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WAR IN AFGHANISTAN U.S. Attacks Afganistan U.S Abandons Afganistan Roots of Terrorism How you can help The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan in 1979
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA
aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet
army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded
until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that
President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents
of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note
to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this
aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention. Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But
perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to
provoke it? B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but
we knowingly increased the probability that they would. Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that
they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States
in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis
of truth. You don't regret anything today? B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had
the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want
me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border,
I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to
the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to
carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought
about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire. Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism,
having given arms and advice to future terrorists? B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban
or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the
liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war? Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated Islamic
fundamentalism represents a world menace today. B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard
to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam
in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading
religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there
in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan
militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing
more than what unites the Christian countries. Translated from the French by Bill Blum
I. FUTILE CAMPAIGN The Guardian May 20, 2002, This futile campaign By Madeleine Bunting There was almost relief in Brigadier Roger Lane's voice on Friday morning as he told the Today programme that they'd finally found and killed some AQT - al- Qaida/Taliban - in the remote mountain valleys of eastern Afghanistan. They had engaged their enemy, hitherto as elusive as the snow leopard, and around 1,000 British soldiers were being flown in for the battle. Twenty-four hours later, Operation Condor, as it was named, looked about as farcical as every other operation in Afghanistan has done in the past six months. You can take your pick from at least three explanations for Operation Condor. Option one is the claim of locals that far from being AQT, these were tribesmen in a shoot-out over some woodland. Option two came from the Pakistan-based Afghan press agency which reported that these were tribesmen celebrating a wedding by shooting AK-47s into the air. Option three was the Ministry of Defence's modified version by Saturday night that a) they were definitely AQT, but b) the marines had not yet made contact with them. The problem with option three is how the MoD in London can be so sure they are AQT when everyone else is having such difficulties identifying them. You have to sympathise with the marine quoted as saying: "It's impossible. They all look the same and they all carry guns." Anthony Loyd, the Times correspondent, concluded recently that if you carry a weapon in the wrong part of Afghanistan and point it at one of the coalition special forces, you will inevitably die quickly and once you've been shot, you are AQT by definition. Given that half the male Afghan population is armed, and used to using weapons liberally, there is ample scope for shooting shepherds. Nor do either of the other options seem particularly plausible. They both cropped up several weeks ago when US forces responded to shots by bombing and killing at least 10 Afghans. Either Afghans have a tendency to fight over woodland or the US is not going to win many friends if its contribution to village nuptials is bombing raids. It's no good instructing your Chinook pilots to wave at everyone they see because friendly relations are crucial, if you then bomb the groom. The only sensible conclusion is that we know as much about Operation Condor as we do about its predecessors - Anaconda, Ptarmigan, Snipe - and before that, Tora Bora: very, very little. Follow the reports for the past six months and there is a ludicrous pattern of claims of victory, then a few discordant details trickle out and, finally, an admission of failure. So, now we know that Tora Bora was regarded as one of the "gravest errors of the war": the US depended too heavily on unreliable Afghan fighters. Osama bin Laden and many AQT fighters managed to escape. We were told that Snipe had inflicted a "significant blow" on the AQT by blowing up an arms dump, but immediately a stubbornly off-message Afghan commander popped up to say, rubbish, that was his dump left over from the fight against the Soviets. We were initiated into a new form of warfare - don't measure success by bodybags. This is a very interesting form of fighting: first the US didn't want to get any of its men killed, then the AQT sensibly followed suit and the result is death-free war, a whole new concept of "pacifist war". Even the marines know this is very silly. Afghanistan is in danger of becoming the most embarrassing chapter in the recent history of British military engagements. A peevishness has crept into the briefings. Brigadier Lane complains that the AQT are "not showing a predisposition to reorganise and regroup to mount offensive operations against us". They just won't come out to play. Well, would you if the place was crawling with some of the most sophisticated weaponry in the world? Far better to lie low and look after your goats, or visit some relatives over the border in Miram Shah in Pakistan's Waziristan, and brush up your Koranic chanting. Any AQT strategist can rely on the fact that their commitment and patience will comfortably outstrip that of the western soldiers currently trudging up and down the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, like any terrorist organisation, doesn't need a base in Afghanistan to launch its attacks, while the Taliban can sit tight, quietly recruiting and regrouping, before re-emerging in Afghan politics. It's an ignominious ending to the triumphalism of the fall of Kabul just over six months ago. Here we are discussing a bad tummy bug, military latrines and whether our boys are using disposable cutlery. Then, we were celebrating music on the streets and women news presenters back on the TV. Afghanistan offered the perfect solution to September 11 - a massive expiation of US anger and, more subtly, guilt. Dropping all those bombs felt doubly good: it was retaliation for a terrible crime, but also getting rid of an evil regime. The emotional rush was everything; whether the latter actually worked has fallen off most people's radar screen. They're not interested. The selective memory means that what is remembered is that a few women in Kabul threw off their burkas in November, not that many more women in northern Afghanistan have been raped since then in a wave of ethnic revenge against the Pashtun. Nor is anyone much interested that since the fall of the Taliban, the old lawlessness of highway looting and illegal road tolls has re-emerged. Or that in the past few months there have been at least two major conflicts between warlords - in Mazar-i-Sharif and in Gardez - as an uneasy truce awaits the results of next month's loya jirga. Nor, curiously has there been much said on the spectacular failure to halt the poppy crop. The Taliban virtually wiped out the trade (which supplied about 75% of the world's opium) but Afghan farmers are a canny bunch and no sooner was Mullah Omar on the run than they started planting on the assumption that no new government would have the authority or will to stop them. They've been proved right. Despite huge EU grants, Hamid Karzai's government has backed off, well aware that its position is too fragile to take on such an unpopular battle. By the time of the first anniversary of the fall of Kabul it will no longer be possible to ignore the accumulation of these awkward details, and we will be embarrassed to be reminded of our naive triumphalism. The war was a crude and clumsy intervention which did little for the wretched Afghans, and even less for the struggle against terrorism. In December, Downing Street put out a memo castigating the pundits who had got it "wrong". The war had made the world "safer for you and your family" it declared. Try telling that to Mrs Pearl or the families of the French engineers blown up in Karachi last week. Try telling that to Americans who have been warned that there is a danger of a terrorist attack on a nuclear installation on July 4.
