Imperialism

Subverting the Taliban
Throughout 1999 the US pressure on Afghanistan increased. On February 3 of that year, Assistant Secretary of State Karl E. Inderfurth and State Department counterterrorism chief Michael Sheehan traveled to Islamabad, Pakistan, to meet the Taliban’s deputy foreign minister, Abdul Jalil. They warned him that the US would hold the government of Afghanistan responsible for any further terrorist acts by bin Laden.
According to a report in the Washington Post (October 3, 2001), the Clinton administration and Nawaz Sharif, then prime minister of Pakistan, agreed on a joint covert operation to kill Osama bin Laden in 1999. The US would supply satellite intelligence, air support and financing, while Pakistan supplied the Pushtun-speaking operatives who would penetrate southern Afghanistan and carry out the actual killing.
The Pakistani commando team was up and running and ready to strike by October 1999, the Post reported. One former official told the newspaper, “It was an enterprise. It was proceeding.” Clinton aides were delighted at the prospect of a successful assassination, with one declaring, “It was like Christmas.”
The attack was aborted on October 12, 1999, when Sharif was overthrown in a military coup by General Pervez Musharraf, who halted the proposed covert operation. The Clinton administration had to settle for a UN Security Council resolution that demanded the Taliban turn over bin Laden to “appropriate authorities,” but did not require he be handed over to the United States.

A CIA secret war
According to a front-page article in the Washington Post November 18, the CIA has been mounting paramilitary operations in southern Afghanistan since 1997. The article carries the byline of Bob Woodward, the Post writer made famous by Watergate, who is a frequent conduit for leaks from top-level military and intelligence officials.
Woodward provides details about the CIA’s role in the current military conflict, which includes the deployment of a secret paramilitary unit, the Special Activities Division. This Division, Woodward reports, “consists of teams of about half a dozen men who do not wear military uniforms. The division has about 150 fighters, pilots and specialists, and is made up mostly of hardened veterans who have retired from the US military.
“For the last 18 months, the CIA has been working with tribes and warlords in southern Afghanistan, and the division’s units have helped create a significant new network in the region of the Taliban’s greatest strength.”
This means that the US spy agency was engaged in attacks against the Afghan regime—what under other circumstances the American government would call terrorism—from the spring of 2000, more than a year before the Sept 11. incident.

Formation of War plans
With the installation of George Bush in the White House, the focus of American policy in Afghanistan shifted from a limited incursion to kill or capture bin Laden to preparing a more robust military intervention directed at the Taliban regime as a whole.

The British-based Jane’s International Security reported March 15, 2001 that the new American administration was working with India, Iran and Russia “in a concerted front against Afghanistan’s Taliban regime.” India was supplying the Northern Alliance with military equipment, advisers and helicopter technicians, the magazine said, and both India and Russia were using bases in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan for their operations.

The magazine added: “Several recent meetings between the newly instituted Indo-US and Indo-Russian joint working groups on terrorism led to this effort to tactically and logistically counter the Taliban. Intelligence sources in Delhi said that while India, Russia and Iran were leading the anti-Taliban campaign on the ground, Washington was giving the Northern Alliance information and logistic support.”

On June 26 of 2001, the magazine IndiaReacts reported more details of the cooperative efforts of the US, India, Russia and Iran against the Taliban regime. “India and Iran will ‘facilitate’ US and Russian plans for ‘limited military action’ against the Taliban if the contemplated tough new economic sanctions don’t bend Afghanistan’s fundamentalist regime,” the magazine said.

At this stage of military planning, the US and Russia were to supply direct military assistance to the Northern Alliance, working through Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, in order to roll back the Taliban lines toward the city of Mazar-e-Sharif—a scenario strikingly similar to what actually took place at early June 2001. An unnamed third country supplied the Northern Alliance with anti-tank rockets that had already been put to use against the Taliban in early June.

“Diplomats say that the anti-Taliban move followed a meeting between US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and later between Powell and Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh in Washington,” the magazine added. “Russia, Iran and India have also held a series of discussions and more diplomatic activity is expected.”

Unlike the current campaign, the original plan involved the use of military forces from both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, as well as Russia itself. IndiaReacts said that in early June Russian President Vladimir Putin told a meeting of the Confederation of Independent States, which includes many of the former Soviet republics, that military action against the Taliban was in the offing. One effect of September 11 was to create the conditions for the United States to intervene on its own, without any direct participation by the military forces of the Soviet successor states, and thus claim an undisputed American right to dictate the shape of a settlement in Afghanistan.

