More civilian deaths as US launches offensive in southern Afghanistan

In what is likely to be the first of many such atrocities, two US military rockets slammed into a house near Marjah, the target of the current offensive, killing 12 people. US military authorities admitted that the victims were innocent civilians sheltering in their own home, as they had been advised to do by US and NATO officials.

The incident took place as fighting intensified during the second day of the US-led offensive into the town of Marjah and the surrounding district of Nad Ali, in central Helmand province. Some 15,000 troops began the attack early Saturday morning, spearheaded by 5,000 US Marines and including British, Canadian, Danish and Estonian troops, as well as troops of the Afghan puppet regime of President Hamid Karzai.

A Marine unit ordered the rockets fired after coming under effective and well-aimed fire by Taliban guerrilla fighters from two directions. A truck-mounted weapon known as a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) was used, but the two rockets hit a home some 1,000 feet away from the target, US military officials told the press.

There was no explanation for why the rockets were so wide of the mark, but there clearly was an element of recklessness, perhaps even panic, in the action. One military official told the media that the rockets were employed because the heavy ground fire made it impossible for helicopters to evacuate wounded US soldiers. “This is a heavy thing to use under these circumstances but they used something that is usually very precise,” the NATO official told McClatchy News Service. “They probably felt this was better than calling in an air attack.”

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, issued an apology to the Afghan government for the death toll, and use of the HIMARS rockets was temporarily suspended pending a review of the incident.

Despite suggestions from US officials that air strikes on the densely populated farming area would be relatively rare, reporters accompanied the troops who entered Marjah reported frequent detonations from bombs dropped by US jets. In at least one case, US Army troops called in a Cobra attack helicopter that launched a Hellfire missile to destroy a building from which guerrillas were firing and pinning down a US patrol.

A British news agency quoted an American Marine officer comparing the intensity of the firefights to those during the US onslaught on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004. “In Fallujah, it was just as intense. But there, we started from the north and worked down to the south,” Captain Ryan Sparks told Reuters. “In Marjah, we’re coming in from different locations and working toward the center, so we’re taking fire from all angles.”

Senior US commanders were at pains to downplay comparisons to Fallujah, where the Marines effectively destroyed the city in a week-long battle, inflicting a huge loss of life, because the American propaganda line under Gen. McChrystal has been about capturing the “hearts and minds” of the Afghan people. “We don’t want Fallujah,” McChrystal said in an interview last week. “Fallujah is not the model.”

Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, commander of the Marines in southern Afghanistan, also disputed the comparison, saying, “The population is not the enemy. The population is the prize—they are why we are going in.” This comment is perhaps unintentionally revealing, conceding that, certainly in Fallujah, as in other operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the local population was considered the enemy and subjected to collective punishment.

Prior to admitting to the killing of the 12 civilians in their home, the US military command had acknowledged 27 Afghan dead in the Marjah operations, and characterized all of them as Taliban insurgents. This recalls the practice of the American military in Vietnam, where it became notorious that every Vietnamese victim of US bombs, strafing, artillery and napalm was classified as “Viet Cong.”

Nicholson predicted that intense fighting in the Marjah area could continue, albeit sporadically, for another 30 days. Given the overwhelming control established by the US military in the first two days, this forecast promises weeks of house-to-house raids in which doors will be broken down as US troops and their Afghan collaborators search for alleged insurgents.

The major innovation in the current operation comes in the political goal of establishing a functioning Afghan governmental machine in the area. McChrystal boasted that he would import a “government-in-a-box” to take charge of civil affairs and policing in the Marjah area, including some 2,000 Afghan National Police officers.

The claim that a full-fledged and permanent “Afghan” administration will be established is ludicrous, given the character of the Karzai government in Kabul, an unstable stooge regime entirely dependent on US funds and force of arms.

