Scores, if not hundreds, of Taliban prisoners of war suffocated
to death inside metal cargo containers where they were imprisoned
after surrendering to Northern Alliance and US forces in the Afghan
city of Kunduz in late November. The Taliban prisoners, mostly
foreign volunteers from Pakistan, died of asphyxiation and injuries
inside the airtight shipping containers during a two or three
day journey to a prison in the town of Sheberghan, according to
a report in Tuesday s New York Times.
These horrific deaths occurred around the same time as hundreds
of other Taliban POWs from Kunduz were being massacred by US and
Northern Alliance forces at the prison fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif,
and have been followed by reports of widespread killings of surrendering
soldiers in the Kandahar area and elsewhere. Nothing more clearly
exposes the barbaric and colonial character of the war in Afghanistan
than the fact that the US and its proxy forces are openly and
knowingly violating the Geneva Convention by carrying out the
deliberate torture and extermination of non-Afghan Taliban prisoners.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), mandated
by the Geneva Convention to ensure the humane treatment of war
prisoners, announced it would conduct an investigation into the
deaths in the shipping containers. Macarena Aguilar, an ICRC spokeswoman
said, Our staff first visited the prison at Sheberghan on
Monday, after pushing for 10 days to be allowed to do so.
Aguilar said many of the 3,000 prisoners there were in need of
medical treatment and that ICRC workers had arranged for those
needing surgery to be moved to a local hospital.
Journalists who had also been barred from the prison entered
last Saturday and began interviewing prisoners, as well as the
Northern Alliance commander in charge. Colonel General Jurabek
said 43 prisoners had died inside the containers, while another
3 died from their wounds upon arrival. Several prisoners interviewed
by the Times, however, said the number was much higher.
Omar, described by the newspaper as a pale and slight youth,
said through the bars of his prison wing that all but seven people
in his container died from lack of air. He estimated that more
than 100 had died. Another Pakistani said 13 had died in his container
and that survivors had taken turns to breathe through a hole in
the metal wall.
One prisoner, Ibrahim, a 30-year-old Pakistani mechanic interviewed
by the Times in the presence of General Jurabek, said he thought
some 35 people died in his container en route from Kunduz. No
oxygen, no oxygen, he said urgently in English. The
general corrected him and said only five or six had died,
the Times reported.
One witness, a local driver who declined to be interviewed but
spoke to Afghan acquaintances, said he had seen soldiers unloading
many dead bodies from a container by the road not far from Sheberghan.
Three containers were lined up by the road in Dasht-i-Laili, and
soldiers were unloading one container that was full of bodies,
throwing them onto the ground, he said.
Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions prohibits violence
to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation,
cruel treatment and torture, of prisoners of war. Moreover
Article 20 mandates that the evacuation of prisoners of
war shall always be effected humanely. The same article
requires that the Detaining Power shall supply prisoners
of war who are being evacuated with sufficient food and potable
water, and with necessary clothing and medical attention
and take all suitable precautions to ensure their safety
during evacuation.
The war crimes being carried out by the US are unprecedented
for a country that claims to be democratic. The wanton slaughter
of prisoners of war recalls the barbaric treatment meted out by
the Nazis to Soviet soldiers on the Eastern Front and is conduct
condemned as uncivilized for hundreds of years.
The US media, in keeping with its role as an uncritical propaganda
arm of the Pentagon, largely ignored the atrocity in Sheberghan.
A lone editorial in the Baltimore Sun urged Washington to
declare loud and clear that the Geneva Convention must be observed
for all prisoners held by all parties in Afghanistan. The
editorial warned that failing to do so would undermine world opinion
and continued domestic support for the war effort, which
includes the behavior of allies.
Such appeals, however, are too little, too late. Top Bush administration
and Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
have gone on public record stating that the US prefers the killing
of non-Afghan soldiers rather than a surrender deal that allowed
them to return to their homes as afforded to Afghan-born Taliban
prisoners. This itself is a violation of the Geneva Convention,
which prohibits in Article 3 any adverse distinction
between prisoners of war founded on race, color, religion
or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.
Rumsfeld said explicitly that America is not inclined to
negotiate surrenders and that he hoped al-Qaida forces would
either be killed or taken prisoner.
Bush officials have moreover suggested that non-Afghan Taliban
fighters are not soldiers in a conventional war, but illegal
combatants, who are not covered by the protections of the
Geneva Convention. This is a grotesque lie, since the Geneva Convention
explicitly extends its provisions to participants in every kind
of armed conflict, including civil wars, a point recently emphasized
by the International Red Cross. The Bush administration invented
the category of illegal combatants in order to give
a pseudo-legal cover to a policy of summary execution.
US officials are well aware that the forces they are directing
have a history of murdering and torturing prisoners. In these
incidents, if US forces are not openly collaborating in the massacre
of prisonersas they did at the fortress near Mazar-i-Sharifthey
are, at the very least, turning a blind eye to the activities
of their hired killers.
It was widely reported by the international media, including
many American newspapers, that Northern Alliance commanders planned
to kill non-Afghan POWs from Kunduz once CIA and US Special Forces
interrogators were through with them. US military officers who
oversaw the surrender of the city were well aware of this, and
the US government did nothing to stop it, making top officials
complicit in the war crimes.
