From the ground in Afghanistan

To: Retort
File under: Done in our name

By a U.S. citizen living in India

Dear friends,

>Everything I hear from "back home" suggests that visual images of the pale
>corpses of seven (need I say civilian?) babies and children killed two
>days ago by yet another US "smart bomb" explosion in residential Kabul are
>not making it onto American television screens. Nor the visual coverage of
>Jalalabad, Kabul and Kandahar hospitals presently flooded with innocent
>Afghan civilians burned, maimed, disfigured and dying from direct US bomb
>explosions on their homes. Nor the picture of an orphaned Afghan baby
>whose face is half skin, half shrapnel from a US bomb, that greeted me on
>the Telugu news station (not a CNN affiliate) when I woke up this morning.
>
>Everything I hear coming out of the US seems to support Harper's Magazine
>publisher John Macarthur's recent comment that the current US aggression
>in Afghanistan is "the most censored war." When I turn on CNN (we do have
>a television in the flat where I live in Hyderabad, but the neighborhood
>monkeys sometimes tear up the wires, so it doesn't always work), I see
>affirmation of that which is rapidly making the US "free press" the shame
>of the international media community. Parochialism of fantastic
>proportions, 10 second soundbytes at the expense of context and substance,
>all-terror-all-the-time (as one friend of mine put it), and most insidious
>in the current context, shameful dependence on and uncritical acceptance
>of Pentagon handouts instead of substantial, critical coverage of the
>ground situation in Afghanistan.
>
>The US corporate media seems to be muting any talk of civilian casualties
>first by framing any such news with "Taliban claims that" and then happily
>putting the matter to rest with Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman's
>conclusive remark, "I would put very low credibility in any Taliban
>report." Thus the matter is safely disposed of and we can return to
>anthrax, fear, and how we might be attacked next.
>
>So let's humor Bryan Whitman for a minute. Setting aside all Taliban
>claims, here are just a few of the reports from the ground in Afghanistan,
>from non-Taliban survivors, eye-witnesses, independent journalists, UN
>officials present on site, the Pentagon's own occasional admissions of
>guilt, and residents of the affected areas. I can cite and forward to you
>every one of my sources if you are interested.
>
>
>Since October 7, the US has:
>
>
>Killed four Afghan UN workers engaged in clearing the countryside of
>landmines, and destroyed the building of their NGO, Afghan Technical
>Consultants, in Kabul. Oct 8.
>
>Bombed a civilian area near the Jalalabad airport, blowing the leg and
>fingers off of 16-year-old Afghan ice cream vendor Assadullah, wounding
>numerous others, and destroying homes. Oct 8.
>
>Bombed a populated residential area in central Kabul near a joint
>military-civilian hospital, destroying homes and inflicting uncertain
>numbers of civilian casualties. Oct 8.
>
>Killed a 12 year old child and destroyed several homes in the village of
>Qala-e-Chaman near the Kabul airport. Oct 11.
>
>Destroyed 60-70 homes in the village of Khrum, near Jalalabad, killing
>"definitely above 150" civilians, possibly many more, and wounding large
>numbers. Oct 10. A journalist who visited the mass graves and destruction
>at Khrum recounted, "I meet Rahmatullah, a callow 16-year old. There's
>only one survivor in his family of six," a sister, who's hospitalized in
>Jalalabad. I talk to Rahmatullah. It's pointless. Numbed with shock, he
>only shakes his head." Later, in a hospital in Jalalabad where the
>survivors of Khrum are being treated, "There's Gul Khan, a three-year-old
>child, with a head injury. His younger sister is unconscious. Rahmat Bibi,
>three, is crying inconsolably, writhing in pain, her legs smashed. She
>wants her mother. But her mother is rotting under the rubble of Khrum. I
>meet Tooray, the only survivor in a family of eight. "'What's there for me
>to live?' he moans."
>
>Dropped a 2,000-pound bomb onto a residential complex in Kabul, killing
>unspecified numbers of civilians. This one is a Pentagon admission. Oct
>13.
>
>Destroyed the international telephone exchange in Kabul, cutting off
>civilians from contact with the outside world and helping restrict media
>coverage. Oct 13.
>
>Reduced to rubble the historic, Mughal period Balahisar Fort, one of
>Kabul's celebrated heritage sites. Oct 14.
