NATO troops accidentally killed 72 civilians in the first three months of 2010, up from 29 in the same period in 2009, according to figures the International Security Assistance Force gave USA TODAY. The numbers were released after Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, issued measures to protect ordinary Afghans.

McChrystal’s command and supporters had loudly trumpeted United Nations statistics in January that showed the proportion of ISAF-caused civilian casualties to decline last year. A spokesman, British Lt. Cmdr. Iain Baxter, told the paper that “the pace of operations this year is considerably higher than last.” Which may be true, but strategically, that makes the rise in ISAF-caused casualties worse for ISAF. If Afghan civilians are seeing ISAF troops more and more, and they’re also seeing ISAF troops kill more of their countrymen, then the resultant embitterment is likely to compound, not diminish.

In fact, McChrystal put it best in his June confirmation hearing:

“I believe the perception caused by civilian casualties is one of the most dangerous enemies we face,” McChrystal said, as the loss of popular support “will be strategically decisive,” which is to say the war will be lost. He vows to review “all” U.S. procedures in Afghanistan to ensure that casualties will be minimized “except in self-defense.” McChrystal expects he’ll need more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets to get “more precision … to reduce civilian casualties and to reduce the impact [of U.S. troops] on the civilian population.” It’s not “a panacea,” but “the more you’ve got, the smarter you are as a force.”

Now McChrystal intends to push into Kandahar, a more densely populated area than the Helmand areas where he has placed most of his operational emphasis to date. Already President Hamid Karzai said he will oppose any Kandahar action without local support, and on a recent trip with McChrystal to a local shura, the elders shouted, “We are not happy” about the impending operation. McChrystal told the Pentagon press corps in March that “one of the things we’ll be doing [ahead of the Kandahar operation] in the shaping is working with political leaders to try to get an outcome that makes sense,” adding, “before we do a military operation in Afghanistan, we really have got to get the consent of the people who are going to be affected by that operation.” It might not have been outright veto power over the operation, but it certainly tethered the Kandahar operation to local support. And now Gareth Porter thinks McChrystal’s command is backing away from that because it’s getting an answer it doesn’t like.

What will McChrystal do?

Civilian deaths caused by Western troops fell 28 percent last year compared to the year before, it said, attributing the drop to measures taken specifically to protect civilians.

Commander of the foreign forces in Afghanistan, US General Stanley McChrystal, has made minimising civilian deaths and injuries a central tenet of his counter-insurgency strategy, and has ordered reduced air strikes as one way of achieving this objective.

The UN report said the change in NATO forces’ command structure, “specific steps to minimize civilian casualties” and “a new tactical directive” by the force contributed to the reduction in non-combatant deaths.

McChrystal can take credit for that drop, and the international recognition of his efforts is vindication. But it’s a cold comfort, given the overall spike in civilian casualties. McChrystal has testified that his metrics for success include protecting civilians from harm — whether from his troops or from the Taliban. While the deaths he’s directly responsible for are pointing in the right direction, the bottom-line total clearly isn’t.

The Washington Times reports that the Taliban has put together a manual called “Rules For Mujahideen” that restricts the boundaries of the martially permissible in an attempt to persuade Afghans that the religious extremists have their best interests in mind. Among its orders: avoid civilian deaths or injuries; accept anyone who joins the Taliban; don’t discriminate among Afghans; treat detainees well. Yes, that’s right: not even the Taliban thinks Ralph Peters is right to urge the summary execution of captured U.S. soldier Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl.

Assume for a second that this is nothing but a propaganda ploy and that the Taliban have no intention of abiding by the manual. Will that matter to Afghans? Not long ago I attended an off-the-record briefing by a knowledgeable U.S. official who observed that the Taliban don’t have to be loved by Afghans — and they’re not — to be heeded and to have their legitimacy respected. Afghan understandings of legitimacy are not the same as ours, the official cautioned, and can countenance a harsh, authoritarian hand. I don’t know if that’s true. But if the Taliban are softening their line in public, that might still work to cement Afghan allegiance or passive complicity. Since we’re not Afghans, we’re the ones whose message faces an uphill cultural struggle.

There’s also this quote at the bottom of the piece:

Ashraf Haidari, a diplomat with the Afghanistan Embassy in Washington, said that he could not confirm the existence of the manual but that “avoiding civilian casualties and summary executions of any suspects is a positive development.”

Frankly, I would have expected a harsher line here, or an out-of-hand dismissal. Is Haidari triangulating?

I asked about the proportion of Afghan forces — soldiers and police — that had received the training, since I’ve seen Afghan police officers treat the population as a target for plunder, not protection. Agoglia didn’t have figures handy, but he said the percentage is “fairly small,” though starting to increase. He said the center had “little mentorship” with the police force in particular and that needed to improve in particular. With the Afghan National Army, Agoglia said he was looking to bring 15 Afghan instructors to the center in “120 to 150 days.”  Given that this is the force the United States is relying on to hold areas that the coalition clears of the Taliban, that seems like a particularly striking training issue. And that’s not meant as a criticism of Agoglia, who appears to be doing his utmost to disseminate best counterinsurgency practices and hard-won lessons throughout the coalition and Afghan forces, but rather a systemic problem of attention being paid to bring qualified Afghan forces into the fight.