II. US WAR CRIMES? Documentary of US 'war crimes' shocks Europe By Clive Freeman Berlin - American soldiers have been involved in the torture and murder of captured Taliban prisoners, and may have aided in the "disappearance" of up to 3 000 men in the region of Mazar-i-Sharif, according to Jamie Doran, an Irish documentary film-maker. Doran's latest film, Massacre At Mazar, was shown on Wednesday in in the Reichstag, the German parliament building in Berlin, and there were immediate calls for an international commission to be set up to investigate charges made in the documentary. Andrew McEntee, a leading international human rights lawyer, who has viewed the film footage and read full transcripts, believes there is prima facie evidence of serious war crimes having been committed by American soldiers in Afghanistan. 'The Americans did whatever they wanted' McEntee, who was in Berlin for Wednesday's special screening, said war crimes had been committed not just under international law but, also, "under the laws of the United States itself". Much of the footage shown in Doran's 20-minute documentary was taken secretly, and although witnesses were said to be living in fear of reprisal from within Afghanistan itself they had all agreed to appear at any future international war crimes tribunal to give evidence, it was claimed. One witness in the film claimed he had seen an American soldier break an Afghan prisoner's neck and pour acid on others. "The Americans did whatever they wanted. We had no power to stop them," he alleged. Sometimes prisoners who were beaten up and taken outside had "disappeared", he said. In other sequences witnesses, among them two men, claimed they had been forced to drive into the desert with hundreds of Taliban prisoners. The living were then summarily shot while 30 to 40 American soldiers purportedly stood by, it was alleged. The prisoners had been taken there on the orders of the local American commander, according to the documentary. In the film, an Afghan witness admitted to killing prisoners himself, and another officer, allegedly a senior officer in the army of deputy defence minister Dostum's forces, was said to have gone into hiding following threats to his life. The far-left Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) arranged for the special showing of Massacre At Mazar in the Reichstag. Party chairman Roland Claus was cautious regarding its content but did spoke of its attempt at "authenticity." Andre Brie, a PDS member of the European Parliament, concerned by reports of ill treatment of Taliban prisoners, said he would be in favour of an international commission looking into "disturbing" questions raised by the film. At a press conference Brie said he had known of Doran's dangerous film activity in Afghanistan, and had helped to support him financially. The PDS party faction had wanted to obtain authentic footage of the war in Afghanistan, he said. The film was due to be screened at the European Parliament in Strasbourg later on Wednesday evening. - Sapa-DPA US Rights Group Urges Forensic Probe Into Alleged Taliban Massacre A medical human rights group called for a full forensic investigation into the reported killings -- allegedly amid US complicity -- of Taliban prisoners in Afghanistan. The Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) also urged that immediate steps be taken to safeguard the gravesite of the alleged victims near the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Also See Physicians for Human Rights Renews Call for Full Forensic Investigation Into Alleged Killing of Taliban Prisoners; Immediate Protection of Graves Urgently Needed Physicians for Human Rights (Press Release 6/13/02P Documentary of US 'War Crimes' Shocks Europe New Zealand Independent Online 6/12/02 A documentary shown Thursday to the European Parliament in Strasbourg cited witness accounts that several dozen Taliban prisoners died at the hands of Northern Alliance soldiers, suffocated in a container after they surrendered in late 2001. The film claims US soldiers asked the Afghans to get rid of the bodies to avoid the appearance of satellite photos showing them, and that between 1,500 and 4,000 prisoners may have been buried. PHR personnel had visited the site in January and March and performed autopsies on three bodies that suggested suffocation was the cause of death. While acknowledging it had not been able to determine the credibility of the allegations made by Irish filmmaker Jamie Doran's documentary, PHR said the site should be protected by the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan pending a comprehensive forensic inquiry. "If these sites and others are not protected and thoroughly investigated, an accurate accounting will not be possible," said PHR executive director Leonard Rubenstein. Founded in 1986, the PHR has documented mass graves and political killings, and collected DNA evidence for identifying the missing in dozens of nations. The group has worked for the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. In an initial reaction to the documentary, the Pentagon on Thursday denied any complicity in the charges and said that similar accusations had emerged months ago. "I think it surfaced in March and we looked at them, they were unfounded," said Major Brad Lowell, a spokesman for the US Central Command in Florida, which leads US forces in Afghanistan. MORE ON WAR CRIMES Le Monde / US troops accused of war crimes against Taliban / Rafaele Rivais US troops accused of war crimes against Taliban Rafaele Rivais MEPs of the European United Left/ Nordic Green Left (EUL/NGL) caused a stir at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on June 12. They organised a showing of a 20-minute preview of Massacre In Mazar, a full-length documentary that accuses United States soldiers and Northern Alliance fighters of committing war crimes in northern Afghanistan's Mazar-i-Sharif region last year. More than 150 people, including MEPs from opposing political groups, crammed into the EUL/NGL's meeting room to watch the documentary, which was made by a former BBC journalist, Jamie Doran, who is now an award-winning independent film director. On the basis of evidence from six eyewitnesses - who were not paid and who are apparently prepared to confirm their claims in court - Doran questions the fate of 8,000 Taliban fighters who surrendered to Northern Alliance forces in Kunduz on November 20, 2001. A few of the men (around 470) were taken to the fortress of Qala-i-Jhangi, on the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif. The prisoners organised an uprising there. Their fate has now been established: only 86 prisoners survived the riot, which was crushed by Northern Alliance forces with help from US and British commando units. But the majority of the Taliban prisoners (around 7,500) were apparently taken to another fortress, Qala- i-Zeini, before being transported in 25 containers to Sheberghan prison, which is a two-hour drive away. Two soldiers claim that around 300 men were squeezed into each container. "We had orders to fire at the containers if they screamed," says one soldier. A taxi driver who came to fill up his vehicle near Sheberghan prison wondered "why there was such a nasty smell", and said he "saw blood pouring out of the containers". Apparently around 4,000 of the Taliban were dead or half-asphyxiated when they arrived at the jail. US officials then allegedly told the drivers to take the dead and the dying into the desert, and to get rid of the containers so that they could not be located by satellite. Two drivers, whom Doran tracked down and met separately, took him to the same spot, where he filmed human bones and pieces of clothing. He did not do any digging, but got the impression he was in the presence of a mass grave. Afghan soldiers claim that the Americans tortured the Taliban at Sheberghan jail. One of them said: "They cut off their beards, tongues and legs, and poured acid over their heads." EUL/NGL's president, Francis Wurtz, intends to ask the European Parliament to investigate the claims made in Doran's documentary. He has made it clear that his group is motivated neither by "anti-Americanism" nor by any "sympathy for the Taliban". June 14 The Guardian Weekly 27-6-2002, page 27
III. US LEAVING RUINED COUNTRY TO WAR LORDS shniad@sfu.ca wrote: New Zealand Herald 18.06.2002 US leaves wrecked Afghanistan to thugs, murderers By Gwynne Dyer > > This is not democracy. This is a rubber stamp," said Sima Samar, the > Minister for Women's Affairs in the interim Afghan Government. > > Looking around the enormous tent erected in the grounds of the wrecked Kabul > Polytechnic to house the 2000 delegates to the Loya Jirga, the grand council > called to choose a government until elections are held late next year, she > continued: "Everything here has already been decided by those with the > power. This Jirga includes all the warlords. None of them is left out." > > She was not exaggerating. There they were in the first and second rows: a > roll-call of the thugs and murderers who have ruined Afghanistan. > > They were there because the United States, at the moment the real ruler of > Afghanistan, wanted them to be there. Washington wants a cheap one-way > ticket out of Afghanistan, and they are it. > > When the Taleban regime was overthrown late last year by an alliance of > American air power and these same warlords, the US had a choice: to stay and > help to build a new Afghanistan, or just to hand over to its warlord allies > and get out fast. > > The British and Russians will both tell you that foreign armies who stay too > long in Afghanistan always end up regretting it. Besides, the Bush > Administration doesn't do "nation-building", so the decision was a > no-brainer. > > Since President Bush has little else to show for his Afghan expedition - no > Osama bin Laden dead or alive, not even Mullah Omar in chains - he needs to > show the American public that something positive has been accomplished, so > "democracy" has to come to Afghanistan. > > But not real democracy, because that would take years of effort and billions > of dollars of development funds, and even then it might not work. Just a > > show of democracy, and then out within a year or less. > > That is why Isaf, the International Security Assistance Force to which 19 > nations have contributed troops, has never expanded outside Kabul. > > Nobody wanted to take on the big job of