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Six Afghan Children in Kandahar 'Killed by NATO'
Officials including Afghan President Hamid Karzai have accused NATO-led international forces of killing up to seven civilians, six of them children, in an air strike in the south.
Soldier with the International Security Assistance Force patrols as Afghan children look on in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in this 2008 file photo. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has accused the NATO-led international forces of killing up to seven civilians, six of them children. (AP/Allauddin Khan) The incident happened late on Wednesday in Zhari district of Kandahar province, a traditional Taliban stronghold where NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops claim significant progress in recent months.
The Kandahar governor's office said the air strike was aimed against insurgents who were planting mines, but they then fled into a village, where ISAF forces pursued them and struck.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Kabul acknowledged that the "unfortunate" incident had involved "several civilians being killed and injured" and said it came in response to insurgent action.
It has launched an inquiry into what happened.
The issue of civilian casualties in air strikes is highly sensitive in Afghanistan and has fuelled tensions between Karzai and his Western backers.
Karzai's office issued a statement saying he "strongly condemned" the strike, which it said killed seven people including six children, as well as injuring two young girls.
The president has also tasked a team with investigating the incident.
The governor of Zhari district Niaz Mohammad Sarhadi said that the strike was aimed at Taliban fighters planting roadside mines in the area but missed its target and hit residential areas nearby.
But the governor's office in Kandahar gave a slightly different explanation.
It said that two insurgents had been killed in an air strike, "while the three remaining fled and hid themselves among civilian houses".
It added: "The ISAF aircraft pursued the three remaining insurgents and dropped bombs on a road where they were hiding but as a result, six children were killed and three others were injured."
ISAF commanders say the Taliban and other insurgents frequently hide among the local population in a bid to protect themselves.
However, ISAF forces are supposed to take all possible steps to avoid civilian casualties.
The United States general who commands ISAF troops in Afghanistan, General John Allen, wrote in July that he expected "every member of ISAF to be seized with the intent to eliminate civilian casualties caused by ISAF".
Kandahar police chief General Abdul Raziq said three Taliban had died out of a total death toll of nine, while investigations were continuing to ascertain the identity of the others.
Earlier this month, Afghan elders held a loya jirga or traditional meeting to discuss a strategic partnership deal with the US which will govern Kabul's relations with Washington after 2014.
This is the date by which all foreign combat troops in Afghanistan - currently totalling 140,000, most from the US - are due to leave.
The loya jirga's stipulations for the deal included that Afghan security forces should lead all military operations, the Afghan air force be better trained and equipped and American citizens committing crimes on Afghan soil should not face immunity.
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31 Comments so far
Show AllAfghanistan needs a Tet offensive to teach them NATO thugs a good lesson.
"unfortunate" is how they describe murdering children. These damned bastards. It's been said many times and in many ways but if the population ever becomes privy to what has been and is being done in their names around the world, there would be a revolt in the morning. I'm sure the "investigation" into the matter will satisfy justice.
Bye
Six that made the news that is. How many many more our media doesn't bother to report?
In keeping with the Thanksgiving tradition, we are treating the Afghan children the same way we treated the American Indian children.
What we could be, but because of war, hate. prejudice and loyalty to tribe, we will never be.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nj2ofrX7jAk
The above video is about gratitude. The evil people that run this world are not simply ungrateful; they wish to destroy any vestige of human kindness left in our species. I am sad to say they are succeeding.
But it's NOT over. I don't know if we can ever overcome our self destructive and hateful nature. But, until my last breath, I will keep trying to overcome it with my actions and my voice.
Those weird Afghans are "sensitive to civilian causalties" Weird Afghans.snark
BABY KILLERS. GOD DAMNED BABY KILLERS.
How to win friends and influence people.
The "unfortunate" incident had involved "several civilians being killed and injured" and said it came in response to insurgent action. The insurgents didn't murder these children, you did.
