_____  

From:
Subject: US Silent on Afghan War Crimes

http://whatreallyhappened.com/category/afghanistan

Petitions at the end.

As possible Afghan war-crimes evidence removed, U.S. silent
By Tom Lasseter
McClatchy Newspapers
http://freedetainee <http://freedetainees.org/2765> s.org/2765

DASHT-E LEILI, Afghanistan - Seven years ago, a convoy of container
trucks rumbled across northern Afghanistan loaded with a human cargo
of suspected Taliban and al Qaida members who'd surrendered to Gen.
Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Afghan warlord and a key U.S. ally in ousting
the Taliban regime.

When the trucks arrived at a prison in the town of Sheberghan, near
Dostum's headquarters, they were filled with corpses. Most of the
prisoners had suffocated, and others had been killed by bullets that
Dostum's militiamen had fired into the metal containers.

Dostum's men hauled the bodies into the nearby desert and buried them
in mass graves, according to Afghan human rights officials. By some
estimates, 2,000 men were buried there.

Earlier this year, bulldozers returned to the scene, reportedly
exhumed the bones of many of the dead men and removed evidence of the
atrocity to sites unknown. In the area where the mass graves once
were, there now are gaping pits in the sands of the Dasht-e-Leili
desert.

A U.N.-sponsored team of experts first spotted two large excavations
on a visit in June, one of them about 100 feet long and more than 9
feet deep in places. A McClatchy reporter visited the site last month
and found three additional smaller pits, which apparently had been
dug since June.

Faqir Mohammed Jowzjani, a former Dostum ally and the deputy governor
of Jowzjan province, where the graves were located, told McClatchy
that it's common knowledge that Dostum sent in the bulldozers.
He speculated that Dostum wanted to destroy the evidence because of
local political trouble that could have made him more prone to
prosecution for the killings.

Last year, Dostum and the then-Jowzjan governor became embroiled in a
feud that killed seven people and wounded more than 40. This year,
Dostum and his men kidnapped and reportedly beat a rival Afghan
leader.

"Maybe General Dostum did it because of a fear of prosecution in the
future," Jowzjani said.

Another local Afghan official said that Dostum had begun to worry
that the 2001 killings could come back to haunt him. "Everyone in the
city (Sheberghan) knows that the evidence has been removed," said the
official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of worries
about being killed for talking about the subject.

"When the crime happened, (Dostum and his commanders) didn't think
they would ever be prosecuted," the official said. "But later they
began to worry . . . they have taken all the bones and thrown them
into the river" that's about half a mile from the graves.
NATO - which has command authority over a team of troops less than
three miles from the grave site - the United Nations and the United
States have been silent about the destruction of evidence of Dostum's
alleged war crimes.

"The truth is that General Dostum went out with bulldozers and dug up
those graves," Jowzjani charged. "I don't know why UNAMA" - the U.N.
mission in Afghanistan - "hasn't said anything in this regard . . .
maybe because of fears about his power, or maybe they made a deal."

Gen. Ghulam Mujtaba Patang, the commander of Afghanistan's national
police in the north, said that he knew that the graves had been
emptied. He noted that "the digging was done very professionally" and
said that U.N. and NATO-led teams in the area were also aware. (While
provincial reconstruction teams are led by individual nations, their
military components are under NATO command.)

"I don't understand why they didn't secure the area," Patang said in
an interview. Perhaps, he said, Western officials "are nervous" about
the power that Dostum has locally and don't want to upset local
security by pushing him on the matter.

Dostum was unavailable for comment, and one of his senior aides, Gen.
Ghani Karim Zada, declined several interview requests.

The Bush administration, too, has remained silent. U.S. officials
claimed that they had no knowledge of the deaths of the prisoners in
the convoy until the news media revealed them in 2002, and now the
administration has remained silent about Dostum's reported effort to
destroy the evidence of them, which also would be a major violation
of international law.

American officials say that Dostum's alleged war crimes are a matter
for the Afghan authorities. But the U.S.-backed government of
President Hamid Karzai is weak and depends on American and NATO
troops to fight a growing Taliban insurgency that now operates in
most of Afghanistan and all but surrounds Kabul, the capital.

