I don’t want to turn this kind of thing into a habit, but…
Registan.net, September 15, 2008:
One of the more confusing aspects of the air strike at Azizabad (a name that is disturbingly close to an official cable news hype-the-scandal animated graphic) is the snippets of evidence that the compound hit, and the men killed inside, despite being written off as Taliban militants, had badges to work at the nearby U.S. base. Locals had even complained of this, saying that the tragedy was not just that innocent people died but that the U.S. killed one of its own collaborators.
Now Hamid Karzai’s spokesman is claiming that is exactly what happened, and that not a single Taliban fighter was killed in the strike. An al Jazeera report also noted the rivalry’s probable role in the bombing:
Channel 4, June 15, 2009:
A British television report to be broadcast Monday says American forces who killed scores of people last August in Azizabad, western Afghanistan, attacked the village on the basis of false allegations inspired by a blood feud with a neighboring community.
An hourlong, in-depth documentary, previewed by the Associated Press and to be broadcast by Channel 4, includes scenes from a Herat provincial court trial in which a leader from the rival village was sentenced to death for murder for having given false information leading to the deaths of 91 innocent Azizabad civilians.
Despite that court ruling, the U.S. Central Command maintains its position that the Americans killed 22 Taliban fighters, along with 33 civilians.
The British broadcaster will also report that U.S. special forces are not cooperating with local police seeking three men from Kalask, the rival village, in the torture death of an Azizabad man. The suspects are guards at the U.S. base in nearby Shindand.
Well, that last part certainly is new. And there are some other allegations that have not received much attention since, including the accusation that the young man arrested after the attack—his mother, I believe, is in that al Jazeera clip above—was returned to his village, dead from torture. (Yochi Dreazen reports that the military is set to “revamp” its detainee policies in Afghanistan, so we’ll see if things change.)
Still, isn’t it great that this revelation about U.S. forces being tricked into bombing the compound at Azizabad is like, a totally new thing? I’ll try to view this documentary and see if anything new comes of it.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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Speaking of which….
http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2009/s2593625.htm
After it’s aired (24hrs from this timestamp) you’ll be able to find the online video and transcript here…
http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/archives.htm
This stuff about Americans blowing people up at the first whisper of someone being Taliban is getting rather tiresome. Having been involved in the targeting process, I can say that is simply not the case, and if anything, it is far too restrictive to react to threats in a timely manner. But until ISAF can come up with a good, consistent IO campaign these claims will be the only ones heard, and thus the only ones believed.