The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 8 | Issue 26 | Number 4 | Article ID 3380 | Jun 28, 2010

1

Roots of U.S. Troubles in Afghanistan: Civilian BombingCasualties and the Cambodian Precedent　　米国アフガニスタン問題の根源——爆撃による民間人死傷とカンボディアの先例

Taylor Owen, Ben Kiernan

R o o t s o f U . S . T r o u b l e s i nAfghanistan: Civilian BombingCasualties and the CambodianPrecedent

Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen

The U.S. war in Afghanistan is “going badly,”according to the New York Times. Nine yearsafter American forces invaded to oust therepressive Taliban regime and its Al-Qaeda ally,“the deteriorating situation demands a seriousassessment now of the military and civilianstrategies.” 1 Aerial bombardment, acentrepiece of the U.S. military effort inAfghanistan, has had a devastating impact oncivilians there. Along with Taliban and Al-Qaeda insurgents and suicide bombers, whohave recently escalated their slaughter of theAfghan population, U.S. and NATO aircrafthave for years inflicted a horrific toll oninnocent villagers.

When U.S. bombs hit a civilian warehouse inAfghanistan in late 2001, U.S. Secretary ofDefense Donald Rumsfeld responded: “We’renot running out of targets, Afghanistan is.”There was laughter in the press gallery.

U.S. Bombing Khanaqa village outsideKabul in 2001 (AP photo)

But the bombing continued and spread to Iraqin 2003, with the United States determined touse “the force necessary to prevail, plus some,”and asserting that no promises would be madeto avoid “collateral damage.”2 Afghan and Iraqicivilian casualties, in other words, werepredictable if not inevitable. The show ofstrength aside, didn’t the U.S. underestimatethe strategic cost of collateral damage? If“shock and awe” appeared to work at least in2001 against the Taliban regular army, thecontinued use of aerial bombardment has alsonourished civilian support for the Taliban andAl Qaeda anti-U.S. insurgency. In March 2010,the New York Times reported that “civiliandeaths caused by American troops andAmerican bombs have outraged the localpopulation and made the case for theinsurgency.”3 Beyond the moral meaning ofinflicting predictable civilian casualties, and

APJ | JF 8 | 26 | 4

2

contravention of international laws of war, it isalso clear that the political repercussions of airstrikes outweigh their military benefits.

Cleanup following U.S. bombing of avillage wedding in 2008 (EPI photo)

This is not news. The extension of the VietnamWar to Cambodia, which the U.S. Air Forcebombed from 1965 to 1973, was a troublingprecedent. First, Cambodia became in 1969-73one of the most heavily-bombarded countries inhistory (along with North Korea, SouthVietnam, and Laos).4 Then, in 1975-79, itsuffered genocide at the hands of Pol Pot’sKhmer Rouge communists, who had beenmilitary targets of the U.S. bombing but alsobecame its political beneficiaries.

Despite key differences, an important similaritylinks the current conflict in Afghanistan to the1970-75 Cambodian war: increasing U.S.reliance on airpower against a heterogeneousinsurgency. Moreover, in the past few years, asfighting has continued in Afghanistansupported by U.S. air power, Taliban forceshave benefited politically, recruiting among ananti-U.S. Afghan constituency that appears tohave grown even as the insurgents suffermilitary casualties. In Cambodia, it wasprecisely the harshest, most extreme elementsof the insurgency who survived the U.S.bombing, expanded in numbers, and then won

the war. The Khmer Rouge grew from a smallforce of fewer than 10,000 in 1969 to over200,000 troops and militia in 1973.5 Duringthat period their recruitment propagandasuccessfully highlighted the casualties anddamage caused by U.S. bombing.6 Within abroader Cambodian insurgency, the radicalKhmer Rouge leaders eclipsed their royalist,reformist, and pro-Hanoi allies as well asdefeating their enemy, the pro-U.S. Cambodiangovernment of Lon Nol, in 1975.

The Nixon Doctrine had proposed that theUnited States could supply an allied Asianregime with the matériel to withstand internalor external challenge while the U.S. withdrewits own ground troops or remained at arm’slength. “Vietnamization” built up the air andground fighting capability of South Vietnamesegovernment forces while American units slowlydisengaged. In Cambodia from 1970,Washington gave military aid to General LonNol’s new regime, tolerating its rampantcorruption, while the U.S. Air Force (and thelarge South Vietnamese Air Force) conductedmassive aerial bombardment of its Vietnameseand Khmer Rouge communist opponents andtheir heterogeneous united front, across ruralCambodia.

U.S. policy in Afghanistan has shown a similarreliance on air strikes in fighting the motleyinsurgency there. These strikes, while far moreprecisely targeted than the earlier bombingcampaigns in Indochina, inflicted substantialcivilian casualties in the first year of the Afghanwar in 2001-02. The Project on DefenseAlternatives estimated that in a 3-month periodbetween October 7, 2001 and January 1, 2002,between 1,000 and 1,300 civilians were killedby aerial bombing,7 and The Los Angeles Timesfound that in a 5-month period from October 7,2001 to February 28, 2002, between 1,067 and1,201 civilian deaths were reported in themedia.8 Deaths reported in newspapers shouldbe treated with caution, but not all arereported, and the total was undoubtedly high.

