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TechnoratiTruckloads of Dead Civilians After Afghan Battle
HERAT, Afghanistan - Villagers brought truckloads of bodies to the capital of a province in Western Afghanistan on Tuesday to prove that scores of civilians had been killed by U.S. air strikes in a battle with the Taliban.
![[An Afghan boy pushes a handcart among new graves of people killed after air strikes in Ganj Abad of Bala Buluk district, in Farah province, May 5, 2009. Dozens of people, including women and children, were killed in U.S.-led air strikes while sheltering in homes from a battle Monday and Tuesday in Western Afghanistan, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Wednesday.Picture taken May 5, 2009. (REUTERS/Stringer) ]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/afghanistan_civiliandeaths_graves.jpg "afghanistan_civiliandeaths_graves.jpg")
The governor of Farah Province, Rohul Amin, said about 30 bodies had been trucked to his office, most of them women and children. Other officials said the overall civilian death toll may have been much higher, with scores of people feared killed while huddled in houses that were destroyed by U.S. warplanes.
U.S. forces confirmed that a battle had taken place with air strikes and said they were investigating reports of civilian casualties, but were unable to confirm them.
"There was an insurgent attack on an ANA (Afghan National Army) group and the ANA called for assistance, and some coalition troops joined them to help fight this group," said U.S. military spokesman Colonel Greg Julian. "There was close air support, but I can't give any detail on the type of aircraft."
He said U.S. and Afghan officials would head to the site on Wednesday to investigate the reports of civilian deaths.
"Once we get eyes on the ground we will have a better idea of what may have happened."
Ghulan Farooq, a member of parliament from the province, said he had been told by family members in the Bala Boluk district where the fighting took place that as many as 150 people had died. He said U.S. air strikes had destroyed 17 houses. Those figures could not be independently confirmed.
Lieutenant Colonel Khalil Nehmatullah, commander of an Afghan Army battalion in the province, said: "Unfortunately the Taliban took people into some buildings and forced them to stay in there after the security forces started telling them to evacuate."
"Arabs and Pakistanis were among the Taliban fighters who were armed with RPGs (rocket propelled grenades) ... the ANA entered the scene with help from a unit of U.S. marines, and they were fighting until 11 pm," he told Reuters. He said he did not know the extent of the civilian casualties.
EXECUTIONS
Amin said the battle in Farah province, a vast desert region on Afghanistan's western border, began after Taliban guerrillas moved into a village on Monday and executed three former government officials for cooperating with the state.
Before the reports of large numbers of civilian casualties emerged, the governor said four Afghan security forces members and about 25 insurgents had been killed.
The head of public health and hospitals in Farah province, Abdul Jabar Shayeq, said 11 civilians and three policemen had been admitted to hospital with wounds from the fighting.
Jalil Ahmad, a resident in the district, said earlier that some 100 Taliban fighters had taken up positions in residential areas to fight the Afghan and foreign troops.
"Civilian lives are in danger from both sides and they don't care about it," Ahmad said. "We beg President (Hamid) Karzai to save our lives."
Civilian deaths have become a bitter source of friction between Afghan authorities and U.S. forces. Washington says it is working harder this year to limit civilian deaths and investigate reports of such incidents more rapidly after the number of civilians killed by U.S. forces soared last year.
In the worst incident last year, the Afghan government and the United Nations said a U.S. strike killed 90 civilians. Washington initially denied it, but after three months said it had killed 33 civilians as well as 22 people it called militants.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is in Washington, where he will meet U.S. President Barack Obama for the first time since Obama's inauguration. Obama has declared Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan to be Washington's main military concern.
Last year more than 7,000 people, including 2,000 civilians, died in insurgency-related violence in Afghanistan, the United Nations and aid agencies say.
The United States plans to more than double its forces to fight the Taliban insurgents this year from 32,000 at the start of the year to 68,000 by the year's end. Other countries have around 30,000 troops in Afghanistan.
(Additional reporting by Golnar Motevalli, Hamid Shalizi and Peter Graff in Kabul; Writing by Peter Graff; editing by Ralph Boulton)
48 Comments so far
Show AllThis story and the pictures of slaughtered and wounded Afghans should be the lead story on all the news programs and an all the major newspapers in this country. But undoubtedly it will not as the mantra among the corporate media appears to be: out of sight, out of mind.
Cowards, the whole lot of them.
If the Taliban is so evil, why are their numbers increasing at such a fast rate? Perhaps the "average" Afghan is tired of seeing his friends, family and neighbors blown to bits.
Revisionist history leaves out the fact that the Vietnamese people kicked our ass because we escalated the war against civilians;not only in Vietnam but also in Cambodia and Laos.