>
>Dropped a "smart bomb" onto another residential area in Kabul, killing
>unspecified numbers of civilians. Oct 14.
>
>Bombed a hospital in Kandahar, killing five civilians. Oct 15.
>
>Bombed with a "direct hit" a boy's school in Kabul. Oct 17.
>
>Bombed and destroyed civilian homes and a bus in Kandahar, killing
>unspecified numbers of civilians. Oct 19. A journalist in Kandahar
>reporting on the destruction wrought by the favorite toy of every
>adolescent video-game addict boy, "the US military's AC-130 'Spectre'
>wrote, "the devastation was enormous. When I visited a house nearby, I saw
>the horribly mutilated remains of at least one woman. "Later, we visited
>the still-smoking remains of a bus. The Taliban claimed 18 civilians had
>been on board. The bodies had long since been removed. The effect of these
>devastating attacks on the morale of the inhabitants of Kandahar was
>shattering." People had been leaving for more than a week, driven out not
>just by fear of bombs but by a shortage of water "caused by a direct
>American hit last weekend that took out the water pumping system. Any hope
>it could be repaired was dashed four days ago, when the main power station
>was destroyed, leaving people to queue with buckets for hours at wells."
>
>Killed eight members of a single family all at once, along with other
>unspecified numbers of civilian casualties, by bombing their homes in
>Kabul. Two of the children might have been saved, reported their surviving
>uncle, were it not that Kabul's crowded hospitals now have a blood
>shortage. Oct 21.
>
>Dropped a "smart bomb" on Herat's second largest hospital, killing at
>least 70 patients and around 100 people altogether. Oct 22.
>
>Bombed and killed unspecified numbers of civilians in a mosque and a
>clinic in Paktia. Oct 22.
>
>Dropped "cluster bombs" on Herat, trapping and killing at least nine
>civilians. Oct 22.
>
>Admitted (the Pentagon) "US warplanes mistakenly dropped a 1,000 pound
>bomb near a home for the elderly in Afghanistan and two 500 pound bombs in
>a residential area outside the capital Kabul," causing unspecified numbers
>of civilian casualties. Oct 24.
>
>Killed at least 20 civilians, including nine children, as they tried to
>flee Tarin Kot, a town under attack by US warplanes. Oct 25.
>
>Killed large numbers of civilians and destroyed their homes in Tarin Kot.
>Oct 25. One journalist wrote of an Afghan man named Ullah who lost all of
>his immediate family in the US bombing. "SIn the 11 hours between the
>explosion and the moment when he finally regained consciousness, the
>bodies of Ullah's wife, his four children, his parents, and five of his
>brothers and sisters had been lifted from the rubble and buried. What do
>you say to a stranger who tells you he has just lost every member of his
>immediate family? All you can decently do is ask questions. When did it
>happen? On Friday night or early Saturday morning. Where? In a suburb of
>Tarin Kot, capital of the Afghan province of Oruzgan. And why? But Ullah,
>who is not familiar with the phrase 'collateral damage' or 'just war' does
>not have an answer." The journalist goes on to describe a woman in the
>hospital burned, maimed and blinded by the explosion of a US bomb in her
>home.
>
>Killed at least 15 civilians, mostly children, several babies, and
>destroyed homes in Qali Hotair, a residential area of northeast Kabul. Oct
>28. One surviving woman sobbed, "They killed all of my children and
>husband. What shall I do now? Look at their savageness."
>
>And in a spectacular display of America's profound humanitarian concern
>for the plight of starving and soon to be freezing Afghans, US jets bombed
>two warehouses of the International Committee of the Red Cross, destroying
>large quantities of wheat, blankets and other supplies on Oct 16. Ten days
>later, on Oct 26 US jets again "accidentally" bombed the Red Cross, this
>time striking six warehouses, including the two from before, and again
>destroying humanitarian supplies. Recall that all of the above, and this
>is by no means an exhaustive list, just a sampling of what's been
>available from the free press on this side of the world ?are confirmed by
>eye-witnesses, survivors, families of the victims, journalists, residents,
>UN activists present, and the humble Pentagon itself. In fact, though
>Rumsfeld might not care to hear it (and certainly would rather not the
>American public hear it), what the journalists are finding and what the
>eye-witness survivors of the bombing are reporting confirms that the
>Taliban claims are? pretty accurate. Around 200 civilians killed in Khrum?