APJ | JF 8 | 26 | 4

3

And the toll has continued long after the initialU.S. invasion.9 According to Human RightsWatch, airstrikes by the U.S. OperationEnduring Freedom (OEF) and its NATO-ledcoalition, the International Security AssistanceForce (ISAF), killed 116 Afghan civilians in2006, and 321 civilians in 2007.10 And thenumber rose again in 2008: according to a UNstudy on the humanitarian costs of the conflict,airstrikes accounted for 530 of the 828 civilianskilled that year by U.S. or Afghan governmentforces. The same study found that betweenJanuary and June 2009, 200 of the 310recorded civilian deaths were caused byairstrikes.11 Overall in 2009, the UN reportedthat 2,400 civilians were killed in Afghanistan,though the number killed by foreign andAfghan troops was down 25%.12

While their largescale killing of civilianspresented a moral challenge to the U.S.-ledcoalition forces, there has also been increasingacknowledgment o f s t ra teg ic cos tsaccompanying these casualties. In mid-2007,the London Guardian reported that “a seniorUK military officer said he had asked the U.S.to withdraw its special forces from a volatilearea that was crucial in the battle against theTaliban,” after the U.S. forces were “criticizedfor relying on air strikes for cover when theybelieved they were confronted by large groupsof Taliban fighters.” The paper added: “Britishand Nato officials have consistently expressedconcern about US tactics, notably air strikes,which kill civilians, sabotaging the battle for‘hearts and minds’.” NATO’s Secretary-Generaladded that NATO commanders “had changedthe rules of engagement, ordering their troopsto hold their fire in situations where civiliansappeared to be at risk.”13 More recentlyCommand Sgt. Maj. Michael Hall, the seniorNATO soldier in Afghanistan, has argued thatmany of the insurgents being held at BagramAir Base had joined the insurgency due todeaths of people they knew. He told the troops,“there are stories after stories about how thesepeople are turned into insurgents. Every time

there is an escalation of force we are findingthat innocents are being killed.”14 The samereport cited a village elder from Hodkailcorroborating this argument: “The people aretired of al l these cruel actions by theforeigners, and we can’t suffer it anymore. Thepeople do not have any other choice, they willrise against the government and fight them andthe foreigners. There are a lot of cases ofkilling of innocent people.”15

Yet the bombings have continued and thecivilian death toll has mounted. In 2008, afterU.S. aircraft killed more than 30 Afghancivilians in each of two bombardments of ruralwedding parties, the top U.S. commander inAfghanistan, General David McKiernan,“ordered a tightening of procedures forlaunching airstrikes,” and proclaimed that“minimizing civilian casualties is crucial.”16 InDecember 2008, McKiernan issued anotherdirective, ordering that “all responses must beproportionate.”17

Again new procedures failed to stop theslaughter from the air . Fol lowing aninvestigation into a 2009 airstrike in FarahProvince which killed at least 26 civilians (theAfghan Government reported a much highertoll of 140 dead), McKiernan’s replacement,General Stanley McChrystal, issued newguidelines meant to minimize civil iancasualties.18 In earlier testimony to the SenateArmed Services Committee, McChrystal hadstressed the strategic importance of civilianprotection. “A willingness to operate in waysminimizing causalities or damage ... is critical,”he argued. “Although I expect stiff fightingahead, the measure of success will not beenemy killed. It will be shielding the Afghanpopulation from violence.”19 So far the cost offailure, for instance by inflicting more civiliancasualties, has included a political windfall forTaliban insurgents, who by 2009 posed a muchstronger threat than they had in 2005.20

Since the issuing of McChrystal’s 2009

APJ | JF 8 | 26 | 4

4

directive, however, airstrikes have continued tokill civilians, the toll increasing with theescalation of the U.S. ground war in responseto the greater Taliban threat. In February 2010alone, 46 Afghan civilians were killed in justthree strikes. An errant rocket attack onFebruary 14 killed 12 civilians.21 Four dayslater a NATO airstrike mistakenly killed 7Afghan police officers.22 Another NATO strikeon February 20, 2010, killed 27 civilians.23 Incomparison to the previous year, the three-month period from March to June 2010 saw a44% drop in civilian casualties caused by thecoalition.24 Yet, nine years after the U.S. wentto war in Afghanistan, bombing remains part ofU.S. strategy and the death toll in aerial strikescontinues. In a March incident, a U.S. airstrikekilled 13 civilians,25 and in June, 10 morecivilians, including at least five women andchildren, were killed in a NATO airstrike.26

One reaction to the McChrystal directive hasbeen an increased U.S. use of unmanned aerialdrones to deliver air strikes.27 While proponentsof targeted drone strikes argue that they offergreater precision, and therefore minimizecivilian casualties, it is also possible that thegreater ease with which they can be deployedcould instead increase the number of raids andthus the civilian casualty rates. For example, aHuman Rights Watch report on civiliancasualties in Afghanistan argued that mostcivilian casualties do not occur in plannedairstrikes on Taliban targets, but rather in themore fluid rapid-response strikes mostlycarr ied out in support o f “ t roops incontact”.28 A recent US military report on adrone strike that killed 23 civilians in Februaryfound that “inaccurate and unprofessional”reporting by the drone operators wasresponsible for the casualties.29 In response,General McChrystal repeated what he had saidmany times, "inadvertently killing or injuringcivilians is heartbreaking and undermines theirtrust and confidence in our mission."30 In lateJune 2010, in the second change of Afghanistancommander in eighteen months, President

Obama fired McChrystal and replaced him withGeneral David Petraeus.