The claim is further undermined by the name given to the military onslaught, “Operation Moshtarak,” which means “Operation Together” in the Dari language, the derivative of Persian spoken by the large Tajik minority in Afghanistan. The use of a Dari name suggests that most of the Afghan troops participating in the operation are Tajik, former soldiers of the Tajik-based Northern Alliance, which backed the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan.

The population of Helmand province and the Marjah area, however, is Pashto-speaking, like most of the Taliban. Giving a Dari name to the military operation sends a message to the local Pashtun population that they are being conquered by the rival ethnic group, not being integrated into a new “national” Afghan state.

From a military standpoint, the heavily armed US and British troops have overwhelming superiority in both firepower and mobility, demonstrated on Saturday morning when more than a thousand US troops were airlifted into Marjah by helicopters, bypassing the elaborate network of booby traps and IEDs reportedly set up by the insurgents in recent months. The airdropped troops set up 11 secure outposts and effectively took control of the town long before troops moving overland joined them. Only one British and one American soldier were killed in the first day of the operation.

While as many as 15,000 troops are taking part in the US-led assault, US military estimates of the opposing force ranged from 1,000 to as few as 150. According to a “senior defense official” who spoke to the Wall Street Journal, more than 75 percent of the guerrilla fighters in Marjah are local residents, making it easy for them to blend in and return to the fight under more favorable circumstances. The figure also demonstrates that the label “Taliban” is being applied indiscriminately to any Afghan who takes up arms against the foreign occupation force.

The Marjah offensive was immediately trumpeted by Obama administration spokesmen as a major military success. Retired general James Jones, Obama’s national security adviser, told the CNN Sunday interview program, “State of the Union,” that it marked a major change in US strategy.

“Instead of clearing the area and leaving as we frequently did in the past,” he said, “our plans call for clearing the area, holding the area, and then providing some building for the people there, better security, better economic opportunity, better governance, more of an Afghan face. It’s an important moment in time because this is the first time we put together all of the elements of the president’s new strategy.”

According to press reports citing Pentagon and White House sources, the attack on Marjah is a major step in a larger offensive to secure the entire populated region along the Helmand River, extending through the province of that name all the way to Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city. Some 85 percent of the people of the two provinces live along that corridor, which is the main target of the 30,000 additional US troops ordered into Afghanistan by Obama.

However, as one Afghan official pointed out to the British daily newspaper The Guardian, the Nad Ali district, of which Marjah is the center, is only one of the more than 700 districts in the country effectively controlled by the Taliban or under their influence.

Source: World Socialist Web Site

Abu Sayyaf operative reported killed in North Waziristan

A wanted member of the Philippines-based, al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf Group is thought to have been killed in a US airstrike in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan last week. Abu Sayyaf operative and bomb-making expert Abdul Basit Usman is thought to have been killed in an airstrike on Jan. 14 in North Waziristan. Usman is believed to have died in the attack that targeted Taliban chieftain Hakeemullah Mehsud in the Pasalkot region in North Waziristan, an area close to the border with the neighboring tribal agency of South Waziristan. Ten Taliban and foreign fighters were reported killed in the attack, which hit a madrassa, or religious school, used by Taliban fighters from South Waziristan who dodged the Pakistani Army operation in South Waziristan.

Usman is wanted by the United States for his involvement in multiple bombings in the Philippines and also has links to Jemaah Islamiyah, al Qaeda's regional affiliate in Southeast Asia. "Because of his association with these US Government-designated international terrorist organizations, US authorities consider Basit to be a threat to US and Filipino citizens and interests," states the Rewards for Justice website. "He is believed to have orchestrated several bombings that have killed, injured, and maimed many innocent civilians."