>Well, yes. Likewise the carnage in Herat. In Kabul. In Kandahar. Slowly
>but surely, the reports of fleeing survivors and international journalists
>are confirming the Taliban claims. Definitely hundreds, and probably more
>than a thousand innocent Afghan people have been killed directly by US
>bombs in the last 23 days.
>
>Consistently, in response to the almost daily reports of civilian deaths,
>Don Rumsfeld has been repeating "we don't target civilians." Rear Admiral
>John Stufflebeem recently elaborated that "what hits that may have
>occurred in residential areas are rare mistakes, or rare errors is
>probably more appropriate." First of all, I would think language like
>Stufflebeem's "hits that may have occurred" immediately following his
>public admission that such hits are confirmed realities, would insult the
>intelligence of the thinking American public. Then there is the matter of
>these events being "rare," when in fact incidents of the US bombing
>residential areas average more than one a day, if one doesn't count any of
>the Taliban claims. More at the heart of the matter, though, is the basic
>thrust of Rumsfeld's and Stufflebeem's assertions, that civilian deaths
>are not intentional, they are mistakes or errors, regrettable, but
>inevitable in the pursuit of our "just cause."
>
>To those whose family members have been mangled and buried under rubble,
>it doesn't matter whether the perpetrators intended to commit the murder
>or not. From the words of civilian Afghan survivors of the US bombing, it
>seems that Afghans are no more comforted by Rumsfeld's assurances that the
>US 'smart bombs? raining on residential homes are all accidents than
>survivors of WTC would have been if the hijackers had left a note saying
>"sorry about the civilian casualties, but you must understand that our
>primary goal was simply to bring the buildings down." Before we accept
>justification for the murder of innocent people "it's regrettable, say
>Rumsfeld and Bush, but hard to avoid in the pursuit of our just cause"
>before we accept this dangerous line of reasoning, recall that the
>hijackers, too, evidently felt that theirs was a just cause, one worth
>dying for, as Bush would like our soldiers to be. No matter how righteous
>the hijackers' anger toward American imperialism might have been, nothing
>can justify the atrocities they committed. But we cannot have it both
>ways: if the killing of innocent civilians is condemnable and wrong, then
>the killing of innocent civilians is condemnable and wrong. Slaughter is
>slaughter. Terror is terror. It was an unspeakable crime against humanity
>in New York on September 11, and it is an unspeakable crime against
>humanity in Afghanistan today.
>
>Two enormous differences: one, the perpetrators of September 11 did not
>claim democratic representation of an entire country. The US government,
>however, does claim to represent you and me as it decimates and terrorizes
>the Afghan civilian population (while failing to make any significant
>headway in finding bin Laden or hurting the Taliban). Two, the
>perpetrators of September 11 did not have the resources of the most
>extensive, comprehensive, colossal propaganda machine in the world in
>their hands. The perpetrators of the current atrocities in Afghanistan do,
>as was made embarrassingly evident when all five major US television news
>networks grovellingly obliged Condoleeza Rice's "request" to censor bin
>Laden and al-Jazeera, when major newspapers began censoring comics
>critical of George Bush, when Barnes and Noble began canceling readings of
>books critical of George Bush, when a cable show cancelled Carol Wells'
>appearance because her anti-war posters were not approved, when anti-war
>activists found words stuffed in their mouths by the New York Times in its
>remarkably titled article "Protestors in Washington urge Peace with
>Terrorists," etc.
>
>Many of you have written to me about the sorry state of affairs when
>pillars of the American "free press" publicly state, with a straight face,
>that it is their "patriotic duty" to exercise censorship. But I've also
>been hearing from several of you who are solidly in agreement with the
>general consensus now enjoyed by the mainstream media, the current
>administration, and a majority of the US population. I briefly wanted to
>address a couple of concerns you have conveyed to me.
>
>"The US strikes in Afghanistan are defensive in nature." The policy idea
>is that the strikes are "defensive" in the sense that their express
>purpose is to destroy al-Qaeda, an aggressive terrorist outfit that
>attacks Americans. I agree that the policy idea sounds good and fits
>cleanly into the understanding of the war that Bush's speeches present to
>us nicely packaged every few days. The problem is that the packaged
>understanding, however appealing, is terribly divorced from the ground
>reality: al-Qaeda remains vigorously intact, the Taliban are dancing and
>cheering to the sound of missiles, and bin Laden continues to elude.
