U.S. vows to back off if fighters use Afghan civilians as cover

• Story Highlights
• The issue of civilian casualties has rankled relations between U.S. and Afghanistan
  
• Commanding general says there's renewed emphasis to avoid civilian casualties
  
• U.S.: Fighting last week in Kandahar province left 37 civilians dead
  
• Afghan officials: Civilian deaths in Kandahar were the result of a U.S. airstrike
  

COMBAT OUTPOST MALAKASHY, Afghanistan (CNN) -- U.S. forces in Afghanistan will "back off" from firing at insurgents if the fighters are using civilian buildings as cover, the U.S. commander in eastern Afghanistan told CNN.

"I've given direct guidance, and so has my boss to me, that if there's any doubt at all that the enemy is firing from a house or building where there might be women and children, that we'll just back off," Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, the commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division, told CNN's Barbara Starr.

"That potentially is something that we did not do before, but now because of this increased emphasis, we are doing," he said in an interview at an outpost in Afghanistan's Paktika province near the Pakistani border.

Schloesser spoke the same day the U.S. military announced that fighting last week in Kandahar province left 37 civilians dead and another 35 wounded. During the two-day battle in Kandahar's Shah Wali Kott district, insurgents fired from some villagers' houses, using them as cover, villagers told the U.S. military.

Afghan officials said the civilian deaths in Kandahar were the result of a U.S. airstrike. But a joint U.S.-Afghan investigation concluded that the civilians died during a battle that was sparked when insurgents ambushed an Afghan-coalition patrol.

The U.S. military released the results of that joint investigation Saturday.

Schloesser said that avoiding civilian casualties has always been a priority of the U.S. military, even before Afghan President Hamid Karzai said last week that his "first and main demand" of the next U.S. administration under President-elect Barack Obama will be "to stop civilian casualties" in his country.

"We've gotten new guidance that we had before the president talked, or expressed his greetings to President-elect Obama," he said. "So it's not that that's new, it's just that we're trying with renewed emphasis to avoid any kind of thing like that."

The U.S. military also is investigating reports that as many as 30 civilians were killed in an airstrike on Thursday in Badghis province in northwest Afghanistan.

The reported casualties come as the U.S. and NATO forces are waging a bloody battle against a resurgent Taliban across Afghanistan. A classified review of U.S. policy in Afghanistan is likely to judge that the United States is losing ground there, according to a government official involved with preparing the review.

The review, under way since September 20, has yet to reach any definitive conclusions. But according to one of the participants, there was no disagreement among the 24 government agencies that participated that Afghanistan is in a "dire situation."

The review is led by Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the senior National Security Council official responsible for Afghanistan and Iraq.

The issue of civilian casualties has rankled relations between the United States and Afghanistan. After a U.S. airstrike in August that killed dozens of civilians in the western province of Herat, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates traveled to Kabul to apologize to Karzai.

Afghan and U.N. officials said the August 22 airstrike killed 90 civilians.

The U.S. military initially denied such a large number of civilians were killed. But when cell phone pictures later were provided to the U.S. military showing dozens of bodies at the scene of the strike, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, asked U.S. Central Command to review the initial investigation.

That investigation concluded that 33 civilians were killed.

Afghanistan begins registering voters for 2009 election

By Jon Hemming

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan began registering voters on Monday for elections due next year that will test support for President Hamid Karzai and democracy itself which is threatened by a virulent Taliban insurgency in which thousands have died.

The lack of security could well derail the election process depending on how much the Taliban decide or are able to intimidate the people against participating, but early signs were the militants have already begun campaigning against the polls.

"Just now we have received some information that in some areas anti-government elements were trying to stop people from registering themselves as voters already," Zekria Barakzai, deputy head of the Independent Election Commission, told Reuters.

"They are preaching at the mosques asking people not to vote or register themselves," he said.

One truck carrying registration forms has already been torched in the northeast, but that may have been due to criminal activity, a security expert said.

Some 3,800 people, a third of them civilians, were killed in Afghanistan by the end of July this year, according to the United Nations, which says 40 to 50 percent of the country is now inaccessible to its aid activities.

For security reasons, registration is taking place in four phases, starting with 14 provinces in central and north-eastern Afghanistan, then a month later in the north, then the more troublesome east and finally in the southern hotbed of the insurgency in January.

The recognition of old voter registration cards could also somewhat ease security problems as only new voters or those who have lost their old cards have to register themselves.

The Afghan army and police, at times hard pressed to defend themselves, backed by the more than 70,000 international troops in Afghanistan are to provide security for the process.

TALIBAN CONTACTS

But there have already been problems taking registration materials from the capital of at least one of the first 14 provinces, in Ghazni, southwest of Kabul, to the outlying district centres where voters are to be recorded.

Foreign troops have been called to help transport the voter registration cards by helicopter. Ghazni, just two hours' drive from the capital was regarded as being largely secure two years ago, but is now plagued by kidnappings and insurgent violence.

The Taliban are now active in a semi-circle of provinces just south of Kabul and extending their influence and attacks into northern regions hitherto almost untouched by violence.

Elections for the presidency in 2004 and for parliament in 2005 passed off largely peacefully as the Taliban mostly chose not to oppose a process that had wide popular support.

But after three years of steadily increasing violence since the austere Islamist movement relaunched its insurgency and widespread disappointment with the slow pace of development, faith in Karzai's ability to govern and the power of democracy to bring change is running low.

Still, election officials say they are not sure the Taliban will target voter registration and say they are attempting to reach out to the militants to prevent pre-election violence.

"We didn't contact them directly but there is a group of tribal leaders, in the coming weeks we will have meetings with them and they promise they will convey our messages to anti-government groups, insurgents, Taliban and so on, to see if it is possible to find a common solution to the problem," said Barakzai.

The election commission's message echoes a call from Karzai last week for the Taliban to give up violence and turn to peaceful politics.

"The message is that the best way to solve the problem is elections," Barakzai said. "If you don't agree with certain policies of the government, the best way to stop the government doing something wrong is participating in elections and electing a president who you want to be in place."

The Taliban have repeatedly denied they are either already in peace talks or will enter negotiations with the government until all foreign troops leave Afghan soil.