The US has put a $1 million reward out for information leading to his capture and prosecution. It is unclear when Usman entered Pakistan. As of May 2009, the US believed Usman was hiding on the Philippine island of Mindanao. US intelligence officials contacted by The Long War Journal would not confirm Usman's death, but did say they were investigating the reports. Usman's death in North Waziristan, if confirmed, would further reinforce the reports that Pakistan's tribal areas are a nexus for al Qaeda-linked groups across the globe. "It isn't just al Qaeda operating in the tribal areas," a senior US intelligence official told The Long War Journal. "You have Pakistani groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. You have the Uzbek terror groups. You have HuJI (the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, a terror group based in Pakistan and Bangladesh), Jemaah Islamiyah, Abu Sayyaf, you name it."

US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has described this jihadist nexus in Pakistan as "a syndicate of terrorist operators" during his recent visit to India. US military and intelligence officials often privately refer to this alliance as AQAM (al Qaeda and allied movements, or al Qaeda and associated movements). US intelligence officials have spoken of AQAM's influence in Pakistan for years. "At times their [AQAM's] planning, allocation of resources, and operations are indistinguishable," a US intelligence official told The Long War Journal in October 2009. "Their goals are identical; they want to hit us here as well as carve out their caliphate there [in Pakistan and Afghanistan]."

Despite the growth of al Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan's tribal areas, the Pakistani military has stated it will not conduct further operations this year to root out the Taliban and al Qaeda safe havens. "We are not going to conduct any major new operations against the militants over the next 12 months," Major General Athar Abbas, the top spokesman for the Pakistani military told the BBC in an interview today. "The Pakistan army is overstretched and it is not in a position to open any new fronts," Abbas continued. "Obviously, we will continue our present operations in Waziristan and Swat."

Source: The Long War Journal

Huge blast rocks Pakistani city

Rescuers are searching the rubble of a police building in the Pakistani city of Lahore after a bomb attack killed at least 23 people and injured 200. Gunmen reportedly opened fire on guards before detonating a car bomb which flattened the emergency response building at police HQ. Nearby offices of the ISI intelligence service were also damaged.

The interior ministry chief linked the attack to Taliban insurgents whom troops are battling in the Swat valley.

Source: BBC

Al-Qaeda chemical expert 'killed'

Reports from Pakistan say a leading al-Qaeda chemical weapons expert, Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, has been killed in a missile strike. Taleban officials in the tribal area of South Waziristan confirmed to the BBC that he was killed in a missile strike that left at least six people dead. The US, which has a reward of $5m on his head, said it had no information. He was wrongly reported to have been killed in 2006 in a strike aimed at al-Qaeda deputy head Ayman al-Zawahiri. The pre-dawn strike targeted a house near a mosque in the village of Azam Warsak, 20km (12 miles) west of the main town in South Waziristan, Wana. It was suspected to be a strike by US forces, with residents saying they had heard US drones, but this has not been confirmed. Pakistani military spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas told the AFP news agency it was still awaiting "authentic information" from the area.

Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, 55, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, is an Egyptian national. The US government's Rewards for Justice website says he is "an explosives expert and poisons trainer working on behalf of al-Qaeda". It says he trained hundreds of militants in chemical and explosives operations at a camp at Derunta in Afghanistan.

The BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan in Islamabad says the militant was considered part of Osama Bin Laden's inner circle and was said to be in charge of efforts to gain access to, or develop, weapons of mass destruction. Local residents said the house targeted belonged to a local tribesman and suspected militants used to stay there. The US is reported to have carried out a number of drone missile attacks in the tribal regions. Pakistan has complained the attacks could damage bilateral relations. The latest strike came shortly before Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was due to meet US President George W Bush in Washington.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said she had no information about the incident. In recent months the US and its allies have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in military and other forms of assistance to help Pakistan's new government tackle militancy in border tribal areas.

Source: BBC

CIA admit 'waterboarding' al-Qaida suspects

Interrogators used "waterboarding" on three men shortly after the September 11 attacks, the CIA admitted today, naming for the first time the victims of a technique widely perceived as torture.