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Here's the problem: at least 99% of the people in this country have no idea what your web name -- "minitrue" -- refers to. And every day that goes by that our young people -- spurred on by the military-industrial-political-Christian complex -- spend endless hours texting each other -- or tweeting, or updating their Facebook page to tell all their "friends," who they "like," exactly what they had for lunch that day -- every day that goes by that this next generation is doing that, rather than reading Orwell (in the case of "minitrue") or Naomi Klein ("Shock Doctrine") or Catherine Crier ("Patriot Acts"), etc., means that that "99%" figure will keep creeping ever closer to a full 100. At which point, there will no longer be an "America" that we older folks can recognize. Rather we will have finally entered Orwell's world completely, where "we are at war with Eastasia. We have always been at war with Eastasia." Except, of course, when we haven't -- a fact completely obliterated, as needed, by OUR Ministry of Truth, led by Obama, Eric Holder, Leon Panetta, W., Cheney, Ashcroft, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc.
And so it goes.
A bit (well, completely tbh) OT:
I'm not one to defend technology and the internet and especially the social networking crap. But it also has a good side. A lot of technologies and social structures around them are based on the concept of distributed, "peer to peer", decentralised operation, and aren't surprised by the lack of a central "decider" organ at all. In addition to this, the concept of "emergent behaviour" is a triviality for a lot of young people, which makes them better equipped to understand complex systems that people who constantly fall back to the attribution of intentionality. Just look at how an OWS-er whose name I can't remember now (sorry :-( ) keeps talking about "decentralisation" being the key concept for 21st century organisation. The idea of decentralisation is of course not new at all, but concrete technologies (like Bittorrent hehe) and social structures around them (hacker/cracker "scene" groups, the Linux and FSF communities, political or cultural forums like CD itself, or content creating fan groups organised around corporate products etc) and especially their abundance and importance to daily life are, and their constant use teaches people a lot about the concepts themselves imo. I think (well, this is more of a hunch) decentralised operation is easier to comprehend and comes much more naturally if you're used to the Internet. (Bittorrent makes you a more democratic person, to exaggerate. Slightly.)
Of course corporations try to coopt this general tendency also. The best example for this is the "Web 2.0" brand, which grew out of mostly free and very often decentralised community oriented innovation that reflected the basic need of people to communicate with each other about and organise communities around issues and which was enhanced by the true power of the internet (which is almost infinitely expandable *peer to peer* exchange of information (expandable means that you can build groups from these connections without caring about resources too much - eg. paper mail is a nice peer to peer channel, but it's very costly to expand this into a multicast or broadcast type information exchange architecture)). Anyway. It's not by random chance that all the "managers" and "investors" and self-proclaimed "technological gurus" and "experts" completely and utterly missed the point during the .com boom - they missed it because it's antithetical to their needs and their point of view (ie. centralisation of power). It took a lot of time for the "business community" to understand this trend (and it managed to do so only in a very limited sense) and give it a name (Tim O'Reilly did so but only in 2005). But people had been doing pretty good work with precursor technologies and with essentially the same organisational structures for decades - although mostly centred around technical and hobby issues.
There is of course a pretty dangerous side to these technologies too. As they are used now, the way they are integrated into everyday life, they cause a lot of harm in terms of decreasing attention capacity (most importantly imo, and yep, this does very much mean a decreased capacity for reading long texts, especially long, complex texts and books), or basically insulating groups of people (most importantly teenagers) from the rest of society which hinders social learning and sharing of real-life experience which is the only source of wisdom (as opposed to pure "knowledge" and "intelligence"), or allowing exposure to higher levels of propaganda etc. No idea if these dangers are ultimately bigger than the advantages, I definitely thought so until OWS started and I read young people showing ways of thinking that would have been a bit alien and unreal and impractical to their peers of twenty years ago. (Not because they were dumb but because they didn't have (with a few exceptions) nearly as much practical experience (and as integral to daily life) with distributed social and technical organisation.) Anyway. Who knows. But I think OWS would not be here without the Internet, and not just because you can organise better with such a powerful technology, but more importantly because it teaches people, especially young people, about how to distribute control in a large system, what a "network" is as opposed to a hierarchy and what "emergent behaviour" is as opposed to planning and direct control. And these are all architectural components of democracy in my opinion.
Look, when you spew irrational conspiracy nonsense like this it just serves to delegitimize the rest of the conversation. It makes everyone here look like we're in league with a bunch of fringe nutcases.