The resort to drones, while potentially usefulfor well-planned long term surveillance-basedstrikes, could also enable the execution of morefrequent troop support strikes. More generally,any shift to increased air power, even inconjunction with ground troops, will likelyinflict greater civilian casualties. The resultinglocal outrage could benefit an insurgencyseeking civilian support and recruitment. Whileair strikes today can be much more accuratethan they were in Indochina in the 1970s, itwould be perilous to ignore a disastrousprecedent: the political blowback of the U.S. airwar against Cambodian insurgents.

On December 9, 1970, President Richard Nixontelephoned his National Security Adviser,Henry Kissinger, to discuss the ongoingbombing of Cambodia. U.S. B-52s, longdeployed over Vietnam, had been targetingCambodia for only a year. In a “sideshow” tothe war in Vietnam, American aircraft hadalready dropped 36,000 payloads on Cambodia,a neutral kingdom until the U.S.-backedGeneral Lon Nol seized power from PrinceNorodom Sihanouk in a March 1970coup.31 The 1969-70 “Menu” B-52 bombings ofCambodia’s border areas, which Americancommanders labelled Breakfast, Lunch,Supper, Dinner, Desert and Snack, aimed todestroy the mobile headquarters of the SouthVietnamese “Viet Cong” and the NorthVietnamese Army (VC/NVA) in the Cambodianj u n g l e . H o w e v e r , t h e s e a n d l a t e rbombardments forced the Vietnamesecommunists further west and deeper intoCambodia, and ultimately radicalizedCambodian local people against Lon Nol’sregime.

After the U.S. ground invasion of Cambodia inMay-June 1970, which also failed to root outthe Vietnamese communists there, Nixon faced

APJ | JF 8 | 26 | 4

5

growing congressional opposition to hisIndochina policy. The U.S. President nowwanted a secret escalation of air attacks,further into Cambodia’s populous areas. Thiswas despite a September 1970 US intelligencereport, which had warned Washington that“many of the sixty-six ‘training camps’ on which[Lon Nol’s army] had requested air strikes byearly September were in fact merely politicalindoctrination sessions held in village halls andpagodas.”32

Telling Kissinger on December 9, 1970 of hisfrustration that the U.S. Air Force was being“unimaginative,” Nixon demanded morebombing, deeper into Cambodia: “They havegot to go in there and I mean really go in . . . Iwant everything that can fly to go in there andcrack the hell out of them. There is nolimitation on mileage and there is no limitationon budget. Is that clear ?”

This order ignored prior limits restricting U.S.attacks to within 30 miles of the Vietnameseborder33 and prohibiting B-52 bombing within akilometer of any village,3 4 and militaryassessments likening the air strikes to “taking abeehive the size of a basketball and poking itwith a stick.”35 Kissinger responded hesitantly:“The problem is Mr President, the Air Force isdesigned to fight an air battle against theSoviet Union. They are not designed for thiswar . . . in fact, they are not designed for anywar we are likely to have to fight.”

The U.S. insistence even today on usingairpower against insurgencies raises this samedilemma: perhaps even more than the civiliancasualties of ground operations, the “collateraldamage” from U.S. aerial bombing still appearsto enrage and radicalize enough of thesurvivors for insurgencies to find the recruitsand supporters they require.

Five minutes after his telephone conversationwith Nixon, Kissinger called General AlexanderHaig to relay the new orders. “He [Nixon]

wants a massive bombing campaign inCambodia. He doesn’t want to hear anything.It’s an order, it’s to be done. Anything that flieson anything that moves. You got that ?” Theresponse from Haig, recorded as barelyaudible, sounded like laughing.

As in Vietnam, the U.S. now deployed massiveairpower over Cambodia to fight an insurgencythat enjoyed significant local support. Oneresult was more growth in the insurgency. Inrecent years the impact of the U.S. bombing onCambodia has become much better known. Anapparently near-complete Pentagon spatialdatabase, declassified in 2000 and detailing nofewer than 230,488 U.S. aircraft sorties overCambodia from October 4, 1965 to August 15,1973, reveals that much of that bombing wasindiscriminate and that it had begun yearsearlier than ever officially disclosed toCongress or the American people.

A decade ago, the U.S. Government released tothe Governments of Cambodia, Laos, andVietnam extensive classified Air Force data ona l l A m e r i c a n b o m b i n g s o f t h o s ecountries.36 This data assists those countries inthe search for unexploded U.S. ordnance, still amajor threat in much of the region, and it canalso be analysed in map and time seriesformats, revealing an astounding wealth ofhistorical information on the air war there.

We now know, for instance, that from 1965 to1969, before Nixon’s ‘secret’ Menu bombingeven started, the U.S. Air Force had droppedbombs on, among other places in Cambodia,eighty-three sites at which the Pentagondatabase described the intended target as‘Unknown’ or ‘Unidentified.’ The detailedrecord reveals that for these 83 cases, the U.S.Air Force stated in its confidential reportingthat it was unaware of what it was bombing. Itnevertheless dropped munitions on those siteswhich it could not identify, in a neutral countryat peace.