However, the fact that U.S. special forces and CIA operatives were
working closely with Dostum in late 2001, when the killings took
place, has fueled suspicions that the warlord got a free pass.
The U.S. Defense Department has said that it found no evidence of
American involvement or presence during the 2001 incident. If there
was an investigation, however, its findings have never been made
public.

"At the time, we had a handful of special forces and CIA, and there
was no way we could have exercised any oversight" of the thousands of
detainees under Afghan control, said Joseph Collins, who was then the
deputy assistant secretary of defense for stability operations.

When he was asked about the detainees suffocating in metal shipping
containers, Collins, who's now a professor at the National War
College, said that "I think most people just took for granted what he
(Dostum) said: that it was a horrible accident."

McClatchy interviewed eight Pakistani men last year who said that
Dostum's gunmen had stuffed them in the containers. The men, mostly
low-level Taliban volunteers, said they'd had to climb over dozens of
dead bodies to get out of the containers.

"We were all sitting on the dead bodies which were lying on the
floor; they were lifeless," said Abdul Haleem, who said that many of
the approximately 200 men in his container died. "An arm was sticking
up in the air here, a leg was sticking up in the air there."

Another man who said he'd made the trip to Sheberghan in a container
full of dead and dying men was Tariq Khan. He said that when Dostum's
men shot into the metal box, "some people were shot in the eye; some
were shot in the neck."

Dostum offered to take Pierre-Richard Prosper, who was then the U.S.
ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, on a tour of the grave
site in late 2002, but Prosper declined. He was pressing a reluctant
Afghan government and the U.N. to take the lead in investigating the
killings.

"We felt the Afghans needed to play a role," Prosper said in a
telephone interview. "If you're a new government, and you want to
move forward, you have to deal with the past."

However, no investigation was likely without strong U.S. backing, and
Prosper said that he couldn't recall whether Washington ever gave
funding for a probe.

Farid Mutaqi, a senior investigator for the Afghanistan Independent
Human Rights Commission in the nearby city of Mazar-e-Sharif, said
that it was almost impossible to visit the site because of Dostum's
power in northern Afghanistan.

Mutaqi said there'd been threats on his life and those of his staff
members from Dostum. There are rumors that the site was mined and
that Dostum's men would torture or kill people if they were caught
researching in the area. At least three Afghans who witnessed the
original digging of the mass grave or who investigated it later
reportedly were killed, and a handful of others were beaten.

Mutaqi said that he told officials at the United Nations and the
local provincial reconstruction team that Dostum's men had disturbed
the mass graves this year. They did nothing, he said.

Now, Mutaqi said, "You can see only a hole. In the area around it you
can find a few bones or some clothes. The site is gone . . . as for
evidence, there is nothing."

A spokesman for the United Nations in Afghanistan, Adrian Edwards,
acknowledged in an e-mail statement that the U.N. had known that the
graves had been dug up but had kept quiet.

"You're right that we don't always make public statements, but that's
because we're in a conflict environment and have to weigh up whether
doing so will stall chances of progress against impunity in other
areas or put lives at risk," the statement said. "It's a judgment
call we constantly strive to get right, and this is not the only
instance where the choices we have to make can be extraordinarily
tough ones." Edwards noted that the U.N. is awaiting a report about
the site by a forensic specialist.

The spokesman for the U.N.'s Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights, Rupert Colville, said that while he didn't know the
details of the digging at the site, "there cannot be impunity for war
crimes of this nature and scale . . . it's a real shame."

Spokesmen for NATO and the U.S. Embassy in Kabul denied knowing that
the remains of hundreds of men had been removed from the site, and
had no further comment.

"We have no information about bulldozers or digging at the site,"
said Lt. Cmdr. James Gater, a spokesman for the NATO mission in
Afghanistan. The U.S. general who heads NATO forces in Afghanistan,
Gen. David McKiernan, wouldn't do an interview, Gater said.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Mark Stroh said that he'd checked with several
officials at the embassy and "nobody seemed to have any visibility on
this." Stroh added that "We don't necessarily monitor all of Dostum's
behavior."

