The spokesman of President Karzai, Mr. Eimal Faizi, has approved the recent report of United Nations about the children casualties in foreign aerial attacks. Last week, children rights monitoring committee of the United Nations released a report in which it was said that during last four years, hundreds of Afghan children lost lives as result of foreign air strikes.

Right after the publication of the report, NATO officials rejected and strongly doubted the authenticity of the report. In a statement that followed the report, NATO claimed that during 2012, children casualties declined by 40 percent.  But Afghan government which is normally against aerial attacks ratified the report. Eimal Faizi said that it was bitter reality that innocent people, including women and children, fell victims to airstrikes.

No doubt, air strikes are recognized very effective in hunting Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders in the remote and mountainous areas, but sometimes, due to false information, they prove costly for innocent villagers. But generally operations proved highly effective in dealing severe blow to insurgency through hunting key figures in AFPAK border region.

But President Karzai opposes the strikes because they are the main reason behind NATO-caused civilian casualties. Several times, he asked for complete stoppage of aerial attacks, in general, and night raids, in particular. But foreign allies have not yielded to his demands because such operations are efficient as well as inexpensive due to lesser amount of men and money involved.

But there is one thing to be noticed. Even if NATO-led forces continue air strikes with the current motion and do not take other necessary steps for scaling down civilian casualty, still it makes least percentage of total civilian casualties. Taliban and al-Qaeda are guilty mainly as they are devising explosive devices in public areas, targeting people indiscriminately and committing suicidal attacks. However, the statement does not mean that deaths of innocent people by NATO forces be ignored or justified. Foreign forces must take due steps to bring down tolls among innocent villager to least possible level. They should understand that the live of each innocent Afghan citizen is as valuable as the life of their combatant forces.

But what is important is the outcome. If there is a close relation between air-strike and Taliban weakening, then it can be justified legally and morally. The weakening of insurgency definitely leads to lesser civilian casualties. On other hand, if foreign forces stop air operations, then the insurgency will get stronger and incline in the graph of civilian casualties. Definitely, that is the thing which no one may favor.