In the late 1960s, MSM began covering the "real" Vietnam war. When was the last time, if ever, that you saw MSM cover the real Iraq and Afghanistan.
America needs to "witness" innocent civilians being blown to bits. Perhaps we can send cameras to Aghan villagers so they can record the "horror" which can then be broadcast to educate the world. I still have vivid images of the "horror" in Vietnam, broadcast by the MSM.
In the 1980s, filmamker Mohamed Amin filmed a starving baby in Ethipia. The end result was Band Aid, Live Aid and a massive response to famine in Ethiopia.
It's time to film the children of Iraq and Afghanistan in their death throes.
The western world must be shocked into action.
Where are our students and universities? In the late sixties, you could not enter any university without being handed several mimoegraphed "fact" sheets on the evils of the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Today, students are being handled prepackaged revisionist shit by their professors.
When you have the likes of Larry Summers running Harvard, we must be alarmed into action. Perhaps the college presidents are afraid of the donors.
In the past, Quaker organisations were activist organisations. Why has Sidwell Freinds accepted kids whose father encourages genocide?
Public opinion and public action has ended wars in the past, both in the US and in other countries. The propoganda machine will fight back. The people will prevail.
I'm thinking more and more or renouncing my U.S. citizenship. How cowardly our military, beating up on unarmed peoples all over the middle east. Our soldiers are portrayed as "brave" and "honorable" ad nauseum; but I see them as supreme cowards for 1) joining the service in the first place, knowing that their mission will be not peacekeeping but rather enriching the military/industrial complex. 2)Rather than engaging Aghani or Iraqi Freedom Fighters head to head, U.S. officers alway call in the air force, dropping bombs on impoverished villages and wedding parties and basically anything that moves. I am thoroughly ashamed of all of us...
Bring America Back !!!!.................attaboy Barak, you're doin' a
helluva job over there; mission accomplished...g.w.b.
What will our First Lady do with Truckloads of Dead Civilians, eh?
Plant them in her 'victory' garden or use them to heat the Whitehouse?
It is O Bomb A's war now.
We the brave soldiers in the US military kill Afghan women and children to protect your constitutional right to spout obscenities at the Pentagon from your 2010 model Range Rovers.
Don't forget the "sport" Humvees..
Joan Baez, along time ago, said the only way to stop the killing is to stop the killiing. So, just after Seeger's birthday, let's just do that!
Hey busterkikki, you tell us that the US has, "only two solutions are: (1)Attack as we did in WWII with overwhelming force, not doing things halfway. Even then, huge civilian casualties were counted, or (2) ignore civilian casualties and do all possible to end the war using ALL, not part of, the arsenals of weapons at our disposal to make the war end as soon as possible."
Like many Americans you forgot the 3rd option. Not invading countries that never threatened or attacked America in the first place. Why does America so often resort to the offensive killing of innocent people to have its way?
The point is simply that the US oil companies want to pacify Afghanistan
so the 8 pipeline routes from the the Caspian basin are secure. The government who is contracted by the Oil companies, doesn't care a damn whether the people are alive or dead as long as the pipeline routes are secure. Same deal in Iraq, doesn't care a damn as long as the oil fields are opened up with no reinvestment requirements. The war on terror will end when either the oil runs out or the dollar collapses, whichever comes first. I'm betting on the latter with long positions on canned goods, Krugerrands and ammo.
Fred
The perpetual war. That is the new 'capitalist economy' totally unfettered or regulated. I bet milton friedman is jerking off in is grave. I bet that there are alot of electorate at all levels from local to federal that are jerking and whipping it, too. Who is going to stop it?
Oh, there is only one political party now, so you don't have to keep up with a democrat or a republican. It is called the ELECTORATE. And it is the rulers of all the local, state and federal levels.
you gotta hand it to the afghans. using civilians as shields will definetly help them strategically. there's only that much death news the western world can take before the US and allies will be forced to pull out.
that didn't really work with the russians. stinger missiles did it then, civilian casualties will do it now.
chameleon 9:42 ------ the reportage seems to say the homes bombed were occupied only by people looking for safety from nearby fighting. In other words no fighters at all only women children and elderly. People who swallow USA propaganda are supporting and promoting the carnage.
Thats one perspective, the other is that the local population are resisting a violent aggressor that has invaded their country and keeps killing them for reasons many of them neither know nor care about.
Not really. That the US was solely responsible for the failure of the Russians in Afghanistan is of course American propaganda, a myth propagated by the right. Pakistan invested far more heavily, in terms of weapons, logistics, men and blood, than did the US, even conducted an air war against the Russian Air Force. Pakistan also paid very heavily for their involvement.