A McClatchy reporter, traveling without official escort, took GPS
readings of the open pits last month, and a forensic investigator
with Physicians for Human Rights, a group contracted by the U.N. to
examine the site, confirmed that they were in the same area where the
grave site was found in early 2002.

In May 2002, the U.N. announced that a Physicians for Human Rights
team had dug a test trench in the area and found 15 bodies, three of
which had been exhumed and found to have died recently of asphyxiation
In November 2002, amid the Physicians for Human Rights findings and
news reports, a top-secret cable from the State Department's Bureau
of Intelligence and Research said that the number of people killed
during transport to Sheberghan "may approach 2,000."

The cable also said that while there was no security at Dasht-e
Leili, U.N. personnel from Mazar-e-Sharif were monitoring the
grave " `every few days' for signs of tampering." There'd been plans
for a detailed forensic investigation of the site in spring 2003.
"The hope had been to do a full exhumation in 2003," said Nathaniel
Raymond, a senior investigator at Physicians for Human Rights. "It
didn't happen."

The U.N. monitoring of the site stopped. Edwards, the U.N. spokesman,
said that he was still trying to reach officials who'd been present
to get an explanation. The U.N., NATO, U.S. forces and the Afghan
government never took any formal responsibility for patrolling the
grave site.

Physicians for Human Rights made several requests to top U.S.
officials to secure the mass graves, including an August 2002 letter
to then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld asking that
he "reconsider the position of the Defense Department and assure
security at the grave site." Four months later, the organization sent
a letter to then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz saying that
it was crucial to provide a small security detachment.

"From the time we discovered the site in January 2002, we had been
advocating privately and publicly to the United Nations, the U.S. and
the Afghan government to ensure consistent site protection and
protection of forensic evidence," Frank Donaghue, the chief executive
officer of Physicians for Human Rights, said in a statement to
McClatchy. "And clearly that did not happen."

Dostum has long experience with mass graves being used in the Afghan
political arena. In 1997, he revealed the discovery of mass graves of
Taliban members killed by a former ally turned rival, Gen. Abdul
Malik Pahlawan, in the Dasht-e Leili desert. The grave sites, which
Dostum's men brought in international journalists to document, helped
cement Pahlawan's exile from the area at the time.

Afghanistan's attorney general, its top law enforcement official,
said that given the bad security conditions in the country it was
hard to think about investigating possible war crimes.

"So for the time being, we have put these issues off for the future,"
Mohammed Ishaq Aloko said in an interview at his Kabul office.

Aloko, who's seen as being very close to President Karzai, didn't
respond directly to repeated questions about Dostum.

"I believe that those who committed crimes against humanity will be
prosecuted one day," Aloko said. Just not anytime soon, he said.

Afghans explain how mounting civilian casualties are aiding Taliban
recruiting

'I Was Still Holding my Grandson's Hand - The Rest Was Gone'
By Clancy Chassay
December 16, 2008
The Guardian, UK

It was 7.30 on a hot July morning when the plane came swooping low
over the remote ravine. Below, a bridal party was making its way to
the groom's village in an area called Kamala, in the eastern province
of Nangarhar, to prepare for the celebrations later that day.

The first bomb hit a large group of children who had run on ahead of
the main procession. It killed most of them instantly.

A few minutes later, the plane returned and dropped another bomb,
right in the centre of the group. This time the victims were almost
all women. Somehow the bride and two girls survived but as they
scrambled down the hillside, desperately trying to get away from the
plane, a third bomb caught them. Hajj Khan was one of four elderly
men escorting the bride's party that day.

"We were walking, I was holding my grandson's hand, then there was a
loud noise and everything went white. When I opened my eyes,
everybody was screaming. I was lying metres from where I had been, I
was still holding my grandson's hand but the rest of him was gone. I
looked around and saw pieces of bodies everywhere. I couldn't make
out which part was which."

Relatives from the groom's village said it was impossible to identify
the remains. They buried the 47 victims in 28 graves.

Stories like this are relatively common in today's Afghanistan. More
than 600 civilians have died in Nato and US air strikes this year.
The number of innocents killed this way has almost doubled from last
year, and tripled from the year before that. These attacks are
weakening support for the Afghan government and turning more and more
people against the foreign occupation of the country.

