Still think that such an atrocity – reported by the Times – is impossible?:
The report into the deaths has provoked demonstrations (Reuters)
American-led troops were accused yesterday of dragging innocent children from their beds and shooting them during a night raid that left ten people dead.
Afghan government investigators said that eight schoolchildren were killed, all but one of them from the same family. Locals said that some victims were handcuffed before being killed.
Western military sources said that the dead were all part of an Afghan terrorist cell responsible for manufacturing improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which have claimed the lives of countless soldiers and civilians.
“This was a joint operation that was conducted against an IED cell that Afghan and US officials had been developing information against for some time,” said a senior Nato insider. But he admitted that “the facts about what actually went down are in dispute”.
The allegations of civilian casualties led to protests in Kabul and Jalalabad, with children as young as 10 chanting “Death to America” and demanding that foreign forces should leave Afghanistan at once.
President Karzai sent a team of investigators to Narang district, in eastern Kunar province, after reports of a massacre first surfaced on Monday.
“The delegation concluded that a unit of international forces descended from a plane Sunday night into Ghazi Khan village in Narang district of the eastern province of Kunar and took ten people from three homes, eight of them school students in grades six, nine and ten, one of them a guest, the rest from the same family, and shot them dead,” a statement on President Karzai’s website said.
Assadullah Wafa, who led the investigation, said that US soldiers flew to Kunar from Kabul, suggesting that they were part of a special forces unit.
“At around 1 am, three nights ago, some American troops with helicopters left Kabul and landed around 2km away from the village,” he told The Times. “The troops walked from the helicopters to the houses and, according to my investigation, they gathered all the students from two rooms, into one room, and opened fire.” Mr Wafa, a former governor of Helmand province, met President Karzai to discuss his findings yesterday. “I spoke to the local headmaster,” he said. “It’s impossible they were al-Qaeda. They were children, they were civilians, they were innocent. I condemn this attack.”
In a telephone interview last night, the headmaster said that the victims were asleep in three rooms when the troops arrived. “Seven students were in one room,” said Rahman Jan Ehsas. “A student and one guest were in another room, a guest room, and a farmer was asleep with his wife in a third building.
“First the foreign troops entered the guest room and shot two of them. Then they entered another room and handcuffed the seven students. Then they killed them. Abdul Khaliq [the farmer] heard shooting and came outside. When they saw him they shot him as well. He was outside. That’s why his wife wasn’t killed.”
A local elder, Jan Mohammed, said that three boys were killed in one room and five were handcuffed before they were shot. “I saw their school books covered in blood,” he said.
The investigation found that eight of the victims were aged from 11 to 17. The guest was a shepherd boy, 12, called Samar Gul, the headmaster said. He said that six of the students were at high school and two were at primary school. He said that all the students were his nephews. In Jalalabad, protesters set alight a US flag and an effigy of President Obama after chanting “Death to Obama” and “Death to foreign forces”. In Kabul, protesters held up banners showing photographs of dead children alongside placards demanding “Foreign troops leave Afghanistan” and “Stop killing us”.
Hekmatullah, 10, a protester, said: “We’re sick of Americans bombing us.” Samiullah Miakhel, 60, a protester. said: “The Americans are just all the time killing civilians.”
Nato’s International Security Assistance Force said that there was “no direct evidence to substantiate” Mr Wafa’s claims that unarmed civilians were harmed in what it described as a “joint coalition and Afghan security force” operation.
“As the joint assault force entered the village they came under fire from several buildings and in returning fire killed nine individuals,” he said.
• Eight Americans were killed in an attack in eastern Afghanistan yesterday (Jerome Starkey writes). Nato’s International Security Assistance Force said that the dead were not uniformed soldiers. Afghan sources said that they were civilians killed in a suicide attack on a compound in Khost province. The US Embassy in Kabul said: “Eight Americans have been killed in an attack on RC-East,” referring to the military region of eastern Afghanistan that includes 14 provinces.
Jerome Starkey In Kabul
December 31, 2009
Source: The Times
The endless war on terror:
– 857 US Soldiers Died in Afghanistan Region Since 2001
– Obama’s surge comes at a cost: At least $57,077.60 per minute
– Nato appeals to Russia for more help with the war in Afghanistan
– US Forces Chief Admiral Mike Mullen Warns of More Fighting And Casualties in Afghanistan
– Rep. Dennis Kucinich: ‘These Wars Are Corrupting The Heart Of Our Nation!’