This practice escalated after the ground war

APJ | JF 8 | 26 | 4

6

began in Cambodia in 1970. For that yearalone, the number of U.S. air strikes on targetsrecorded as ‘Unknown’ or ‘Unidentified’increased to as many as 573 bombing sites.American planes also bombed another 5,602Cambodian sites where the Pentagon recordneither identifies nor cites any target -- fifteenpercent of the 37,426 air strikes made on thecountry that year. Interestingly, after Nixon’sDecember 1970 order for wider bombing ofCambodia, the number of such attacks fell in1971, but that year still saw as many as 182bombing raids on ‘Unknown’ targets, and 1,390attacks on unidentified ones (among the 25,052Cambodian sites bombed that year).

T h e l o n g t e r m t r e n d f a v o r e d m o r eindiscriminate bombardment. In 1972, the U.S.Air Force bombed 17,293 Cambodian sites,including 766 whose targets it explicitlyrecorded as ‘Unknown,’ plus another 767 siteswith no target identified in the militarydatabase. These figures dramatically increasedthe next year. In the period January-August1973 alone, the U.S. Air Force bombed 33,945sites in Cambodia, hitting as many as 2,632‘Unknown’ targets, and 465 other sites wherethe Pentagon record identified no target.

May 1973 saw the height of the Cambodiabombing. During that month, U.S. planesbombed 6,553 sites there. These sortiesincluded hits on 641 ‘Unknown’ and 158unidentified targets, at a rate of over 25 suchstrikes per day for that month.

Overall, during the U.S. bombardment ofCambodia from 1970 to 1973, Americanwarplanes hit a total of 3,580 ‘Unknown’targets and bombed another 8,238 sites with notarget identified. Such sites accounted for10.4% of the U.S. air strikes, which hit a totalof 113,716 Cambodian sites in less than fouryears.

Also unknown is the human toll that thesespecific air strikes inflicted on ‘Unknown,’ ‘Unidentified’ or non-identified targets, and

the toll from the additional 1,023 U.S. strikeson targets identified only as a ‘sampan.’Civilian casualties from the former, at least, areproperly considered U.S. war crimes (notgenocide), though they remain unprosecuted.

However, it is possible to cross-check otherinformation in the Pentagon bombing databasewith details that Cambodian survivors providedto Ben Kiernan in interviews he conducted in1979-81.37 We can also begin to answerimportant further questions concerning thestrategic efficacy and political consequences ofaerial bombing: Can insurgencies be beatenwith bombs? What are the human and also thestrategic costs of “collateral damage”? For astrategy of replacing or reinforcing groundtroops with air strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan,Cambodia at least shows how strategicbombing can go disastrously wrong.

The new data transforms our understanding ofwhat happened to Cambodia, even today one ofthe most heavily bombed countries in history.The total tonnage of U.S. bombs dropped onCambodia, at least in the range of 500,000tons, possibly far more, either equalled or farexceeded the tonnages that the U.S. dropped inthe entire Pacific Theater during World WarTwo (500,000 tons) and in the Korean War(454,000).38 In per capita terms, the bombing ofCambodia exceeded the Allied bombing ofGermany and Japan, and the U.S. bombing ofNorth Vietnam (but not that of South Vietnamor possibly, Laos).

The U.S. dropped 160,000 tons of bombs on Japan during World War Two. ThePentagon data records the bombardment of Cambodia to have been at least three timesheavier (around 500,000 tons), perhaps much more. To put this massive figure inglobal perspective, during all of WWII, the U.S. dropped 2 million tons of bombs,including 1.6 million tons in the European Theater and 500,000 tons in the PacificTheater (including the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: 15,000 and 20,000tons respectively).39 In the Korean War, the total U.S. bombardment was 454,000tons.40 Cambodia’s total thus equalled or exceeded the U.S. bomb tonnages dropped inthe Pacific War and the Korean War.

Not only was the total payload dropped onCambodia signif icant, and much of i tindiscriminate, but also, the bombardment

APJ | JF 8 | 26 | 4

7

began much earlier than previously disclosed.The “secret” 1969-70 Menu campaign, whenlater uncovered, caused congressional uproarand provoked calls for Nixon’s impeachment,but we now know that U.S. bombing hadactually started over four years earlier, in 1965,as Cambodian leaders had claimed at the time.These early tactical strikes may have supportedsecret U.S. Army and CIA ground incursionsfrom across the Vietnamese border. During themid-1960s, the Studies and Operations Group,U.S. Special Forces teams in tandem with theKhmer Serei (U.S.-trained ethnic Cambodianrebels from South Vietnam), were collectingintelligence inside Cambodia.41 Perhaps theU.S. tactical air strikes supported or followedup on these secret pre-1969 operations.