"If things were going OK maybe we could accept the occasional
mistake. But with the economy the way it is, the worsening security
situation, and the lack of development - when they kill civilians on
top of everything else, it's too much for people," says Jahid Mohseni
who runs Tolo TV, Afghanistan's most popular television station, with
his two brothers.

The US military initially denied any civilians had been killed in the
Kamala bombing but later said they were investigating the incident.
When asked this week for an explanation of events on that morning in
July, the US military in Afghanistan said they were unfamiliar with
the specifics but would look into it.

The latest figures from the Afghan Independent Human Rights
Commission, taken a month ago, suggest about 750 civilians have been
killed by foreign forces this year. Most were killed in air strikes.
The remainder were shot by jumpy soldiers, who often open fire in
crowded public places after an attack on one of their convoys.

Humanitarian aid agencies say privately that they believe the figure
is significantly higher, as many victims classed as "insurgents" are
actually non-combatants.

As the situation deteriorates across the country, the killing of
civilians is seen as a final affront in a litany of mistakes by the
foreign forces in Afghanistan. Patience among ordinary Afghans has
worn thin and anger grows with each attack.

In July this year hundreds of Afghans took to the street in Nangarhar
province after the air strike on the wedding party. The riots turned
violent as protesters raged against the foreign occupiers and the
government they support. The army eventually had to be called in to
quell the rioting.

Civilian casualties are not new to Nangarhar province - last year a
convoy of US Marines hit by a bomb attack subsequently opened fire in
a bazaar killing 16 people. The marines involved were sent home and
their officers charged, but a subsequent ruling cleared them of
responsibility for the deaths.

Nato and US spokesmen say their forces go to great lengths to avoid
civilian casualties. But all too often after an air strike, they deny
civilians are among the dead or claim far fewer were killed.

A recent Human Rights Watch report said US investigations, when
launched, have been "unilateral, ponderous, and lacking in
transparency, undercutting rather than improving relations with local
populations and the Afghan government".

The routine denials and hands-off attitude are contributing to a
growing sense among Afghans that their lives are cheap in the eyes of
the foreigners.

"We know they don't intend to kill the civilians but we don't believe
they care enough not to," said Ahmad Zia, a jeweller in Kabul's busy
bazaar. "If it continues we will see a lot more people joining the
fight against the foreigners. It's inevitable."

The accidental targeting of wedding parties in Afghanistan has only
deepened resentment. Last month 27 people were killed when a wedding
party was bombed near Kandahar. It was the third wedding party to be
hit this year alone.

He says many of the incidents result when planes are brought in to
protect forces coming under fire. "Their troops are in trouble so
they call in the air strikes without considering that it is a
civilian area."

Sharif Hassanyar, a former interpreter with US Special Forces who is
now working as a journalist, described how decisions were taken to
bomb areas based on flimsy intelligence.

"I remember when I was working with a group of Rangers and a spy in
the area told them the Taliban were training in a garden of a house
so they bombed the house, without checking the information.

Afterwards they found out that there had not been any Taliban there,
only civilians were killed by the bombs," he said.

Informants for the foreign forces often give bad information either
accidentally or because they are pursuing tribal or personal
vendettas against individuals in neighbouring villages, he added.

"The Taliban grow very strong in the aftermath of each attack," said
Hassanyar.

Mullah Zubiallah Akhond, a Taliban commander in Oruzgan province,
says the attacks are sending recruits his way daily. "The people who
are fighting with the Taliban are the brothers, uncles and relatives
of those killed by the Americans. They have joined the Taliban and
are fighting the Americans because they want to avenge their
brothers, fathers or cousins," he says.

"There are now Taliban in every village, many of them have rejoined
the movement after the savage attacks carried out by the Americans."
He believes the attacks have helped turn their fight against the
foreigners into a nationwide popular struggle.

"When an American vehicle is blown up every day on the main road in
Wardak, the order is not coming from the Taliban leadership. It is
the people themselves who have turned against the foreigners. They
have come together in their villages and do not allow the foreigners
to pass through their areas."

