AFGHANISTAN: US bombs kill more than September 11 toll

January 16, 2002
Issue 

Memories of former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright's callous 1996 declaration that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to US-sponsored sanctions were "on balance ... worth it" were evoked on January 8 when the US envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, touched down in Kabul.

Khalilzad brushed aside calls for an end the US bombing attacks that have killed thousands of Afghan civilians with the words: "You have to weigh the risks of ending the conflict prematurely with the costs of continuing it." Clearly, like those of Iraq's children, the lives of Afghan villagers are a secondary consideration.

US warplanes have continued to pound eastern Afghanistan despite the fact that the Taliban regime has long collapsed, its forces have been thoroughly routed, Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda fighters have either been killed, captured or have fled to the safety of Pakistan and a pro-Western government has been installed.

Massacres

On December 21, as many as 65 people were killed when US warplanes attacked a convoy of cars and utility vehicles between Khost and the Paktia provincial capital, Gardez. Warplanes also bombed 10 houses and a mosque in the village of Asmani Kilai, from where the vehicles departed.

Washington claimed that those attacked were Taliban or al Qaeda "leadership". They turned out to be members of the Paktia provincial council and other Pashtun guests travelling to Kabul to attend the swearing in ceremony for the new government the next day.

Major Brad Lowell of US Central Command claimed on December 22 that after the US warplanes first "engaged" the convoy, two shoulder-fired missiles were launched in response. For General Tommy Franks, commander of the US forces, this was evidence that the convoy contained the enemy: "Friends don't fire ... at you." Until they were blasted to martyrdom, the Afghan leaders travelling to Kabul probably thought the same thing.

At around 3.30am on December 30, US warplanes slammed bombs into the Paktia village of Qalaye Niaze. Washington again claimed that Taliban and al Qaeda leaders were present and that the village was the site of an underground arms storage bunker.

Rather than a nest of "terrorists", Qalaye Niaze was filled with people who had gathered from kilometres around to attend a wedding. According to doctors at the nearest hospital, 107 people — many children — were slaughtered, many as they slept. According to the United Nations (whose estimate of the carnage was 52 dead, including 25 children), "unarmed women and children" were "chased and killed by American helicopters ... as they fled to shelter ... [or] as they tried to rescue survivors".

Reporter Rory Carroll wrote in the January 7 British Guardian: "Commander Matthew Klee, a spokesman at the US central command in Tampa, Florida, had reassuring news: 'Follow-on reporting indicates that there was no collateral damage'.

"Some of the things his follow-on reporters missed: bloodied children's shoes and skirts, bloodied school books, the scalp of a woman with braided grey hair, butter toffee in red wrapper, wedding decorations. The charred meat sticking to rubble in black lumps could have been Osama bin Laden's henchmen but survivors said it was the remains of farmers, their wives and children, and wedding guests."

The Los Angeles Times' Allissa Rubin on January 8 confirmed the gruesome scenes and concluded that the evidence was clear that "women and children were killed by the US bombing".

The Washington Post's Edward Cody on January 10 reported seeing "tunnel-like holes more than 30 feet deep, apparently the result of bombs that burrowed for bunkers or underground chambers that are nowhere to be seen".

It has been widely reported that the December 21 convoy massacre and the attack on Qalaye Niaze were based on "intelligence" provided to US forces by warlord Pacha Khan Zadran, who is vying for control over the strategic Paktia and Paktika provinces, which border Pakistan. Zadran already controls Khost province and his brother is minister for frontier and tribal affairs in the new US-backed regime in Kabul.

Even without taking into account the latest series of atrocities, more civilians had been killed by US bombing attacks in Afghanistan between October 7 and December 10 than were killed in the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11.

Deaths exceed September 11

An independent study conducted by Marc Herold, professor of economics and international relation at the University of New Hampshire, found that at least 3767 civilians — an average of 62 every day — had been killed by US bombs. The most recent estimate of the number of people killed or missing in the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington is 3234.

Herold's figures are very conservative. They are based on corroborated reports from the United Nations, aid agencies, eyewitness reports, as well as television, newspaper and wire service reports. The death toll excludes those who died later of wounds sustained in attacks, the deaths of known combatants, civilians who have died from hunger or the cold after their homes were destroyed or after humanitarian aid deliveries ceased in the first several weeks of the war and civilians killed by Washington's armed Afghan allies.

Herold also noted that US warplanes repeatedly attacked purely civilian installations — such as Afghanistan's largest hydroelectric power station (on seven occasions), Kabul's telephone exchange, the al Jazeera television network office, Kandahar's electricity grid and numerous hospitals, mosques, schools and villages.

There are an estimated 24,000 unexploded "bomblets" from US cluster bombs scattered across Afghanistan, the Mine Action Centre said on December 21. On December 17, two children near the western Afghan city of Herat were killed by a bomblet while they were collecting wood.

[Marc Herold's data is available at <http://www.cursor.org/stories/civilian_deaths.htm> and <http://www.media-alliance.org/mediafile/20-5/index.html>.

From Green Left Weekly, January 16, 2002.
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