Washington - The new US commander in Afghanistan is to issue fresh orders this week setting tighter limits on the use of air strikes to try to reduce the high civilian death toll, one of the reasons attributed to the swing in support behind the Taliban.

Coalition forces drop bombs on alleged Taliban positions in Helmand Province. (Photo: AP)

    General Stanley McChrystal, who took over last month after the failure to stem the Taliban advance, told senior US officers and Nato counterparts in video-conference last week the number of civilian casualties was counterproductive.

    He told them he is not ending air strikes but establishing more rigid restrictions on their use.

    McChrystal, who before the new posting was in charge of US special operations, said troops on the ground should not call in air strikes if they are in doubt about whether civilians are in buildings suspected of holding al-Qaida or Taliban members. Basically, they should be called in only if US coalition or Afghanistan troops are in danger of being overrun.

    A Pentagon spokesman said today that in the future if US coalition or Afghanistan government forces come under fire from a civilian compound, they should withdraw rather than risk civilian life by firing back.

    The Pentagon several times since the Taliban began to gain ground a few years ago has said it was taking aboard protests from the Afghanistan government about the number of civilians killed and was imposing new restrictions. McChrystal's predecessor, General David McKiernan, called for restraint in December.

    But each new round of orders has been followed by another bombing atrocity. The latest order from McChrystal is partly in response to an air strike in Farah province last month that generated a lot of anger.

    An estimated 86 civilians were killed.

    The US military late on Friday published part of an internal investigation into that incident, which it said "did not adhere to all of the specific guidance". US and Afghanistan forces fighting the Taliban called in an air strike on a building into which the Taliban fled.

    The first attacks were carried out by F-18s, which are designed for close support of ground troops, but the next wave was by B1 bombers which are not. The report said the use of the bombers may have been a mistake. The B1 planes dropped five 500-pound bombs and two 2,000-pound bombs.

    The report said that missions will only be judged a success if there are no civilian casualties.

    McChrystal, in comments to officers quoted by the New York Times, said: "Air power contains the seeds of our own destruction if we do not use it responsibly. We can lose this fight."

    He suggested that sometimes the Taliban be allowed to escape rather than call in an air strike. "If it is just to defeat the enemy, then we are not going to do it, even if it means we are going to step away from that firefight and fight another time."

    Under his new rules, an air strike such as that in Farah would be ruled out.

    Obama has called the fight in Afghanistan his top foreign policy issue and is doubling the number of US troops from 32,000 to 68,000.

    The Afghanistan president, Hamid Karzai, at present standing for re-election, has repeatedly urged the US government to limit the number of air strikes.

www.truthout.org/062309B