The men subjected to waterboarding, which simulates drowning, were al-Qaida suspects Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the CIA director, Michael Hayden, told the US Congress. "We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time," Hayden said. "There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable. And we had limited knowledge about al-Qaida and its workings. Those two realities have changed."

Hayden told the senate intelligence committee that Mohammed - the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks - and the other two men were subject to waterboarding in 2002 and 2003. "The circumstances are different than they were in late 2001, early 2002," Hayden said, adding that he opposed limiting the CIA to interrogation techniques permitted in the US Army field manual, which bans waterboarding. Hayden told the committee that fewer than 100 people had been held in the CIA's terrorism detention and interrogation programme, with less than one-third subjected to "coercive" techniques. The CIA said in December that it had destroyed videotapes depicting the interrogations of Zubaydah and Nashiri, prompting a justice department investigation. The tapes were destroyed as Congress moved to pass a ban on inhumane interrogations and a prosecutor is investigating whether US intelligence officials broke the law or violated court orders in destroying the tapes.

In waterboarding, the victim's mouth is covered and water poured over his face, making the victim feel as if they are drowning. "Waterboarding taken to its extreme, could be death - you could drown someone," McConnell acknowledged. He said waterboarding remains a technique in the CIA's arsenal, but it would require the consent of the president and legal approval of the attorney general.

At the same hearing, the US director of national intelligence said the Taliban, which was overthrown in Afghanistan in late 2001, has expanded its operations into once-peaceful areas of western Afghanistan and around the capital, Kabul, despite the death or capture of three top commanders in the last year. McConnell also said al-Qaida maintains a "safe haven" in Pakistan's tribal areas, where the group is able to stage attacks supporting the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan. The Pakistani tribal areas provide al-Qaida "many of the advantages it once derived from its base across the border in Afghanistan, albeit on a smaller and less secure scale", allowing militants to train for strikes in Pakistan, the Middle East, Africa and the US, McConnell said. "Al-Qaida remains the pre-eminent threat against the United States, both here at home and abroad," McConnell said, even though the terror network had suffered setbacks in Iraq. He expressed concern that al-Qaida in Iraq is shifting its focus elsewhere in the region. "They may deploy resources to mount attacks outside the country," McConnell said, although fewer than 100 terrorists have moved to establish cells in other countries. McConnell also told the senate panel that US officials believe that Osama bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan's tribal areas. A report released in London said nearly 400 militant groups now operate around the world and the greatest proliferation has been in the border regions between Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

The number of violent "non-state" groups has grown about 10% in the past year, according to the 2008 military balance report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Iraq and India, with more than 30 active guerrilla groups each, are the most volatile countries, the report said, with the Afghan-Pakistan border and the disputed Kashmir region between India and Pakistan the worst-affected areas.

Source: Guardian

Print Leaflet Feedback Share » NATO forces carry out massacre of Afghan civilians

Official estimates of the civilian death toll from NATO air strikes in southern Afghanistan on October 24 are disputed, but some sources report up to 85 killed.

NATO planes carried out bombing raids in the Panjwayi district near Kandahar. Scores of people were killed in the village of Nangawat, some in their own homes while celebrating the Eid al-Fitr festival that marks the end of Ramadan. Many of the dead were women and children. The bombed district is in the region where NATO forces carried out Operation Medusa in September. This was a “significant success,” according to a senior NATO commander, in which upwards of 500 Taliban fighters were killed. NATO officials claimed to have completely flushed out or killed all Taliban militants in the area.

Reports also suggest at least 40 civilians died during the recent bombing raids when a nomad camp was hit in the district. NATO command has conceded only 12 civilians deaths in the recent air strikes, adding that 48 Taliban fighters were killed in the area. The Taliban has denied losing any men.

Local police and officials have rejected NATO accounts. Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Zmarai Bashir told the BBC that 40 civilians and 20 Taliban militants were killed, while another government official, who asked not to be named because “it would cause me problems,” said at least 60 had died. Kandahar provincial council member Bismallah Afghanmal told the Associated Press that up to 85 civilians had been killed. Other local officials put the death toll at between 60 and 85.

