미국. 이라크와 아프가니스탄에 있는 전쟁의 노병은 3월에서 워싱톤에 강하하는 것을 계획하고 있다. 13-16 그들이 그 국가에서 투입하거나 개인으로 목격한 전쟁 범죄에 관하여 증언하기 위하여.

에 의하여 Aaron Glantz

"Liam가 전쟁에 대하여, 그룹 이라크 노병의 이전 해병 그리고 일원 미치게 한ㄴ다는 것을 얼마나 때문에 위험한 그것을 커버하는 취재원을 위해 인지 이라크에 있는 전쟁 그것의 잠재력에,"는 말했다 커버되지 않는다. "군사 점령의 순수 자연이." 보이는 무슨에 관하여와 같이 미국 공중의 마음에 있는 많은 오해를 넣어두는

전쟁에 대하여 이라크 노병은 이라고와 미국의 well-publicised 사건 주장한다. Abu Ghraib 형무소 물의 같이 잔인성 및 Haditha의 도시에 있는 이라크인의 전체 계열의 대학살은 "약간 나쁜 사과에 의해" 저질러진 고립된 사건이, 만큼 정치가 아니 군 지도자는 요구했다. 그들은 "점점 살벌한 점령"의 본의, 그룹은 말한다, 일부분이다.

"우리가 이라크에서 직면하는 문제, 우리 존중하지 않는다 국제 조약을, 이렇게 지도력에 있는 정책 입안자가 우리가 법규를 지키지 않는 무법의 전례를 만들었다 이다 저 대기권이 그것 범죄 행위에 빌려줄 존재할 때,"는 이전 미국을 변론한다. 양심적 병역 거부자로 출력되기 전에 2004년부터 2005년까지 이라크에 있는 투어를 봉사한 Logan Laituri 육군 상사.

Laituri는 무법 제작의 전례 자체가 최전선에 군인에게 지휘관이 아래로 수교한 교전 규칙에서 느꼈다는 것을 IPS에게 말했다. 그가 Samarra에서 있을 때, 예를 들면, 그가 거리의 아래 걷는 동안 그 동료 군인 중 하나가 비무장하는 남자를 쐈다는 것을 그는 말했다.

"문제 아무도는 거리의 아래 걷고 가정되었다 교전 규칙이 아주 명확했기,"는 그 말했기 때문에 당신이 그것을 부르는지도 모르는 때 저 군인이 범죄를 행하고 있어 않아다 이다. "그러나 나는 저것에 대한 문제가 있다. 당신은 가족을 알고 있는 모두를 남겨두도록 말할 수 없다 그래서 당신은 그들의 집 또는 그들 도시에서 배설물을 폭격할 수 있다. So while he definitely has protection under the law, I don’t think that legitimates that type of violence.”

Iraq Veterans Against the War is calling the gathering “Winter Soldier,” after a quote from the U.S. revolutionary Thomas Paine, who wrote in 1776: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

Organisers say video and photographic evidence will also be presented, and the testimony and panels will be broadcast live on Satellite TV and streaming video on ivaw.org.

Winter Soldier is modeled on a similar event held by Vietnam Veterans 37 years ago.

In 1971, over 100 members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War gathered in Detroit to share their stories with fellow citizens. Atrocities like the My Lai massacre had ignited popular opposition to the war, but political and military leaders insisted that such crimes were isolated exceptions.

“Initially even the My Lai massacre was denied,” notes Gerald Nicosia, whose book “Home to War” provides the most exhaustive history of the Vietnam veterans’ movement.

“The U.S. military has traditionally denied these accusations based on the fact that ‘this is a crazy soldier’ or ‘this is a malcontent’ — that you can’t trust this person. And that is the reason that Vietnam Veterans Against the War did this unified presentation in Detriot in 1971.”

“They brought together their bona fides and wore their medals and showed it was more than one or two or three malcontents. It was medal-winning, honored soldiers — veterans in a group verifying what each other said to try to convince people that these charges cannot be denied. That people are doing these things as a matter of policy.”

Nicosia says the 1971 Winter Soldier was roundly ignored by the mainstream media, but that it made an indelible imprint on those who were there.

Among those in attendance was 27-year-old Navy Lieutenant John Kerry, who had served on a Swift Boat in Vietnam. Three months after the hearings, Nicosia notes, Kerry took his case to Congress and spoke before a jammed Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Television cameras lined the walls, and veterans packed the seats.

“Many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia,” Kerry told the committee, describing the events of the Winter Soldier gathering.

“It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit — the emotions in the room, and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.”

In one of the most famous antiwar speeches of the era, Kerry concluded: “Someone has to die so that President Nixon won’t be — and these are his words — ‘the first president to lose a war’. We are asking Americans to think about that, because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

Nicosia says U.S. citizens and veterans find themselves in a similar situation today.

“The majority of the American people are very dissatisfied with the Iraq war now and would be happy to get out of it. But Americans are bred deep into their psyches to think of America as a good country and, I think, much harder than just the hurdle of getting troops out of Iraq is to get Americans to realise the terrible things we do in the name of the United States.”

*Aaron Glantz has reported extensively from Iraq and on the treatment of U.S. soldiers when they return home. He is editor of the website www.warcomeshome.org and will be co-hosting Pacifica Radio’s live broadcast of the Winter Soldier hearings from Mar. 14-16.

By Tony Paterson in Berlin

A bitter diplomatic row between Germany and the United States deepened yesterday after Berlin flatly rejected demands from Washington that it deploy troops in war-torn southern Afghanistan and angrily dismissed the request as “impertinent” and a “fantastic cheek”.

Germany currently has some 3,200 soldiers stationed in comparatively tranquil northern Afghanistan and the capital Kabul as part of the current Nato peacekeeping mission. It has been urged to deploy troops in the south before but has consistently refused. Yesterday however, it became clear that Washington had stepped up pressure on Berlin to commit troops to the south.

The move followed increased Taliban attacks and threats from Canada that it would withdraw its Afghanistan contingent completely unless more Nato troops were sent south. Canada has lost 77 combat troops in the region.

Two US non-governmental studies released this week warned that Afghanistan could once again become a failed state and terrorist haven.

Details of what was described as an “unusually stern” letter written by Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, to Franz Josef Jung, his German counterpart, were leaked to the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper yesterday.

The letter described Germany’s performance as “disappointing” and asked it to consider a new Afghanistan mandate which would enable its paratroopers and helicopter units to be sent to the south of the country. It said the US wanted German soldiers to help replace an American contingent of 2,200 troops which is to be withdrawn this autumn.

Germany’s response was a mixture of outrage and surprise. Initial comments leaked from an unnamed defence ministry source described the Gates’ letter as “impertinent”, and as a “fantastic cheek”. One official accused Mr Gates of trying to inflict “psychological torture” on Germany.