The US threatens war— before September 11

In the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 incident in the USA, two reports appeared in the British media indicating that the US government had threatened military action against Afghanistan several months before September 11.

The BBC’s George Arney reported September 18 that American officials had told former Pakistani Foreign Secretary Niaz Naik in mid-July of plans for military action against the Taliban regime:

“Mr. Naik said US officials told him of the plan at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan which took place in Berlin.
“Mr. Naik told the BBC that at the meeting the US representatives told him that unless Bin Laden was handed over swiftly America would take military action to kill or capture both Bin Laden and the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar.

“The wider objective, according to Mr. Naik, would be to topple the Taliban regime and install a transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place—possibly under the leadership of the former Afghan King Zahir Shah.

“Mr. Naik was told that Washington would launch its operation from bases in Tajikistan, where American advisers were already in place.
“He was told that Uzbekistan would also participate in the operation and that 17,000 Russian troops were on standby.

“Mr. Naik was told that if the military action went ahead it would take place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.”
Four days later, on September 22, the Guardian newspaper confirmed this account. The warnings to Afghanistan came out of a four-day meeting of senior US, Russian, Iranian and Pakistani officials at a hotel in Berlin in mid-July, the third in a series of back-channel conferences dubbed “brainstorming on Afghanistan.”

The participants included Naik, together with three Pakistani generals; former Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Saeed Rajai Khorassani; Abdullah Abdullah, foreign minister of the Northern Alliance; Nikolai Kozyrev, former Russian special envoy to Afghanistan, and several other Russian officials; and three Americans: Tom Simons, a former US ambassador to Pakistan; Karl Inderfurth, a former assistant secretary of state for south Asian affairs; and Lee Coldren, who headed the office of Pakistan, Afghan and Bangladesh affairs in the State Department until 1997.

The meeting was convened by Francesc Vendrell, then and now the deputy chief UN representative for Afghanistan. While the nominal purpose of the conference was to discuss the possible outline of a political settlement in Afghanistan, the Taliban refused to attend. The Americans discussed the shift in policy toward Afghanistan from Clinton to Bush, and strongly suggested that military action was an option.

While all three American former officials denied making any specific threats, Coldren told the Guardian, “there was some discussion of the fact that the United States was so disgusted with the Taliban that they might be considering some military action.” Naik, however, cited one American declaring that action against bin Laden was imminent: “This time they were very sure. They had all the intelligence and would not miss him this time. It would be aerial action, maybe helicopter gunships, and not only overt, but from very close proximity to Afghanistan.”

The Guardian summarized: “The threats of war unless the Taliban surrendered Osama bin Laden were passed to the regime in Afghanistan by the Pakistani government, senior diplomatic sources revealed Sept 01. The Taliban refused to comply but the serious nature of what they were told raises the possibility that Bin Laden, far from launching the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon out of the blue 10 days ago, was launching a pre-emptive strike in response to what he saw as US threats.”

Bush, oil and Taliban
Further light on secret contacts between the Bush administration and the Taliban regime is shed by a book released November 15 in France, entitled Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth, written by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie. Brisard is a former French secret service agent, author of a previous report on bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, and former director of strategy for the French corporation Vivendi, while Dasquie is an investigative journalist.
The two French authors write that the Bush administration was willing to accept the Taliban regime, if it cooperated with plans for the development of the oil resources of Central Asia.

Until August, they claim, the US government saw the Taliban “as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia.” It was only when the Taliban refused to accept US conditions that “this rationale of energy security changed into a military one.” To prepare that the U.S. and British governments sponsored radical elements of the Afghan Mujahedin in Afghanistan and helped nurture what became the repressive Taliban via Pakistan and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
By way of corroboration, one should note the curious fact that neither the Clinton administration nor the Bush administration ever placed Afghanistan on the official State Department list of states charged with sponsoring terrorism, despite the acknowledged presence of Osama bin Laden as a guest of the Taliban regime. Such a designation would have made it impossible for an American oil or construction company to sign a deal with Kabul for a pipeline to the Central Asian oil and gas fields.

Talks between the Bush administration and the Taliban began in February 2001, shortly after Bush’s inauguration. A Taliban emissary arrived in Washington in March with presents for the new chief executive, including an expensive Afghan carpet. But the talks themselves were less than cordial. Brisard said, “At one moment during the negotiations, the US representatives told the Taliban, ‘either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs’.”

As long as the possibility of a pipeline deal remained, the White House stalled any further investigation into the activities of Osama bin Laden, Brisard and Dasquie write. They report that John O’Neill, deputy director of the FBI, resigned in July in protest over this obstruction. O’Neill told them in an interview, “the main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were US oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it.” In a strange coincidence, O’Neill accepted a position as security chief of the World Trade Center after leaving the FBI, and was killed on September 11.

