Fighting in Afghanistan has intensified dramatically over the past year with more Nato led and US assisted attacks on civilian targets. The targets are said to be of Taliban or Al-Qaeda origins but the US command in Afghanistan has so far failed to substantiate its claims.

At least 540 civilians have been killed in the conflict so far this year, a sharp increase over last year's total. This has not grabbed the attention of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) which is fast in condemning ‘terror’ attacks but turns a blind eye on the Nato’s and the US attacks against innocent civilians in Afghanistan.

Recently the US-led Nato forces attacked and killed 90 people in Azizabad in western Afghanistan. According to the Afghan government and a U.N. investigation team, it killed 90 civilians, including children and women. The US argued that this was not the case but it failed to prove that it had killed Taliban fighters.
The bodies extracted from the rubbles of the bombed complexes in the area showed that women, holding their babies in a desperate attempt to escape the blitz had been killed by the Nato bombs. It also uncovered the bodies of old men and women who were definitely not Taliban fighters.

In the village, the people reportedly said the attack was a brutal and cruel one since it came without anyone suspecting such an action by the occupying forces in the war torn country. Some villagers even said they feared the US were targeting people seen as supporters of the Taliban. Azizabad is known for its anti-American sentiments; they said adding that this did not mean the people were entire pro-Taliban.

The OIC, as a responsible organization, failed on its part to hit the US hard on its little finger. It should have reacted strongly and vociferously against such attacks and it should have condemned Washington for engaging in a deadly game that has kept the Afghanistan populations back to the wall against such blatant aggression.

So far, no European or Arab and even Asian governments have voiced their opposition to the daily atrocities committed by the Nato command – which is under US commanders – and this is a situation that has to change.
There must be an end to the Nato attacks against civilian targets and the Nato should altogether explain what is it doing in Afghanistan after all. The UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Mr. Philip Alston noted in his special report on Afghanistan this year that US secret services in many cases rely on quite doubtful and unchecked data before carrying out a combat operation or airstrike raids.

He also noted that these raids as a result lead to more and more casualties among afghan civilians and brought destruction of homes and properties as well as displacement of civilian occupants caused by the bombing spree.

All this naturally arouse resentment in a civilized public opinion, which stands for international humanitarian law observance, against U.S.-NATO air strikes laws of war violation, particularly adherence to the principles of proportionality and the requirement that parties take all feasible precautions to prevent non-combatant casualties.

There is doubt as well about NATO-led security and development mission in Afghanistan called “International Security Assistance Force” activity in the country. The OIC has shut its mouth on what this force is doing in Afghanistan. It was supposed to be a ‘reconstruction’ force and the IMF had organized a bailout plan of several billion US dollars to rebuild Afghanistan.

On the contrary, the money is being spent largely on the ‘security’ item in the Afghanistan reconstruction projects. This means a larger amount of money is being spent as payment to the Nato-US forces to carry out raids and kill civilians rather than rebuild Afghanistan!

To the public astonishment the OIC did not have any reaction upon these latest facts of humanitarian law violations in Afghanistan. But taking in mind that all these are related to the Islamic World issues, it is fair to for the world to have expected the OIC to be more aggressively involved in the Afghan situation.

While carrying out anti-terror operations in Muslim countries, Americans behave their own ways. They do not take into account any Muslim (or local) traditions and realities, breaking domestic laws and legislations. It happens because there is a prejudice in the western world that Islam is significant with terror and any Muslim person can be a potential terrorist.

To maintain balance in this part of the world it is necessary for OIC to take a stance against the massive humanitarian law violations by the Nato and the US and condemn their latest combat operations in Afghanistan.

The OIC will have to shed its pro-US attitude and get more involved into this problem by working out some appropriate special OIC statements and if necessary, resolutions to condemn and altogether put pressure on the Nato to stop its murderous acts in the Muslim country..

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