When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty - Lisa Macdonald, 2004.
I would like to respectfully disagree with your assessment of Pakistan's role in defeating the soviets. You are right about involvment of personnel tho. Same like any other army in history including the US, the russians had problems with insurgency on the ground. They managed to maintain the upper hand by use of airpower same like the US (see article).
Taliban forces were retreating into Pakistan when the first Stinger manpads were deployed tipping the balance (british equivalent didn't really work properly). The fact that the soviet union was on the verge of collapse didn't help either.
Truth is, both the soviet installed communists and the taliban are/were equally bad.
I will not repeat Struggle's accurate assessment; he/she is quite correct.
Another of your misstatements is that the Taliban were involved in the Soviet war; the Taliban did not exist at this time.
You are correct that the USSR was on the edge of collapse, as it had been since the late 1960s.
When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty - Lisa Macdonald, 2004.
I stand corrected on the term taliban. Mujahedeen would have been the right term.
Sorry, but you need to study the history. The communist government in Afghanistan was not "soviet installed". It was the creation of the Afghans themselves and proved to be a progressive government that offered: womens liberation, free education and health care and a secular state. Of course, the USA couldn't allow this to continue and they supported the Islamic fundamentalists in their overthrow of this progressive government. The Soviets only got involved (and it took some time before they could be convinced to do so) after repeated pleas by this progressive government to come to their assistance.
As to the funding of the counter-revolutionary forces - Saudi Arabia matched all US investments, dollar for dollar and at one point amounted to a total of $1 billion a year in supporting the Islamic fundamentalists against the progressive government/Soviet military support.
May I refer you to this article, that tells the real history:
http://michaelparenti.org/afghanistan%20story%20untold.html
I guess we will have to agree to disagree.
The movie and book "Charlie Wilson's War" reinforces the mythology, though it is recognized by serious scholars as "largely Hollywood" and US breast-beating.
Another piece largely missing from US and UK narrative of the Soviet war is the Chinese involvement, who invested heavily in tanks, artillery and RPGs for the mujahideen guerrillas. One really does need to read historical accounts written outside of the US to understand the a full perspective of the conflict.
When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty - Lisa Macdonald, 2004.
on one hand it was good Reuters did this story at all. but on the other hand news media need to stop reporting in pentagonspeak. they have been reporting "battles and "firefights" in Afghanistan for 9 years as if Afghanistan had an approximately competitive military force. or an air force to engage their bombers, or anti-aircraft guns.
Also stop referring to Afghans (or Iraqis) as "insurgents". These are people attempting to resist enemy invaders.
The u.s.military are cowards and crybabies.
You know, we told you so about Obama. It's hard, however, not to follow the Messiah when one's cult demands a new figurehead. The peace and social justice movement has been effectively neutered by Obama and the Democratic Party. Eunichs for change. Yes we can!
Well you have to remember that with McSame there was no chance
of the war ending. I (Obama voter) felt there was a slim chance
of it ending if Obama was elected. And where was this "peace
and social justice movement" under the Republicans?? I must have
missed it.
The USA seems to bomb any large gathering of Afghans.
I guess they have the Zionist sniper mentality, the civilian children are just going to grow up to be terrorist defending their homeland.
This is O's bloody hands and they call Karzai the corrupt one.
This makes me angry, a peace conference is the only solution.
F%%^^ing O's policy is only going to keep killing more and more civilians.
Now that Obama is a murdering war criminal his DOJ surely will not peosecute
Bush-Cheney for torture and war crimes. That's a double edged sword.
Simple answer-----Get us the hell out of there and all of the other bases in the world. Americans keep saying we are not the policeman of the world and then we put a policeman on every corner.
How sad. When did it become ok to simply bomb an entire area when trying to undo only a few rascals? The US appears to have chosen to bomb-by-air without regard to the population that is there simply to live; to exist. And these regular people make up the largest majority of those living there and, yet, they too get killed. Is this the way it is now? In modern times? Civilized times? Do they, (and me), have to adjust to this going on all the time? Can I adjust to this?
It became ok to bomb civilian areas when the major media networks stopped covering the war right when the surge in Iraq started.
And to this day, the only real news of war events are only on the internet.
The media black out has been very obvious for the last 12 months.
As long as the GOOD GOD fearing Prince of Peace Jesus crowd knows nothing about the brutal slaughters, they will turn a closed eye with the deaf ear.
BornFreeMen
I call on all Christian Ministers to rally and get thier flocks to protest war. Call for ending all American occupation.
ITS WHAT JESUS WOULD DO.
