Pentagon still killing civilians in Afghanistan
By G. Dunkel
When a single U.S. soldier was killed May 19 in eastern
Afghanistan, it made national news in this country.
But there's very little news about the fact that the United
States is still killing civilians in Afghanistan. Ten were
killed May 16 by a U.S. AC-130 attack plane, sometimes
described as a flying heavy-machine-gun nest. The circumstances
were reported in wildly different ways.
The Australian media talked about a two-day running battle
with Al Qaeda-Taliban forces that nearly overran their patrols,
set ambushes for the forces that came to relieve them and put
up a bang-up fight until the British sent in about 1,000
troops.
One Afghan press report described a struggle between two
tribes over some trees and land, where a few shots were
exchanged until the U.S. plane came blazing in. Another Afghan
report described a wedding celebration where some rifles were
fired into the air.
Whatever the circumstances, they all agreed that the United
States killed at least 10 civilians.
On May 12, when U.S. Special Forces troops raided a small
village in central Afghanistan, the hometown of a major Taliban
leader, five farmers hiding in a wheat field were shot dead and
20 others taken off to a U.S.-run prison.
According to Marc Herold, an economics professor at the
University of New Hampshire, U.S. bombs killed at least 3,780
civilians between Oct. 7 and May 14. Herold, who makes clear
that he opposes the U.S. war in Afghanistan, uses corroborated
reports from aid agencies, the United Nations, eyewitnesses, TV
stations, newspapers and news agencies from around the
world.
According to a study by a journalism school in New Zealand,
Herold's figures are sometimes too low. (The Herald, Jan
17)
Currently, 4,600 troops from 19 countries are serving under
British command in Afghanistan, according to the May 16 Ottawa
Citizen. But U.S. Gen. Tommy Franks is still the overall
commander.
Troops from Canada and 18 other countries currently in
Afghanistan provide a fig leaf for the role of the U.S. as hit
man in this bloody war against an impoverished country. But the
U.S. Air Force flies most of the combat air missions. The
United States is spending some $30 million a day on its
military missions in Afghanistan.
The "global war on terrorism," according to the Pentagon,
has cost $17 billion since Sept. 11. (The Scotsman, May 17)
Gen. Maurice Baril, a former chief of defense in Canada,
released a heavily censored interim report May 14 that offered
almost no insight into what happened about a month ago when a
U.S. jet killed four Canadian soldiers during a night exercise.
Senior Canadian military leaders told the Canadian media they
do not expect a full accounting, purportedly because of the
need to preserve the safety of troops still battling Al Qaeda
and Taliban resistance.
A few days after the Baril report, Gen. Franks talked to
about 400 members of the regiment that was involved in the
incident. He congratulated them on the success of their latest
mission, which involved digging some bodies up from a cemetery
where the bodies of suspected Al Qaeda and/or Taliban fighters
were supposed to be buried, and crushing the bones to extract
the DNA. The headline in the May 16 Ottawa Citizen read:
'Bone-crushing' Canadian mission wins praise.
Bush and the Pentagon need to pretend the war against
Afghanistan is finished so they can focus on Iraq.
Reprinted from the May 30, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
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