Chancellor Angela Merkel let it be known through her spokesman that the issue was “not up for discussion”. Franz-Walter Steinmeier, the German Foreign minister, also flatly rejected the idea. “I think we must continue to focus our attention on the north,” he said.

Mr Jung later justified the German position insisting that there were “clear regional divisions” regarding troop deployment in Afghanistan. “Our current mandate only allows for German soldiers to be sent to the south in emergencies,” he said. The issue is expected to come to a head next week when Nato defence ministers meet in Lithuania to discuss Afghanistan. Social Democrat MPs in Ms Merkel’s conservative-led grand coalition government also argued strongly against the idea of sending troops south. Rainer Arnold, the party’s defence spokesman, warned that the idea risked undermining the already shaky public support for Germany’s entire Afghanistan mission.

“I cannot see broad acceptance for this idea coming from parliament or from the public”, he said “This is a precondition for our continued presence in Afghanistan.” Germany’s presence in the relatively peaceful north of Afghanistan is already unpopular. An opinion poll last year suggested that more than 50 per cent of Germans wanted a complete withdrawal of troops. Ms Merkel’s government is currently facing opposition to plans to deploy a 200-strong unit of combat forces in the north to replace a Norwegian unit which is currently policing the region.

Germany has already been afforded a special Nato caveat which in effective prohibits its troops from going on the offensive unless they are first attacked. At next Thursday’s Nato summit in Vilnius, Germany is expected to come under intense pressure to lift the caveat.

Several German commentators attacked the government for rejecting the American request. The left-leaning Süddeutsche Zeitung accused politicians of being afraid of the voters.

* The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, will visit London next week to discuss strategy on Afghanistan, Iran and other issues with the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband. Ms Rice, who arrives on Wednesday, will also meet the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

By David Morgan

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has recommended sending additional troops to Afghanistan to reinforce NATO forces but there is no final decision yet, defense officials said on Monday.

The Pentagon chief will consult with President George W. Bush soon on a proposal to send 3,200 Marines to the South Asian nation, where stability is threatened by a surge in violence over the past two years, officials said.

One senior official said a decision could be imminent.

Gates has forwarded his recommendation to the White House and officials said the defense secretary would not order a deployment without first speaking to Bush, who returns from the Middle East on Wednesday.

“A recommendation has been forwarded for discussion. But at this point, no decision has been made. We’re still waiting,” Pentagon spokesman Army Lt. Col. Mark Wright told Reuters, declining to discuss further details.

The White House said Bush looked forward to hearing from Gates.

“President Bush is committed to helping the Afghan people deal with the Taliban and other extremists who continue to take innocent life and attempt to derail Afghanistan’s progress,” spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

A decision to send extra U.S. troops to Afghanistan could be seen as a reverse for NATO, whose member nations have been unable to respond to U.S. calls for additional forces.

Lawrence Korb, a former defense official now with the Center for American Progress, said the Bush administration mishandled NATO involvement by delaying its role in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

“It’s a step in the right direction because we have not had enough troops in Afghanistan. But does it bode well for the alliance? No. The way this was handled has made it more difficult to get NATO to do what it needs to do,” Korb said.

Violence in Afghanistan has increased, with the fundamentalist Islamist Taliban fighting a guerrilla war in the south and east and carrying out suicide and car bombings across the country.

The United States has about 27,000 troops in Afghanistan — the most since leading the 2001 invasion. About half serve in a 40,000-strong NATO-led force, while the rest conduct missions ranging from counterterrorism to training Afghan troops.

For months, Gates pressed NATO allies to provide more troops for Afghanistan. But after meeting allies in Scotland last month, he signaled a shift away from pushing them to make politically difficult decisions to provide combat troops.

A senior Pentagon official said the United States was expected to proceed with the deployment of some 3,000 Marines to make up for the NATO shortfall.

“It is widely anticipated that the secretary will soon approve a deployment of additional U.S. forces to Afghanistan to fulfill unmet NATO requirements,” said a second senior defense official.

CNN reported on Monday that 3,200 Marines had been notified about an impending deployment to Afghanistan. The Marine Corps had no comment. (Additional reporting by Caren Bohan)

South Korean troops have returned home from

The pullout of 195 troops – mostly medics and engineers - was part of a pledge

The Taliban killed two male South Korean captives before freeing all 21 others in August.

Despite the withdrawal, Seoul plans to send up to 30 people, including five soldiers, to Afghanistan in January to run a hospital that had been managed by South Korean troops at the US military base in Bagram, north of

Separately, South Korea has said it is preparing to pull out about 350 troops from

Roh Moo-hyun, the South Korean president, has said recently he intends to extend the Iraq deployment to boost his country’s alliance with the

Chimes of Freedom

The Battle of Musa Kala is supposedly over and the city is once more in the hands of NATO forces. There has been a virtual news blackout about the manner in which the city was taken but, listening to the BBC World Service yesterday, I picked up snippets about a heavy aerial bombardment by the US Air Force, using B1 and Stealth bombers in what appeared to be a Shock & Awe blitzkrieg. Phosphorous bombs may have been used. Thousands of civilians may have been killed. We just don’t know.

Nor do we know just what what the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is doing in South Central Asia. It is a question that after six years still goes unanswered. If pressed, we are given vague assurances about a continued “War against Terrorism”, the catch-all justification the USUK regimes give their public for just about whatever they wish to do, either domestically or abroad.

In fact the much-vaunted “War against Terrorism” is really the ongoing World War of western capitalism that replaced the Cold War, a time during which “hot” wars were exported to places like Korea and Vietnam, with the idea of “Endless War”, which is really an unending war based on geostrategic needs to grab as much of the Planet’s mineral resources as possible.

And in this scenario, Afghanistan, rich in Gas, Oil and Coal, sits neatly in the middle of the Great Game, currently occupied by the western economic bloc but neighboured by the opposing bloc of the countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

SCO

Indeed, looking at the history of US involvement in the area since the early days of its use of the Taleban as anti-Russian insurgents, it may be seen how Afghanistan has played the part of a significant chess-piece in the Great Game of geostrategic politics and war. And the entire fake operation of 911 as the window of opportunity which provided, amongst much else, the excuse for the US along with its dogged ally the UK, to occupy in perpetuo this strategic cross-roads, hence ensuring that it would never fall into the hegemony of the opposing powers.

The argument for a pipeline through Afghanistan was made before the US Congress in 1998 by John Maresca of the Unocal Oil Company in testimony to the House Sub-Committee on Asia and the Pacific:

Maresca concluded his Congressional testimony with this peroration. “Developing cost-effective, profitable and efficient export routes for Central Asia resources is a formidable, but not impossible, task. It has been accomplished before. A commercial corridor, a “new” Silk Road, can link the Central Asia supply with the demand — once again making Central Asia the crossroads between Europe and Asia.”

