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5 DISPATCHES FROM
AMERICA Death from
above By Tom Engelhardt
complained about NATO and US
bombing policies. The Agency Coordinating Body for
Afghan Relief, an umbrella organization for Afghan
and international relief and human-rights
organizations, has received attention for claiming
that marginally more civilians have died this year
at the hands of the Western powers than the
Taliban; and, most recently, United Nations
Secretary General
Ban
Ki-Moon has made a "strong" appeal to military
commanders in Afghanistan to avoid civilian
casualties.
In all of this, the weakening
of the US and NATO position in Afghanistan, and of
the US one in Iraq, continue to play crucial roles
- while these repeated air-power "incidents" lead
into conceptual territory that is simply never
touched upon in the US mainstream media.
A blur of civilian deaths But
first things first. Let's start with a partial
list of recently reported air-power "incidents"
(dates approximate), all of which resulted in
significant civilian casualties:
June
18: An "air strike against a suspected
al-Qaeda hideout" in the southeastern Afghan
province of Paktika is ordered after "nefarious
activities" have been observed at the site, which
includes a mosque and a madrassa (religious
school). Almost immediately, news arrives that
seven children have been killed in the attack. The
initial response: "Major Chris Belcher, spokesman
for the coalition, said there had been no sign of
children at the facility in the hours before the
strike, and blamed al-Qaeda for trying to use a
civilian facility as a shield." (According to
another spokesman, Sergeant First Class Dean
Welch, "If we knew that there were children inside
the building, there was no way that that air
strike would have occurred.")
Later, up to
100 civilians are reported to have been killed in
related fighting, though the figures vary with the
news story. Subsequently, US military officials
admit that the air strike "likely missed its
primary target", an al-Qaeda commander, and that
"contrary to previous statements, the US military
knew there were children at the compound".
Thinking they had a key al-Qaeda figure in their
sights, they launched the attack anyway.
June 21: A US air strike aimed at a
"booby-trapped house" in the Iraqi city of Baquba
misses its target and hits another house, wounding
11 civilians, according to the US military. The
incident is declared "under investigation".
In the larger Baquba incursion, Operation
Arrowhead Ripper, part of US President George W
Bush's "surge plan" for Iraq, civilian casualties
from the air (and ground) are evidently
significantly more widespread than generally
reported in the US media. A British Broadcasting
Corp (BBC) report notes at least 12 civilian
casualties, including three women, on the
operation's first day and quotes the head of the
city's emergency service as saying there were
"certainly more ... but ambulances were being
prevented by US troops from going in to evacuate
them". (A Sunni political party in Prime Minister
Nuri al-Maliki's government claims 350 dead
civilians in Baquba, mainly due to helicopter
attacks.)
Joshua Partlow of the Washington
Post, reporting on the Baquba operation, quotes
Amer Hussein Jasm, a refugee from a nearby town,
saying: "The airplanes have been shooting all the
houses and people are getting scared, so they ran
away." Partlow also quotes an American lieutenant
threatening Iraqis his unit has picked up: "Our
planes can blow up this whole city. They have that
capability. If we didn't care about you guys, we
wouldn't place ourselves in danger walking around
trying to separate the bad guys from the good
guys. When you guys tell us where the bad guys
are, you keep innocent people from being hurt."
June 21: "At least 25 civilians,
including nine women, three infants and an elderly
village mullah," are killed in "crossfire" in
Helmand province in southern Afghanistan when US
air strikes are called in. ("In choosing to
conduct such attacks in this location at this
time, the risk to civilians was probably
deliberate," [NATO spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel
Mike] Smith said [of the Taliban]. "It is this
irresponsible action that may have led to
casualties.")
June 22: The US
military announces that it has killed "17 al-Qaeda
gunmen" infiltrating an Iraqi village north of
Baquba. ("Iraqi police were conducting security
operations in and around the village when
coalition attack helicopters from the 25th Combat
Aviation Brigade and ground forces from 3rd
Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division,
observed more than 15 armed men attempting to
circumvent the [police officers] and infiltrate
the village ... The attack helicopters, armed with
missiles, engaged and killed 17 al-Qaeda gunmen
and destroyed the vehicle they were using.")
A BBC report later reveals that the dead
are 11 village guards ("some of their bodies cut
into small pieces by the munitions used against
them"). They were assisting the Iraqi police in
trying to protect their village from possible
al-Qaeda attacks when rocketed and strafed by US
helicopters.
June 22: "NATO- and
US-led coalition forces killed 60 insurgents [in
Afghanistan] near the border with Pakistan, in
what was described as the largest insurgent
formation crossing the region in six months, the
military said Saturday." That is how the story is
first presented, before news of civilian
casualties starts to trickle out. Later, more
defensively, US commander Colonel Martin P
Schweitzer insists that his forces only targeted
"bad guys": "These individuals clearly had weapons
and used them against our aircraft as well as
shooting rockets against our positions," he says.
"This required their removal from the battle
space."
The first accounting of
noncombatant dead, reportedly from a US rocket,
includes at least five men, three women, and one
child, according to a Pakistan Army spokesman.
These deaths occurred on the Pakistani side of the
border. (According to the Pakistanis, civilians
also died on the Afghan side of the border.) This
figure is later raised to 12; the place hit
identified as a "small hotel"; and the air power
identified as possibly B-52s and Apache
helicopters. A report in the Egyptian paper
Al-Ahram adds: "Sources in Pakistan's tribal areas
... say 31 of the supposed slain 'insurgents' were
in fact Pakistan tribesmen and their families,
including women and children."
June
30: In air strikes, again in Helmand province,
munitions "slammed into civilian homes". At least
30 insurgents and civilians are initially reported
to have been killed, "including women and
children". These figures later rise precipitously.
("'More than 100 people have been killed. But they
weren't Taliban. The Taliban were far away from
there,' said Wali Khan, a member of Parliament who
represents the area.") Other reports have 45
civilians and 62 insurgents dying. NATO spokesmen
later claim civilian deaths were "an order of
magnitude less" and that Taliban fighters were
firing from well-dug trenches and "continuing
their tactic of using women and children as human
shields in close combat".
Given the
ongoing uproar over civilian casualties in
Afghanistan, an investigation is launched.
According to Haji Zahir, "a tribal elder who said
he had been in touch with residents of bombed
villages", "People tried to escape from the area
with their cars, trucks and tractors, and the
coalition airplanes bombed them because they
thought they were the enemy fleeing. They told me
that they had buried 170 bodies so far."
Thirty-five villagers "fleeing
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