This revelation has several implications. First,U.S. bombing of neutral Cambodia significantlypredated the Nixon administration. Earlyindividual bombardments of Cambodia wereknown and protested by the Cambodiangovernment. Prince Sihanouk’s ForeignMinister, for instance, claimed as early asJanuary 1966 that “hundreds of our peoplehave already died in these attacks.”42 ThePentagon database reveals escalatingbombardments. From 1965 to 1968, theJohnson Administration conducted 2,565 sortiesover Cambodia. Most of these strikes occurredunder the Vietnam War policy of then Secretaryof Defence Robert S. McNamara, which hesubsequently publicly regretted.

Second, these early strikes were tactical,directed at military targets, not carpetbombings. The Johnson Administration made astrategic decision not to use B-52s inCambodia, whether out of concern forCambodian l ives, or for the country’sneutrality, or because of perceived strategiclimits of carpet bombing. However, Nixondecided differently, and from late 1969 the U.S.Air Force began to deploy B-52s overCambodia.

Why did the United States bombard a smallagrarian country that attempted to stay out of amajor war, and what were the consequences?

In the first stage of the bombing (1965-69) theU.S. goal was to pursue the Vietnamesecommunists retreating from South Vietnam intoCambodia, then to destroy their Cambodiansanctuaries, and cut off their supply routesfrom North to South Vietnam, through bothLaos to the north and later, the southernCambodian port of Sihanoukville. These earlyU.S. attacks failed to find, let alone hit, amobile Vietnamese headquarters, or to stop theflow of weapons and supplies.

The second phase of the bombing (1969-72)aimed to support the slow pullout of U.S. troopsfrom Vietnam, ironically by expanding the warto Cambodia in the hope of winning it faster byattacking the Vietnamese communists frombehind. Lon Nol’s 1970 coup facilitated muchmore extensive U.S. action in Cambodia,including the short ground invasion and theprolonged carpet bombing, until 1973.

In 1969, Nixon first introduced B-52s into thestill secret U.S. air war in Cambodia to buytime for the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam.Later, as Emory Swank, U.S. ambassador toLon Nol’s Cambodia, recalled, “time wasbought for the success of the program inVietnam . . . to this extent I think somemeasure of gratitude is owed to the Khmers.”Former U.S. General Theodore Mataxis calledit “a holding action. You know, one of thosethings like a rear guard you drop off. Thetroika’s going down the road and the wolvesare closing in, and so you throw themsomething off and let them chew it.”43 ThusCambodians became a decoy to protectAmerican lives. In its attempt to deny SouthVietnam to the Vietnamese communists, theU.S. drove them further into Cambodia,producing the domino effect that i tsIndochinese intervention had been intended to

APJ | JF 8 | 26 | 4

8

prevent. Phnom Penh would fall two weeksbefore Saigon.

Map showing 115,273 targets of U.S.secret bombing of Cambodia betweenOctober 1965 and August 1973. (Taylor

Owen)

The final phase of the U.S. bombing, January-August 1973, aimed to stop the now rapidKhmer Rouge advance on the Cambodiancapital. U.S. fear of this first Southeast Asiandomino falling translated into a massiveescalation of the air war that spring ands u m m e r – a n u n p r e c e d e n t e d B - 5 2bombardment, focussed on the heavilypopulated areas around Phnom Penh, but alsosparing few other regions of the country.44 Aswell as inflaming rural rage against the pro-U.S. Lon Nol government, the rain of bombs onnon-combatants also reduced the relative riskof their joining the insurgency.

The impact of the resultant increased civiliancasualties may not have been a primarystrategic concern for the Nixon administration.It should have been. Civilian casualties helpeddrive people into the arms of an insurgencythat had enjoyed relatively little support untilSihanouk was overthrown in 1970, the Vietnam

War spread to Cambodia, and extensive U.S.bombing of its rural areas began.

Even before that, the initial U.S. bombardmentsof border areas had set in motion a highlyprecarious series of events leading to theextension deeper into Cambodia of the impactof the Vietnam War, contributing to Lon Nol’s1970 coup, which also helped fuel the rapidrise of the Khmer Rouge.

The final phase of the story is better known. In1973 the U.S. Congress, angered at thedestruction and the deception of the NixonAdministration, legislated a halt to theCambodia bombing. The great damage wasalready done. Having grown under the rain ofbombs from a few thousand to over 200,000regular and militia forces by 1973, the KhmerRouge took Phnom Penh two years later. Theythen subjected Cambodia to a genocidal Maoistagrarian revolution. Is there a lesson here oncombating insurgencies?

Apart from the large human toll, perhaps themost powerful and direct impact of thebombing was the political backlash it caused.Because Lon Nol was supporting the U.S. airwar, the bombing of Cambodian villages and itssignificant civilian casualties provided idealrecruitment rhetoric for the insurgent KhmerRouge.

The Nixon administration knew that the KhmerRouge were explicitly recruiting peasants byhighlighting the damage done by U.S. airstrikes. The CIA’s Directorate of Operations,after investigations south of Phnom Penh,reported in May 1973 that the communiststhere were successfully “using damage causedby B-52 strikes as the main theme of theirpropaganda.”45 Years later, journalist BrucePalling asked a former Khmer Rouge officerfrom northern Cambodia if local Khmer Rougeforces had made use of the bombing for anti-U.S. propaganda:

APJ | JF 8 | 26 | 4

9

Chhit Do: Oh yes, they did. Everyt ime a f te r there had beenbombing, they would take thepeople to see the craters, to seehow big and deep the craters were,to see how the earth had beengouged out and scorched... Theordinary people ... sometimesliterally shit in their pants whenthe big bombs and shells came...Their minds just froze up and theywould wander around mute forthree or four days. Terrified andhalf-crazy, the people were readyto believe what they were told...That was what made it so easy forthe Khmer Rouge to win the peopleover... It was because of theirdissatisfaction with the bombingthat they kept on cooperating withthe Khmer Rouge, joining up withthe Khmer Rouge, sending theirchildren off to go with them ...