Gas, Oil and Afghanistan by Jon Flanders

The area includes a huge field of natural resources, predominantly Gas, Oil and Coal. Since the ‘nineties the Texas-based Unocal company was negotiating with the Taleban to build pipelines south to the Arabian Gulf. But these negotiations were brought to a halt by events in a highly destabilized part of the Great Game.

Yet, even were the US oil monopolies temporarily unable to secure the required conditions to pipe the resources, they could still hold a stake in the area’s oil-fields for future exploitation, particularly if the area concerned remained under US occupation. After Unocal pulled-out of the Central Asian Gas Pipeline (Centgas) the company’s chief shareholder became the Saudi Arabian Delta Oil Company.

Unocal’s defection did not end pipeline plans. According to the VOA’s Sarah Horner “But the pipeline dreams have surfaced again. In May 2000 there were reports of discussions of the issue involving Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Iran and Turkmenistan. And the Taliban newspaper, the Kabul Times, recently reported that the mine and industries minister, Mullah Mohammed Isa Akhond, met representatives of the Central Asia-based US company, Central Asia Oil and Gas Industry. The newspaper quoted company representative, Rafiq Yadgar as saying: “Central Asia Oil and Gas Industry is ready to invest in Afghanistan in the field of oil and gas extraction and meanwhile is willing to build an gas and oil refinery in Afghanistan.” He added that Turkmen authorities are ready to cooperate with his company.”

ibid

Now it is the US-puppet Karzai regime which runs Afghanistan, not the Taleban. So if anyone is going to exploit Afghanistan’s rich resources they would come from the western bloc, not the SCO. Hence the importance of Afghanistan remaining under the permanent occupation of the USUK and a fragmented NATO reborn as a ‘Coalition of the Willing.’ And why the UK Government has built in Kabul a huge, new fortified Embassy, signifying plans for a long-term occupation.

The present Bush junta represents nothing less than a coup d’état against the US people by oil interests.

As most of us know, the Bush-Cheney team that took control of the US Government in January, 2001, was heavily influenced by the oil industry. Bush himself is a veteran of a number of mostly failed oil enterprises. Condolezza Rice, Bush’s assistant to the president for national security affairs, was on the board of Chevron. Vice President Dick Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton, a major player in the downstream oil industry.

ibid

The hot spot for where the business is the Caspian.

In a column dated Thursday, August 10, 2000 in the Chicago Tribune , Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego [wrote] … “Because of the instability in the Persian Gulf, Cheney and his fellow oilmen have zeroed in on the world’s other major source of oil –the Caspian Sea. Its rich oil and gas resources are estimated at $4 trillion by US News and World Report. The Washington-based American Petroleum Institute, voice of the major US oil companies, called the Caspian region, “the area of greatest resource potential outside of the Middle East.” Cheney told a gaggle of oil industry executives in 1998, “I can’t think of a time when we’ve had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian.” Halliburton’s Caspian investments include Turkmenistan.

ibid

And in this revealing paper, written in 2001, its author goes on to note,

P.V. Vivekanand, chief editor of The Gulf Today in the United Arab Emirates sums up the pipeline picture in the Caspian/Central Asia region in this way…”There are dozens of oil and gas pipeline projects in Central Asia, some estimated to cost billions of dollars and almost all sparking transborder disputes and controversies. Most of the projects have been discussed for decades as the oil giants wait for the right political conditions to move in. Because pipelines are the best method to transport oil and gas over land, the efficiency of such a delivery system is too tempting for energy exporters and importers to let go of plans in a hurry. And for many potential exporters and pipeline hosts, the realization of such projects can mean economic survival.”

ibid

and finally concludes,

I think the evidence is overwhelming. The Bush administration plans to use the WTC attack as an opportunity to use the US military as pipeline police, with the current goal of splitting the government of Pakistan and the Taliban from the Islamic militants led by Bin Laden. If they can accomplish this, and this is a big if, the way might be cleared for the Afghanistan pipeline project, and the basis for further penetration into the oil rich former Soviet republics established, as part of a general rollback of Russian influence in the Caspian and Central Asia.

ibid

Six years on we can see how this analysis has been borne out. It underscores the vital role played by the false-flag events of 911 which are now being increasingly exposed as having been a CIA-Mossad operation. And it reveals the skeleton-in-the-cupboard behind a nonsensical war, not so much against terror but of ongoing terror by the USUK-led capitalist West against the people of our Planet.

We have seen how in these wars the deaths of millions are just written-off as “collateral damage”, of no significance in contrast to the purposes to be achieved by the constant playing-out of a hell on earth. Hells which are carefully kept out of the view of consumer target audiences and where war crimes are repeated so often that the concept itself begins to seem meaningless.

All wars are ruthless. But when the very survival of the New World Order lies at stake, as it now does, we can be sure that their horror and intensity will only grow, foreshadowing a great, planetary showdown in the interests of the Dollar Line.

TOKYO (AFP) — Japan’s opposition stood firm Thursday against resuming a naval mission supporting the US-led “war on terror” in Afghanistan as a ship returned home from the Indian Ocean.

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda made a new pitch to the opposition hours after returning from a two-nation trip which included a trip to Washington where he promised US President George W. Bush he would work to restart the deployment.

“He called for support for the Afghan refuelling mission… He pleaded over and over again,” main opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa told reporters after he met Fukuda.

Ozawa said he rejected Fukuda’s proposal to have consultations on resuming the naval mission, which provided fuel and other logistical support to troops in Afghanistan.

“We will pursue the policy of having debate in parliament,” he said, arguing his party’s view on how Japan’s troops should contribute to the global fight against terrorism was “fundamentally different” from that of the ruling party.

The opposition, which won control of the upper house of parliament in July 29 polls, opposed the mission arguing that it is against the nation’s pacifist constitution and Japan has been too close to the Bush administration.

Fukuda, whose predecessor quit in part over the row, discussed the Indian Ocean mission during a visit last week to the US to meet Bush. He returned to Japan early Thursday after taking part in an Asian summit in Singapore.

Fukuda argues that Japan must play a greater role in international security as the world’s second largest economy. But the government was forced to call the ships home on November 1 as legislation expired amid legislative deadlock.

The Kirisame destroyer, which had been at sea for four months, returned Thursday morning to Sasebo port in southwestern Nagasaki prefecture, television footage showed.

The other ship in the mission, the Tokiwa oiler, is due to return to Tokyo on Friday, a defence ministry official said.