– Rep. Dennis Kucinich: The Truth About Afghanistan
– Obama administration tells Pakistan: Tackle Taliban or we will
– Dennis Kucinich: Afghans ‘don’t want to be saved by us, they want to be saved from us.’
– MSNBC Rachel Maddow: War President Obama
– Ron Paul: ‘Obama is Actually Preparing Us For Perpetual War’
– Afghanistan Surge to Cost At Least $40 Billion, That Is $1.333.333 For One US Soldier Per Year
– President Obama ‘to deploy 30,000 troops to Afghanistan’
– Obama: ‘I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am President, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank.’ (!)
– CIA Secret ‘Torture’ Prison Found at Fancy Horseback Riding Academy Outside Vilnius, Lithuania
– British military forces told to ‘bribe’ the Taliban with ‘bags of gold’
– Afghanistan: New 67-Million-Dollar US Prison At Bagram
– The ‘Obama Market’ in Kabul: US Military Rations, Sleeping Bags, Tactical Goggles on Sale
– Paul Craig Roberts: Republic of Fools & The Evil Empire
Murray asserts that the primary motivation for US and British military involvement in central Asia has to do with large natural gas deposits in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. As evidence, he points to the plans to build a natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan that would allow Western oil companies to avoid Russia and Iran when transporting natural gas out of the region.
Murray alleged that in the late 1990s the Uzbek ambassador to the US met with then-Texas Governor George W. Bush to discuss a pipeline for the region, and out of that meeting came agreements that would see Texas-based Enron gain the rights to Uzbekistan’s natural gas deposits, while oil company Unocal worked on developing the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline.
“The consultant who was organizing this for Unocal was a certain Mr. Karzai, who is now president of Afghanistan,” Murray noted.
“There are designs of this pipeline, and if you look at the deployment of US forces in Afghanistan, as against other NATO country forces in Afghanistan, you’ll see that undoubtedly the US forces are positioned to guard the pipeline route. It’s what it’s about. It’s about money, it’s about oil, it’s not about democracy.”
“I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan,” he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department’s head of personnel. “I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end.”
– Three US helicopters crash in Afghanistan, 14 Americans killed
– Morale dips for American marines in Afghanistan:
“I’m not much for this war. I’m not sure it’s worth all those lives lost,” said Sergeant Christian Richardson as we walked across corn fields that will soon be ploughed up to plant a spring crop of opium poppy.
– Afghanistan opium production reaches 6,900 tons:
Opium production rate has soared to 6,900 tons in Afghanistan in the past 10 years ‘despite‘ the presence of 100,000 foreign troops in the country for nearly eight years.
A report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said on Wednesday that Afghanistan produces 92 percent of the world’s opium that has devastating global consequences.
The UN report also noted that Afghanistan’s illegal opium production is worth 65 billion dollars.
The heroin and opium market feeds 15 million addicts, with Europe, Russia and Iran consuming half the supply, UNODC reported.
– Ron Paul: ‘The more troops we send the worse things get!’
– Ron Paul On The US Afghanistan War Policy
– Italians bribed the Taleban all over Afghanistan, say two senior Afghan officials
– Pentagon spends $400 per gallon of gas in Afghanistan
– I was ordered to cover up President Karzai election fraud, sacked UN envoy says
– President Obama quietly deploying 13,000 more US troops to Afghanistan
– Congressman Alan Grayson on Afghanistan
– Ten more US soldiers killed in Afghanistan
– ‘We’re pinned down:’ 4 US Marines die in Afghan ambush
– Top US commander in Afghanistan: The Taliban have gained the upper hand:
The Taliban have gained the upper hand in Afghanistan, the top American commander there said, forcing the U.S. to change its strategy in the eight-year-old conflict by increasing the number of troops in heavily populated areas like the volatile southern city of Kandahar, the insurgency’s spiritual home. Gen. Stanley McChrystal warned that means U.S. casualties, already running at record levels, will remain high for months to come.
(Source: The Wall Street Journal)
– General Sir David Richards: Afghanistan will take 30 to 40 years
– Former SAS Comander: Afghan operation is ‘worthless’