policing the rest of the country > > even long enough to ensure that the Loya Jirga could be chosen freely. > > What happened instead was documented in a recent report from Human Rights > Watch that was based on a survey of the delegate-selection process in six > southern provinces. Intimidation was rife, beatings and false arrests were > frequent, and the province usually wound up being represented by the > friendly neighbourhood warlord and his men. > > Meanwhile, the highway banditry and illegal road tolls that were suppressed > in Taleban times are reappearing everywhere. The poppy crop that the Taleban > successfully banned (Afghanistan used to supply 75 per cent of the world's > opium) has been replanted, and interim president Hamid Karzai's Government > is too weak to enforce the law against poppy farmers with warlord backing. > > Humanitarian aid must now be funnelled through the hands of the local > mafiosi in half the provinces of Afghanistan. > > Afghanistan was not better off under the Taleban, but it was not a whole lot > worse off. To which Americans might reply: too bad, but we didn't really go > there to improve life for you Afghans. > > If that happens, we're pleased, but we went there to root out a terrorist > group that inflicted a great hurt on the US, and was given shelter by the > Taleban regime. > > We destroyed it, and now it's up to you Afghans to pick up the pieces if you > can. Bye. > > Fair enough, if this were the first contact between the US and Afghanistan, > and if the Afghans were really an incorrigibly tribal people who have spent > their entire history in a low-grade civil war. But neither of those things > is true. > > Afghan leaders have been trying to modernise their country for almost a > century now, and after the monarchy was overthrown in 1973 the new, > pro-Soviet regime put the project into high gear. > > Twenty years ago, there was barely a head-scarf to be seen in Kabul, let > > alone a burqa. The grounds of Kabul Polytechnic, now thronged with the > bearded retinues of tribal warlords, were filled with young Afghan women in > jeans studying for engineering degrees. > > The conservative tribal areas hated modernisation, but what turned it into a > 22-year civil war was former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's insight > that if he secretly armed the tribes against Kabul, he could sucker the > Soviet Union into coming to the Kabul Government's rescue. > > The Russians duly "invaded" in 1979, the US ran even more arms in to the > > tribes, and Kissinger got what he wanted: Russia's Vietnam. > > Afghanistan's modern infrastructure was destroyed and millions of Afghans > were killed or driven into exile, but after 10 years the Russians pulled > > out. > > Kissinger boasts that it helped to bring down the Soviet Union, which is > rather like the butterfly in Kipling's Just So Stories which stamped - and > felt responsible because King Solomon's temple then collapsed. > > Having helped to wreck Afghanistan, Washington then walked away, abandoning > it to a long civil war and the tender mercies of Pakistan's Inter-Service > Intelligence (which eventually pacified it, more or less, by creating the > Taleban). > > Now the US is walking away again, behind a flimsy facade of > "democratisation". But given the dismal record of past interventions, > British, Russian, American and Pakistani, maybe this is the least bad > outcome to a miserable episode in Afghan history. > > * Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist > June Zaccone Economics (Emerita), Hofstra University National Jobs for All Coalition 475 Riverside Dr Ste 853 NY, NY 10115-0050 212-870-3449 http://www.njfac.org MORE ON WAR LORDS AND FAILURE OF WEST Jonathan Steele The warlords are reasserting themselves West is failing Afghanistan In the heady days after the Taliban fell, Western politicians developed a simple refrain. "This time we will not walk away,¾ they promised. By that they meant no repetition of what happened after Western-supported mojahedin forces gained control of Afghanistan a decade earlier. Foreign governments had cheered their allies' victory, but when the mojahedin factions fell out and destroyed Kabul in an orgy of artillery shelling, rape and murder, they turned a blind eye. It was an experience that Mohammed Latif will never forget. A civil servant who now earns more by driving a taxi, he lives across the street from the site of the loya jirga or grand tribal council, which chose the country¼s new government last week. His house was damaged during the mojahedin fighting. Huge shell-holes are still visible on the two-storey facade, now partly filled by bricks. Latif pointed up the hill to the Intercontinental Hotel and described how forces loyal to the main Tajik mojahedin commander, Ahmed Shah Massoud, had fired down from the ridge on to his neighbourhood during the years of anarchy. He hoped the West would exert a restraining hand this time. Yet, as the loya jirga ended, it was hard to be optimistic. Admittedly, there had been unprecedentedly open debate. Around half the delegates were chosen in elections that were reasonably free. When it came to sharing jobs in President Hamid Karzai's new government a balance was struck between the country's main ethnic groups, the Tajiks and the Pashtun. But on the major issue of whether Afghanistan will be run by educated people with a vision of democratic development, the loya jirga was a disaster. The struggle between the modernisers and the old mojahedin leaders was won decisively by the latter. Men responsible for the mayhem of the early 1990s hogged the microphones to boast of their role in resisting Soviet occupation but ignored the more recent destruction they caused and the fact that ordinary Afghans despise them as reactionary warlords. They forced their fundamentalist views of Islam on to the assembly, demanding -- and getting from Karzai -- the right to call the government "Islamic¾. The loya jirga also failed to enhance the power of the central government and extend it to the provinces. The thugs who run the cities of Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif rejected offers to join Karzai's government in Kabul, preferring to stay in monopoly control of their regional fiefdoms. How much Western governments could do to stop these internal processes can be debated. But by refusing to send international peacekeepers out of Kabul to help Karzai to disarm the warlords the West is helping the forces of conservatism. By declining to make aid for regional government projects conditional on human rights progress, it is doing the same. Indeed, it is not even providing all the aid it promised, with or without strings attached. Removing the Taliban was not the primary purpose of the United States air strikes on Afghanistan last autumn. "Regime change¾ became a war aim relatively late in the day. The main goals were to capture Osama bin Laden and eliminate the danger of further al-Qaida attacks. But neither Bin Laden nor his main lieutenants have been found. A new audio tape obtained by the al-Jazeera TV station says they are alive and ready for more outrages. So the hunt for al-Qaida inside Afghanistan has failed, as Britain's decision to abandon its help for the US and withdraw its marines next month demonstrates. And the Bush administration now admits the threat may be greater than it was before it bombed Afghanistan. The New York Times last week reported senior US government officials as saying that a group of mid-level operatives have taken over from Bin Laden and have forged links with extremists in several Islamic countries. By this analysis the internal politics of Afghanistan are the only area where the US can claim success from its decision to respond to the September 11 attacks with military force. Forget, for a moment, the hundreds of civilians killed by bombs and the thousands who died of hunger during the disruption of aid supplies. Ignore the dangerous precedent of accepting one nation's right to overthrow a foreign government, however brutal, by bombing another country. The crude test of the operation depends on whether the fall of the Taliban outweighs the high costs incurred. In the euphoria of last December many people felt it did. Can they feel so sure six months down the line? The Taliban's collapse created real opportunities for progress, and Kabul has become a vibrant city once again. Women are able to lead normal public lives, and at the loya jirga, in spite of efforts at intimidation, many spoke out against the warlords with more courage than the men. But signs of regression are already emerging. Many delegates were concerned that when they left the spotlight of publicity and returned to the provinces they could be targeted. The fundamentalists are reasserting their authoritarian rule. In spite of its loud promises the West has begun to walk away. The Guardian Weekly 27-6-2002, page 12