The opposition’s refusal to cooperate with Fukuda raises the possibility that the ruling bloc’s bill to resume the Afghan mission may remain stuck in the opposition-led upper house as the current session expires on December 15.

Ozawa said “there is not enough time left” for full deliberation of the bill in the upper house.

He blamed the ruling camp for “wasting time” after the election setback.

“In the first place, the (ruling) Liberal Democratic Party failed to recognise what would happen after seeing the results on July 29,” he said.

The opposition has also said it would first probe a growing corruption scandal before considering Fukuda’s bill, which was sent by the lower house last week with an overwhelming majority by the ruling coalition.

The scandal has implicated Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga, who admitted playing golf with a defence contractor, former Yamada Corp. executive Motonobu Miyazaki, who has been arrested on embezzlement and document forgery charges.

Nukaga, who has also served as defence chief before, has denied any wrongdoing.

The defence ministry said Thursday it has suspended trade with Yamada and its US subsidiary as its president admitted padding bills on military supplies.

Internal report into explosion above Afghanistan supports claims that safety fears were ignored

Mark Townsend
The Observer

A dozen major deficiencies in the repair and maintenance of the RAF’s Nimrod spy planes were identified shortly before one of the aircraft exploded above Afghanistan, causing the biggest loss of life suffered by Britain’s armed forces since the Falklands war.An internal defence report, seen by The Observer, highlights a catalogue of ‘critical’ failings found during an investigation into the recurrent problem of fuel leaks within the Nimrod fleet.

It found that deep-rooted concerns relating to a ‘low standard of workmanship’ and ‘inadequate’ training of mechanics working on the Nimrod fuel system were first identified eight years ago. Investigators found no evidence to suggest such issues had been rectified.

The official inquiry into the explosion above Afghanistan that killed 14 people - to be published this month - is expected to pinpoint a fuel leak in the Nimrod MR2 as the cause of the tragedy. The inquiry comes days after a Nimrod suffered a serious leak in mid-air, spraying fuel into an empty bomb bay while refuelling over southern Afghanistan. Last night families of the crew who died in the explosion over Kandahar province claimed it was the fourth such incident since the tragedy.

Last night the father of one of the servicemen killed accused the RAF of ‘wasting’ the life of his 25-year-old son Ben. Graham Knight, from Bridgwater, Somerset, said the report proved that safety fears over fuel leaks had been repeatedly ignored by defence officials.

‘I was speaking to one of the widows involved in the crash recently and she agreed that her husband’s life has been thrown away,’ he said. ‘This report shows that mechanics were not using the proper equipment, there were problems with training and also with the sealants.’

In addition to the 12 areas of concern found by experts, the report detected a further six factors that appear to have compounded problems relating to the aircraft’s fuel tank system, including the age of the fleet and the Nimrod’s design.

The 36-page report adds that the age of the plane that exploded over Afghanistan 14 months ago was ‘considerably beyond the initial design requirement for the aircraft’. The report by Qinetiq, a private defence firm, also found that mechanics could not detect fuel leaks reported in Iraq and Afghanistan once the planes had returned to Britain for service.

The 12 deficiencies mentioned in the Qinetiq report, published in March 2006, focus on mechanics’ working practices. They cite staff using out-of-date generic manuals that did not relate to the specifics of the spy plane and the lack of an ‘adhesion promoter’ to properly carry out repairs to the aircraft’s fuel tanks. So alarmed were the authors of the report that they recommend that a team of specialists should review the findings and make urgent improvements.

‘The overall control and quality of the [mechanics’] work was not helped by the loss of venting equipment, inadequate tooling and poor upkeep,’ said the report. Experts highlighted a ‘critical need to improve the training’ of Nimrod mechanics, a ‘deficiency of appropriate tooling for sealant stripping’, and a ‘lack of expertise and critical loss of experienced personnel that has had a major impact on the efficiency of RAMS [mechanics] in carrying out fuel tank repair work’.

The lack of suitably skilled mechanics was serious enough, the report adds, to have ‘diminished the consistency of fuel tank repair work with a possible impact on the reliability of those repairs’ and may have compromised the ‘effective sealing of leaks’.

Investigators also expressed concern that they could not find who had performed earlier repairs or when they had been concluded. Details relating to prospective repairs on the plane that exploded over Afghanistan could not be traced by those examining the fuel tank system of the plane. Defence officials have previously admitted that the fleet of Nimrods has a history of fuel leaks.

An MoD spokesman said: ‘The safety of our aircrews is paramount. We have regular checks and we have now taken the action of suspending air-to-air refuelling as a precaution.’

by Edward C. Corrigan

	U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in his government’s recent Throne Speech announced that he wants to extend Canada’s participation in the Afghan War for another two years. Many people are asking why are we in Afghanistan and for what purpose are our soldiers dying? What are the other costs to Canadians?

The Conservative Government of Stephen Harper is attempting to portray the Afghan war as “a humanitarian mission” while continuing to fight against Afghans who are resisting what they see as “foreign invaders”. I wonder how Canadians would see American, Russian or Chinese soldiers who invaded our country, over threw an unpopular government, killed tens of thousands, wounded many thousands more, caused wanton destruction and massive environmental damage. Even if they claimed that they were bringing “democracy to Canada” I do not believe that most Canadianswould be impressed.

The recent poll published in the Globe and Mail showed that Afghans want the fighting to end, and they support negotiations with the Taliban. The Globe and Mail reports; “Despite the enmity toward the Taliban, 74 per cent [of Afghans] said they supported negotiations between the Karzai government and Taliban representatives as a way of reducing conflict. In Kandahar, support for talks jumped to 85 per cent.”

But what is the cost of the war in Afghanistan to Canadians? The deaths of 71 soldiers and a diplomat are fairly well known. The financial costs are less well known. According to one study published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the “full cost” of the Afghan war to Canada will be $7.2 billion by March 2008. This works out to more than $100 million every month. What could Canada do with $7.2 billion dollars? How could this money benefit our health care system, to help alleviate poverty, provide tax relief or be used in the fight against Global Warming?

One aspect of the war that is rarely discussed is the impact of exposure of our own soldiers, not to mention the civilian population in Afghanistan and Iraq, to toxic substances.

In the first Iraq War in 1991 causalities reported killed and wounded numbered less than 800. However, in 2001 the United States Veterans Affairs Department officially recognized 159,000 U.S. Desert Storm soldiers as being disabled and another 60,000 becoming disabled in Gulf service after the 1991 war. The 2001 report also noted that 8,000 Gulf War vets had already died.

The numbers are staggering. These figures are from 2001 and the rates for cancers and other illnesses can only go up. They are the 220,000 causalities from the First Iraq War virtually no one talks about.

