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An Afghan man grieves for his brother after an attack this week by U.S.-led coalition forces.

KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) — Thirteen people, described by the U.S. military as “noncombatants,” were killed in western Afghanistan earlier this week during a coalition operation, the military said Saturday.

“We expressed our deepest condolences to the survivors of the noncombatants who were killed during this operation,” said Brig. Gen. Michael Ryan, U.S. Forces-Afghanistan.  Three militants also died in Tuesday’s operation in the Gozara district of Herat province, the military said.  The killings further inflame Afghans’ anger and frustration over the killing of civilians in U.S.-led coalition and NATO operations. Many civilians also die in the crossfire between coalition forces and Taliban militants.

Afghan and coalition investigators and international observers this week were in Herat this week. Weapons and ammunition were found at the site of the operation and Afghan soldiers held shuras, or consultative bodies, with village leaders.

Ryan discussed the attack with senior police and army officials and with the governor of Herat.

“Our inquiry in Herat demonstrates how seriously we take our responsibility in conducting operations against militant targets and the occurrence of noncombatant casualties,” Ryan said.

“Our concern is for the security of the Afghan people. To this end, we continually evaluate the operations we conduct during the course of our mission in Afghanistan and have agreed to coordinate our efforts jointly.”
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President Hamid Karzai raised the issue of civilian casualties during a meeting he had on Saturday with visiting U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

A “recent consensus between the Afghan government and NATO, which gives more authority to the Afghan security forces during military operations, house searches and detention of suspected individuals, will help in reducing civilian casualties and bringing more effectiveness in the fight against terrorism,” Karzai said.

Tom Ridge was appointed after the 9/11 attacks on the US

Tom Ridge told the BBC that the report’s attacks on extended detention and torture were justified.  But he also said the US had been dealing with a new kind of threat.  The report the International Commission of Jurists said anti-terror measures worldwide had seriously undermined international human rights law.

After a three-year global study, the ICJ said many states had used the public’s fear of terrorism to introduce measures including detention without trial, illegal disappearance and torture.

It said the framework of international law that existed before the 9/11 attacks was robust and effective, but had been actively undermined by the US and the UK.

Mr Ridge, who was appointed to the new post of homeland security secretary after the 11 September, 2001 attacks on the US, said the ICJ was on “solid ground” in its commentary “with regard to torture and sustained detention without due process”.

In an interview with the BBC’s World Today programme he said that regardless of what terrorism suspects had done, the US still needed “to afford them some sense of due process.”

“It has taken a while for us to get to that point but we are certainly there now,” he said.   He added that there was now a consensus in the US and beyond that water-boarding – a harsh interrogation technique that simulates drowning – was torture, saying there had been no allegations of its use since 2003.

‘Dealing with it’

However, Mr Ridge also defended US policy, saying counter-terrorism work was now about detaining people before they were able to commit terrorist acts.  “The criminal justice system is about prosecution and counter-terrorism is about prevention,” he said.

When you are taking upon [yourself] the responsibility to prevent acts I think you do need to engage in slightly different tactics in order to ensure that it happens Tom Ridge, former US homeland security secretary

“When you are taking upon [yourself] the responsibility to prevent acts I think you do need to engage in slightly different tactics in order to ensure that it happens.”  Mr Ridge said the US and other countries had had to deal with a new kind of enemy – “individuals who sought to kill innocent civilians, accepted a belief system that the end justified the means.”

Many suspects had “embraced an ideology, a belief system, that said it’s perfectly all right in order to advance a cause to kill innocents along the way”, he said.

“They had no loyalty to a country so they’re not the traditional prisoner of war, they don’t wear the uniform of a country so we can’t treat them as we have done in previous wars.”

Mr Ridge added: “How we dealt with them in terms of returning them to their potential country of origin was a difficult issue that not only the United States but other countries have had to deal with.

“So, we’re in the process of dealing with it.”

Taleban supporters are in plain sight in Mingora, in the Swat valley

Pakistan has announced a “permanent ceasefire” with Taleban rebels in the north-western valley of Swat.

Syed Mohammad Javed, commissioner of Malakand, which includes Swat, revealed the deal, but the Taleban say that negotiations are continuing.

Swat, once one of Pakistan’s most popular holiday destinations, has been blighted by violence since 2007. Reports of the pact come a week after a 10-day ceasefire and a deal to implement Sharia law in parts of Swat.  Local Taleban met a senior elder, Sufi Mohammad, to discuss ceasefire terms before the agreement was announced, reports said. Sufi Mohammad, a pro-Taleban cleric, is the father-in-law of Maulana Fazlullah, who has been waging a violent campaign to impose Sharia in the region.