>Meanwhile what the policy makers call defensive strikes, and what the
>American public understandably wants to think of as defensive strikes, are
>inflicting the same kind of carnage, terror and suffering on innocent
>Afghans that hijackers inflicted on innocent citizens of the US and many
>other countries on September 11. If you'd like to assert that the US
>strikes in Afghanistan are supposed to be defensive, well fine; but that's
>not going to hold any water with the 16-year-old ice cream vendor whose
>leg was blown off by a US missile on day one. Nor should it.
>
>"Anti-war language like yours is just what the terrorists want from
>Americans now." This point and its obvious response have both been
>repeated ad nauseam in recent weeks so I won't dwell on it. Anyone can say
>anything is "just what the terrorists want": the statement alone hardly
>constitutes an intellectually sustainable criterion for discrediting an
>argument. And the obvious response is that terrorism thrives on the
>escalation of violence. Every day that the US continues to massacre
>innocent Muslims in Afghanistan, uncountable numbers of young people will
>ideologically join ranks with Osama. Violent US aggression gives
>legitimacy and moral standing to its opponents. State terrorism breeds
>non-state terrorism.
>
>"What we do to the Afghans cannot be as bad as what the Taliban is doing."
>This one is invariably followed up with the equation with Hitler and Nazi
>Germany. That the Taliban are purveyors of massive violence and oppression
>is not in doubt. That being buried under rubble, having one's children all
>killed, or having one's face torn apart by shrapnel constitutes a better
>deal than living with the whips, stonings, suppression and other horrors
>of the Taliban is an interesting assertion that I propose we debate not
>amongst ourselves in standard parochial American fashion, but rather take
>up with the people of Afghanistan. We might do well to note that western
>journalists in Afghanistan are encountering increasing hostility and
>resentment from Afghan civilians devastated by the bombings ("First you
>bomb us, then you come to take pictures!" said an angry old man in Khrum).
>Or that non-Taliban Afghan women, so often invoked by Americans as reasons
>why we must destroy the Taliban, are marching in huge numbers in the
>streets of Pakistan's cities and refugee camps denouncing US aggression,
>carrying banners that read "Stop the killing of innocent Afghan Muslims".
>If everything went according to the rosy vision of Bush's speeches, the
>famous 'burqa-clad women" of Afghanistan would be weeping with gratitude
>as every next Anglo-American commando parachuted onto Afghanistan's dusty
>surface. But in fact that doesn't seem to be the case; women and children
>?as usual the worst hit in wartime ?are increasingly raising their voices
>against the US bombing. They don't support the Taliban, they don't support
>the US bombing. The idea that those are the only two options is not only
>dimly conceived, but also insulting to the dignity and intelligence of the
>Afghan people.
>
>Finally, one other concern I have with the "what we're doing cannot be as
>bad" thesis is that it represents a symptom of a larger illness, that is,
>the mainstream American public's general disbelief that what "our"
>government (and our businesses, our banks, our US-trained military allies,
>etc.) does in the rest of the world can really be as bad as what voices
>from ravaged "developing countries" say. This is a huge issue so I won't
>try to address it here, except to say that even if the current state of
>the media and public discourse in the US shows little promise of it,
>people in places like South Asia are nonetheless still hoping that the
>sensitive, thinking American public will respond to current world crises
>by rising out of its somnolence (the corporate media is the opiate) and
>holding its government accountable for its actions. As an American living
>abroad I would like to see the US less hated. This cannot be accomplished
>by shouting, "We're good! We're good! We're a peaceful nation! Why don't
>you poor countries understand!" while killing and terrorizing and smashing
>the homes of innocent people, who have absolutely nothing to do with
>either state terrorism or non-state terrorism, in one of the poorest
>countries in the world. This can be accomplished (along with the lessening
>of terror in the world) by radically changing US foreign policy in ways
>that actualize, rather than make a mockery of, our Constitution's ideals
>of freedom and democracy. Though less spectacular and less profitable for
>Lockheed-Martin et al, working with the people of Afghanistan and the
>United Nations to responsibly negotiate a political solution to
>Afghanistan's current crisis, using the instruments of international law
>to pursue justice in the context of September 11, would be a good start.