"We have to be given a larger role," said Dr. Abdullah, the Afghan foreign minister, in an interview. "If things do not improve, well, I will certainly pray for the Americans and wish them success, but I will no longer be able to take part in this."

Flaws in U.S. Air War Left Hundreds of Civilians Dead
The American air campaign in Afghanistan, based on a high-tech, out-of-harm's-way strategy, has produced a pattern of mistakes that have killed hundreds of Afghan civilians.

On-site reviews of 11 locations where airstrikes killed as many as 400 civilians suggest that American commanders have sometimes relied on mistaken information from local Afghans. Also, the Americans' preference for airstrikes instead of riskier ground operations has cut off a way of checking the accuracy of the intelligence.

The reviews, over a six-month period, found that the Pentagon's use of overwhelming force meant that even when truly military targets were located, civilians were sometimes killed. The 11 sites visited accounted for many of the principal places where Afghans and human rights groups claim that civilians have been killed.

Pentagon officials say their strategy has evolved in recent months away from airstrikes to the use of ground forces to hunt down remaining fighters for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Since then, air power has been deployed in mostly a supporting role; still, the effects have often been disastrous.

The American attack this month on villages in Oruzgan Province, where airstrikes killed at least 54 civilians, has crystallized a sense of anger here is undermining the good will the United States gained by helping to dislodge the Taliban. That anger is threatening to frustrate America's ability to hunt down Taliban and Qaeda forces that still survive.

For the first time, Afghan leaders are demanding a say in how air raids are conducted. They are even hinting that if the mistakes continue, they may limit America's future military activities.

The war in Afghanistan is not the first time that differences have risen between what pilots thought they hit and what was found on the ground later. Nor is it the first time that questions have risen about civilian casualties from American airstrikes.

After 78 days of airstrikes over Serbia in 1999, American military officials conceded that damage to the Yugoslav Army was far less extensive than originally thought. In those raids, Human Rights Watch, an American organization, said at least 500 civilians had been killed.

American commanders say they have not kept track of civilian deaths in Afghanistan, but they say their strategy has succeeded. Earlier this year, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the head of Central Command, called the Afghan campaign "the most accurate war ever fought in this nation's history." The military also takes solace in relatively low American casualties, including 37 soldiers killed.

Indeed, the extraordinary accuracy of American airstrikes since they began in October has produced few of the types of disasters that plagued past wars, when bombs aimed at one target hit something else instead. In one of those cases here last November, an American bomb aimed at a building that was thought to harbor a senior Taliban military commander, Jalaluddin Haqqani, hit a mosque.

A reporter visiting the mosque after the strike found evidence to substantiate Afghans' claim that at least 65 civilians died. American military officials acknowledged that the mosque had been struck in error, but a senior American military official was not able to give the precise number of dead.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/21/international/asia/21CIVI.html?pagewanted=all&position=top