Bruce Palling: So the Americanbombing was a kind of help to theKhmer Rouge?

Chhit Do: Yes, that’s right...,sometimes the bombs fell and hitlittle children, and their fatherswould be a l l for the KhmerRouge...

The Nixon administration, aware of thisconsequence of its Cambodia bombing, kept theair war secret for so long that debate over itstoll and political impact came far too late.Along with support from the Vietnamesecommunists and from Lon Nol’s deposed rival,Prince Sihanouk, the U.S. carpet bombing ofCambodia was partly responsible for the rise ofwhat had been a small-scale Khmer Rougeinsurgency, which now grew capable ofoverthrowing the Lon Nol government, andonce it had done so in 1975, perpetratinggenocide in the country. The parallels to

current dilemmas in Iraq and Afghanistan,where genocidal Al-Qaeda factions lurk amongthe insurgent forces, are poignant and telling.

Today the technology of U.S. bombing hasbecome more sophisticated. “Unknown” targetsare bombed less frequently, and collateraldamage is now lower than it was. Yet it remainshigh, and perhaps these days, informationtravels faster. What are the strategicconsequences of the continuing civilian deathtolls that U.S. forces inflict in Iraq andAfghanistan, and of the outrage they spawnamong rural communities there? Are theywor th the r i sk , l e t a lone the mora lconsequences, to say nothing of theimplications under international criminal law?

The January 13, 2006 aerial strike by a USpredator drone on a village in Pakistan, killingwomen and children and inflaming local anti-US political passions, seems a pertinentexample of what continues to occur inAfghanistan and Iraq. “Collateral damage,” inthis case, even undermined the positivesentiments previously created by billions ofdollars of U.S. post-earthquake aid to that partof Pakistan. Aside from the killing of innocentcivilians, how many new enemies does U.S.bombing create?

In the lead-up to the Afghanistan and Iraqwars, neither the U.S. media nor the Bushadministration seriously included the impact ofcivilian casualties in public discussion of theoverall war strategy. Even with officialassurances that civilian casualties will belimited, when it comes to a decision to bomb avillage containing a suspected terrorist, thebenefit of killing the target trumps the toll oninnocents. This misguided calculus is quitepossibly a fundamental threat to longtermAfghan and American security.

If the Cambodians’ tragic experience teachesus anything, it is that official disregard of the

APJ | JF 8 | 26 | 4

10

immorality and miscalculation of theconsequences of inflicting predictable civiliancasualties stem partly from failure tounderstand the social contexts of insurgencies.The reasons local people help such movementsdo not fit into Kissingerian rationales. Nor istheir support absolute or unidimensional. Thosewhose lives have been ruined may not look tothe geopolitical rationale of the attacks; rather,understandably and often explicitly, many willblame the attackers.

Dangerous forces can reap a windfall. Thestrategic and moral failure of the U.S.Cambodia air campaign lay not only in the tollof possibly 150,000 civilians killed there in1969-73 by an almost unprecedented level ofcarpet, cluster and incendiary bombing, butalso indirectly, in its aftermath, when thegenocidal Khmer Rouge regime rose from thebomb craters to cause the deaths of another1.7 million Cambodians in 1975-79. Thesesuccessive tragedies are not unrelated. It isonly predictable that an insurgency in need ofrecruits may effectively exploit potentialsupporters’ hatred for those killing their familymembers or neighbors. That Washington hasyet to learn from its past crimes and mistakesis a failure of strategic as well as moralcalculation. Until it does, America’s hopes forAfghanistan and for its own improved securitymay be misplaced.

Ben Kiernan is the Whitney Griswold Professorof History, Chair of the Council on SoutheastAsia Studies, and Director of the GenocideStudies Program at Ya le Univers i ty(www.yale.edu/gsp). He is the author of HowP o l P o t C a m e t o P o w e r(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0300102623/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20) (1985), The Pol Pot Regime(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0300144342/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20) (1996), Genocide andR e s i s t a n c e i n S o u t h e a s t A s i a(http://www.amazon.com/dp/1412806690/?tag=

theasipacjo0b-20) (2007), and Blood and Soil: AWorld History of Genocide and Exterminationf r o m S p a r t a t o D a r f u r(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0300144253/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20) (2007).

Taylor Owen is a Doctoral Candidate at theUniversity of Oxford.

They wrote this article for The Asia-PacificJournal.

Recommended citation: Ben Kiernan and TaylorOwen, "Roots of U.S. Troubles in Afghanistan:Civi l ian Bombing Casualt ies and theCambodian Precedent," The Asia-PacificJournal, 26-4-10, June 28, 2010.

