May God forgive AmeriKa!
"When British troops are pinned down by the Taliban, they call in a US air strike; But the huge bombs don't just kill the enemy - they destroy innocent families, increasing hostility towards the coalition" by Mark Townsend The Observer August 12, 200
Last week I saw the damage being done in the battle for hearts and minds. In the British headquarters a girl was brought in by her family. She lay on the table, blood leaking from her tiny frame. Occasionally her body would convulse, her screams reverberating around the base. On either side, three of her siblings whimpered. They, too, had been lacerated by masonry after a US bomber strafed their home last Sunday morning while the Taliban were firing from the same compound.
An hour earlier, soldiers at the base in Sangin had recognised the thud of a nearby explosive. By the time its disbelieving victims appeared at the British outpost, they had already buried two children. Others lay entombed beneath the rubble. Bombed by their would-be liberators, their parents had passed the bloodied bundles of their remaining children to the British army to save them.
New unpublished figures confirm that the rate of civilian casualties is accelerating. They also reveal that, for the first time since current operations began in Helmand last year, the number of innocent people killed by international troops has eclipsed those killed by the Taliban. No one knows how many have died, only that the numbers are high. Forty minutes before the four children arrived at Sangin compound, I saw two wounded women arrive at its gates and beg for treatment.
Accusations grow that authorities are trying to suppress the consequences of waging a war in a populated area such as the Helmand valley. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which oversees British and international forces in Afghanistan, warned that queries risked 'treading on dangerous territory'. Despite admitting that all reports of civilian casualties were logged, a spokesman said they were too 'busy' to provide data.
Using hospital data from the region, however, independent researchers have substantiated at least 348 civilian deaths caused by British, Nato and US operations in Helmand in the first six months of the year. Another 118 were injured. Last year international forces killed 320.
Researcher Michael Shaikh, said: 'It has been a very bloody period.' He added they had found evidence indicating 'indiscriminate and disproportionate' use of force by international soldiers.
The true total of civilian victims is certain to be higher, as Shaikh did not have access to the numbers of civilians treated at Helmand's military hospitals. Scores have been taken to front-line bases. The ISAF admitted that, 'typically', victims went to army compounds - the children involved in last Sunday's tragedy near Sangin, close to where a British soldier was killed last Friday, were flown to the main British army hospital 30km away.
No details of the incident have been made public. Only my presence will mean that what happened will spread beyond the circle of troops and medics who tried to save them. An army spokesman said the children were operated on at the British Military Hospital at Camp Bastion and will be taken back to Sangin when they had recovered.
Officers had given their relatives $600 to help rebuild their lives. What else they will receive in compensation is unclear, a matter for the US military. The British government has so far received 227 compensation claims and settled 67, most of them relating to the firefights between British troops and Taliban this summer.
Though one British military spokesman insisted that all claims are investigated and that this takes time, unease over the UK's system of recompense is growing. Several British army officers described their compensation system as 'an absolute mess'. One confided that it was so inadequate it was encouraging locals to turn against them. Compensation, he said, was not forthcoming if soldiers had suspected that Taliban were in the area. Human rights groups allege the British system is inferior to the 'better resourced' US process.
Another spokesman, Lt Col Charlie Mayo, said: 'We do everything possible to mitigate against civilian casualties. We know through interviews conducted by Afghan police with civilians who have been admitted to hospital that they have been stopped by the Taliban from leaving their homes in combat areas. We are operating in a high intensity counter-insurgency environment and regrettably there will be casualties in spite of all the steps we take to avoid them.'
Four days later, as dawn broke over northern Helmand, I was with British troops as an American F-15 swooped from the east before peeling away. Two seconds later, there was a blinding flash, a thunderclap and then a tremor that shook the soldiers squatting in trenches 700 metres away. A giant cloud swamped the town of Rasaji beneath a halo of dust.
The fighting stopped in the aftermath of the 500lb bomb. A Taliban commander was heard to demand reinforcements because his men had been all but obliterated. It is precisely the power of such air strikes that lies at the centre of concerns over collateral damage.
Nato recently announced that the use of 500lb bombs in Helmand would not be tolerated. Seeing the ruins of Rasaji emerge, it was not difficult to see why. British troops have called in US air strikes hundreds of times in recent months: the strikes represent their greatest asset against a resolute enemy.
Requests for US air support are frequently made when troops are pinned down. In such frenzied moments, things can go wrong. Last Thursday's fighting was fearsome, but for the soldiers of B Company of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Anglian Regiment it was a routine scrap. During the 80-minute dawn exchange, British troops fired more than 6,000 rounds and at least 11 Taliban were killed. Mortars pitted the plain below. In all, 237 shells rained on the enemy. So frenetic was the exchange that guns overheated. Oliver 'Dusty' Hale, 20, from Sudbury, Suffolk, who was protecting the unit's left flank, was forced to spit on his barrel to help cool it. By sunrise, a thousand used shells from his weapon filled the trench.
