By Jim Loney KABUL, May 22 (Reuters) - Mounting civilian casualties from U.S. and NATO air strikes against the Taliban are undermining the West's mission in Afghanistan and helping the insurgents recruit more fighters, analysts say. Scores of Afghans have died in recent air strikes by NATO and U.S.-led coalition forces, stirring angry protests by Afghans and calls for President Hamid Karzai's resignation. "There is an increased level of frustration over air strikes," said Nader Nadery, an Afghan human rights campaigner. "Some people do question why the coalition and NATO don't use more ground operations." Aerial bombardments killed at least 50 villagers in the remote Shindand district in western Herat province this month. The International Committee of the Red Cross said 173 houses were rendered uninhabitable, leaving nearly 2,000 people homeless. Karzai has warned that Afghans' patience is wearing thin. "Civilian deaths have strengthened the Taliban," said Waheed Mozhdah, a political and military analyst who served as an official in the Taliban government. "We had people fleeing their villages for neighbouring countries because of the bombings during the occupation by the Russians," he said. "That provided basically a good ground for the recruitment of mujahideen (holy warriors)." The growing hostility toward the foreign troops battling the Taliban insurgency has prompted NATO to take another look at its strategy, which uses aerial bombing to aid ground forces in battles with hardened Afghan mujahideen. Germany, which lost three soldiers in a Taliban suicide bombing last weekend, has called for a review of the way Western forces operate in Afghanistan. At a meeting on Monday, U.S. President George W. Bush and NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said they would try to reduce civilian casualties but blamed the Taliban for using human shields. REVULSION AT RAIDS Afghan revulsion at foreign air strikes can be traced to Soviet air raids in March 1979, when an estimated 20,000 civilians were killed in indiscriminate bombing at the start of the 10-year Soviet occupation. At the beginning of the U.S. campaign to oust the Taliban government in late 2001, air strikes were more precise and civilian casualties were fewer, said Nadery. The tide turned, he said, when U.S. planes attacked a wedding party in Uruzgan province in 2002, killing 48 people. "The majority of Afghans did welcome and still welcome the foreign troops," said Joanna Nathan, an International Crisis Group analyst. "But (civilian deaths) tend to drive disillusioned and disenfranchised groups to the other side of the conflict, even if not for ideological reasons." Acutely aware of the need to maintain popular acceptance, NATO and U.S. military officials say they use their ownership of Afghan air space cautiously and have called off strikes against Taliban leaders who use civilians as human shields. "There are dozens of combat actions that are successful and do not produce civilian casualties," said Ronald E. Neumann, until recently the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission said about 136 civilians have been killed this year by Taliban or Western forces. At least 700 civilians were among 4,000 war-related casualties last year, it said. The group estimates 60 percent are caused by foreign forces and 40 percent by the Taliban, who have claimed credit for recent suicide bombings that have also killed innocent bystanders. In another incident in March, U.S. troops fired on civilians near the eastern city of Jalalabad, killing 19, prompting an apology from a U.S. commander who said he was "ashamed" Americans had killed innocent Afghan people. Sean Kay, an analyst at Ohio Wesleyan University, said the recent civilian deaths contribute to a changing dynamic that is rendering the counter-insurgency campaign counter-productive. "Insufficient troops continues to create the situation where it is virtually impossible to do successfully the necessary combined combat operations and hearts-and-minds missions in the southern areas of the country," he said. (Additional reporting by Rodney Joyce and Sayed Salahuddin)