Confirming Naiz Naik’s account of the secret Berlin meeting, the two French authors add that there was open discussion of the need for the Taliban to facilitate a pipeline from Kazakhstan in order to insure US and international recognition. The increasingly acrimonious US-Taliban talks were broken off August 2, after a final meeting between US envoy Christina Rocca and a Taliban representative in Islamabad. Two months later the United States was bombing Kabul.

The politics of provocation

This account of the preparations for war against Afghanistan brings us to September 11 itself. The inside Job that destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon was an important link in the chain of causality that produced the US attack on Afghanistan. The US government had planned the war well in advance, but the shock of September 11 made it politically feasible, by stupefying public opinion at home and giving Washington essential leverage on reluctant allies abroad.

Both the American public and dozens of foreign governments were stampeded into supporting military action against Afghanistan, in the name of the fight against terrorism. The Bush administration targeted Kabul without presenting any evidence that either bin Laden or the Taliban regime was responsible for the World Trade Center atrocity. It seized on September 11 as the occasion for advancing longstanding ambitions to assert American power in Central Asia.
There is no reason to think that September 11 was merely a fortuitous occurrence. Every other detail of the war in Afghanistan was carefully prepared. It is unlikely that the American government left to chance the question of providing a suitable pretext for military action.

In the immediate aftermath of September 11, there were press reports—again, largely overseas—that US intelligence agencies had received specific warnings about large-scale terrorist attacks, including the use of hijacked airplanes. It is quite possible that a decision was made at the highest levels of the American state to allow such an attack to proceed, perhaps without imagining the actual scale of the damage, in order to provide the necessary spark for war in Afghanistan.

How otherwise to explain such well-established facts as the decision of top officials at the FBI to block an investigation into Zaccarias Massaoui, the Franco-Moroccan immigrant who came under suspicion after he allegedly sought training from a US flight school on how to steer a commercial airliner, but not to take off or land?
The Minneapolis field office had Massaoui arrested in early August, and asked FBI headquarters for permission to conduct further inquiries, including a search of the hard drive of his computer. The FBI tops refused, on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence of criminal intent on Massaoui’s part—an astonishing decision for an agency not known for its tenderness on the subject of civil liberties.

This is not to say that the American government deliberately planned every detail of the terrorist attacks or anticipated that nearly 5,000 people would be killed. But the least likely explanation of September 11 is the official one: that dozens of Islamic fundamentalists, many with known ties to Osama bin Laden, were able to carry out a wide-ranging conspiracy on three continents, targeting the most prominent symbols of American power, without any US intelligence agency having the slightest idea of what they were doing.

A Dossier on Civilian Victims in Afghanistan

When U.S. warplanes strafed [with AC-130 gunships] the farming village of Chowkar- Karez, 25 miles north of Kandahar on October 22-23rd, killing at least 93 civilians, a Pentagon official said, "the people there are dead because we wanted them dead." The reason? They sympathized with the Taliban. When asked about the Chowkar incident, Rumsfeld replied, "I cannot deal with that particular village."

A U.S. officer aboard the US aircraft carrier, Carl Vinson, described the use of 2,000 lb cluster bombs dropped by B-52 bombers: "A 2,000 lb. bomb, no matter where you drop it, is a significant emotional event for anyone within a square mile."

Abstract. What causes the documented high level of civilian casualties -- 3,000 - 3,400 civilian deaths -- in the U.S. air war upon Afghanistan? The explanation is the apparent willingness of U.S. military strategists to fire missiles into and drop bombs upon, heavily populated areas of Afghanistan. A legacy of the ten years of civil war during the 80s is that many military garrisons and facilities are located in urban areas where the Soviet-backed government had placed them since they could be better protected there from attacks by the rural mujahideen. Successor Afghan governments inherited these emplacements. To suggest that the Taliban used 'human shields' is more revealing of the historical amnesia and racism of those making such claims, than of Taliban deeds. Anti-aircraft emplacements will naturally be placed close by ministries, garrisons, communications facilities, etc.. A heavy bombing onslaught must necessarily result in substantial numbers of civilian casualties simply by virtue of proximity to 'military targets', a reality exacerbated by the admitted occasional poor targeting, human error, equipment malfunction, and the irresponsible use of out-dated Soviet maps. But, the critical element remains the very low value put upon Afghan civilian lives by U.S. military planners and the political elite, as clearly revealed by U.S. willingness to bomb heavily populated regions. Current Afghan civilian lives must and will be sacrificed in order to [possibly] protect future American lives. Actions speak, and words [can] obscure: the hollowness of pious pronouncements by Rumsfeld, Rice and the compliant corporate media about the great care taken to minimize collateral damage is clear for all to see. Other U.S. bombing targets hit are impossible to 'explain' in terms other than the U.S. seeking to inflict maximum pain upon Afghan society and perceived 'enemies': the targeted bombing of the Kajakai dam and other power stations, radio stations, the Kabul telephone exchange, the Al Jazeera Kabul office, trucks and buses filled with fleeing refugees, and the numerous attacks upon civilian trucks carrying fuel oil. Indeed, the bombing of Afghan civilian infrastructure parallels that of the Afghan civilian.