Residents in Panjwayi say the bombing continued into the night. Local people as well as district officials have described buildings destroyed by aerial bombings. One local man said, “The planes came and were bombing from 3 a.m. And in the morning they started hitting our village with mortars and rockets. They didn’t allow anybody to come to our help.”

Witnesses told Reuters that 25 homes were demolished during four to five hours of bombing. People told the BBC that the bodies of many locals had been pulled from the rubble of their homes and buried.

One of the surviving nomads, who are among the poorest of Afghanistan’s citizens, said 20 members of his family had been killed and 10 injured. He said their camp, with no connection to the Taliban, had been attacked: “There are no Taliban here. We live outside the village in an open area in tents. Anyone can come here to see our homes and area. There are no Taliban here. We all are nomads living in tents.

“Each time they say that it was a mistake. They have destroyed us all in such mistakes. For God’s sake, come and see our situation.”

This was echoed by Kandahar provincial councilor Afghanmal, who said, “These kinds of things have happened several times, and they only say, ‘Sorry.’ How can you compensate people who have lost their sons and daughters? The government and the coalition told families that there was no Taliban in the area anymore. If there are no Taliban, then why are they bombing the area?”

Major Luke Knitig, a spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said NATO troops had been engaged in heavy fighting against insurgents in three separate incidents in Panjwayi that day and the battle included air strikes.

Hundreds attended a mass funeral for the dead villagers two days after the NATO bombing raids. Many of the mourners condemned both NATO and the Karzai government for the deaths.

One mourner, Abdul Aye, who claimed 22 members of his family were killed in the NATO raids, said, “Everyone is very angry at the government and the coalition. There was no Taliban.”

Taj Mohammad, another villager, said there were no militants and innocent people were killed. Mohammad said 10 of his relatives had been killed in the latest incident.

A NATO officer later said the wild variance in the death toll estimates may stem from insurgents “being misidentified as innocent bystanders.” The unnamed officer stressed that NATO bombs did not go off course.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said it was “very concerned.”

The latest atrocity against Afghan civilians follows the killing of at least 26 people less than a week before in NATO operations in Kandahar and neighbouring Helmand province.

President Hamid Karzai announced an inquiry by a body to include NATO officers along with a few tribal and community elders. Karzai’s office said his investigators would make suggestions on how to prevent such “unfortunate” incidents in future and ensure “better coordination with foreign forces.” The inquiry is to report in a week’s time.

At a press conference he did not attempt to give a figure of those killed, speaking only of “numbers” of civilian deaths. But he did admit that foreign pilots did not always manage to distinguish between Taliban fighters and civilians.

To shore up the pretense of a sovereign government in Kabul, the press conference was closely followed by a statement from NATO spokesman Mark Laity, who said, “We’ve got tight rules of engagement but sometimes things go wrong.... President Karzai quite understandably and correctly wants us to show maximum care. That’s what we do.”

The prostration of Karzai before the United States is being exploited by Islamist militias. An alleged statement by the Taliban leadership dismissed Karzai’s offer for talks on October 27 and called his administration a “puppet government.”

“We say even today that there is no possibility of any talks when the country is under occupation,” the statement said. “Any talks with aggressors would amount to selling the country.”

Karzai had reiterated to reporters that he was ready to negotiate with the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar if he stopped receiving support from neighboring Pakistan. Karzai says Omar is hiding in the Pakistani city of Quetta, while Pakistan says Omar is in Afghanistan.

Over the past two years hundreds of Taliban supporters, including some senior officials, are believed to have reconciled with the government, but there have apparently been no high-level talks with the Islamist group’s leadership.

NATO forces have relied extensively on attack aircraft in Afghanistan in the past year. According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch, in June the US Central Command confirmed 340 air strikes in Afghanistan, double the 160 strikes in Iraq in the same month.

