be providing final, verified civilian casualty figures.
The shocking report regarding massive civilian causalities in Kuduz has put a serious question mark on the Afghan government and coalition forces’ claims of protecting civilians in the war zone. It also speaks volumes about flawed counter-terrorism policy being blindly pursued over the years without having an inkling of its far reaching consequences over the region. This is not for the first time that civilians were targeted, such kind of attacks and incidents have taken place in the past wherein innocent people were killed. In Oct 2015, 42 people were killed in a US airstrike on a hospital in Kunduz city run by medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontiers.
Any way the UNAMA report must serve as an eye-opener for all those who hold the belief that use of hard power is the only solution to Afghan conundrum and only way forward to bring Taliban to negotiating table. There are so many lessons to learn from Afghanistan’s chequered history and the one that is vivid and clear is that a political solution to Afghan problem is direly needed to end this decades’ long war that has so far brought nothing but death and destruction in the region. Since there is no military solution to Afghan problem it is time that the US in particular must review its policy towards the region and start dialogue and reconciliation process between key stakeholders to ensure peace and stability inside Afghanistan. And this is what the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had emphasized on during his visit to Kabul last year.