At the end of December 2001 U.S. Army reports were released that suggested one cause for Gulf War illnesses was low level exposure to sarin nerve gas. The gas was released into the air when the U.S. military improperly blew up Iraqi chemical weapons sites in 1991.

The other suspected cause for “Gulf War Syndrome” is Depleted Uranium or DU. Major Doug Rokke (Ret.) who has a Ph.D served as health physicist for the U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Assessment team in Iraq. He directed development of radiation and safety education and field procedures at the Bradley Radiological Laboratories. He now has a 40% army disability because the uranium in his urine is 5,000 times the permissible level. He also has trouble breathing.

In 1991 his team was brought in to cleanup contamination caused when U.S. troops fired DU weapons accidentally against their fellow U.S. troops (”friendly fire” casualties). DU is basically reprocessed nuclear waste. His containment team went into smashed up tanks without radiological protective suits. Within 72 hours they were getting sick, had respiratory problems and rashes that bled. Over the years many team members died. Dr. Rokke says they were abandoned by the U.S. Defense Department. Rokke himself was fired from his job at Bradley Labs in 1996 after he wrote a report saying the US Army had huge liability for contamination at an US army base in Alabama. Pdf file LINK

The Veterans Affairs Department has awarded disability to 60,000 soldiers who went into the Gulf countries after the war was over. Two thousand of these Gulf War “theater” veterans have died. This is very alarming. It means that the Gulf area (Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia) is still highly contaminated.

The chief suspect again is DU, “depleted uranium” Rokke says the name is a mistake. “There’s nothing depleted about it.” He says the dangerous “alpha proportion” actually goes up in the processing. More than 900,000 DU projectiles were fired during the first Gulf War. When the weapons hit, about half of the uranium was released as tiny particles. The radioactive particles will last for billions of years.

Looking for a quick victory and low body count the U.S. military fought the first Gulf War without regard to the long term effects of exposure to DU and other environmental hazards on its own soldiers. The U.S/ Military liked the cheapness and great penetrating power of the DU shells so it made a political decision to downplay the risk of uranium poisoning. (For much more info on DU see LINK)

Now another generation of U.S., Canadian and British soldiers are being sent to war by politicians, most of whom who never have been in combat, into what is a toxic waste land. These soldiers are very likely going to pay a very steep price for fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. The future health costs and law suits are going to be very expensive and the human cost in pain and suffering incalculable.

In a more recent study it is reported that more than 73,000 U.S. Military service men have died since the First Gulf War. These figures do not include Iraqi civilian deaths estimated at more than one million in the First Iraq War and the period of sanctions and an additional 1.2 million in the current war in Iraq. Over 20,000 civilians have been killed in the War in Afghanistan.

The United States Department of Veteran’s Affairs, in conjunction with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in May 2007 released figures which reveal “the true cost of the War against Iraq and Afghanistan.” According to the report more Gulf War veterans have died than the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Vietnam.

The Department of Veterans Affairs, May 2007, Gulf War Veterans Information System reported the following: Total U.S. Military Gulf War Deaths Since Gulf War One: 73,846; Deaths amongst Deployed: 17,847; Deaths amongst Non-Deployed Veterans: 55,999. Total “Undiagnosed Illness” (UDX) claims: 14,874. Total number of disability claims filed: 1,620,906. Disability Claims amongst Deployed: 407,911 Disability Claims amongst Non-Deployed Veterans: 1,212,995. Percentage of combat troops that filed Disability Claims 36%.

Soldiers, by nature, are generally not complainers. The real impact of those who are disabled from the U.S. invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan and other nations, is not fully reflected in the official Veterans Affairs numbers. Many soldiers suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other psychiatric aliments due to their war time activities and many are never able to live normal lives.

The official U.S. government numbers, as of October 25, 2007, of deaths due to the War in Iraq is 3,838 with 28,171 reported as wounded.

Apparently the Bush administration does not want the 73,000 dead veterans to be compared to the 55,000 U.S. soldiers killed in Vietnam. What the Bush Administration is doing is counting only the soldiers that die directly in action in Iraq or Afghanistan. Injured soldiers are quickly taken out of the war zone for medical treatment. Any soldier who is shot in the war but is removed from the war zone before they die is not counted as a causality of the war.

The 73,843 dead amongst the U.S. soldiers for this scale of operation in Iraq and using weapons of mass destruction is proportionately not that high. However, according to one source, ?they expect the great majority of U.S. soldiers who took part in the invasion of Iraq to die of uranium poisoning, which can take decades to kill. From a victors perspective, above any major war in history, the Gulf War has taken the severest toll on soldiers.?

According to reports more than 1,820 tons of radioactive nuclear waste uranium were exploded into Iraq alone in the form of armour piercing rounds and bunker busters, representing the world’s worst man made ecological disaster ever. To compare 64 kg of uranium was used in the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The U.S. Iraq Nuclear contamination represents more than fourteen thousand Hiroshima’s. It has been suggested that the nuclear waste the U.S. has exploded into the Middle East will continue killing for billions of years and could possibly wipe out more than a third of life on the planet. Gulf War Veterans who have ingested the uranium will continue to die off over the next few decades from cancers and other horrific diseases.

Birth defects are up 600% in Iraq. Being exposed to the same radioactive contamination we can expect a massive increase in birth defects in the children of U.S. veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Our Canadian soldiers are being exposed to the same radioactive contamination and other environmental hazards.

This information is not being addressed in the North American mainstream media. However, this information is readily available on the United States Department of Veteran’s Affairs web site: Pdf file LINK

The financial cost of the U.S. war against Iraq and Afghanistan is also staggering. A recent U.S. Congressional study estimates the cost for U.S. war in Iraq and Afghanistan at $2.4 trillion through the next decade. The report says the United States has already spent 604 billion dollars on the so called “War on Terror”. U.S. President George W. Bush has asked for $196.4 billion for war-related operations for the 2007-2008 budget year.

The question that needs to be asked is what is spending all of these billions of dollars accomplishing. According to Lord Ashdown, NATO has “lost in Afghanistan” and its failure to bring stability there could provoke a regional sectarian war “on a grand scale.” Lord Ashdown is the former leader of the British Liberal Democrats and a highly respected British political figure. He is also the former United Nations High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ashdown delivered his dire prediction after being proposed as a new “super envoy” for Afghanistan.

Lord Ashdown’s pessimistic assessment of the war in Afghanistan is shared by Great Britain’s Chief of Defence Staff, Sir Jock Stirrup. He recently has said the military cannot resolve the situation in Afghanistan alone. The Chief of Britain’s Armed Forces warned ?that British troops could remain in Afghanistan for “decades.” He also said that even then the conflict will only be resolved by a political deal - after talks with Taliban leaders.?

