To Karlin - During meetings, even back when I was there in 2005, we'd often get people that'd show up at Shura's or general meetings, claiming to be elders from some tiny village. They'd then bitch and moan about us raping their daughters, killing their goats, etc etc. It was only much later that coalition command picked up on several individuals in the Gardez region masquerading as "elders" from some village. If memory serves me correctly, a British Officer recognized an "elder" claiming to be from one village, as being an "elder" claiming to be from another village all together a month earlier. In this instance, it turned out that the village he was "representing" had been abandon due to lack of a water source in early 2004. My point? There are members of the Taliban and Al-qaeda attempting to sow discord among regular Afghans. It's a trend that was somewhat minor in the North, but, from what i'm told, rampant in the South.
They've even gone as far as having workers in the camps (we employ local Afghans for menial tasks) to steal PDAs, memory sticks, cell phones, etc, to gather names and/or info to use to "substantiate" their claims. My father was there up until the end of May 2006 (on his third tour). He's a Military Police Officer, and one of the tasks the MPs and NIS were given in Kandahar was the investigation of stolen memory devices. In the local bazaar, it was possible to purchase all kinds of memory storage devices with their info still on them. In one stance, the name of a U.S. soldier, "implicated" in a rape, was proven to have been taken from a draft email he'd saved a few weeks earlier to his memory stick. The stick was reported stolen shortly after Afghan cleaning staff had attended to his company lounge, where he'd left the stick. In the end, the U.S. Military Police investigation caught up with the thief and the soldier was cleared.
While I have no doubts that incidents DO happen, I take a lot of the complaints with a grain of salt. Many are blatant lies, others distortions of the truth. You take the statement in there that the troops beat them and disturb their houses. It reminds me of early on during my tour in 2005. A tip came in that a weapons cache was being stored in a house near Camp Julien. Three patrols of Canadian soldiers (including mine) and 1 of Belgians bombed up, loaded in to G-wagons and LAV 3s, and zipped over to the residence less than 5 minutes from the base gates. We encircled the house, and 2-3B did the door kicking. In the house, there were two men, mid-20's, one of whom tried to flee. He was chased to the rear of the house where he turned and took a swing at a member of 3VP and was subsequently tackled by two others. He was zap strapped and brought to the front of the house where his buddy was also zapped and herded in to the back of a waiting LAV. A search of the house turned up several Ak-47s, an RPG-7 (with ammo), and some old Russian artillery shells ideal for making IEDs. The two men were transported to Camp Julien to be questioned by members of the Kabul Police. When the KP showed up, the one who took the swing at the soldiers started off on a tirade of how the soldiers blew his door up, ran in and started beating him and his friend with their rifles, kicking him, and then cuffed him and brought him to the Camp, even though he'd done nothing wrong. the KP, used to dealing with these people, called bullshit on him (as they'd be briefed by 3VP, and he didn't show a mark on his body), told him he'd resisted arrest, and they'd found more than enough evidence to convict him. It also didn't help that his partner in crime was cooperating fully with the KP, and had said they'd been approached weeks ago by members of the Taliban to store weapons for a modest sum of money. He also said that while the door being kicked in had scared him, he had been treated fairly. My point to this; it all boils down to a point of view.