U.S. Special Operations can still conduct night raids without Afghan government approval

Madison Ruppert, Contributor
Activist Post

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the agreement which the United States and Afghanistan have come to is one that favors coalition troops while further subjugating the people of Afghanistan and sidelining their government.

This is hardly surprising given the clear push to force the United States to remain in Afghanistan indefinitely, either through blatant propaganda and fear mongering or questionable deals hidden away from public scrutiny.

Over the weekend, an agreement was signed which would place restrictions on the so-called “night raids” – which have been a considerable bone of contention between the U.S. and Afghanistan – something which Afghan President Hamid Karzai has attempted to get done for quite some time.

These restrictions are laughably lax, and it is unclear if the United States even needs to observe the legal opinions of Afghan officials or if they can just carry on operations regardless.

At first glance, the agreement appeared to place American Special Operations troops on standby before these raids could move forward.

According to Danger Room, in theory this agreement would require that raids obtain a warrant from an Afghan judicial panel before conducting a raid.

However, military officials say that this is far from the case as these restrictions would only be applicable to missions where there is supposed a reasonable chance of either taking Afghans prisoner or “search[ing] a residential house or compound,” according to Navy Commander John Kirby, a military spokesman in Kabul.

No other missions conducted by either special operations or any other conventional forces require an Afghan warrant, making it far less significant than one might think.

Therefore, special operations troops are allowed to target an alleged militant as he travels in the open or strike an alleged insurgent stronghold as long as they don’t think it is in a civilian home without an Afghan warrant.

That being said, it gets even worse when we consider that not even all raids on the homes of Afghan civilians require a warrant from an Afghan judicial panel.

“Under the Afghan constitution, specifically in Article 38, it does allow for what they call warrantless search and detention of individuals that are deemed an immediate threat,” Kirby told reporters.

“Theoretically, these operations can still go forward without a warrant in advance. But it does have to be pursued as soon as practical afterward,” he added.

In other words, the United States and coalition partners can still do just about whatever they want and then, as soon as they feel it is practical, pursue the justification for their actions.

It’s no surprise that the majority of Afghan people consider forces from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to be occupiers.

Kirby claims that situations where night raids will occur before they even seek out the approval of an Afghan judge will be the exception and not the rule, but I seriously doubt that will end up being the case.

These restrictions – which really do not appear to be very restricting in any sense – get even less serious when we take note of the fact that Kirby refused to say if U.S. special operations troops could still carry out a night raid even if the warrant request is denied by Afghan judges.

Similarly, Kirby declined to say what exactly the standard for obtaining a warrant is, but one can expect that they will likely hand over the warrant in the vast majority of cases given the huge amount of money that the United States continues to pour into Afghanistan.

Kirby noted that since December there have been “more than 350” of these night raids, all of which were reportedly joint operations with Afghan commandos.

According to Kirby – who is a dubious source when it comes to these matters, to say the least – the military found their target in 75 percent of these missions and only fired their weapons during 31 of the 350 raids. Personally, I doubt these statistics are accurate.

While Karzai continues to use heated rhetoric when addressing the raids publicly, it remains to be seen if he will actually do anything to stop them.

Right now, it seems like he isn’t doing anything to that effect.

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This article first appeared at End the Lie.