Ultimately, I think whoever came up with the idea to print these things didn’t really think it through. While the likelihood of success using a technique like this is slim, the chance of inflaming the locals even further is much higher. This whole thing seems clumsy and ham-handed, and will almost certainly do more harm than good. I’d love to be proved wrong.

How does threatening villages — even implying that villages will be targeted — comport with McChrystal’s message that mission success is measured by population protection?

For more questions about the “precise synchronization” of McChrystal’s strategy, see Josh Foust in World Politics Review.

Military officials in Kabul said the “tactical directive,” to be released this week, came in response to incidents such as one last month that killed dozens of civilians. Under the new rules, the incident’s deadliest strikes wouldn’t have been authorized.

“We don’t want another Granai,” a senior military official in Kabul said, naming the village where last month’s incident occurred. “The tactical gains simply don’t outweigh the costs.”

This is a robust effort by McChrystal to prove that he means it when he says that the loss of Afghan popular support will mean the United States and its allies lose the war. And it’s sure to be met with opposition from some corners of the military and commentators who think a concern with population protection tips too far into the realm of tactical passivity. (That’s a charitable way of putting a sentiment that Ralph Peters expresses here.)

Beyond that, it’s unclear what guidelines McChrystal will use to assess the war’s fortunes, the objective conditions of Afghanistan, the relevant variables and the prospects for success. At his confirmation hearing last week, he said that success will ultimately be measured by “the number of Afghans shielded from violence.” But he also embraced “limited but necessary” air strikes, even as new Pentagon investigations uncover preventable errors that contribute to Afghan civilian casualties. Very few commanders would explicitly renounce a legal warfighting option, but questions remain about whether the anger with which Afghans view the result of the air strikes render them counterproductive. How McChrystal will tell the difference? If it’s metrics he’s after, the Center for a New American Security proposed some last week.

At least one change McChrystal has recommended might be on the table this week. During his hearing, he indicated that he would like to give Rodriguez operational responsibility for the regional commands around Afghanistan, freeing him to see the larger picture of the war. But because the Afghanistan war is a NATO fight, such a change will require the sign-off of the NATO countries that contribute troops. Enter Gates, who leaves tomorrow for Maastrict and Brussels for two days of NATO summitting, where he’ll probably take the temperature of the allies for such a command-structure change.

Recall that in January, Defense Secretary Bob Gates told the Senate that the U.S. military needed to adopt a policy of “first apologiz[ing]” when civilian casualties are said to occur, then investigating. An onerous burden, perhaps. But Gates articulated the broader importance of such a policy: “We have to get the balance right with the Afghan people or we will lose this war.” In a war that requires the active or passive support of the Afghan people, U.S.-caused civilian casualties aren’t just tragedies, they’re strategic facts that count in the Taliban’s favor. Speaking yesterday about how he’ll judge the success of the war effort, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the probable next commander of the war, cited one metric in particular: “the number of Afghans shielded from violence.” That can’t just be violence caused by the insurgency.

But as far as I’ve been able to determine (or, more accurately, not been able to determine), USFOR-A doesn’t follow Gates’ apologize-first instruction. Obviously the United States. doesn’t intend to kill civilians; and obviously in war civilians will be killed. But when these tragedies occur, USFOR-A should ask itself whether its strategic goals are better advanced by owning up to its errors or by pushing the blame for them onto the Taliban, even when the Taliban is morally responsible for provoking the act that led to the civilian deaths. Clearly the first-order priority is to take measures to minimize civilian casualties. But when they occur, what certainly won’t serve U.S. interests is to pay generic lip service to the idea that civilian casualties are huge strategic setbacks while deflecting blame for them in each particular instance — especially in instances where official investigations indicate U.S. culpability.

“I believe the perception caused by civilian casualties is one of the most dangerous enemies we face,” McChrystal said, as the loss of popular support “will be strategically decisive,” which is to say the war will be lost. He vows to review “all” U.S. procedures in Afghanistan to ensure that casualties will be minimized “except in self-defense.” McChrystal expects he’ll need more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets to get “more precision … to reduce civilian casualties and to reduce the impact [of U.S. troops] on the civilian population.” It’s not “a panacea,” but “the more you’ve got, the smarter you are as a force.”

Coalition Forces offer condolences following non-combatant deaths in Khost

KABUL, Afghanistan – Further inquiries into the Coalition and ANSF operation in Khost earlier today suggest that the people killed and wounded were not enemy combatants as previously reported.

During the operation to capture militants linked to insurgent activities in the area, a local family near the targeted enemy’s location fired upon the combined forces. The combined forces returned fire, killing two males, two females and wounding two females. There are reports of an infant also killed.

Coalition and Afghan forces do not believe that this family was involved with militant activities and that they were defending their home against an unknown threat.

The joint investigation will continue.

Coalition forces are working closely with local Afghan officials and family members to express condolences and provide assistance in the aftermath of this tragic event.

“We deeply regret the tragic loss of life in this precious family. Words alone cannot begin to express our regret and sympathy and we will ensure the surviving family members are properly cared for,” said Brig. Gen. Michael A. Ryan, U.S. Forces-Afghanistan.

I’m still unclear as to whether the policy is to apologize first or investigate first; it seems to be the latter. Still, this release, accepting responsibility for the civilian deaths, came barely four hours after USFOR-A’s announcement than an investigation had begun.