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Ben Gilbert reports on US efforts to stop the use of roadside bombs by insurgents in Afghanistan, and why Afghan civilians fear those efforts.

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KATY CLARK:  I’m Katy Clark and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH in Boston.  The Taliban’s second in command is said to have been captured in Pakistan.  Meanwhile, across the border in southern Afghanistan, the U.S. led offensive in Marjah continues.  It’s considered a test of General Stanley McChrystal’s strategy to protect civilians in Afghanistan.  It doesn’t appear to be going that well.  Today coalition forces said that 12 civilians killed Sunday were hit by an air strike targeting Taliban fighters.  And yesterday an incident unrelated to the Marjah offensive, a NATO strike killed five civilians in Zari district near Kandahar.  NATO said they were mistaken for insurgents planting improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.  Ben Gilbert was embedded with coalition forces in Zari in December.  He reports that even then, the effort to counter IEDs was controversial.

BEN GILBERT:  When Lieutenant Colonel Reich Andersen and his soldiers arrived in Zari district last fall, at least 10 IEDs were exploding every day on the local highway.  The Taliban were planting massive bombs made with homemade explosive or HME, under the tarmac.  Andersen remembers one bomb that killed four American soldiers in their MRAP, a heavily armored vehicle.

REICH ANDERSEN:  You couldn’t even tell it was an MRAP because they were able to pack 1,800 pounds of HME under the road.  They tunneled up underneath the road over a period of time and just continued to stack the stuff in there and waited for the opportune moment.

GILBERT: So Lieutenant Colonel Andersen committed his troops to a highway search.  His solders drove up and down the road looking for IEDs.  Afghan police and soldiers set up check points, helicopters prowled the skies searching for Afghans planting the bombs.  Colonel Andersen says the highway, known as the Ring Road, is now one of the safest routes in the country.

ANDERSEN: We’ve taken the Ring Road here that goes through Zari once noted as the most dangerous stretch of road in Afghanistan from seven to ten IED events a day down to a total of about 10 to 15 events over the past month.

GILBERT:  The effort has won praise from the military commanders in Kandahar.  But Afghan officials are less enthusiastic.  They say the aggressive counter-IED campaign is killing civilians.  They’re especially concerned about the use of helicopters.  About a mile from the U.S. base, two Afghan farmers speak with the U.S. patrol.  Mohammad and Jan Mahmad say the helicopters flying overhead scare them more than the Taliban.  He says we are afraid of the helicopters.  We cannot work our fields.  Ten days ago the helicopters killed two guys who were just watering their fields.  The patrol leader, Lieutenant Nathan Wagnon tells a translator to explain what the farmers need to do if they’re digging near a road.

NATHAN WAGNON:  Tell them basically that it’s okay to farm your field, but when you’re working real close to the road, because the Taliban plan mines on the road, then the helicopters think that guys who are digging or working on the road are actually putting bombs in the road.  So if you’re on the road working and the helicopters fly over, you need to put your tools down and step away from the road.

GILBERT: As the U.S. troops are leaving, helicopters fly low over the fields.  Back at the U.S. base, Nyaz Mohammad Sar Haddi, the Afghan government official in Zari district, says the American rush to eliminate the IED threat resulted in the death of 17 civilians in the last few months of 2009 alone.  This is a big problem Sar Haddi says.  They’re killing innocent people all the time and people are getting very upset in different areas.  Sar Haddi says one of those killed was a 12-year-old boy standing outside his family’s compound.  Sar Haddi says incidents like this are pushing people toward the Taliban.  The helicopter killed two men in front of an Afghan National Police Checkpoint Sar Haddi says.  They were innocent.  One was a cousin of a member of Parliament.  I asked Lt. Col. Andersen about that incident.  He had a different take on it.

ANDERSEN: Are there mistakes made?  Sure, absolutely.  It’s unfortunate.  I don’t think that one was.  In the incidence that you’re referring to, I remember seeing the photographs of the holes that they were digging in the road.

GILBERT: Anderson says photos taken from the helicopter’s gun turret clearly show the men were planting an IED.  Andersen says he’s going to start bringing photos like this to meetings with locals to prove that hi men had good reason to open fire.

ANDERSEN: And, unfortunately, conducting our operations, sometimes good people get hurt.  And that’s our last intent because we, more than anyone, know that if civilians are hurt or killed, that you probably have just created more support for the Taliban.

GILBERT: Coalition officers who asked not to be named have privately questioned whether the use of helicopters is worth the risk of hitting civilians.  Lt. Col. Anderson defends the use of helicopters, but he says he has stopped flights over some areas so locals are not afraid to farm their fields.  He also hopes to set up a system so the farmers can let U.S. troops know if they’re digging near a road.  But that my not be so easy in a region where the cell phone network is sporadic and much is lost in translation.

ANDERSEN: I’m trying to come up with ways that we can co-exist to where the farmers can continue to farm.  We’re not going to inadvertently target them, while also being able to press the Taliban back.

GILBERT: In light of yesterday’s civilian casualties in Zari district, its clear Andersen and his unit have yet to find a solution.  For The World, I’m Ben Gilbert.

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