IV. CIVILIAN DEATHS David Corn - WorkingForChange 07.11.02 - War is hell. War is fog. The Pentagon seems committed to proving these axioms in Afghanistan. On July 1, the U.S. military attacked a compound in the village of Kakrak, At least 54 people were killed and 120 wounded. They were civilians; many were women and children attending a wedding celebration. Twenty-five members of the bridegroom's family were destroyed. The event was horrible, the latest in a string of U.S. military mishaps that have caused the deaths of Afghan civilians-the total estimate of those killed ranging from hundreds to several thousand. It is probably sadly true that major military action is not possible without what's euphemistically known as "collateral damage"-especially when that action consists of air attacks and bombing raids. But throughout the war in Afghanistan, the Pentagon has been loath to acknowledge errors and to deal with the supposedly unavoidable and supposedly unintentional consequences of its operations. The Defense Department refused to concede that in December it had wrongly hit a convoy of tribal elders on their way to the inauguration of interim president Hamid Karzai. In January, U.S. Special Forces raided two compounds and killed over a dozen troops loyal to Karzai's government and captured and held almost two dozen more (some of whom claimed they were abused). Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld eventually conceded the U.S. troops had killed and grabbed the wrong people, but he refused to characterize the U.S. actions as a mistake. No one apparently was disciplined. With the most recent event-the worst known case of civilian casualties of this war-the Pentagon, once again, tried at first to duck responsibility and to explain away the slaughter. But as more information became available about the attack in Kakrak, it became harder for the Defense Department to hold the line. A look back at its changing story is instructive. On the day of the assault, U.S. military officials told reporters that a 2,000-pound satellite-guided bomber dropped from a B-52 had strayed off course and slammed into the village. They noted that an Air Force AC-130 gunship operating in the area had returned fire after receiving sustained antiaircraft fire. One U.S. military officer scoffed at the initial report that a wedding party had been hit, noting that the last time such a claim was made, "even the 'bride' had a beard and an AK-47." This unidentified officer further told Thomas Ricks of The Washington Post, "This group is masterful at disinformation." In other words, don't believe what the locals say about this incident. The day after, the Pentagon rejiggered its story and said the 2,000-pound bomb had struck an uninhabited hillside. It refused to accept responsibility for the civilian deaths and injuries. Defense Department officials could not explain what happened, though they now focused on the AC-130 gunship, again saying it had attacked targets in this area after being shot at. As the Post reported, the U.S. military officials "insisted that U.S. forces ... were responding to a deliberate attack by antiaircraft guns or other weapons." At a Washington press conference, Marine Corps Lt. General Gregory Newbold, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, "This is an area of enormous sympathy for the Taliban and al-Qaeda." He and Victoria Clarke, the Pentagon's chief spokesperson, pointed out that it was a common tactic for the Taliban and al-Qaeda to place weapons and troops in civilian areas. Military officials also suggested that locals might have been harmed by falling antiaircraft fire. Rumsfeld said it would take up to two days to come up with "useful information." The whiff of justification was in the air. But as reporters were able to speak with survivors of the attacks, an awful tale emerged. Villagers said that at about 2:00 am a warplane blasted them at the wedding party. Some saw family members cut in half. Body parts were flying. Survivors spoke of fleeing through rice and corn fields as the aircraft seemed to chase after them, firing away. Some said the attack went on for several hours and also targeted other villages. Some reported that American and Afghan troops arrived shortly after the assault ended and remained on the scene until about noon. (Presumably, these U.S. troops were not in a position to send "useful information" to Rumsfeld.) And local villagers maintained they were supporters of Karzai and explained they were from his ethnic Pashtun tribe. As one said, would we be having a wedding celebration with music and dancing, if the Taliban were around? Two days after the attack-and as it became more clear a massacre had occurred, intentional or not-the Pentagon began to acknowledge errors might have been committed during the raid, but it asserted the U.S. forces had cause to attack the compound. Major Gary Tallman, a U.S. spokesman in Afghanistan, said that U.S. aircraft had flown over the area repeatedly the two days prior to the attack and each time had encountered antiaircraft fire, and, he added, the antiaircraft gun was firing when the AC-130 attacked on July 1. He acknowledged, though, that no trace of the gun had been found. Pentagon officials would not confirm that the airstrike had caused civilian casualties. But Tallman also said that U.S. Special Forces had "reliable information" that senior Taliban officials were being sheltered in Kakrak. At the same time, U.S. military investigators told reporters, off the record, that they had not found evidence that many people had been killed and injured. "There should be more blood," one said. It looked as if the Pentagon was attempting to wiggle its way out of this mess-to dodge responsibility, as it had become accustomed to doing. One problem was, the Afghan government could not join its American allies in this mission. With the villagers protesting-and other Afghans outraged-Foreign Minister Abdullah decried the raid, noting, "This situation has to come to an end. Mistakes can take place ... but our people should be assured every measure has been taken to avoid such incidents." President Karzai blamed the U.S. military for the deaths and declared, "People should not be hurt, and the campaign against the Taliban and terrorism must not become the cause of harassment of the people." Though Karzai had raised questions about civilian Afghan casualties in the past, his government was more forceful this time. With a tenuous claim to power, his administration had to address the controversy and demonstrate to its constituents it can serve and protect them. (Who cares about helping the U.S. war on terrorism if that means a gunship can blow away you and your family?) Karzai's comments were a gentle but clear warning to the United States: don't think you can get away with this. President George W. Bush expressed his sympathies-without apologizing or assigning blame. And five days after the strike, Lt. General Dan McNeill, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, conceded that civilians were indeed killed in the airstrike. He announced that a "formal investigation" would be conducted to determine what transpired. "It is important that we keep this coalition together," he remarked. Yet he asserted there were "ample indications" the assault was mounted in response to antiaircraft fire. Maybe so, but there were "ample indications" by this point that the wrong target-and people-were struck. Meanwhile, back in Kakrak, human flesh was still hanging on the trees. And local Afghan officials were telling journalists that American commanders had informed them that U.S. forces had acted on faulty intelligence. Apparently, the Americans had received word that Mullah Omar, the number-one Taliban, was hiding in Kakrak. After Osama bin Laden, he's next on the get-him list. That might explain why the AC-130 attacked with such ferocity, why it may have strafed people running from the compound, and why it also attacked nearby villages (could every one of these villages have had an antiaircraft gun firing at the gunship?). On July 8, as the Pentagon announced an investigative team was heading to Kakrak in a day or two (no rush there), Victoria Clarke was claiming the Defense Department had no solid information regarding what had happened: "The issue of the number of civilian casualties and civilians killed is much less clear. We know they occurred, and we regret every one of them, but we do not have hard and fast numbers from what we have seen thus far." And Lt. General Newbold was still claiming U.S. forces were shot at first. But he produced no evidence of this. No communications tapes ("we're taking fire"), no reported on-the-ground sightings of antiaircraft weaponry in Kakrak. Could the U.S. military in an entire week not figure out what had happened in Kakrak? After all, U.S. troops were present right after the raid. This seems a bad sign for the war on terrorism. If U.S. forces cannot gather information on an attack they mounted in territory they control, how can they be expected to discover and effectively handle reliable information on the location of al-Qaeda and Taliban remnants? The bloody assault upon Kakrak raises another matter: compensation for Afghan civilians. For months, I and a few others have been proposing that the United States ought to make payments to Afghans who have lost relatives, homes, businesses, and limbs because of U.S. mis-attacks and errant bombs. The CIA did quickly dispense cash to the innocent victims of the January raid, but hundreds, if not thousands, of Afghans injured have received nothing. The latest blunder has prompted additional calls for compensation-and not only from Afghans. "If American forces prove to be responsible for the deaths of innocent people, compensation should be paid and U.S. commanders should give a public accounting of how and why such a tragedy occurred," the Post editorialized. And Post columnist Jim Hoagland suggested the same. Will the nightmare of Kakrak lead the Bush administration finally to agree to compensation, the lousy but only remedy available for redressing a lethal raid gone wrong? There's reason to be pessimistic. If the Bush administration paid to ease the suffering of the villagers of Kakrak, it would have a tough time arguing that all other Afghan civilian victims should be ignored. The money is not the issue. We're talking tens of millions of dollars-barely an asterisk in the budget for the war in Afghanistan. Rather, the Pentagon and the Bush administration do not want to enter the business of evaluating claims and determining guilt (their own). That can only distract from the mission at hand and create one helluva precedent for a war on terrorism that Bush and Rumsfeld say may last as long as the Cold War. Truth is the first casualty of war, goes another axiom. Accountability may be the second. © 2002 WorkingForChange.com V. CIVILIAN DEATHS COUNT to all on VVAWNET: Common Dreams NewsCenter
Thursday, August 08, 2002 Featured Views Published on Thursday, August
8, 2002 in the Guardian of London
PILOTS TAKING DRUGS, BOMBING MISTAKES, AND "COLLATERAL DAMAGE"
