Focus on the forgotten victims of bombing

Marla Ruzick is a restless soul. In this dusty, half-destroyed city of Kabul, Ruzick, an American NGO worker, runs around energetically with just one mission; to get compensation for the civilian victims of the coalition bombing of Afghanistan since 7 October. She does not know how many there are and no one has compiled reliable figures. All statistics for civilian victims of the Afghan war are estimates or guesses. Despite that, Ruzick, in Afghanistan since 1 December, says there are many out there and they all deserve to be compensated by the United States, leading the war against terror in Afghanistan. "These are innocent victims, these are mothers, fathers and the US has to be accountable to them. Innocent civilians should not be impacted during war," Ruzick told IRIN in the Afghan capital, Kabul. "We need to make sure that there is a precedent and somebody is banging at the doors of the US embassy for accountability," she added. She has been doing that for some weeks, appearing at the US embassy in Kabul with one Afghan family or another and trying to get compensation for them, but so far she says she had no luck but will continue to try. Ruzick said US embassy officials take the claim from her but say that a decision on this will be taken in Washington. Determined, she plans to bring more Afghan victims to the embassy on 15 and 16 March. "I think it is important that the US, which will be putting lots of money in development projects here, if they are putting this money, why can’t they help innocent victims?" she asked. Ruzick's lobbying has still not emboldened the Afghan victims. Few come forward, either due to lack of resources or lack of will. "My relatives house was destroyed and he was injured, I have asked him to come and plead for some compensation but he does not want to," a cab driver in Kabul whose cousin lived near a village in the eastern city of Jalalabad, told IRIN. "What will he get anyway?" driver Mohammad Gul asked. Ruzick, a representative of US NGO Global Exchange, thinks all the Afghan victims of the coalition war on the Taliban and Al Qaeda should get on an average US $10,000, an amount Washington can easily afford to pay, she says. "If you take this estimate that probably 2,000 families were impacted or their homes were destroyed, probably on an average they need 10,000 dollars and this is just 20 million dollars and if you consider that 30 million dollars were spent daily on the bombing campaign here, its nothing," she added. A US embassy official in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, told IRIN that the US embassy in Kabul had received a few applications from Afghans seeking compensation and a file was being maintained. "The US embassy in Kabul has raised the issue with the Pentagon, which is looking in it," the official said. "The embassy is keeping a file but they need to be investigated," the official added, but gave no other details. Accurate figures remain elusive. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) spokesperson in Kabul Caroline Donilliez told IRIN that she understood it was a very important issue but the ICRC could not give out an estimate of civilian casualties because it did nor have the resources to compile such figures. Global Exchange - which organised the first visit of American family members of the victims of 11 September to Kabul to meet families of Afghan victims of the coalition bombing - now plans to undertake a survey of its own to try to figure out how many were killed. "We are in the process of a survey. We are going to focus on the area of Kandahar. Pay some people to go out and interview some families, collect news reports and get names and we are going to go and investigate that. Also look at the economic impact. The property damage," Ruzick said. The Massachusetts-based Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA) estimates that between 1,000 and 1,300 Afghan civilians died as a direct result of aerial bombardment. "A minimum of 3,000 more civilian deaths are attributable to the impact of the bombing campaign and war on the nation's refugee and famine crises," said PDA's report titled 'Strange Victory: A critical appraisal of Operation Enduring Freedom and the Afghanistan war' and available on its website. Another PDA study said the estimate used in the present study is broadly consistent with two other recent reviews: one by Human Rights Watch (HRW), which calculated at least 1,000 civilian deaths, and one by Reuters news agency, which concluded that perhaps 982 people were killed in 14 incidents. Yaqoob Sharafat, direct of the Afghan Islamic Press, a Pakistan-based news Afghan news agency, told IRIN from the Pakistani northwestern city of Peshawar that according to his estimates between a 1,000 to 1,500 civilians were killed. But he too, conceded that getting accurate information was extremely difficult. "There is nothing 100 percent confirmed, its very hard to say but I think after excluding exaggerated claims more than a 1,000 and less than 1,500 civilians were killed since 7 October," said Sharafat whose news agency was one of the main sources of information for international news networks and wire services after 7 October. A United Nations worker in Kabul told IRIN that some journalists, including reporters for some American newspapers were trying to compile this information. "It will be interesting to see what they write about," said the UN official. Ruzick said irrespective of the numbers, the United States must start quickly helping those victims whose cases have been investigated and confirmed. "We are talking about victims of the bombing campaign that started in October. People who have lost their lives, lost their homes. It’s a very urgent issue, its an issue which will help repair US image and it would also be a gesture for peace here in Afghanistan."