This is anti-terrorism?
Pentagon slaughters 15 Afghan children
By Heather Cottin
U.S. occupation forces in Afghanistan and Iraq are creating
a nightmare for the population there as they step up military
repression in the face of growing resistance.
On Dec. 5, a Pentagon air and ground assault killed six
children and two adults after a wall fell on them on a farm
compound in eastern Paktia Province in Afghanistan. U.S.
military officials admitted the deaths on Dec. 10.
Another nine children were playing quietly on Dec. 6 near a
small house in Hutala, a tiny village in southern Afghanistan.
Two girls were fetching water from a stream. The boys were
playing marbles. The girls' uncle stood nearby. Suddenly the
roar of a huge armored plane shattered the silence of the
country morning.
The U.S. A-10 Warthog launched 30 to 40 rockets into the
village, murdering nine children along with the man, who had
raced toward the creek to protect his nieces.
The massacre followed "stringent rules of engagement,"
according to Maj. Christopher West, U.S. military spokesperson.
West proudly claimed that the attack "was precisely
targeted--it hit one house without damaging others in the
area."
Villagers said the man the U.S. was hunting, Mullah Wazir,
was not in the village. But a U.S. spokesperson claimed that
Abdul Muhammed Wahid, who had been killed, was the man they
sought. (BBC, Dec. 7)
Wahid had recently returned to Afghanistan from Iran to get
married. His mother, who also lost two granddaughters, Bibi
Toara and Bibi Tamama, in the raid, identified his body.
Two brothers who had lost three children stood near little
embroidered hats and bloodied galoshes. One said: "Look at
their little shoes and hats. Are they terrorists?" (New York
Times, Dec. 8)
Washington justified the attack because Wazir was allegedly
involved in recent attacks on foreign workers constructing a
"ring road." The "ring road" is a giant project that the United
States, Saudi Arabia and Japan have undertaken to develop
Afghanistan's infrastructure.
Since October 2002, the Louis Berger Group of East Orange,
N.J., has been working on a $180-million enterprise
reconstructing the critical road connecting Kabul, Kandahar and
Herat. The U.S. Agency for International Development sees
Afghanistan's location and the development of its land routes
as central to its "special geo-strategic and economic
importance," according to a State Department publication.
The U.S. concern with protecting infrastructure over human
lives is in keeping with its military priorities in what is,
according to UNICEF, the fourth-poorest nation in the world.
One in every five children still dies of disease and/or
malnutrition before the age of five.
Afghanistan's children are Washing ton's least concern. But
killing children by hunger or rockets isn't helping the United
States win Afghan hearts and minds.
Losing hearts and minds in Iraq, too
The British daily, the Guardian, reported Dec. 9 that U.S.
intelligence and military officials had admitted that the
Israeli army sent warfare specialists to Fort Bragg in North
Carolina, where U.S. special forces are based, to train them
for operations in Iraq. The Guardian report said U.S. special
forces units were also operating inside Syria.
"This is basically an assassination program. That is what is
being conceptualized here. This is a hunter-killer team," a
former senior U.S. intelligence official told the
newspaper.
The U.S. occupation forces were carrying out raids
throughout Iraq, including attacking union offices. According
to a release from the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, the
U.S. military, "using a force of about 10 armored cars and
dozens of soldiers," attacked the temporary headquarters of
IFTU at the offices of the Transport and Communications Union
in Baghdad on Dec. 6 and arrested eight of its leaders. The
troops then wrecked the offices, "without giving any reason or
explanation."
The U.S. had made appeals for relief troops from NATO. But
the Pentagon, in a directive from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz, has barred French, German and Russian companies from
competing for $18.6 billion in contracts for the
"reconstruction" of Iraq, saying the step "is necessary for the
protection of the essential security interests of the United
States."
Of course, the Pentagon is keeping the lion's share of the
contracts for U.S. corporations like Halliburton and Bechtel,
which have contributed a long line of corporate officers to
government posts in order to grease the wheels of military
adventure and expansionism.
Paris, Berlin and Moscow, which opposed the U.S. moves
toward war last year but were cooperating with the U.S.-led
occupation, reacted angrily. The European Commission said it is
investigating whether the move complies with global trade
rules. Canada and China are also cut out of the contracts.
But the U.S. will dole out a few to those countries--like
Britain--that sent soldiers to help the U.S. suppress the Iraqi
people, and to Spain, Japan, Italy and Poland, which have
troops in Iraq or are about to send them.
Meanwhile, a car bomb near Mosul in northern Iraq wounded 51
U.S. troops. The official number of U.S. troops killed in
action since Bush's triumphant speech at the beginning of May
reached 194 on Dec. 10. So far, the Pentagon hasn't been able
to overcome the Iraqi people's resistance and "rebuild" much of
anything. But that isn't stopping Washington from using
potential construction contracts as both carrot and stick.
U.S. empire having problems
The U.S. military is having a hard time waging endless war.
On Nov. 26, Washington announced a decision to close down 20
percent of its military installations in Europe and parts of
Asia to move to "geographic areas where U.S. forces have
increasingly found themselves ... particularly in the Middle
East and Central Asia." (Boston Globe, Nov. 26)
Meanwhile, the Nov. 18 Stars and Stripes reported that to
keep more troops in the military, the Army has imposed a
"stop-loss/stop-movement order" on all active-duty units
preparing to deploy into Iraq. This means the Army is
preventing service members from retiring or leaving the service
at their scheduled time; stop movements prevent permanent
change-of-station moves.
Even this is not enough. The Pentagon's military might
cannot control Afghanistan any more than it can defeat Iraq.
Both occupations are brutal, killing thousands of civilians,
including children, and turning the populations into resistance
fighters.
With U.S. forces inadequate to the task, Washington is
turning to NATO for help. On Dec. 2, U.S. Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld called for a shift of NATO forces into
Afghanistan, saying, "NATO might take over military operations
in Afghan istan some time in the future."
Eager to expand the NATO-led "peace-keeping" mission in
Afghanistan beyond Kabul, the imperialist and comprador powers
of NATO have committed themselves to "deliver ... real security
from Kosovo to Kabul."
At a Dec. 3 meeting in Brussels, NATO Secretary General Lord
Robertson proposed shifting NATO forces from Bosnia to
Afghanistan. NATO began its expansion in the war on Bosnia in
1992, but its 17,500 troops in Kosovo are still necessary for
that occupation.
On Dec. 6 Rumsfeld roared into Mazar-e-Sharif with a
cavalcade of 35 vehicles to announce an escalation of the war
on Afghanistan: Operation Avalanche, which began with the
slaughter of the innocents in Hutala.
To the military occupiers, Afghanistan is still "the worst
place in the world," according to U.S. Army Col. Rodney Davis.
"This forgotten war is not about to end any day soon." (London
Daily Telegraph, Nov. 30)
For the people of Afghanistan the recent U.S. offensive
began with a war on their beloved children. As one Afghan man
asked a reporter, "As a human, what would you think?" (New York
Times, Dec. 8)
Reprinted from the Dec. 18, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
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