VII. MURDER OF PRISONERS Witness reports and the probing of a mass grave point to war crimes. Does the United States have any responsibility for the atrocities of its allies? A NEWSWEEK investigation. August, 26 Issue Trudging over the moonscape of Dasht-e Leili, a desolate expanse of low rolling hills in northern Afghanistan, Bill Haglund spotted clues half-buried in the gray-beige sand. Strings of prayer beads. A woolen skullcap. A few shoes. Those remnants, along with track marks and blade scrapes left by a bulldozer, suggested that Haglund had found what he was looking for. Then he came across a human tibia, three sets of pelvic bones and some ribs. Mass graves are not always easy to spot, though trained investigators know the signs. "You look for disturbance of the earth, differences in the vegetation, areas that have been machined over," says Haglund, a forensic anthropologist and pioneer in the field of "human-rights archeology." At Dasht-e Leili, a 15-minute drive from the Northern Alliance prison at Sheber-ghan, scavenging animals had brought the evidence to the surface. Some of the gnawed bones were old and bleached, but some were from bodies so recently buried the bones still carried tissue. The area of bulldozer activity--roughly an acre--suggested burials on a large scale. A stray surgical glove also caught Haglund's eye. Such gloves are often used by people handling corpses, and could be evidence, Haglund thought, of "a modicum of planning." Haglund was in Dasht-e Leili on more than a hunch. In January, two investigators from the Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights had argued their way into the nearby Sheberghan prison. What they saw shocked them. More than 3,000 Taliban prisoners--who had surrendered to the victorious Northern Alliance forces at the fall of Konduz in late November--were crammed, sick and starving, into a facility with room for only 800. The Northern Alliance commander of the prison acknowledged the charnel-house conditions, but pleaded that he had no money. He begged the PHR to send food and supplies, and to ask the United Nations to dig a well so the prisoners could drink unpolluted water. STORIES OF MASS GRAVES But stories of a deeper horror came from the prisoners themselves. However awful their conditions, they were the lucky ones. They were alive. Many hundreds of their comrades, they said, had been killed on the journey to Sheberghan from Konduz by being stuffed into sealed cargo containers and left to asphyxiate. Local aid workers and Afghan officials quietly confirmed that they had heard the same stories. They confirmed, too, persistent reports about the disposal of many of the dead in mass graves at Dasht-e Leili. That's when Haglund, a veteran of similar investigations in Rwanda, Sri Lanka, the Balkans and other scenes of atrocity, was called in. Standing at what he reckoned from the 'dozer tracks was an edge of the grave site, he pushed a long, hollow probe deep into the compacted sand. Then he sniffed. The acrid smell reeking up the shaft was unmistakable. Haglund and local laborers later dug down; at five feet, they came upon a layer of decomposing corpses, lying pressed together in a row. They dug a trial trench about six yards long, and in that --short length found 15 corpses. "They were relatively fresh bodies: the flesh was still on the bones," Haglund recalls. "They were scantily clad, which was consistent with reports that [before they died] they had been in a very hot place." Some had their hands tied. Haglund brought up three of the corpses, and a colleague conducted autopsies in a tent. The victims were all young men, and their bodies showed "no overt trauma"--no gunshot wounds, no blows from blunt instruments. This, too, Hag-lund says, is "consistent" with the survivors' stories of death by asphyxiation. How many are buried at Dasht-e Leili? Haglund won't speculate. "The only thing we know is that it's a very large site," says a U.N. official privy to the investigation, and there was "a high density of bodies in the trial trench." Other sources who have investigated the killings aren't surprised. "I can say with confidence that more than a thousand people died in the containers," says Aziz ur Rahman Razekh, director of the Afghan Organization of Human Rights. NEWSWEEK's extensive inquiries of prisoners, truckdrivers, Afghan militiamen and local villagers--including interviews with survivors who licked and chewed each other's skin to stay alive--suggest also that many hundreds of people died. The dead of Dasht-e Leili--and the horrific manner of their killing--are one of the dirty little secrets of the Afghan war. The episode is more than just another atrocity in a land that has seen many. The killings illustrate the problems America will face if it opts to fight wars by proxy, as the United States did in Afghanistan, using small numbers of U.S. Special Forces calling in air power to support local fighters on the ground. It also raises questions about the responsibility Americans have for the conduct of allies who may have no --interest in applying protections of the Geneva Conventions. The benefit in fighting a proxy-style war in Afghanistan was victory on the cheap--cheap, at any rate, in American blood. The cost, NEWSWEEK's investigation has established, is that American forces were working intimately with "allies" who committed what could well qualify as war crimes. FALSE STATEMENTS Nothing that NEWSWEEK learned suggests that American forces had advance knowledge of the killings, witnessed the prisoners being stuffed into the unventilated trucks or were in a position to prevent that. They were in the area of the prison at the time the containers were delivered, although probably not when they were opened. The small group of Special Forces soldiers were more focused at the time on prison security, and preventing an uprising such as the bloody outbreak that had happened days earlier in the prison fort at Qala Jangi. The soldiers surely heard stories of deaths in the containers, but may have thought them exaggerated. They also may have believed that the dead were war casualties, or wounded prisoners who, among thousands of their comrades, simply didn't survive the rugged journey from the surrender point to the prison. But it's also true that Pentagon spokesmen have obfuscated when faced with questions on the subject. Officials across the administration did not respond to repeated requests by NEWSWEEK for a detailed accounting of U.S. activities in the Konduz, Mazar-e Sharif and Sheberghan areas at the time in question, and Defense Department spokespersons have made statements that are false. Questions can be raised, as well, about international agencies. How seriously has the United Nations pursued investigations of what happened at Sheberghan? The reports of atrocity come at a time when the international community is desperately trying to bring stability to Afghanistan. Well-meaning officials may be wondering if a full-scale investigation might set off a new round of Afghan slaughter. Would it be worth it? A confidential U.N. memorandum, parts of which were made available to NEWSWEEK, says that the findings of investigations into the Dasht-e Leili graves "are sufficient to justify a fully-fledged criminal investigation." It says that based on "information collected," the site "contains bodies of Taliban POW's who died of suffocation during transfer from Konduz to Sheberghan." A witness quoted in the report puts the death toll at 960. Yet the re--port also raises urgent questions. "Considering the political sensitivity of this case and related protection concerns, it is strongly recommended that all activities relevant to this case be brought to a halt until a decision is made concerning the final goal of the exercise: criminal trial, truth commission, other, etc." U.S. INVOLVEMENT The close involvement of American soldiers with General Dostum can only make an investigation all the more sensitive. "The issue nobody wants to discuss is the involvement of U.S. forces," says Jennifer Leaning, professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and one of the pair of Physicians for Human Rights investigators who pushed their way into Sheberghan. "U.S. forces were in the area at the time. What did the U.S. know, and when and --where--and what did they do about it?" The Taliban and Qaeda forces at Konduz surrendered in a negotiated deal that took two to three days to hammer out. According to Shams-ul-Haq (Shamuk) Naseri, a mid-level Northern Alliance commander who was present, the talks were held in the presence of three American intelligence officers and a dozen or more Special Forces soldiers. Northern Alliance commanders, including General Dostum, agreed to relatively generous conditions: The Afghan fighters would be allowed to go home to their villages. Most of the Pakistanis could also return home after the Americans picked out suspected Qaeda operatives. Arabs and other foreign fighters would be turned over to the United Nations or some other international organization. According to another Afghan present at the talks, Said Vasiqullah Sadat, the Taliban representatives insisted that their men surrender to General Dostum, because they figured he was the least likely to seek revenge for past killings. The surrender would formally start on Sunday, Nov. 25--to give time for the Taliban leaders to sell the deal to their forces in Konduz. The day after negotiations ended, roughly 400 hard-core fighters made a break for it anyway, fleeing west. But the vast majority of fighters trapped in Konduz surrendered "like sheep," according to Naseri. "One went and the rest followed." The agreed site for the actual surrender was Yerganak, a desert spot about five miles west of Konduz. Most of the top Taliban and foreign commanders drove out, and their vehicles were promptly confiscated by the Northern Alliance. The rest walked. Four checkpoints had been set up at Yerganak to disarm the fighters and load them onto whatever vehicles were available: pickups, big-wheeled, open-topped Russian Kamaz trucks, even some container trucks. But the numbers streaming out of Konduz overwhelmed the facilities, and most of those surrendering waited three or four days in the desert. CREDIBLE MUSCLE Dostum and another Northern Alliance commander, Atta Mohammed, were at Yerganak to monitor the surrender. So were dozens of American Special Forces troops, according to U.S. and Afghan participants. Some of the Special Forces teams were zipping around the area on four-wheeler motorcycles; Dostum was filmed at the time enjoying a ride on the back of one. The Americans provided much of the food and water given to the waiting masses. But they were there primarily to provide credible muscle, a message that was reinforced by the frequent appearance of U.S. bombers streaking overhead. At about this time, soldiers from Dostum's militia arrived at a container depot on the outskirts of Mazar-e Sharif, about 100 miles to the west, and recruited a driver we'll call Mohammed, a bearded man in his mid-40s. (NEWSWEEK has changed the names of several witnesses in this report to lessen the chance of reprisals.) Mohammed was told that his container truck was needed to ship captive Taliban fighters to Sheberghan prison. He was to pick them up that evening at the old