Wasn't it Bush #one, who decided to fund the Taliban, with money and weapons, for his own agenda, and it was Bush #two who stirred them up with his demand to have the oil pipe line put in, and when refused, by bin Laden, threatened to bomb Afghanistan? The reason many question the attack of 9/11. Now Obama has the same generals as Bush, and some wonder,--- why????
Only a few times in history have civilian casualties not resulted from warfare. WWII was probably the champion in killing of innocent bystanders, the elderly, the young and the unfit for service.
Civilian casualties are to be avoided, but how does one avoid them?
In Afghanistan we are using remote control weapons that have no way to differentiate between combatants and non-combatants. In fact, the Taliban place the latter along with the combatants in an effort to cause great hatred and concern against the USA.
The only two solutions are: (1)Attack as we did in WWII with overwhelming force, not doing things halfway. Even then, huge civilian casualties were counted, or (2) ignore civilian casualties and do all possible to end the war using ALL, not part of, the arsenals of weapons at our disposal to make the war end as soon as possible.
Always remember: WAR IS HELL -- Think twice or twenty times before engaging in it.
There is a third choice, bring our soldiers home and let those people run their country. We could protect our borders for a lot less than we are spending on war. Perhaps if we didn't f*&k
with other countries they wouldn't feel the need to blow up
stuff here.
But then THEY would control OUR pipeline route!
We couldn't have that. All of Condi's plans ruined.
10 percent of all casualties in ww1 were civilans.
Today in Itrag and afghinaitan with all that hi tech 90 percent are
A peace conference is the only solution.
F*&^K that smiling articulate bastard.
Simply sickening. Both the killings themselves, and the US official response that "said they were investigating reports of civilian casualties, but were unable to confirm them."
That's exactly how to create blowback. An awful lot of people will be cheering when that hits.
That the victims of American attacks in Afghanistan have to load their dead onto trucks and haul them to distant cities to PROVE what the air strikes are doing just shows how callous and uncaring the American authorities are.
They should not have to go through such measures. US lies and duplicity make it necessary.
Quite right. This is sickening.
These are not people they are insurgents! It is all too common to label those that one is attacking as something other than human beings. Just what would you do if the US was invaded by foreign forces that killed Americans? Would you sit back and think it was for the good of the country or would you not too become an "insurgent" fighter.
For every Afghanistan civilian killed I am sure that there are at least five new insurgents created. What choice do they have and would you not do the same if your family and friends were murdered by an invading force.
I thought the Obama administration would see through the utter folly of these stupid wars that create more terrorists than they claim to destroy, but sadly this is not the case. War criminals are war criminals and whether you are Democrat or Republican it matters little.
Amen!
I still can't get over how the U.S. propaganda machine effectively changed the definition of "insurgent."
In-surge = to surge in. In other words, before Bush, an insurgent was someone who entered an area from somewhere else to fight against that area's military forces. So, according to the original definition, the U.S. soldiers, as invaders, are the insurgents, not the people who live in Afghanistan and who are fighting against the invaders.
Maybe Obomber will go back to the body count of the Vietnam era to measure progress towards "victory" in Afghanistan and Iraq (and Pakistan too?). I wouldn't be a bit surprised.
Every child's dream is to one day grow to become the Murderer-in-Chief.
Oh, I'm certain that the reports of civilian casualties are totally untrue distortions and exaggerations.
And when the Amerikan authorities change their story in a few weeks or months, I'm equally certain that it will turn out that Known Terrorists were cruelly hiding among the innocent bystanders just to make the Amerikans look bad! And they all got away, damn them!
Or else it will turn out to just be some kind of Merry Mixup.
As Israel found out in its criminal assault on Gaza, nothing is more thankless than Ridding the World of Evil Terrorists, especially by becoming one.
· Yr Obd't Servant
And documentation is enormously difficult in such a morass of poverty and terrorism
(impossible to document and then the propaganda possibility... informing the sense of the NPR initial reports)
We will have won when the genocide is complete. It is known as "the final solution".
It is difficult to comprehend the absolute evil of our former and current leaders.
Well suckers, change you can believe in? you got took.
Well I'll have to give you that one. I'm really pissed about the continuation of the occupation of Iraq and the the expansion of
the occupation in Afghanistan. That is not the change I had hoped for. But I do like a few things Obama has done, which is more than
I can say for the former "War President". He didn't do anything in eight years that I agreed with.
Is anyone surprised to learn that civilians are being killed in Afganistan by American forces? Read the last sentence of the article. The US is going to douple its forces in Afganistan by year's end to 68,000 troops. That's a lot of ammo that needs to be shot. Someone's got to be at the receiving end of it all.