Crossfire
Following the deal struck last Sunday to agree to introduce Sharia law, the government’s announcement suggests negotiations between Maulana Fazlullah and Sufi Mohammad could now be leading to a more permanent deal.

“They have made commitment that they will observe a permanent ceasefire and we’ll do the same,” Mr Javed, the commissioner of Malakand, told reporters on Saturday.

He said that the army would scale back its operations in the valley and asked residents who left Swat because of the fighting to return home. Schools for boys would reopen, although school for girls would remain closed, Mr Javed added.

A Taleban spokesman told the BBC that while Maulana Fazlullah had expressed his satisfaction with the peace agreement, the rebels would not lay down their arms until the new Sharia regulations were enforced to their satisfaction.

He said negotiations between the two sides were continuing but no deal had been yet been reached, the BBC’s Shoiab Hassan reports from Islamabad.

Thousands of people have fled and hundreds of schools have been destroyed in Swat since a Taleban insurgency began in 2007. The people of Swat have long been caught in the crossfire between the army and the Taleban.

More than 1,000 civilians have died in shelling by the army or from beheadings sanctioned by the Taleban. Thousands more have been displaced. The Taleban now control the entire countryside of Swat, limiting army control to parts of the valley’s capital, Mingora.

ISLAMABAD – A suicide bomber attacked the funeral of a slain Shiite Muslim leader in northwestern Pakistan on Friday, killing 28 people and triggering deadly rioting, officials said.

Rising sectarian attacks threaten to further destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan just as it faces intense international pressure to crack down on Islamist militants.

Meanwhile, a top U.S. official said Washington was worried that a five-day-old cease-fire in the restive Swat valley could “turn into a surrender” to Taliban insurgents behind beheadings, the bombings of schools for girls and attacks on security forces.

Friday’s explosion struck a 1,000-strong crowd streaming toward a graveyard in Dera Ismail Khan for the burial of Sher Zeman, a Shiite leader who was gunned down in the city the day before.

Police official Ishtiaq Marwat said a suicide attacker killed at least 28 people and wounded more than 60 others, leaving shoes and torn clothing littering a bloodstained street. Some of the dead and injured were taken to the hospital in wooden handcarts.

Gunfire broke out afterward and police said angry Shiites fired on officers rushing to the scene. Marwat said two Sunni Muslim residents had been shot dead in the rioting.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but past attacks on Pakistan’s minority Shiites have been carried out by extremists from the majority Sunni community who regard the sect as heretical.

Fayyaz Hussain, a local Shiite leader, said extremists were trying to start a wider sectarian conflict.

“This attack is yet another attempt to force us to leave Dera Ismail Khan, but we will face the situation and will stay here,” Hussain said.

Relations between the two communities are under growing strain following a series of attacks. A car bomb killed 29 people and wounded scores near a Shiite mosque in Peshawar in December. On Feb. 5, a suicide bomber killed 24 at a Shiite mosque in a central city.

Much of the bloodshed has been in the northwest, where the Taliban and other hardline Sunni groups have seized control of swaths of territory, despite a series of military offensives.

International concern is focused on Swat, where troops and militants have been observing a cease-fire since authorities offered to introduce Islamic law if militants lay down arms.

Pakistan has sent hard-line cleric Sufi Mohammed to persuade the Swat Taliban to accept the pact, whose details remain murky.

A spokesman for Mohammed said talks with militant leader Maulana Fazlullah on Friday had gone well.

“We will soon give good news to the people,” spokesman Ameer Izzat Khan said.

The government has rejected criticism that the pact would create a Taliban sanctuary less than 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the capital, Islamabad, insisting it is committed to combating terrorism and extremism.

But Richard Holbrooke, the new U.S envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said Thursday that he had raised concern about the deal during a phone call with Pakistan’s president.

Holbrooke told CNN that President Barack Obama was worried “that this deal, which is portrayed in the press as a truce … does not turn into a surrender.”

He said Zardari told him during Thursday’s phone call that the pact was an “interim arrangement” while Pakistan stabilizes the situation.

“He doesn’t disagree that the people who are running Swat now are murderous thugs and militants and they pose a danger not only to Pakistan, but to the United States and India,” Holbrooke said.