Pentagon terror in Afghanistan
No letup in brutal bombing
By Leslie Feinberg
Seen through the tightly focused lens of U.S. media
censorship, the Pentagon-led war against Afghanistan is being
treated as yesterday's news.
The big brass take center stage in news corps briefings.
Their message? "The Northern Alliance, with a backbone of U.S.
command and firepower, is militarily routing the Taliban to the
south. It's almost over. The next countries to be targeted in
the crosshairs of Operation Enduring Warfare? No news yet. Stay
tuned."
But the war looks different below the B-52 bombers in
Afghanistan. It's merciless and bloody and terrifying. And it's
not over. The facts are painful and grim. It's important not to
turn away from the reality of the toll this war is taking on
the women, men and children at ground zero in Afghanistan.
These are people who have done nothing to anyone in the
United States. They have no defense against the powerful
aircraft ruling their skies. They are being killed wantonly, in
the same arrogant and racist tradition that has led to so many
millions of other Third World deaths at the hands of colonial
and imperialist armies.
Carpet bombing by U.S. Air Force warplanes killed some 150
unarmed Afghan civilians in Khanabad on Nov. 18, reported The
Independent in England. As terrified residents fled the
town--located a few miles from Kunduz--they described how B-52
bombers had pounded their civilian neighborhoods with tons of
bombs on a daily basis for four days.
Refugees said all but a handful of the town's population of
40,000 had fled, many without food, medicine, warm clothing or
shoes. Above the stream of homeless Afghanis, B-52s circled
nearby, dropping bombs from their bays on nearby hills. Smoke
billowed from the echoing detonations.
"There are a lot of dead people there," said Farhod, who was
displaced from Khanabad along with his parents, sisters and
brothers.
"I saw 20 dead children on the streets," recalled refugee
Zumeray. "Forty people were killed yesterday alone. I saw it
with my own eyes. Some of them were burned by the bombs, others
were crushed by the walls and roofs of their houses when they
collapsed from the blast. When the bombs hit, there was fire
everywhere." While the dead remain nameless and faceless in
U.S. media reports, Zumeray recalled that the first house hit
by the exploding bombs belonged to a man named Agha Padar.
Terror: Made in the USA
More than 1,000 people were killed during intense U.S.
bombing strikes around the city of Kunduz over the weekend of
Nov. 17-18, according to reports in the Hindustan Times. The
newspaper quoted Mulla Fazil, a military commander of the
Pentagon-backed militia.
Fazil told the daily Dawn via satellite phone that the
bombing runs had killed some 800 people in Kunduz and 250 in
the nearby district of Khanabad.
More U.S. air strikes took nearly 140 lives--mostly
civilians--near Kandahar on Nov. 16-18, the Pakistan-based
Afghan Islamic Press reported.
Some 42 people died during the aerial pounding of the
Maywand district. "Most of the victims were tribal nomads," the
AIP observed. The article added that another 93 people were
killed in heavy raids on the eastern provinces of Khost and
Nangarhar.
Some U.S. media accounts did note in passing that the
Pentagon had "damaged" a mosque during a Nov. 16 bombing run.
In actuality, the 500-pound laser-guided bomb plowed into a
madrassa--an Islamic seminary--killing 62 students during
evening prayers.
The following day U.S. bombs claimed the lives of 28 people,
including 19 members of one family, in the village of Zani
Kehl--six miles west of Khost.
And one day later, another 30 Afghanis were killed during
pre-dawn air strikes on the town of Shamshad, five miles from
the border with Pakistan. AIP quoted witnesses who explained
that the U.S. jets streaked back for a second attack later when
people from adjacent villages were trying to rescue
survivors.
"I don't know how many people died but it is likely there
are many casualties," stated Imtiaz Hussain, administrator of
the Edhi Hospital on the Pakistan border.
Now that the generals feel that the air war is ruling the
skies over much of Afghanistan, more elite U.S. troops are
being sent inside to impose control on the ground.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld laughed as he held up
pictures of Pentagon troops on horseback for the media cameras.
The Pentagon already has hundreds of "special operations"
troops inside the country.
Rumsfeld added that these elite commandos are shooting to
death those it thinks are Taliban and Al-Qaeda members. This is
another sinister violation of international norms of conduct.
And he said that Pentagon forces will interrogate Taliban and
Al-Qaeda leaders being held by the U.S.-backed Northern
Alliance.
Reprinted from the Nov. 29, 2001, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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