Owen and Kiernan are the authors of BombsOver Cambodia: New Light on US Air War(http://japanfocus.org/-Ben-Kiernan/2420)

Notes

1 New York Times editorial, June 24, 2010, p.A32; see also, “Pakistan is Said to Pursue AnAfghanistan Foothold,” New York Times, June25, 2010, p. 1.

2 New York Times, October 14, 2002; emphasisadded.

3 New York Times, March 4, 2010, p. A16.

4 Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-centuryHistory, ed. Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn B. Young,New York, New Press, 2009.

5 Ben Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power:Colonialism, Nationalism and Communism inCambodia, 1930-1975 (New Haven, secondedition, 2004), pp. 284, 345, 349-57, 390.

6 Ben Kiernan, “The American Bombardment ofKampuchea, 1969-1973,” Vietnam Generation1:1 (Winter 1989), 4-41, e.g. pp. 6, 13-14;a c c e s s i b l e o n l i n e h e r e(http://www.yale.edu/cgp/us.html ).

APJ | JF 8 | 26 | 4

11

7 Carl Conetta, Operation Enduring Freedom:Why a Higher Rate of Civilian BombingCasualties? Project on Defense AlternativesBriefing Report #13, January 18, 2002.A v a i l a b l e h e r e(http://www.comw.org/pda/0201oef.html ).

8 “The Americans . . . They Just Drop TheirB o m b s a n d L e a v e , ”(http://web.archive.org/web/20020604082553/http://www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=la-060202bombs ) The Los AngelesTimes, June 2, 2002.

9 Ben Kiernan, “‘Collateral damage’ means realpeople,” Bangkok Post, October 20, 2002.

10 Human Rights Watch, 2008. Troops inContact: Airstrikes and Civilian Deaths inA f g h a n i s t a n(http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/09/08/troops-contact-0).

11 United Nations Assistance Mission toAfghanistan, 2009. “Afghanistan: Mid YearBulletin on Protection of Civilians in ArmedConflict, 2009,” pp. 10-12. Human Rights Unit,3 0 J u l y 2 0 0 9 . A v a i l a b l e h e r e(http://unama.unmissions.org/Portals/UNAMA/human rights/09july31-UNAMA-HUMAN-R I G H T S - C I V I L I A N - C A S U A L T I E S - M i d -Year-2009-Bulletin.pdf).

12 Reuters AlertNet, April 15, 2010, “Spate ofAfghan civi l ian deaths ‘disturbing.’”(http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SGE63E0DJ.htm)

13 “British officer wants US out of Afghan zone,”Guardian, August 17, 2007, pp. 1-2.

14 New York Times, March 26, 2010, “TighterRules Fail to Stem Deaths of Innocent Afghansa t C h e c k p o i n t s . ”(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/27/world/asia/27afghan.html )

15 Ibid

16 “Afghan Officials Say U.S. Strike Killed 40 atWedding Party,” New York Times, November 6,2008, p. A19.

17 “Civilian Deaths Imperil Support for AfghanWar,” New York Times, May 7, 2009, p. A1.

1 8 C N N(http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/06/23/afghanistan.airstrikes/index.html ), June 23,2009.

1 9 C N N(http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/02/mcchrystal.senate.hearing/index.html ), June 2,2009.

20 See e.g., “U.N. Sees Rise in Attacks byAfghan Insurgents,” New York Times, June 20,2010, p. 12

2 1 T h e G u a r d i a n(http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/14/nato-rockets-kill-afghan-civilians), February 14,2010; New York Times, February 15, 2010,“Errant Rocket Kills Civilians in Afghanistan,”pp. 1, A6.

2 2 A F P(http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jPNvyT8KHLK6x-n-uLHLzV7YluVg ),February 18, 2010.

2 3 B B C N e w s(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8528715.stm), February 22, 2010; New York Times,February 23, 2010, “NATO Airstrike Is Said toHave Killed 27 Civilians in Afghanistan,” p. A4.

24 “U.N. Sees Rise in Attacks by AfghanInsurgents,” New York Times, June 20, 2010, p.12.

25 New York Times, March 21, 2010, “BombsKill 13 Afghans; Elderly Man Dies in Raid.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/world/asia/22afghan.html )

APJ | JF 8 | 26 | 4

12

26 New York Times, June 20, 2010, “AfghanCivilians Said to Be Killed in an Airstrike.”(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/world/asia/20airstrike.html )

2 7 T h e W a s h i n g t o n I n d e p e n d e n t(http://washingtonindependent.com/73915/under-mcchrystal-drone-strikes-in-afghanistan-quietly-rise-as-civilian-casualties-drop ),January 14, 2010.

28 Human Rights Watch, 2008. Troops inContact: Airstrikes and Civilian Deaths inA f g h a n i s t a n(http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/09/08/troops-contact-0). pp. 3-4.

29 ABC News, May 29, 2010, “US Drone CrewBlamed for Afghan Civi l ian Deaths;”(http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=10777234) see also New York Times, May30, 2010, p. 6, and June 3, 2010, p. A10.