On November 28, for example, Times reporter Dexter Filkins wrote
an article, entitled, Taliban: After Defeat, Journey to
Uncertain Fate. It described 14 truckloads of Taliban prisoners
from Kunduz who were being kept in the desert by Northern Alliance
leader Rashid Dostum because he was unable to send them to his
prison fortress in Mazar-i-Sharif, which was under US bombardment.
Because these Taliban were foreigners, mostly illiterate
young men from Pakistan, they were not allowed to return to their
homesunlike the Taliban from Afghanistan. The future of
the foreign prisoners is murky , with Northern Alliance commanders
bickering over whether they should be tried and executed or turned
over to the United Nations, Filkins wrote. He added that
the Northern Alliance appeared to be giving these prisoners
all the consideration it might afford a pile of spent bullets,
reporting that guards were ignoring the prisoners pleas
for water and food and throwing stones at them.
Another article by the same reporter on December 2, entitled,
Taliban Arab, Like Many, Longs for Home but Faces a Doubtful
Future, focused on a 21-year-old Saudi prisoner, named Fahad
Nasir, who was shot during the prison massacre after being captured
in Kunduz.
Filkins described Nasir as lying on the floor of an abandoned
home, wrapped in a dirty blanket, with an infection gnawing his
limb and Northern Alliance guards debating his future. The
soldiers-turned-prisoners, Filkins continued, face
an uncertain future. While some Northern Alliance commanders say
they favor turning the men over to the United Nations, others
prefer the old way, when prisoners were a luxury that few of the
Afghan factions could afford.
After were finished talking to them,
said Syed Wasiqullah, a Northern Alliance officer in charge of
Mr. Nasir and others, theyre finished,
he said, as he dragged his finger across his throat.
In addition to the deaths in Sheberghan there have been several
other reports of massacres of Taliban POWs. On December 12, the
Pakistan daily Dawn reported that hundreds of mainly Arab Taliban
prisoners were massacred in Kandahar and other parts of southern
Afghanistan after the fall of the Talibans last stronghold.
Reports said that over 400 non-Afghan Taliban fighters,
mainly Arabs, had been trapped and massacred by tribal militias
in and around Kandahar since the Taliban surrendered Kandahar,
Hilmand and Zabul, the paper reported.
A large number of dead bodies of Arab Taliban were found
in various parts of Kandahar region, travellers reaching
there from different parts of southern Afghanistan told reporters.
No tribal group is sparing the Arab Taliban, Amanullah,
one of the witnesses, told newsmen near the border. People living
in areas close to the Kandahar Airport had buried bodies of 21
Arab fighters the other day, he said, adding that they had been
killed by the forces loyal to the governor of Kandahar. Sources
said that other tribal groups were also involved in the killing
of non-Afghan Taliban.
Slaughters of captured Taliban took place in the south well before
the fall of Kandahar. In one incident in late November, 160 captured
Taliban fighters were reportedly executed in the presence of US
military advisers. An unnamed commander loyal to the governor
of Kandahar, said the Taliban had refused repeated appeals to
surrender. They replied with abuse, so we had no choice,
he said. We executed about 160 Taliban who were captured.
They were made to stand in a long line and five or six of our
fighters used light machineguns on them. The commander claimed
the US advisers, who had been filming the battle on videotape,
made an unsuccessful attempt to stop the executions. US officials
later said their investigation of the incident showed no wrongdoing.
One indication of how many foreign Taliban fighters have been
killed in battle or after they were captured is a report that
senior Pakistan government officials say as many as 8,000 Pakistanis
who had gone to Afghanistan to fight against the US-led forces
are dead or missing. Hundreds of Pakistani prisoners were apparently
killed in the prison near Mazar-i Sharif, while others were trapped
in Kandahar. Already this month, officials said, 2,000 Pakistani
families in border areas have appealed to the government for help
in locating their missing sons and fathers.
No credible estimate has been released of the number of people
killed in Afghanistan by American bombing. If the death toll among
Pakistani volunteers is as high as 8,000, the casualties among
Afghans in the ranks of the Talibanmany of them young boys
and unwilling soldiers drafted at gunpointare likely to
be many times that figure.
But even if one counts only the prisoners who were killed after
surrenderingshot, bombed, suffocated, throats slitthe
number is likely to be greater than the death toll on September
11. No one can claim that any of these helpless POWs had any responsibility
for terrorist attacks which took place 10,000 miles away. Those
who perpetrated the destruction of the World Trade Center were
guilty of mass murder. Those giving the orders for the slaughter
now taking place in Afghanistan are perpetrating even greater
crimes.
See Also:
Interview
with Jamie Doran, director of Massacre at Mazar
New
film accuses US of war crimes
The
Geneva Convention and the US massacre of POWs in Afghanistan
After
US massacre of Taliban POWs: the stench of death and more media
lies
US
atrocity against Taliban POWs: Whatever happened to the Geneva
Convention?
US
war crime in Afghanistan: Hundreds of prisoners of war slaughtered
at Mazar-i-Sharif
US
war crime at Mazar-i-Sharif prison: new videotape evidence
Thousands
of POWs held in appalling conditions in Afghanistan