Is Stephen Harper’s Afghanistan war the kind of war that Canadians want? We need to very loudly ask our political leaders why are we fighting a war in Afghanistan?

About the writer:

This is a slightly edited version of a speech given at London, Ontario?s “Day of Action: on October 26, 2007 to Protest the War in Afghanistan and Iraq. Edward C. Corrigan is a London lawyer certified as a Specialist in Citizenship and Immigration Law and Immigration and Refugee Protection by the Law Society of Upper Canada. He can be reached at corriganlaw@edcorrigan.ca or at (519) 439-4015.

By Jacob G. Hornberger

While most Americans have turned against the Iraq War, many of them still think that the war on Afghanistan was morally and legally justified. Their rationale is that the United States was simply defending itself by attacking Afghanistan and retaliating against those who had conspired to commit the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Of course, the last thing on people’s mind was that the 9/11 perpetrators themselves were retaliating for the bad things that the U.S. government had long been doing to people in the Middle East.

In fact, the irony of the attacks on both Afghanistan and Iraq is that both actions are simply a continuation of regime-change operations that have long characterized U.S. foreign policy, operations that are in large part responsible for much of the anger that foreigners have for the United States.

For example, there was the regime-change operation in Iran in 1953, where the CIA successfully ousted the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, and replaced him with the shah of Iran, whose brutal dictatorship ultimately culminated in the Iranian revolution in 1979. Not surprisingly, Iranians are still angry about that U.S.-imposed regime change.

There was also Guatemala in 1954, where the CIA successfully ousted the democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz, which led to the decades-long civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of Guatemalan citizens. There were Chile, Panama, Nicaragua, and Grenada. And, of course, there were the unsuccessful regime-change operations against Cuba.

In the Middle East, there was the U.S. support of Saddam Hussein, including the furnishing of weapons of mass destruction to him to use against Iranians, whose regime was no longer friendly to the United States after the 1979 revolution. There was the Persian Gulf intervention, which was followed by the brutal sanctions against Iraq, whose purpose was to bring about regime change after the United States turned against Saddam. There was the implicit U.S. endorsement of Madeleine Albright’s famous statement that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children from the sanctions against Iraq had been “worth it.” There was the unconditional financial and military support of the Israeli government. And there was the stationing of U.S. troops on Islamic holy lands, with full knowledge of the adverse effect such an action would have on Muslim religious sensitivities.

Long before the 9/11 attacks, the terrorists who had struck the World Trade Center in 1993 had cited, as had Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, those foreign policies as the basis for their grievances against the United States.

Therefore, it is ironic that U.S. officials used the 9/11 attacks to do the kind of thing they had long been already doing and which had in fact motivated the 9/11 attacks: regime-changing nations whose regimes were not inclined to obey U.S. orders. In what has become a customary perverse consequence of U.S. policies, the invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan have not only produced chaos, death, and destruction, they have also ensured a steady stream of terrorist recruits to al-Qaeda and other groups that hate the United States more than ever. It is almost as if U.S. officials were saying after 9/11, “We are going to show you that your attacks will not cause us to change our ways, and our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq will be our proof.”

After the 9/11 attacks, here at The Future of Freedom Foundation we recommended that the U.S. government not use the U.S. military to attack Afghanistan as a way to get bin Laden. We recommended instead that U.S. officials treat the attacks as a criminal-justice problem rather than a military problem.

After all, that’s the way that the federal government has always treated terrorism — as a criminal violation of federal statutes against terrorism. That was, in fact, how the government treated the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, in which one of the perpetrators was a Kuwaiti man of Pakistani descent named Ramzi Yousef who was residing in Pakistan. Rather than invade Pakistan to capture or kill Yousef, which would have killed and maimed countless Pakistanis, U.S. officials simply bided their time until he was arrested in Pakistan and brought to New York for trial. It took time, but that’s the way the criminal-justice system often works. Sometimes a criminal is arrested immediately, sometimes much later, sometimes never. By the way, at Yousef’s sentencing, he angrily cited U.S. foreign policy as the basis for his grievances.

Recall that in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, there was a tremendous outpouring of sympathy and empathy all over the world for the United States. If U.S. officials had exercised wisdom, instead of reacting in a knee-jerk military fashion, they could have capitalized on those positive feelings by isolating bin Laden and the rest of his gang. Immediately after the attacks, we recommended offering a huge financial reward for the arrest of bin Laden and his cohorts and bringing them to trial. We pointed to the “letters of marque” that are authorized in the Constitution for such captures.

If President Bush had announced to the world that the United States would not kill innocent people in the quest to bring bin Laden and other members of al-Qaeda to justice, the entire world would have remained sympathetic to the United States. Bin Laden and al-Qaeda would have been isolated, not knowing who would turn them in to the authorities. Compare that to the situation in the world today, where countless ordinary people all over the world are filled with rage over the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention the torture and sex-abuse scandals at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere. Moreover, even U.S. intelligence agencies are admitting that the continuous killings of Afghanis and Iraqis continue to provide al-Qaeda with a steady stream of recruits.

The Taliban and bin Laden

Another major problem with the attack on Afghanistan was the one that most U.S. presidents and, alas, most Americans, have chosen to ignore for the past several decades: that the U.S. Constitution requires the president to secure a congressional declaration of war from Congress before waging war against another country. Bush failed to do that.

Why did Bush order an invasion of Afghanistan? Not because he believed that the Taliban had conspired with al-Qaeda to commit the 9/11 attacks and not because he felt that the Taliban had committed some act of war against the United States by knowingly “harboring” a known fugitive.

Instead, Bush ordered the invasion of Afghanistan for one reason: the Taliban government refused to comply with his demand to unconditionally deliver bin Laden to the United States. He always made it clear that if the Taliban delivered bin Laden to the United States, such action would spare Afghanistan from a U.S. invasion. The “offer” that he made to the Taliban was not significantly different from that made to Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf, a close friend of the Taliban, after 9/11: play ball with us and you stay in power; refuse to do so, and you’re history.

So why did the Taliban refuse to turn over bin Laden? For one thing, there wasn’t any extradition agreement between Afghanistan and the United States. And there is a long tradition in Muslim countries to treat foreign visitors as guests. Nevertheless, the Taliban did express a willingness to deliver bin Laden over to the United States or to a third country if U.S. officials provided convincing evidence that bin Laden had, in fact, been complicit in the 9/11 attacks. Was the demand unreasonable? Well, it would be nothing more than any government, including the United States, would expect in any extradition proceeding.

Bush’s response was that U.S. officials would not furnish any such evidence to the Taliban government. The Taliban simply needed to follow U.S. orders and turn bin Laden over to the United States, with no guarantees of what would happen to him once he was in U.S. custody. That is, there were no assurances that bin Laden would be brought back to the United States for trial for terrorism in federal district court instead of being turned over to the CIA for torture and execution.