fort in Qala Zeini, which lies on the road between Mazar-e Sharif and Sheberghan. The road actually passes through the fort: one gate in, one gate out. Mohammed arrived at Qala Zeini about 7 that evening. Several other container trucks were already waiting inside the fort. So were about 150 soldiers, all Afghans. At about 9, the prisoners--a mix of Afghans, Pakistanis, Arabs and Chechens--arrived from Yerganak in open trucks and pickups. Soldiers ordered the prisoners down from the trucks and stripped them of their turbans, caps and vests. Then they herded the captives into the containers, as many as 200 to a truck. The fighters realized they were not going home, as promised. "F--k Shamuk Naseri," one driver recalls a prisoner's screaming. "He betrayed us." The doors of the container trucks were locked. The prisoners probably realized their fate. "Death by container" has been a cheap means of mass murder used by both the Taliban and the Northern Alliance for at --least five years. Abandoned freight containers--international standard size, 40 feet by 8 feet by 8 feet--litter the roads of Afghanistan, rusting reminders of the many tons of aid that have poured into the country over the past 20 years. It was reputedly a savage Uzbek general named Malik Pahlawan who first saw the container's potential as a killing machine in 1997. After a Taliban assault on Mazar-e Sharif had been repulsed, Pahlawan--according to a subsequent U.N. report--killed some 1,250 Taliban by leaving them in containers in the desert sun. When the containers were opened, it was found the inmates had been grilled black. When the Taliban took Mazar-e Sharif in 1998, they in turn killed several hundred enemies in thesame fashion. 'WE'RE DYING. GIVE US WATER!' In the case of the Taliban prisoners from Konduz, the November temperatures weren't hot enough to blacken them. But after a few hours, they started beating on the sides of their overstuffed cells. "We're dying. Give us water!" some shouted. "We are human, not animals." Mohammed used a hammer and spike to bang holes in his container, until one of Dostum's soldiers heard the banging and angrily demanded to know what he was doing. Mohammed said that he was sealing holes to prevent the prisoners' escape. After the soldier had gone, one of the prisoners in the container stuck his face close to one of the holes. "Are you a Muslim?" he asked. "Yes," Mohammed replied. "Look at my tongue," said the prisoner, and stuck it out. It was cracked from dehydration. Mohammed filled a two-liter Fanta bottle with water and passed it in through the hole. He also pushed in 10 pieces of bread, all he had. "Thank Allah you are a Muslim," the prisoner said. Some of the other drivers NEWSWEEK has traced say they, too, tried to help. One described how he also poked holes in his container and tried to bring water to the prisoners. But Dostum's soldiers spotted him, and five of them gave him a beating with their rifle butts. Mohammed saw the beating and spent the rest of the night inside his locked cab. Someone else saw a similar scene at Qala Zeini, and tried to send a warning. In December, Abdullah was in the settlement of Langar Khaneh, which is close to the fort of Qala Zeini. When the gates of Qala Zeini were closed for a day and a half, and traffic diverted through Langar Khaneh, Abdullah's curiosity was aroused. He made his way over to the fort and peered inside. As he watched, four container trucks were driven into the fort. Not long after, prisoners arrived in pickups and Kamaz trucks, he says. Soldiers in the fort--Dostum's men, Abdullah says--proceeded to tie up the prisoners with their own turbans. Those who didn't move fast enough or who tried to resist were beaten. Most prisoners, says Abdullah, were bound around their upper arms and blindfolded, but some were hogtied. Unruly prisoners were grabbed by hand and foot and swung into the containers on their bellies. When the containers were full, they were locked. Abdullah was in no doubt what he was witnessing. "The only purpose was to kill the prisoners," he says. MISSING CONTAINERS Wondering whom he could alert to these preparations, Abdullah recalled an acquaintance who was working with the American forces based in Mazar. He was Said Vasiqullah Sadat, who was at the surrender negotiations and served as a translator for the Americans. Abdullah says that he told Vasiqullah what was happening, and he says Vasiqullah responded: "We will act." The next day, Abdullah said, a group of Americans arrived at Qala Zeini in two dust-colored pickups. But the containers were gone, and--says Abdullah--the Americans turned around and drove back to Mazar. Vasiqullah is cautious when asked about this version of events. He says that on the fourth day of the surrender at Yerganak--Nov. 28--he headed back to Mazar with several cars full of American soldiers. Some of these were billeting in Atta Mohammed's headquarters in Mazar. Vasiqullah confirms that he "soon" heard about prisoners' being transferred into containers at Qala Zeini. But he will not confirm that he heard this from the witness from Langar Khaneh. Nor will he confirm that he passed the news on to the Americans he was working with. "The Americans were distracted at this time," he says. The uprising at the Qala Jangi prison in Mazar-e Sharif--in which CIA operative Mike Spann was killed and the American John Walker Lindh was discovered--had occurred on Nov. 25. "Many of them were taking care of arrangements for shipping Mike Spann's body out of Mazar airport." But, says Vasiqullah, the containers could not have remained a secret for long. "I think the Americans found out soon," he says. "They were at Sheberghan prison from the beginning." At 11 a.m. on Nov. 29, according to the driver Mohammed, a convoy of 13 container trucks set out from Qala Zeini. Each driver had soldiers in the cab beside him. A driver we'll call Ghassan, who had picked up his load of human cargo at a concrete bridge 31 miles west of Mazar-e Sharif, was also on the move around this time. He recalls that some in his container were alive, and beating on the sides. "They just want water ... Keep driving," he was ordered. By the time the trucks arrived at Sheberghan prison, many were ominously quiet. Mohammed was the driver of the second truck in line, but he got down from his cab and walked into the prison courtyard as the doors of the lead truck were opened. Of the 200 or so who had been loaded into the sealed container not quite 24 hours before, none had survived. "They opened the doors and the dead bodies spilled out like fish," says Mohammed. "All their clothes were ripped and wet. " $750 FOR AN AIR HOLE The following day, Nov. 30, a fresh convoy of seven trucks arrived at Sheberghan. The day after, Dec. 1, brought a third convoy--also seven trucks. NEWSWEEK has traced drivers from both later convoys. Their recollections are that most of those containers contained many dead bodies. But not all. The inmates of one truck in those convoys passed about 45,000 Pakistani rupees (about $750) to the driver through a crack in the floor as a bribe to cut air holes and spray in water through a hose. All 150 inmates survived. In at least one container, the prisoners themselves managed to rip holes in the wooden floor, and all of them survived. Abdul, a 28-year-old pashtun, is one who lived. NEWSWEEK interviewed him in Sheberghan prison. He recalls that his container was packed to the breaking point. After nearly 24 hours without water, Abdul says, the prisoners were so desperate with thirst that they began licking the sweat off each other's bodies. Some prisoners began to lose their reason and started biting those around them. Abdul's was one of the containers in the third convoy to Sheberghan: by the time they reached the prison, he says, only 20 to 30 in his container were alive. Other survivors now in Sheberghan tell almost identical stories. One 20-year-old was shoved into a fully packed container. After about eight hours, he thinks, the prisoners began kicking the sides of the container and shouting for air and water. None came. Some of the prisoners began using their turbans to soak and drink the sweat off each other's bodies. After a few more hours many of the prisoners started going crazy and bit each other's fingertips, arms and legs. Anything to get moisture. By the time they reached Sheberghan, the young man says, only about 40 in his container were still alive. PACKED 'LIKE CATTLE' For some, the agony in the containers was intensified because they were tied up. This appears to have been a fate reserved for Pakistani--and perhaps other non-Afghan--prisoners. Mahmood, 20, says he surrendered at Konduz along with 1,500 other Pakistanis. All were bound hand and foot either with their own turbans or with strips ripped from their clothing, he says. Then they were packed in container trucks "like cattle," he says. He reckons that about 100 people died in his container. The drivers remain tormented by what they took part in. "Why weren't there any United Nations people there to see the dead bodies?" asks one. "Why wasn't anything being done?" Another driver shook uncontrollably as he spoke with NEWSWEEK. The convoys of the dead and dying, along with many truckloads of living prisoners, seem to have arrived at Sheberghan for perhaps 10 days. Prying eyes were kept away. The Red Cross, learning of the arrivals of prisoners from Konduz, applied on--Nov. 29 to get into Sheberghan. Dostum's commander at the prison promised that access would be granted within 24 hours. In fact, it was not until Dec. 10 that the Red Cross got into the prison. By then, most of the bodies had probably been buried. (Dostum's spokesman denies that access was blocked by prison officials.) There were witnesses near the burial site who noticed unusual activity. The hamlet of Lab-e Jar is about half a mile east of the grave site. On several nights in the first half of December, Dostum's soldiers forbade the villagers to leave their homes. Most of the villagers are now too frightened to talk. "Bodies have been buried there for years," says one. "You know what happened. I know what happened. But nothing is going to change if we talk about it." Still, NEWSWEEK found some who were willing to say what they saw. One man, 49, claims that around the first week in December, Dostum's soldiers blocked the dirt road running past Dasht-e Leili for several days. "No cars, no donkey carts, not even pedestrians were