Nato is to start using smaller bombs in Afghanistan in an effort to avoid civilian casualties as it adapts to new Taliban tactics, the alliance said today.
After suffering heavy losses in pitched battles with Nato forces last year, the Taliban is avoiding direct confrontation with better equipped alliance forces. Instead, the insurgents are resorting to hostage-taking, suicide bombings and using human shields in an attempt to undermine public support for coalition forces by drawing Nato into inflicting civilian casualties.
"We have to adjust our profile as the Taliban deliberately targets civilians," said Chris Riley, a Nato spokesman.
Afghanistan has become a crucial test for Nato, which has never deployed outside Europe before. The alliance has charged 35,000 troops in Afghanistan with preventing the Taliban from returning to power after it was overthrown in 2001.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Nato's secretary-general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said Nato was "working with weapons load on aircraft to reduce collateral damage [civilian casualties]". He added, however, that it was impossible to avoid such deaths entirely.
Alliance commanders have also recently delayed attacks on Taliban forces in some situations where civilians were at risk.
"We realise that if we cannot neutralise our enemy today without harming civilians, our enemy will give us the opportunity tomorrow," he told the FT. "If that means going after a Taliban not on Wednesday but on Thursday, we will get him then."
Other Nato officials say the alliance will also increasingly leave house-to-house searches to the Afghan army, in the hope of reducing the risk of confrontation.
According to Afghan government figures, some 700 civilians were killed in 2006 as a result of the fighting. Up to 380 civilians were killed in the first four months of 2007, the UN estimates.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said last month civilians were suffering severely as a result of increasing numbers of roadside bombs and suicide attacks, and regular aerial bombing raids.
In a report last month, the human rights group Amnesty International said it was increasingly concerned at the rising numbers of Afghan civilians being killed and injured.
Amnesty said US, Nato and Afghan forces had killed scores of civilians this year in aerial and land attacks against Taliban insurgents. Civilians were also being killed in indiscriminate suicide attacks launched by the Taliban, as well as in attacks using improvised explosive devices (IEDs) such as roadside bombs, it said. Amnesty also cited reports of the Taliban using "human shields" to escape attack.
Last week, Massimo D'Alema, Italy's foreign minister, said civilian casualties were "not acceptable on a moral level" and "disastrous on a political level". And Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has warned western forces against treating Afghan lives as "cheap".
"We see that the Taliban have changed tactics," Mr de Hoop Scheffer said. "They realise they cannot win militarily and they are now deliberately forcing civilians into situations in which they get them killed to undermine support for Isaf (Nato's force in Afghanistan). That means we also must adjust. We cannot avoid it."