The Taliban refused to accede to Bush’s unconditional demand. The result was the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the ouster of the Taliban from power, the installation of a U.S.-approved regime, a nation ruled by regional warlords, the deaths of countless Afghanis, the failure to capture bin Laden, and an ever-growing terrorist movement generated by ever-deepening anger and hatred against the United States.

Moreover, Bush’s conflation of the Taliban and al-Qaeda into one amorphous “terrorist” group, when each group obviously had its own reasons for resisting the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, ultimately set the stage for his “enemy-combatant” doctrine in the “war on terror” and the invasion and occupation of Iraq as part of the “war on terror,” which would later be used to justify the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, Abu Ghraib, rendition, torture, and the military power to indefinitely incarcerate Americans and foreigners.

Did the United States have the legal and moral right to invade Afghanistan upon the Taliban’s refusal to turn bin Laden over to the United States? Many Americans would undoubtedly respond, “Yes, absolutely. When a country experiences a terrorist attack, it has the legal and moral right to attack and invade a sovereign and independent country that refuses to comply with an unconditional demand to give up the suspected perpetrators.”

Venezuela’s war on terrorism

Well, if that’s true then how would such proponents respond if, say, Venezuela attacked the United States for harboring terrorists? Would the proponents say, “I’m going to fight on the side of Venezuela because in the war on terror a country has the right to attack countries that are harboring terrorists”? Not likely.

Yet the U.S. response to Venezuela’s extradition of a suspected terrorist named Luis Posada Cariles, a former CIA operative, not only provides a good example of the hypocrisy of the U.S. government’s “war on terror,” it also shows how such a war leads inexorably toward endless international conflict and discord. After all, ask yourself, Can a world in which each country has the right to wage a war on terror under the principles followed by the U.S. government possibly be harmonious?

Posada is a prime suspect in the terrorist bombing of a civilian Cuban airliner whose flight originated in Venezuela in 1976. The plane crashed, killing 73 people, including several young members of a Cuban sports team. About a year ago, Posada made his way into the United States, prompting Venezuelan authorities to demand his extradition to Venezuela pursuant to the extradition agreement between the two nations.

U.S. officials, however, announced that they had no intention of returning Posada to Venezuela, extradition agreement or not, suggesting that they didn’t care how much evidence of Posada’s involvement in the terrorist attack Venezuela was able to provide. Their reason? While their stated reason for their decision is that Venezuela might torture Posada on his return, the real reason was the U.S. government’s natural sympathy toward anti-Castro Cuban exiles, including those who commit terrorist acts against the Cuban people.

But how is the U.S. government’s response to Venezuela in the Posada case different from the Taliban’s refusal to turn bin Laden over to the United States? If the U.S. government is going to refuse to turn over a terrorist suspect because of the possibility that he might be tortured, then how can it say that Afghanistan didn’t have the same right, especially since a suspected terrorist is as likely to be tortured by the United States as he is by Venezuela? Or to put it another way, if Afghanistan was “harboring” a terrorist by refusing U.S. demands to turn him over, isn’t the United States doing the same thing by refusing Venezuela’s extradition request of Posada?

In fact, the farcical, chaotic, and destructive nature of the U.S. government’s entire “war on terror” is easily exposed when one applies its principles universally to every other nation. That is, if the U.S. government has the right to wage a war on terror, then so has every other nation. That means then that every nation has the right to attack every other nation in which there are suspected terrorists. Cuba, for example, would have the right to attack the United States in order to kill or capture Posada and, for that matter, those Cuban-American citizens who are funding anti-Castro terrorist activity in Cuba.

Obviously, the only reason that the U.S. government is getting away with its “war on terror,” including regime-change operations against Third World countries and military wars of aggression on sovereign and independent nations, is that it has overwhelming military strength, especially compared with Third World countries. In the U.S. government’s war on terror, might makes right. But as the U.S. empire becomes increasingly overstretched by waging such a war, the American people are going to inevitably discover what lies at the end of that road: death, destruction, conflict, discord, terrorism, torture, rendition, and infringements on liberty.

Granma International

flamesong

Interrogation techniques used by the CIA on alleged terrorists can cause serious mental damage and are illegal in the United States, according to a report released Thursday by two non-governmental organizations, Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights First.

The report, titled “Leave No Marks, ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation Techniques and the Risk of Criminality,” was drafted by medical and legal investigators from both groups and based its conclusions on extensive medical documentation and various cases of torture survivors.

Researchers analyzed CIA techniques, which include sensory and sleep deprivation, exposing prisoners to excessive heat and/or cold for long periods, placing prisoners in “stress” (extremely uncomfortable) positions, sexual humiliation and simulated drowning of prisoners via a technique known as “water-boarding.”

The report found that these practices can cause long-term consequences such as post-traumatic stress disorder, psychosis, substance abuse, and suicide, and for that reason are illegal, the AP reported.

By Noah Shachtman

It’s not just the troops that are surging.  War costs are up for American operations in Iraq and Afghanistan* – way up, more than a third higher than last year.  In the first half of this fiscal year, the Defense Department’s “average monthly obligations for contracts and pay is running about $12 billion per month, well above the $8.7 billion in FY2006,” says a new report, obtained by DANGER ROOM, from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service.

Additional war costs for the next  10 years could total about $472 billion if troop levels fall to 30,000 by 2010, or $919 billion if troop levels fall to 70,000 by about 2013.  If these estimates are added to already appropriated amounts, total funding about $980 billion to $1.4 trillion by 2017.

Meanwhile, Inside Defense reports that “top Pentagon budget and program officials have directed the military services to prepare spending proposals to finance Iraq and Afghanistan operations… through fiscal year 2009, which will span the last days of the Bush administration and the early months of the next administration.”

By Griff Witte and Javed Hamdard

Just a week after Afghan President Hamid Karzai chastised international forces for being “careless,” Afghan officials reported Saturday that possibly 100 or more civilians had been killed in a NATO and U.S.-led assault.

The battle in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, which was prompted by a Taliban ambush, began Friday night and continued into Saturday morning, Afghan officials said. It ended with international forces bombing several compounds in the remote village of Hyderabad.

“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. “The people are already unhappy with the government. But these kinds of killings of civilians will cause people to revolt against the government.”

Another parliament member from Helmand, Mahmood Anwar, said that the death toll was close to 100 and that the dead included women and children. “Very few Taliban were killed,” he said.

Spokesmen for the international forces acknowledged that civilians were killed in the battle, though they disputed the numbers. Maj. John Thomas, a spokesman for the NATO force, said the civilian death toll was “an order of magnitude less” than what Afghan officials reported.