allowed to go down the road," he says. He personally saw four or five container trucks at the burial site, he says. When U.N. investigators talked with the people of Lab-e Jar in May, two residents told of seeing bulldozers at work on the site around the middle of December. QUESTIONING SURVIVORS A widening circle of organizations and individuals know, in broad terms, what happened after the fall of Konduz. The Red Cross has questioned survivors and compiled a report about the events; top officials at the Red Cross's Geneva headquarters have met to discuss, inconclusively, what to do next. A pair of U.N. investigators were present when Haglund dug his trial trench across the Dasht-e Leili grave site. After questioning local witnesses, they, too, compiled a report. Two U.N. entities--the Assistance Mission to Afghanistan and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights--have also been mulling what to do. "You have to understand, you're dealing with a potentially explosive issue here," says a Red Cross official in Afghanistan, explaining why he was hesitant to discuss the matter. Until now, anyway, the American military has not conducted a full-fledged investigation, nor has it been asked to participate in one by other agencies. U.N. sources say that their inquiries have not implicated U.S. forces. Publicly, the Pentagon has kept its distance. At the end of January, Department of Defense officials were told (by the PHR) of the discovery of what appeared to be a recent mass grave. In late February, officials at the Pentagon and the State Department were given confidential copies of the first formal report compiled by Haglund and his colleagues at the PHR. Consistently, however, the Pentagon has responded that Central Command investigated and found that U.S. troops know nothing of any killings--that the Pentagon indeed has no reason to believe there were killings. In June, DOD spokesman Lt. Col. Dave Lapan said that Central Command had questioned individually the forces in Af-ghanistan "several months ago": "Central Command looked into it and found no evidence of participation or knowledge or presence. Our guys weren't there, didn't watch and didn't know about it--if indeed anything like that happened." A DOD statement a week later was emphatic: "No US troops were present anywhere near that site in November. US troops were present in the December/January timeframe when the mass graves were discovered." But is that entirely true? The American unit most directly involved was the 595 A-team, part of the Fifth Special Forces Group based at Fort Campbell, Ky. The leader of the dozen-man 595 was Capt. Mark D. Nutsch. Throughout the Afghanistan operation, the Pentagon insisted that reporters identify Special Forces personnel by their first names only, claiming this was necessary to protect their families back home from possible terrorist reprisals. But the Army waived that concern in April, when--at the instigation of his Army superiors--the Kansas state Legislature passed a resolution of both houses honoring Captain Nutsch, a 33-year-old native of Kansas. Nutsch's wife, Amy, and their baby daughter, Kaija, born while Nutsch was in Afghanistan, were present at the very public ceremony. Contacted recently by NEWSWEEK about the container deaths, Nutsch said he did not want to discuss them. 595'S ASSIGNMENT The Special Forces A-teams were the shock troops of the U.S. assault on the Taliban. They were the crucial link between the Northern Alliance militia on the ground and U.S. firepower in the air. Attached to each A-team in the Afghan campaign was at least one Air Force Special Operations soldier called a combat air controller. It was the high-precision airstrikes called in by those CACs that destroyed the Taliban forces. Each A-team was assigned to a specific local commander, and 595's assignment was to work with General Dostum. 595's role in the Afghan conflict made them legends to the wider public. Heloed into Afghanistan, like the rest of the teams, in a Special Forces Chinook, they met up with Dostum on Oct. 19 at his headquarters at Darra-e Suf in the mountain fastnesses south of Mazar-e Sharif. It was the 595 unit that famously carried out its missions on horseback; it was snippets from Nutsch's dispatches that a euphoric Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld took to reading at his press briefings. Invigorated --by American air power--and lubricated by the money distributed lavishly to wavering locals by the CIA paramilitaries--Dostum and his fellow Northern Alliance commanders swept north out of the mountains. The climax of the brief campaign began on Nov. 4, when the Northern Alliance launched a three-pronged assault on the major city in the north, Mazar-e Sharif, orchestrated and micromanaged by an assembly of Special Forces, including two A-teams. 595 members had been with Dostum at the surrender negotiations, and then again at the actual surrender at Yerganak. As a consequence they were not with their CIA colleagues, Mike Spann and Dave Tyson, when that pair went to Qala Jangi prison to question the fresh batch of Qaeda and Taliban hard-liners who had arrived there after the abortive breakout from Konduz. The 595 commander, Nutsch, felt bitter about Spann's death. "This was a guy we considered part of our unit," he told Robert Young Pelton, a reporter working for CNN and National Geographic Adventure. "If we had been there, Mike's death would not have happened." Over the three days that the first convoys of dead were arriving at Sheberghan, Special Forces troops were in the area. There was also a separate, four-man U.S. intelligence team, in combat gear, at the prison doing first selections of Qaeda suspects for further questioning. According to Pelton, a swashbuckling freelancer who specializes in writing about dangerous places, Special Forces soldiers were mainly concerned about security at the prison. At the same time the containers of dead were arriving, many truckloads of living prisoners were also streaming in: On the evening of Dec. 1, for instance, a container arrived bearing the 86 survivors from Qala Jangi. One of them was John Walker Lindh. It was the 595 team's medic, Bill, who first treated Lindh. Pelton believed at the time, and still does, that the dead from container trucks numbered "40-some odd" and were mostly people who died of wounds suffered in the siege of Konduz. "When I was with 595, we went over this time and again," says Pelton. "What happened is that these people basically died because they were wounded." A senior Defense Department official, speaking to NEWSWEEK on background, said the Pentagon asked the commander of the Fifth Special Forces Group to look into the reports of container deaths. That commander, Col. John Mulholland, reported back that the A-team knew that numbers, perhaps even large numbers, of Taliban prisoners had died on the journey to Sheberghan. But the Special Forces believed that these deaths had occurred from wounds or disease. news-week put this account to Colonel Mulholland through the public-affairs office of the Special Operations Command, but got no response by the time NEWSWEEK went to press. AGONIZING DILEMMA For the Red Cross, the killings at Sheberghan represented an agonizing dilemma. The organization's code of operating out of the public eye--a trade-off that allows them access to places no one else is allowed to go, and enables them to provide aid to people in the most difficult circumstances--inhibited its officials from going public with what they heard. "We approached the ICRC more than two months ago to look into this, and they showed no interest," says Aziz ur Rahman Razekh of the Afghan Organization of Human Rights. "We got a frosty reception." In fact, the Red Cross was concerned from the start about the fate of prisoners turning up at Sheberghan. The Taliban's surrender of the northern towns was an extended process; and the first dribble of prisoners from Konduz--captured on its outskirts--began to arrive at Sheberghan on Nov. 22-23. The ICRC office in Mazar-e Sharif learned of these arrivals; and on Nov. 29, a small team sought entry to Sheberghan prison. They were turned away. Asked about this now, an ICRC official says: "The authorities did not want us there." (Dostum's spokesman denies that prison officials refused them access.) Not until Dec. 10 did the Red Cross manage to talk their way into Sheberghan to interview the new prisoners. They swiftly heard about the horrors of the containers. When NEWSWEEK first approached a Red Cross official to ask about the treatment of prisoners from Konduz, his immediate response was: "I can't talk about containers." Told of the stories that prisoners in Sheberghan had already given to news-week, he responded in some anguish: "If you're hearing stories about containers now, what do you think we were hearing about then?" Apparently caught between outrage and its own code of secrecy, the Red Cross may have sought to stir attention to Sheberghan indirectly. In mid-January John Heffernan and Jennifer Leaning of the PHR met by chance in Kabul with two Red Cross officials--one a senior official based in ICRC headquarters in Geneva. The Geneva official told them that the Red Cross had, they recall her saying, "grave concerns" about the treatment of prisoners by U.S. forces and their allies; and she urged them that this topic was "worth exploring." That was why the PHR pair went up to Sheberghan. At the start of May, the PHR--frustrated by a lack of response in either Kabul or Washington to their private briefings on Haglund's discoveries at Dasht-e Leili--issued a report describing his findings. The Red Cross chimed in, producing for reporters--this was at the Red Cross Kandahar office--a survivor from one of the containers: Sardar Mohammed, 23, from Kandahar. Mohammed reckoned, he said, that they had been packed 150 to a container. And he claimed that he and his fellow survivors had tallied up more 1,000 who had not survived the ordeal. It may not be easy for Americans to summon much sympathy for Taliban or Qaeda prisoners. But the rules of war cannot be applied selectively. There is no real moral justification for the pain and destruction of combat if it is not to defend the rule of law. The line is tough to hold even in a conventional conflict. In a proxy war, it's much more difficult. The dead at Dasht-e Leili are proof of that. ---------- With Donatella Lorch in Washington, Karen Breslau in San Francisco and Stryker McGuire in London (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.) REBUILDING AFGHANISTAN
