US commander defends night raids in Afghanistan

The US Special Operations commander who directed the operation that killed Osama bin Laden defended the unpopular night raids on homes in Afghanistan that have provoked the fury of the country's president and held up a security agreement with the United States.
Adm. William McRaven also backed a training program his troops run for village police forces an initiative that some fear could spawn militias and new violence.
McRaven, who leads the US Special Operations Command, said in a rare interview with journalists late Saturday that the US understands Afghan concerns about night raids and has allowed its partner Afghan forces to take the lead in those and other operations.
"At the end of the end of the day I think you would find that night raids are very valuable when you are trying to get someone who is trying to hide," McRaven said.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called for an end to the raids, in which troops borne in by helicopter search homes, because he says the forces conducting them treat too many civilians as if they were insurgents and violate privacy in an intensely conservative society. The deaths they cause although relatively few in number have made them unpopular with many Afghans.
Afghan citizens, Karzai says, cannot feel secure if they think armed troops might burst into their homes in the middle of the night. McRaven, who would not answer questions about the May raid that killed bin Laden in neighbouring Pakistan, said the United States was discussing the future of night raids with Afghanistan's government.
Around 2,800 raids against insurgent targets have been carried out in the past year, he said. But in 85 percent of them, the forces involved never fired a shot.
Karzai convened a traditional national assembly known as a Loya Jirga last month that stopped short of demanding a complete end to night raids. Instead, it asked that they be led and controlled by Afghan security forces a demand that the US says it has met.
Still, the issue has held up the signing of a security agreement with the US that could keep thousands of American troops here for years beyond the 2014 deadline for most international forces to leave. Remaining US troops would train Afghan forces and assist with counterterrorism operations.