Thomas said U.S. ground forces helping to carry out a NATO mission had come under fire by Taliban insurgents using small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. Thomas said the troops responded by firing on insurgents who were shooting from a compound and a network of trenches. U.S. helicopters and NATO bombers were later brought in for support, he said.

Thomas said troops returned to the area after the battle and found what appeared to be civilian bodies among the dead insurgents in the trenches. “This confirms for us again that militants are willing to fire from among civilians,” he said.

“We are deeply saddened by any loss of innocent lives,” U.S. Army Maj. Chris Belcher, a coalition forces spokesman, said in a statement. “Insurgents are continuing their tactic of using women and children as human shields in close combat.”

Karzai has not accepted that argument, repeatedly criticizing international troops for not doing more to protect noncombatants. After a series of particularly deadly incidents in June that Karzai blamed on poor coordination, he told reporters that international troops would have to “work the way we ask them to work.”

Violence has increased in recent months in Afghanistan, especially in Helmand. A NATO soldier was killed and another injured in a separate incident in the province Saturday. The force did not identify the soldiers’ nationalities.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan on Saturday, three civilians were killed and seven injured when a Taliban rocket missed a NATO base in the eastern province of Kunar.

More than 2,800 people have been killed in violence in Afghanistan so far this year, compared with 4,000 killed in all of last year, according to a tally by the Associated Press. The AP counts hundreds of civilians killed. Slightly more have been killed by NATO and U.S.-led forces than by the Taliban, according to several independent assessments.

Witnesses claim a village in British-run Helmand was bombed for three hours after the Taliban attempted to ambush a US-Afghan army convoy

Jason Burke
Sunday July 1, 2007
The Observer

Air strikes in the British-controlled Helmand province of Afghanistan may have killed civilians, coalition troops said yesterday as local people claimed that between 50 and 80 people, many of them women and children, had died.In the latest of a series of attacks causing significant civilian casualties in recent weeks, more than 200 were killed by coalition troops in Afghanistan in June, far more than are believed to have been killed by Taliban militants.

The bombardment, which witnesses said lasted up to three hours, in the Gereshk district late on Friday followed an attempted ambush by the Taliban on a joint US-Afghan military convoy. According to Mohammad Hussein, the provincial police chief, the militants fled into a nearby village for cover. Planes then targeted the village of Hyderabad. Mohammad Khan, a resident of the village, said seven members of his family, including his brother and five of his brother’s children, were killed.

‘I brought three of my wounded relatives to Gereshk hospital for treatment,’ he told the Associated Press news agency by phone. The villagers were yesterday burying a ‘lot of dead bodies’, Khan said.

He spoke as American forces in Iraq also found themselves heavily criticised over civilian deaths when eight people died, apparently caught in crossfire from a gunfight between insurgents and soldiers in Baghdad’s Sadr City yesterday. But residents, police and hospital officials said eight civilians were killed in their homes and angrily accused US forces of firing blindly on innocent people. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki condemned the raids and demanded an explanation for the assault on a district where he has barred American operations in the past.

In Afghanistan, the civilian deaths caused by US and Nato-led troops have infuriated local people and prompted President Hamid Karzai to publicly condemn foreign forces for careless ‘use of extreme force’ and for viewing Afghan lives as ‘cheap’. The increasingly fragile President has urged restraint and better co-ordination of military operations with the Afghan government, while also blaming the Taliban for using civilians as human shields.

Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations Secretary-General, raised the issue of civilian casualties on a four-hour visit to Afghanistan on Friday on which he met the senior Nato commander there, the American General Dan McNeill.

Senior British soldiers have previously expressed concerns that McNeill, who took command of the 32,000 Nato troops in Afghanistan only recently, was ‘a fan’ of the massive use of air power to defeat insurgents and that his favoured tactics could be counter-productive.

‘Every civilian dead means five new Taliban,’ said one British officer who has recently returned from Helmand. ‘It’s a tough call when the enemy are hiding in villages, but you have to be very, very careful,’ he added.

The American general has been dubbed ‘Bomber McNeill’ by his critics.

But Nato has ‘never killed and will never intentionally kill innocent civilians’, its secretary-general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, told a conference in Macedonia on Friday. ‘The majority of civilian casualties in Afghanistan have been caused by Taliban suicide bombs and roadside bombs.’

US Air Force Major John Thomas said that, after a long skirmish and under constant fire from the Taliban, troops of Isaf (the International Security Assistance Force), called for close air force support during an operation in Helmand, where the Taliban have been resurgent this year.

‘All enemy positions were destroyed, but after friendly forces surveyed the area, there were reports of some possible civilian deaths,’ Thomas said.

‘The remains of some people who appeared to be civilians were found among enemy fighters in a trench line,’ he added. The level of violence has soared in Afghanistan, with more than 2,800 people - mostly Taliban fighters - killed in fighting this year, according to an Associated Press tally of figures issued in the last few days by Western military and Afghan officials.

A count by the United Nations and an umbrella organisation of Afghan and international aid groups shows the number of civilians killed by international forces was slightly greater than the number killed by insurgents in the first half of the year.

In Helmand’s Sangin district, Nato-led and Afghan troops clashed with Taliban fighters on Friday, leaving 15 of the militants dead, said Ezatullah Khan, a district chief. Helmand is the primary area of operations for the British troops deployed in Afghanistan.

There were no casualties among Nato and Afghan troops, the official said.

More than 3,000 British troops have been deployed in Helmand to combat both the Taliban and the drugs trade. Also in the south, two suspected Taliban members were killed while trying to place a homemade bomb on the side of a road in Zhari district of Kandahar province on Friday, said Ghulam Rasool, the district’s police chief.

Three children were also killed on Friday and another wounded when an old rocket they were playing with exploded in Zabul province in the south, said General Yaqoub Khan, the provincial police chief.

AFP

The NATO-led force in Afghanistan on Monday said it was investigating a report that US and Afghan soldiers tied a detainee to a military vehicle and threatened to drag him across a road.

One US soldier and an unspecified number of Afghan servicemen have been suspended after the German magazine, Focus, reported the June 10 incident in Ghazni province.

The soldiers were also reported to have threatened the suspect’s family.

“We take these accusations very seriously,” Colonel Martin P. Schweitzer, regional commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said in a statement.

“The coalition has appointed a senior officer to investigate the allegations in coordination with (Afghan National Security Forces) officials and the local community leaders.

“The soldier in question has been temporarily removed from his post, pending the outcome of the investigation.”

The US soldier was from the 82nd Airborne Division, which is serving under the NATO force.

The statement added that any criminal investigation into the American would be carried out by the US army, and could take months.