Source: World Socialist Web Site

Destruction of Giant Buddhas Confirmed

The international community acknowledged Monday that it has failed to stop the ruling Taliban militia in Afghanistan from destroying the ancient Buddha statues at Bamiyan, with UNESCO branding their demolition "a crime against culture." It was the first time that the destruction of the statues had been independently confirmed, despite a concerted effort by Arab, Islamic and international players to spare them. "I was distressed to learn from my special envoy, Pierre Lafrance, that the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas has been confirmed," the UN cultural body's chief Koichiro Matsura said in a statement. "It is abominable to witness the cold and calculated destruction of cultural properties which were the heritage of the Afghan people, and, indeed, of the whole of humanity," the statement said.

The Taliban had said the huge figures, carved into sandstone cliffs in Bamiyan city more than 1,500 years ago when Afghanistan was a seat of Buddhism, are "false idols" and must be destroyed in line with Islamic laws. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India, which has a large Buddhist population, on Monday branded the destruction "an act of barbarism" but stressed that his government had been helpless to intervene. "What is happening there has been condemned by the entire world. It is an act of barbarism, but there is a limit and the world cannot stop the destruction," said Vajpayee. Yet there were no shortage of efforts to try reversing the Taliban's edict, including from many Muslim countries and Pakistan, the closest ally of the Taliban and one of only three countries which recognizes its puritanical regime. After talks over the weekend between Pakistan Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider and Taliban officials failed, Haider played for time "suggesting that since this edict has repercussions for the entire Muslim world, it should be discussed with the ulema (Islamic religious leaders) from outside Afghanistan." But the high-level delegation of Islamic clerics that later visited Afghanistan returned empty-handed Monday.

The Taliban said the clerics had "failed to convince us that destroying the statues was un-Islamic." They were part of a delegation of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) led by Qatar's foreign minister and included Egypt's top religious leader and two leading Sunni clerics, the same faith as the Taliban. "From a religious point of view it is clear, these statues are part of humanity's heritage and do no affect Islam at all," said the Egyptian cleric, speaking on his return to Cairo. A similar diplomatic mission from Japan also failed to overturn Taliban Supreme Leader Mullah Mohammad Omar's decree, which he said was based on orders of God and the Koran, Islam's holy book, and was "irreversible."

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan tried his hand at convincing the Taliban not to carry out their "lamentable decision," meeting Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Mutawakel while on a tour of South Asia. Annan stressed that many Islamic countries opposed the move, adding that destroying cultural masterpieces was not the way to mobilise the donor community to help Afghanistan overcome its humanitarian crisis. Jordan, another Muslim country, was quick to react to the news Monday that the statues were finished, saying it was disappointed at the "failure of Arab, Islamic and international efforts to stop the destruction." "Heritage that dates back to before Islam belongs to the entire world," the country's culture minister said.

With the Taliban set to move even further into isolation now, Matsuria concluded that "the loss is irreversible" but that "everything possible must be done to stop further destruction" of Afghanistan's pre-Islamic heritage. He also said he hoped that the destruction "will not provide fanatics elsewhere with an excuse for acts of destruction targeting Muslim cultural properties."

Source: Agence France-Presse

Islamic Rebels Capture A Strategic Afghan City

Islamic rebels known as the Taliban captured the eastern city of Jalalabad today, gaining virtual control of nearly two-thirds of Afghanistan and sending Government troops retreating to Kabul, the capital.

At least 70 people were reported killed in the attack, but that figure could not be confirmed.

The capture of Jalalabad gives the Taliban control over a major ground route for supplies to Kabul from Pakistan and puts increased pressure on the ruling coalition of President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who has accused Pakistan of aiding the rebels.

The Taliban are the most conservative of the Islamic factions that have fought for control here since the communists lost power in 1992, and they have imposed strict religious rule in areas they control.

Source: New York Times