US TURNING ATTENTION TO IRAQ, FAILING AFGHANISTAN
US ABANDONS AFGHANISTAN
CIVILIAN DEATHS
LOSING CONTROL OF THE COUNTRY
BIN LADEN'S MESSAGES
WARLORD ALLY OF US USES TORTURE
US BOUGHT AFGHAN VICTORY No
light in the Afghan tunnel 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 David H. Hackworth
Operation Enduring Freedom – launched in Afghanistan a month after 9-11 – is now officially over. But despite Pentagon spin to the contrary, our casualty count from that war-torn land won't be winding down anytime soon. Last month, the increasingly bold Taliban forces took and held two district towns along the Pakistan border for a week – right under our commanders' noses – and now a day doesn't pass without terrorists assaulting Afghanis, international aid workers or soldiers. In the past month alone, four American warriors were killed in Afghanistan, bringing our occupation terrorist-inflicted combat losses to 30 deaths. The dollar tab is mounting, too. The bill for 8,000 U.S. military personnel running what the Pentagon euphemistically calls "Stabilization Operations" is costing the U.S. taxpayer $9 billion a year. Many of our troops pulling duty over there say their big concern is that the situation might well develop into a long-term running sore. And they see ominous similarities to the pitiful attempts at pacification that turned the Vietnamese people off during that 20-year, guerrilla-driven war. Then there's the parallel of the same indiscriminate use of the big U.S. firepower hammer that killed hundreds of thousands of innocents in Southeast Asia. A recent U.S. airstrike in eastern Afghanistan that was meant for the terrorist bad guys killed 11 civilians from one family alone. As we keep learning the hard way, these sort of errant explosives are major recruiters for the insurgents. In Afghanistan, as in Asia, our forces are finding that their vastly superior superpower advantage – firepower, mobility, electronic intelligence gathering and communications – can't do the job against a lightly equipped, hit-and-run guerrilla force with the cunning to attack only when it believes it can win and that knows the ground like Cameron Diaz knows her body. More bad news is that there's ample evidence that Mullah Omar, Osama bin Laden's good buddy, is making a big comeback in southern Afghanistan. The Taliban thugs under Omar might no longer rule the land, but they're still in the terrorism business and have the run of a fair chunk of the countryside, especially along the wild and woolly border Afghanistan shares with Pakistan. A Special Forces soldier says, "When I first got here five months ago, the attacks were patchy, but today it's a whole new ballgame." A recent Taliban attack on a U.S. platoon actually occurred during broad daylight. The terrorists boldly killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded five others before scooting across the border to their safe haven in eastern Pakistan. And while the Taliban are displaying renewed guerrilla prowess, our forces seem to be getting nowhere fast. Six weeks ago, a large and costly short-term exercise in futility – Operation Valiant Strike – was launched to hunt down and destroy the terrorists. At the end of this op, when cost was weighed against return, we were way in the red. Civilian aid workers have even become targets. A Red Cross representative was shot and killed several months ago after being stopped by a terrorist gunman. A Taliban commander said the terminate-with-extreme-prejudice order came from Omar himself and was aimed at destabilizing the U.S.-supported government. Since the murder, more than a dozen international aid agencies have pulled out because the risk of operating in that area is simply too high. No aid workers means no aid – except what those friendly folks from the Taliban provide. "What's more disturbing is that our senior commanders will not press attacks against the Taliban out of fear of U.S. casualties," says another Special Forces warrior. "Our forces are under guidance to only attack when there's the least amount of risk to U.S. personnel. For the most part, we sit on our bases and get sniped at and rocketed." "U.S. cash and food are given to the warlords to keep their allegiance," he says, "but they use it to finance the private armies with which they run this country. And the only way the warlords will give up power is if they're killed." "War" or "stabilization," Afghanistan is our tar baby, and we're stuck fast. Too bad the policy-makers who put our soldiers at risk didn't brush up on their Brit-Soviet-Afghan History 101 beforehand. Let's hope Iraq doesn't become Harsh History Lesson II, even though it, too, sure seems to be moving in that direction.
Col. David H. Hackworth, author of his new best-selling "Steel My Soldiers' Hearts," "Price of Honor" and "About Face," has seen duty or reported as a sailor, soldier and military correspondent in nearly a dozen wars and conflicts – from the end of World War II to the recent fights against international terrorism. Taliban reviving
structure in Afghanistan April 7, 2003 | KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- Before executing the International Red Cross worker, the Taliban gunmen made a satellite telephone call to their superior for instructions: Kill him? Kill him, the order came back, and Ricardo Munguia, whose body was found with 20 bullet wounds last month, became the first foreign aid worker to die in Afghanistan since the Taliban's ouster from power 18 months ago. The manner of his death suggests the Taliban is not only determined to remain a force in this country, but is reorganizing and reviving its command structure. There is little to stop them. The soldiers and police who were supposed to be the bedrock of a stable postwar Afghanistan have gone unpaid for months and are drifting away. At a time when the United States is promising a reconstructed democratic postwar Iraq, many Afghans are remembering hearing similar promises not long ago. Instead, what they see is thieving warlords, murder on the roads, and a resurgence of Taliban vigilantism. "It's like I am seeing the same movie twice and no one is trying to fix the problem," said Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghanistan's president and his representative in southern Kandahar. "What was promised to Afghans with the collapse of the Taliban was a new life of hope and change. But what was delivered? Nothing. Everyone is back in business." Karzai said reconstruction has been painfully slow - a canal repaired, a piece of city road paved, a small school rebuilt. "There have been no significant changes for people," he said. "People are tired of seeing small, small projects. I don't know what to say to people anymore." When the Taliban ruled they forcibly conscripted young men. "Today I can say 'we don't take your sons away by force to fight at the front line,'" Karzai remarked. "But that's about all I can say." From safe havens in neighboring Pakistan, aided by militant Muslim groups there, the Taliban launched their revival to coincide with the war in Iraq and capitalize on Muslim anger over the U.S. invasion, say Afghan officials. Karzai said the Taliban are allied with rebel commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, supported by Pakistan and financed by militant Arabs. The attacks have targeted foreigners and the threats have been directed toward Afghans working for international organizations. Abdul Salam is a military commander for the government. Last month he was stopped at a Taliban checkpoint in the Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar and became a witness to the killing of Munguia, a 39-year-old water engineer from El Salvador. After stopping Munguia and his three-vehicle convoy, gunmen made a phone call to Mullah Dadullah, a powerful former Taliban commander who happens to have an artificial leg provided by the Red Cross. Mimicking a telephone receiver by cupping a hand on his ear, Salam recalled the gunmen's side of the conversation. "I heard him say Mullah Dadullah," he said. "I heard him ask for instructions." When the conversation ended the Taliban moved quickly, Salam said. They shoved Munguia behind one of the vehicles, siphoned gasoline from the tanks and used it to set the vehicles on fire. Munguia was standing nearby. One Taliban raised his Kalashnikov rifle and fired at Manguia. Then they told the others: "You are working with kafirs (unbelievers). You are slaves of Karzai and Karzai is a slave to America." "This time we will let you go because you are Afghan," Salam remembered them saying, "but if we find you again and you are still working for the government we will kill you." In the latest killing in southern Afghanistan, gunmen on Thursday shot to death Haji Gilani, a close Karzai ally, in southern Uruzgan province. Gilani was one of the first people to shelter Karzai when he secretly entered Afghanistan to foment a rebellion against the Taliban in late 2001. International workers in Kandahar don't feel safe anymore and some have been moved from the Kandahar region to safer areas, said John Oerum, southwest security officer for the United Nations. But Oerum is trying to find a way to stay in southern Afghanistan. To abandon it would be to let the rebel forces win, he says. The Red Cross, with 150 foreign workers in Afghanistan, have suspended operations indefinitely. Today most Afghans say their National Army seems a distant dream while the U.S.-led coalition continues to feed and finance warlords for their help in hunting for Taliban and al-Qaida fighters. Karzai, the president's brother, says: "We have to pay more attention at the district level, build the administration. We know who these Taliban are, but we don't have the people to report them when they return." Khan Mohammed, commander of Kandahar's 2nd Corps, says his soldiers haven't been paid in seven months, and his fighting force has dwindled. The Kandahar police chief, Mohammed Akram, said he wants 50 extra police in each district where the Taliban have a stronghold. But he says his police haven't been paid in months and hundreds have just gone home. "There is no real administration all over Afghanistan, no army, no police," said Mohammed. "The people do not want the Taliban, but we have to unite and build, but we are not."
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