The commander of NATO-led forces in Afghanistan has promised the Afghan president his entire force will be retrained immediately after recent civilian deaths during coalition operations, officials from both sides said on Tuesday. Civilian casualties are a major source of friction between Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government and its Western backers. Rules governing air strikes and “night raids” have been tightened several times in recent years, but such operations can still go wrong.
NATO forces angered Islamabad and tested an already uneasy alliance when an attack killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at the weekend. NATO described it as a “tragic, unintended incident”. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul confirmed ISAF commander U.S. General John Allen had written to Karzai in response to civilian deaths in volatile Kandahar province in Afghanistan’s south last week.
