Night raids in Afghanistan - from June 2011 Frontline

[sad sally]

Imagine a foreign army unit breaking into your house in the middle of the night...



MOHAMMED DAUDZAI, Chief of Staff to President Karzai: Night raids are against our culture. Even if it doesn’t cause any harm, that’s unacceptable because it’s a disgrace to people’s dignity in our culture.

NARRATOR: Mohammed Daudzai is chief of staff to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. He is worried that night raids do more harm than good.

MOHAMMED DAUDZAI: You have a village, has a very peaceful life, and in the middle of the night, people come and surround the village and search a few houses and take a few prisoners. And in that scuffle, a few of them are killed, women disgraced. The next day, what do you expect? The entire village youth becomes Taliban. They’re searching for the Taliban to recruit them and give them weapons.

NARRATOR: General McChrystal knew that night raids could turn the Afghan population against American soldiers. He restricted conventional troops from conducting them and instead ordered the elite forces of JSOC to take the lead.

Now they are doing six times as many night raids as they were two years ago. JSOC has taken measures to reduce the offense these operations cause by involving locals. This military video shows Afghan soldiers being trained by special forces to conduct a night raid.

TRAINING VIDEO: Attention! Your house is surrounded by the army. Raise your hands and come outside. Otherwise, you will all be killed.

Gen. DAVID PETRAEUS: Afghans accompany our forces on every one of these. They do the call-out— in other words, “Come out, we’ve surrounded the house.” They do it, obviously, in the native tongue that’s appropriate to that area.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/afghanistan-pakistan/kill-capture/transcript/?du