We have always been at war with Eastasia and pretending otherwise won't change that.
we kill them over there and take their oil, er, remove the threat to the American People.
Afghanistan has oil?
You becha Pipelinastan will have Oil.
Tons of it. It'll be crossing the country from the wells in the Caspian Sea to Pakistan and India via the dread TAPI pipeline. But the pipeline is no longer needed since there's a glut of excess oil on the "free Opec" market, so the drill now, is to make sure no one else controls it. Otherwise, your gas price would become dirt cheap, and Wall Street can't have that! It was scheduled to be completed in 2014. @WOW, what a coincidence! That's the same year the military is scheduled to pull out!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline
TJ
(direct democracy now!)
"Six Afghan Children in Kandahar 'Killed by NATO' "
Don't we know this already? - This so-called "International Security Assistance Force" and all other "security"-measures inside and outside our gloriously global "West" is all about "securing" the compliance and non-resistance of the poorest of the world, all except the about 7 million super-rich, making them 1 in 1.000 of every human. - That's not 99 % btw - it's 99.9 %.
Police, "Homeland Security", NATO and all institutions serving the greedy destruction of everything and everyone but themselves - that's what the super-rich clique in a "self- referential, self-deluding circle" want the "security" to continue for.
Anti-terrorism is openly directed at the poor. Even the racial bias is just a pretext to keep the poor down and submissive.
Of course poor children are a threat to the "security" of the "West", i.e. the super-rich: those children might grow up to have a real perspective on the power-structures of the human world. Better keep 'em meek.
"Security" is for all but the poorest 99.9 % of the world.
"It has launched an inquiry into what happened."
In two month's time they're gonna conclude that the ones who died are dead. Case closed.
Parents then get $ 5,000 for each dead child. That's the going "compensation"-rate in Afghanistan. - They're sure to love the "security" NATO offers. Winning a lot of "hearts and minds" there.
I think our current president is more bloodthirsty than Bush and Cheney.
More Blood Thirsty than Bush/Cheney ??? Maybe, but Obama did not know of or allow 9/11 to happen, follow the money, 9/11 made huge money for the military industrial complex, two wars, and private contractors that spy on Americans, 800000 analysts in Washington earning 80000 a year listening to our phone calls. Patriot Acts , " If you are not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about" Bush Cheney Bullshit!! " If you see something say something" Obama bullshit. THey all work for the same murdering cowards that play on our fears, Blood Thirsty , all of them.
+1000
"ISAF commanders say the Taliban and other insurgents frequently hide among the local population in a bid to protect themselves."
Twaddle. The Taliban and other insurgents *are* the local population.
And I think anyone's smart enough to know that it won't protect them - that NATO ain't going to let a few dead civilians stand in their way.
"The issue of civilian casualties in air strikes is highly sensitive in Afghanistan and has fuelled tensions between Karzai and his Western backers."
Fuck you, "reporter", you disgusting piece of shit, for even daring to write something like this down. Fuck you, evil shit-eating fascist cock-sucking scum. "Highly sensitive"? "Fuelled tensions between Karzai and his Western backers?" It's, you know (although you probably don't, pissbrain), about having killed children, you shithead. What the fuck.
The world would be a much better place without Karzai and especially all his "Western backers", and all the cocksuckers sugarcoating their crimes and "analyzing" their effects on Western interests.
Well put. Western "interests" my ass. Western "interests" are the multi-national corporations, primarily oil companies and banks, intent on extracting profits from the poorest parts of the world. People are literally LITERALLY dying for oil company and "financial services" profits. god damn it god damn it god damn it god damn it god damn it god damn it !!!! GOD DAMNED CUTTHROAT EXTRACTIVE CAPITALIST FUCKING BASTARDS.
Language, language, kids. - Such series' of expletives simply don't promote the messages you seek to convey. It puts people off reading what you actually say. Think it over. Express your anger, sure, but in ways accessible to more than mostly yourself. Don't defeat your own purpose. However fine and true your intentions.
