December 7, 2001 | Page 5
LEE SUSTAR reports on the U.S. role in the massacre of Taliban
prisoners.
BODY PARTS were scattered across the Qala-i-Jhangi fort near
Mazar-i-Sharif following the slaughter of as many as 600 prisoners
by Northern Alliance troops--with help from U.S. Marines and American
warplanes.
Even the rabidly pro-war Chicago Sun-Times had to run a front-page
photo of the carnage under the headline: "AFGHAN JAIL BUTCHERY."
And Time magazine reporter Alex Perry said that he saw 12 American
and British officers "running the show"-- coordinating
air strikes by U.S. warplanes and directing Northern Alliance
fighters.
The bodies of the dead were handed over to the Red Cross--but
not before Northern Alliance soldiers cut the bindings that tied
the hands of many of the dead, according to an Associated Press
photographer. First, though, the soldiers--under the command of
the notorious Uzbek warlord Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum--ripped gold
teeth from the mouths of the dead.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson has called
for an inquiry into the massacre. But Robinsons appeal--as
well as a separate call for an investigation by Amnesty International--was
rejected by the U.S. and British governments.
"The rejection of an inquiry
into what is apparently
the single most bloody incident of the war, during which serious
abuses of international human rights and humanitarian law may
have been committed, raises questions about their commitment to
the rule of law," Amnesty International said.
The Geneva convention--the international rules of warfare that
the U.S. claims to uphold--explicitly bans indiscriminate attacks.
"There is no doubt that the prisoners human rights
were violated," said London-based human rights lawyer Sadiq
Khan.
Details were still coming to light as Socialist Worker went to
press. But its already clear that Northern Alliance troops--and
U.S. forces--seized the opportunity to slaughter as many Taliban
prisoners as possible.
Northern Alliance leaders claim that this savagery was justified
to put down a prison uprising that began when three Taliban prisoners
overpowered their guards and killed a CIA agent and two Northern
Alliance officers sent to interrogate them.
Yet if this is true, why did many more Taliban soldiers--who
had only recently surrendered--join the uprising despite certain
defeat? Why wasnt it possible to negotiate with the prisoners
after the initial incident?
The only plausible explanation is that the prisoners concluded
that they were likely to be killed anyway.
"U.S. planes blasted the mini-citadel inside the fort where
the Talibans foreign fighters had been holed up for the
past two days," wrote Luke Harding of Britains Guardian
newspaper November 28. "Incredibly, some survived. At 8 a.m.,
they even launched a counterattack, shooting dead several soldiers
who had been sniping at them from ramparts. Government troops
blasted the Taliban with mortars, rockets and withering gunfire.
By mid-afternoon, only three of the 400-odd foreign prisoners
who had originally stormed the castle on Sunday were still alive...Soldiers
advised by British SAS [commandos] and U.S. special forces officers
then poured oil into the thick-walled house where the Taliban
were hiding. They set light to it. The last three fighters, by
now armed only with a machine gun and a Kalashnikov [rifle], were
forced upstairs.
"At 3:30 p.m., a tank roared into the citadel, crushing
the bodies of several Pakistani and Arab Taliban volunteers lying
in the way. It fired four rounds in quick succession at the Talibans
hideout from a distance of only 20 meters [about 60 feet]. The
shells obliterated the building; then there was silence."
The barbarism at Qala-i-Jhangi was only the most extreme example
of the systematic execution of Taliban prisoners. Pakistani soldiers
with the Taliban were murdered at a school in Mazar-i-Sharif,
and journalists reported systematic executions of prisoners following
the Taliban surrender of Kunduz. An anti-Taliban Pashtun commander
near Kandahar admits that he executed 160 Taliban soldiers.
This is not, as the media pundits would have it, a settling of
scores between Afghan enemies. Its U.S. policy.
When asked about the fate of non-Afghan members of the Taliban,
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters, "My hope
is that they will be either be killed or taken prisoner."
With U.S. forces refusing to establish prison camps and Northern
Alliance troops executing prisoners, massacres are inevitable.
"So with the strategic assistance of the USAF, a war crime
is committed," wrote British journalist Robert Fisk.
This war--waged in the name of justice--showed its real character
in the Qala-i-Jhangi fort. Its a one-sided, high-tech slaughter
conducted by the worlds most powerful country against one
of the worlds poorest ones.
Washingtons war crimes
VIOLATIONS OF the Geneva convention--that is, war crimes--are
nothing new for the U.S. military. A new book on the Korean War,
The Bridge at No Gun Ri, highlights the systematic slaughter of
as many as 400 civilian refugees by U.S. warplanes and ground
troops in July 1950.
"From every direction, in every direction, people were running,
panicked, helpless, not knowing what was happening, children with
their hands over their ears, adults dragging children by their
arms," the authors write of the bombing and strafing by U.S.
planes. "Some scratched into the ground trying to hide. Others
lay bloody and silent, dismembered, strewn about. Still others
lay sprawled crying pitifully for help. Cows screamed. The limbs
of people and animals rained down. As he lay on the ground, teenager
Chung Koo-shik felt something hot land on his back. It was the
head of a baby."
A U.S. soldier recalled, "Our orders was to start opening
fire, and when we did, there wasnt nothing standing but
a couple of cows. We fired for about an hour, an hour and a half."
The killing at No Gun Ri took place on the direct orders of top
military brass. The U.S. Army and South Korean forces were retreating
after a North Korean and Chinese advance, and the generals worried
that peasant refugees included "infiltrators."
"The army has requested that we strafe all civilian refugee
parties that are noted approaching our positions," USAF Col.
Turner C. Rogers wrote in a memo the day before the slaughter
at No Gun Ri. He added: "The strafing of civilians is sure
to receive wide publicity and may cause embarrassment to the U.S.
Air Force and to the U.S. government in its relation with the
United Nations."
Rogers was no humanitarian. He suggested that army soldiers could
deal with refugees instead by "shooting them as they come
through."
No Gun Ri was only the most extreme example of this policy in
Korea. So common was the shooting of civilian refugees that CBS
correspondent Edward R. Murrow filed a report on this horror--but
network bosses censored him.
Censorship also played a major role in suppressing the news of
more recent U.S. violations of the Geneva convention in the 1991
Gulf War. Only months after the war, Newsday reported that U.S.
Army tanks bulldozed sand to bury thousands of wounded Iraqi soldiers
and others alive--even as they tried to surrender. "For all
I know, we could have killed thousands," said Col. Anthony
Moreno, the commander who led the assault on the heaviest defenses.
Capt. Bennie Williams, who was awarded the Silver Star for his
role in the assault, told Newsday, "Once we went through
there, other than the ones who surrendered, there wasnt
anybody left."
|