NATO in Afghanistan till 2015 (merged thread)

[carl]

This is a link to a very interesting article by Kate Clark of the Afghan Analyst Network about the Takhar airstrike in 2010.

http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts...in_afghanistan

There is a radical difference in what the US military and what the AAN and the locals think about the identity of the people who were killed. Ms. Clark says the following about this.

Dealing with the U.S. military, it has felt like we are from parallel worlds. Their Afghanistan, where knowledge is often driven largely by signals intelligence and reports provided by a very limited number of local informants, with a very narrow focus on insurgent behaviour, and the normal, everyday world of Afghan politics. In the case of the Takhar attack, these two worlds simply did not connect.

Taabistan said something similar in his post of 3-4-2011.

(I found this article at Free Range International and Baba Tim excerpted the very same quote. I hope he will forgive me stealing it and putting it here.)