30 The Washington Post, May 30, 2010, “Droneoperators blamed in airstrike that killed Afghanc i v i l i a n s i n F e b r u a r y . ”(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/29/AR2010052901390.html?wprss=rss_world )

31 To be precise, there were 35,914 U.S. B-52attacks on Cambodia in 1969 and 1970.

32 See Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power, p.350.

33 William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger,Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia, NewYork, 1979, p. 145.

34 Henry Kissinger, Ending the Vietnam War,New York, 2003, p. 479.

3 5 Seymour Hersh, The Price of Power:Kissinger in the Nixon White House, New York,1983, p. 64.

36 The GIS database comprised data originally

recovered by the National Combat CommandInformation Processing System (NIPS) onmissions conducted between 1965 and 1975. The data was classified top secret andmaintained by the Joint Chiefs of Staff untildeclassified and delivered to the NationalArchives in 1976. It was originally compiled infour separate databases. These files areCombat Activities File (CACTA - October 1965-December 1970); Southeast Asia Database(SEADAB - January 1970-June 1975); theStrategic Air Command’s Combat Activitiesreport (SACCOACT - June 1965-August 1973);and herbicide data files (HERBS - July 1965-February 1971). E. Miguel and G. Roland(2005), The Long Run Impact of BombingVietnam. Draft Manuscript, p. 45, and TomSmith, ‘Southeast Asia Air Combat Data,’ TheDISAM Journal, Winter Issue, 2001.

3 7 See Ben K iernan , “The Amer icanBombardment of Kampuchea, 1969-1973,”Vietnam Generation (1989), accessible fromwww.yale.edu/cgp/us.html; Taylor Owen andBen Kiernan, “Bombs over Cambodia,” TheWalrus (Toronto), October 2006, pp. 62-69.

38 In The Walrus magazine in October 2006, westated that newly-released Pentagon bombingdata revised dramatically upwards theheretofore accepted total of 539,129 tons ofU.S. bombs dropped on Cambodia. The total ofthe individual bombing load figures entered inthe database’s records of 230,516 aircraftsorties over Cambodia indicates that from 1965to 1975 Cambodia would have been the targetof 2,756,941 tons of U.S. bombs, nearly 5 timesmore than previously believed. The PhnomPenh Post reported a similar figure: “The [data]tapes show that 43,415 bombing raids weremade on Cambodia dropping more than 2million tons of bombs and other ordinanceincluding land mines, experimental weaponsand rockets” (April 14-27, 2000). However, thistonnage data may be incorrect. In new workusing the original Air Force SEADAB andCACTA databases, Holly High and others have

APJ | JF 8 | 26 | 4

13

re-analyzed the total Cambodia tonnage figuresand argue in a forthcoming article that the totaltonnage dropped on Cambodia was at least472,313 tons, or somewhat higher. While bothdata sets derive from the same U.S. Air Forcedatabase, the one we used for Cambodia hadbeen decoded by an independent contractor, aswas the database the U.S. provided to Laos.The resulting GIS databases for Cambodia andLaos have been used extensively in bothcountries to guide de-mining efforts there, andhave proven accurate for that purpose. As wedid not ourselves decode the Cambodia datafrom the original Air Force tapes, and so farhave been unsuccessful in our efforts to contactthe independent contractor who did so, wecannot yet be certain as to how the totaltonnage field was calculated. It remainsundisputed that in 1969-73 alone, around500,000 tons of U.S. bombs fell on Cambodia,one-sixth of the total bombing of Indochina (sixmillion tons over nine years). This figureexcludes the additional bomb tonnage droppedon Cambodia by the U.S.-backed air force ofthe Republic of Viet Nam, which also flewnumerous bombing missions there in 1970 and1971. William Shawcross reported that from1970, “Cambodia was open house for the SouthVietnamese Air Force,” and subsequently “theSouth Vietnamese continued to regardCambodia as a free fire zone” (Sideshow, pp.174-75, 214-15, 222-23.)

39 Miguel and Roland, Long Run Impact, p. 2

40 Grolier, 1996, cited but not fully referencedin Miguel and Roland, Long Run Impact.

41 Over four years, this group conducted 1,835missions and captured 24 prisoners, but did notf ind the Viet Cong command center .Shawcross, Sideshow, p. 64.

42 The Australian, Jan. 15, 1966, quoted inKiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power, p. 285.

43 Shawcross, Sideshow, pp. 331, 191.44 Kissinger made the case for escalation,stating “our analysis was that the Khmer Rougewould agree to a negotiated settlement only ifdenied of hope of military victory.” Kissinger,Ending the Vietnam War, 476.

45 “Efforts of Khmer Insurgents to Exploit forPropaganda Purposes Damage Done byAirstrikes in Kandal Province,” CIA IntelligenceInformation Cable, May 2, 1973; for moredetails see Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime:Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia underthe Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979 (New Haven,third edition, 2008), 22; and Kiernan, “TheAmerican Bombardment of Kampuchea,1969-1973,” Vietnam Generation 1:1 (1989),4-41; see www.yale.edu/cgp/us.html

(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0300102623/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20)

APJ | JF 8 | 26 | 4

14

Click on the cover to order.

(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0300144342/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20)

Click on the cover to order.

(http://www.amazon.com/dp/1412806690/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20)

Click on the cover to order.

APJ | JF 8 | 26 | 4

15

(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0300144253/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20)

Click on the cover to order.