It is not just the deaths from air strikes that are poisoning the
hearts of Afghans. In the capital, Kabul, each day, terrified drivers
swerve out of the way as foreign troops hurtle through the streets in
their armoured convoys training their rifles on the drivers and
pedestrians and shouting obscenities: "Stay the fuck back!"

The Afghans know to keep out of the way. Last year a US military
convoy ploughed into several vehicles, killing seven people including
a family. The incident sparked a riot involving thousands of angry
Kabul residents. It was suppressed only after the security forces
started shooting protesters on the streets. At least 15 people were
killed.

"The anti-American feelings in Afghanistan are not just coming from
conservative or religious elements," said Shukria Barakzai, a female
MP.

"These feelings stem from the actions and military operations of the
foreign troops. The anti-western sentiment is directly because of the
military actions, the civilian casualties, and the lack of respect by
foreign troops for Afghan culture."

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US-NATO Out of Afghanistan: 10 Petitions

US-NATO Military Occupation of Afghanistan is Imperialistic Terrorism.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adeebmedia/2471120905

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adeebmedia/2471126091

http://www.rense.com/1.mpicons/dees1.htm

(InformPress.com) - Many people have posted their petitions on the

Internet-Web which demand that the US-NATO armed forces must quickly

withdraw from illegally occupied Afghanistan, because the US-NATO

illegal military occupation of Afghanistan is Imperialistic Terrorism

of US-NATO. Indeed, it is also a terroristic aggression of Jewish,

Zionist and Christian politicians (evil devils) of NATO against an

independent Muslim Nation of Afghanistan.

Actually, NATO is the Nihilistic Axis of Terrorist Organizations

(NATO). State Terrorism, Government Terrorism, or Imperialistic

Terrorism and all State Terrorists, Government Terrorists, or

Imperialistic Terrorists must be condemned, opposed, exposed,

arrested, prosecuted and punished for their state, governmental, or

imperialistic terrorism, barbarism and imperialism; genocide;

barbarous massacres; crimes against innocent men, women and children

(humans); crimes against humanity; war crimes; crimes against human

rights; crimes against peace; and official corruption.

The petitioners have requested all anti-war humans to read, sign, e-

mail and support the following 10 petitions:

(1) America Violating International Law in Pakistan

http://www.petitiononline.com/286/petition.html

(2) Condemn USA Attacks on Pakistan

http://www.petitiononline.com/Attacks/petition.html

(3) Canada Out of Afghanistan! Bring the Troops Home Now!

http://www.petitiononline.com/outnow/petition.html

(4) End the Canadian Soldiers' Mission in Afghanistan

http://www.petitiononline.com/homeca/petition.html

(5) Canada Out of Afghanistan

http://www.petitiononline.com/pe070215/petition.html

(6) Canada must cease combat roles in Afghanistan until it

independently investigates and confirms Osama Bin Laden's complicity

in the attacks of September 11, 2001

http://www.petitiononline.com/cntroops/petition.html

(7) Withdraw Canada's Support for the "War on Terror"

http://www.petitiononline.com/pc2lv/petition.html

(8) Stop the Reinstation of the "Taliban" Vice and Virtue

http://www.petitiononline.com/96359183/petition.html

(9) In Recognition of the Resistance in Afghanistan

http://www.petitiononline.com/5673d/petition.html

(10) Mass Movement to End the War Now

http://www.petitiononline.com/NYCLAW2/petition.html

Internet-Web Links:

(1) Sooper Media: http://soopermedia.wordpress.com

(2) DW: http://www.dictatorshipwatch.com

(3) Afghanistan Mass Graves: http://afghanistan.phrblog.org

PHR Calls for Probe into Removal of Mass Grave in Afghanistan

http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/news-2008-12-12.html

PHR Asks NATO to Assist UN in Securing Dasht-e-Leili Mass Grave in

Afghanistan

http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/news-2008-12-15.html

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/918/afghanistan.html

http://www.jamaat.org/news/2008/Dec/18/1001.html

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/dec2008/afgh-d09.shtml

http://www.canadaoutofafghanistan.ca <http://www.canadaoutofafghanistan.ca/>

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