I've heard this way too often, only to be ignored even more completely when I stopped using swear words. It's just a pretext to ignore - no matter how courteous and polite you are, no matter how nicely you put your thoughts into words, they will be ignored *based on their content*, not based on their style. In fact, there are only two ways that this "language" and "civility" argument is ever used in practice: the one I mentioned, as a pretext that allows one to ignore the content of an argument; the other, which is coming from you, arguing that without proper style and "respect", the message will not be conveyed. This usually argument is usually made in good will, unlike the first one, which never ever is. But you know what? Being polite means shit. You are ignored based on content, not style. No matter how many times you rephrase your questions, you will be ignored if the content is uncomfortable.
In addition to this, I am not misusing language by swearing, my words just reflect my feelings - unlike the shithead who wrote the article and is raping language and using it to manipulate the context of the question and to suck the cock of the world's biggest criminals. I am so not going to be polite towards these fuckwits, as I have absolutely no respect towards these subhuman "pundit" snots, and I like to express this in a way that can't be mistaken for respect :-)
Finally, I don't believe that there's too much time for patience and tempering of anger. I don't want to make the impression that these things are tolerable and should be discussed in a "civil" manner. It is like any other crime of fraud, except journalists have, in my opinion, much more explicit responsibility for their own actions. I don't think politeness even has a tactical use in this case. And frankly, I wouldn't even want to discuss shit with the vomitbrain who wrote this article (not that there's much of a chance for that anyway). I just want to express my complete disgust with him, his fucked up work and his retarded evil little cocksucking brain. Is this nice and civil? Of course it isn't. But this is not a dialogue, not a discussion, not pedagogy. I am not reacting in a symmetric situation. I have no chance to publish a counter-argument for AFP. I am in this case a passive "consumer" of what is called propaganda, part of an asymmetric situation in which I can only accept what I get fed. The most natural reaction to this lack of symmetry is anger, not pretending away the lack of symmetry of the situation, which is what politeness is about. "Let's pretend they're listening." Sorry, but let's not, because they aren't.
Please don't take this personally, I think I understand your arguments, and I think they are good ones in a few situations. Not always, and definitely not in this case. If I met this asshole, I would not even attempt to communicate with him, as he isn't expressing his own opinion but just reflects the official, comfortable viewpoint. He's a machine, a little cog, that does what he has to do. Maybe he internalised this bullshit, maybe not, but he's most probably completely incapable of discussing it.
Basically, I'm just saying that being angry and using swear words is not remotely the worst you can do in a proper discussion. In fact, using weasel words and pretending to believe something one doesn't, pretending to have values of freedom and equality but in fact being just an asslicker of power, pretending to care about responsibility while lying and cheating and pushing the consequences of one's actions onto others are much, much worse. People, in my opinion, should be angered by this crap, and they should express their anger. Saying "fuck" is a big no-no, but lying and manipulating and shilling for power is a-ok? It's a bit like being polite while trying to stop a murder. Although tbh I think there's a significantly larger chance that an average individual criminal will be impacted by your politeness than that it'll work for the interests behind these articles.
BABY KILLERS - that includes everyone who voted dem/repub.
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Keep this headline in mind the next time you hear some Neocon propagandist blabbering about "humanitarian intervention", "right to protect", etc.
Alright, first of all, while this is likely true that 6 kids were killed, it's a lot different when they are killed in an air strike, than gunning them down intentionally, which the picture and the headline suggests. This is a DISHONEST representation of what happened and only takes the integrity away from Common Dreams for presenting it dishonestly.
Albeit, 6 kids are dead and their blood is still on NATO's hands. Airstrikes kill people randomly and should be illegal. Still, it isn't the same as lining up children specifically, and killing them - even though I probably wouldn't object if it should be handled like that's what happened, in court. I just feel the headline and picture was misleading because I expected to read that soldiers had walked in and intentionally shot kids, which wasn't the case.
Sundome...Dead is dead - it doesn't matter if the innocent victims are lined up and shot, or killed by drones, or piled into furnaces and incinerated. Dead is dead, and it is never justifiable to kill an unarmed person who poses no threat.
That was recently debated on C-span. The rules of 'war' require that no one be killed unless he poses a real and immediate threat. Bin Laden's assassination was a violation because he was unarmed, half asleep - and the Seals were never in danger. The slaughter of children is the highest of all moral failings - not to mention a violation of International Law.