The Taliban give as good as they get. Even after the F-15 raids, they kept advancing. As the order came for 'rapid extraction', the Taliban laid down a blanket of bullets as we dashed across open land. This habit of shooting wildly is blamed for hitting many civilians. A soldier fell, twisting his ankle. He would be the only British casualty.
Eventually we reached the ghost town of Tangye, deserted after months of fighting. Towns and villages all around Kajaki have been abandoned; soldiers call it the 'dead zone'. Most locals have moved to tents in the desert, themselves forgotten victims of collateral damage.
Predictably, reports of civilian casualties have become a propaganda tool for both sides. The Taliban, masters of mining the distrust that has attached itself to the international forces, blame the British even when they are the perpetrators. The British, in turn, point to the Taliban tactic of using 'human shields' or shooting from civilian compounds.
It is the reliance on US air power, though, that remains the principal problem. To date, British forces in Helmand have forwarded compensation claims to US authorities on 76 occasions after realising they were the most likely culprits. So sensitive is the issue that analysts believe it could split the coalition as the fight to quell the insurgency in southern Afghanistan enters a critical period.
The debate is complex. Scores of British soldiers told me that US aircraft had rescued them from perilous situations; many said they owed them their lives.
Yet there is one crucial difference between Taliban and international forces. Human rights groups say that while Nato troops 'unintentionally' kill civilians and try to warn villages before fighting breaks out, the Taliban are often guilty of murder. Yet the bottom line, according to latest figures, is that, while Taliban civilian casualties are falling, those attributed to international forces are rising. We will almost certainly never know what happened to the children caught in the horrors of war as they played at home one sunny Sunday morning. If they survive, it is safe to assume they will never again flash a welcoming smile at the British in Helmand
"Mass Graves in Afghanistan" by Adamite.
"These stories show how corporate media likes to give the impression that the US government is working diligently to root out evil doers around the world and to build democracy and freedom. This theme is part of a core ideological message in support of our recent wars on Panama, Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Governmental spin transmitted by a willing US media establishes simplistic mythologies of good vs. evil often leaving out historical context, special transnational corporate interests, and prior strategic relationships with the dreaded evil ones.
"The hypocrisy of US policy and corporate media complicity is evident in the coverage of Donald Rumsfeld's stop over in Mazar-e Sharif Afghanistan December 4 to meet with regional warlord and mass killer General Abdul Rashid Dostum and his rival General Ustad Atta Mohammed. Rumsfeld was there to finalize a deal with the warlords to begin the decommissioning of their military forces in exchange for millions of dollars in international aid and increased power in the central Afghan government.
"Few people in the US know that General Abdul Rashid Dostum fought alongside the Russians in the 1980s, commanding a 20,000-man army. He switched sides in 1992 and joined the Mujahidin when they took power in Kabul. For over a decade, Dostum was a regional warlord in charge of six northern provinces, which he ran like a private fiefdom, making millions, by collecting taxes on regional trade and international drug sales. Forced into exile in Turkey by the Taliban in 1998, he came back into power as a military proxy of the US during the invasion of Afghanistan.
"Charged with mass murder of prisoners of war in the mid-90s by the UN, Dostum is known to use torture and assassinations to retain power. Described by the Chicago Sun Times (10/21/01) as a "cruel and cunning warlord," he is reported to use tanks to rip apart political opponents or crush them to death. Dostum, a seventh grade dropout, likes to put up huge pictures of himself in the regions he controls, drinks Johnnie Walker Blue Label, and rides in an armor-plated black Cadillac.
"A documentary entitled Massacre at Mazar released in 2002 by Scottish film producer, Jamie Doran, exposes how Dostum, in cooperation with U.S. special forces, was responsible for the torturing and deaths of approximately 3,000 Taliban prisoners-of-war in November of 2001. In Doran's documentary, two witnesses report on camera how they were forced to drive into the desert with hundreds of Taliban prisoners held in sealed cargo containers. Most of the prisoners suffocated to death in the vans and Dostum's soldiers shot the few prisoners left alive. One witness told the London Guardian that a US Special Forces vehicle was parked at the scene as bulldozers buried the dead. A soldier told Doran that U.S. troops masterminded a cover-up. He said the Americans ordered Dostum's people to get rid of the bodies before satellite pictures could be taken."
[You PROUD to be NAZIS, Amurka? Seig Heil!!]