This dossier makes six major points. First, the U.S. bombing upon Afghanistan has been a low bombing intensity, high civilian casualty campaign [in both absolute terms and relative to other U.S. air campaigns]. Secondly, this has happened notwithstanding the far greater accuracy of the weapons because of U.S. military planners decisions to employ powerful weapons in populated regions and to bomb what are dubious military targets. Thirdly, the U.S. mainstream corporate media has been derelict in its non-reporting of civilian casualties when ample evidence existed from foreign places that the U.S. air war upon Afghanistan was creating such casualties in large numbers. Fourthly, the decision by U.S. military planners to execute such a bombing campaign reveals and reflects the differential values they place upon Afghan and American lives. Fifth, this report counters the dangerous notion that the United States can henceforth wage a war and only kill enemy combatants. Sixth, the U.S. bombing campaign has targeted numerous civilian facilities and the heavy use of cluster bombs, will have a lasting legacy born by one of the poorest, most desperate peoples of our world. In sum, though not intended to be, the U.S. bombing campaign which began on the evening of October 7th, has been a war upon the people, the homes, the farms and the villages of Afghanistan.

Mohammed Raza, an odd-job man, was not so lucky. At 8 p.m. as he was walking back home, near to the Jalalabad airport. A cruise missile targeted at a Taliban facility "a few hundred yards away", strayed and landed next to him. Shrapnel pierced his neck, grazing his spine, paralyzing him.

Three days later, a researcher at the Institute for Health & Social Justice, Partners in Health of Harvard University, H.J. Chien, confirmed that civilians had been killed in Jalalabad and elsewhere. On October 9th, the Pakistan Observer [Islamabad] daily newspaper reported on the first night, "37 Killed, 81 Injured in Sunday's Strikes." The casualties spanned four provinces : Kabul [20], Herat [9], Kandahar [4] and Jalalabad [4]. By October 10th, The Guardian reported 76 dead civilians. And by October 15th, the leading Indian daily, The Times of India was mentioning over 300 civilian casualties and that the US-UK bombing action was in violation of Article 51 of the United Nations Charter allowing the use of force in self-defense. On the following day [October 16th], the alternative U.S. media noted that during the first week of bombing, 400 Afghan civilians had been slaughtered.

Yet, the mainstream western press only took note of civilian casualties on October 9th when a cruise missile destroyed the building of the United Nations land mine removing contracting firm, the Afghan Technical Center, in the upper class Macroyan residential district of eastern Kabul, killing four night watchmen. Tellingly, the day before, October 8th, other Afghans living near the Kabul airport [in the Qasabah Khana neighborhood] and near the Kabul radio station were also killed. On October 10th, the Sultanpur Mosque in Jalalabad was hit by a bomb during prayers, killing 17 people. As neighbors rushed into the rubble to pull out one injured, a second bomb was dropped reportedly killing at least another 120 people.
Fleeing the intense bombing in Kandahar, Mehmood, a Kandahar merchant, brought his family to his ancestral village of Chowkar-Karez, a village 25 miles north of Kandahar. His extended family, crowded into six cars, arrived at a village just about when it was attacked by U.S. warplanes in the night of October 22/23rd. Ironically, the cars arriving in the night may have prompted the raid -- as the Pentagon labels "a target of opportunity." Said Mehmood, "I brought my family here for safety, and now there are 19 dead, including my wife, my brother, sister, sister-in-law, nieces, nephews, my uncle. What am I supposed to do now?"

At 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 27th, a U.S. bomb and missile fired from a Navy F/A 18 hit the village of Khan Agaha at the entrance of the Kapisa Valley, some 80 kms northeast of Kabul. The U.S. planes dropped 35 bombs in the area. Ten civilians were reportedly instantly killed said an ambulance driver who had gone to the village. A nearby hospital to which victims were rushed, run by the Italian relief agency, Emergency, said up to 16 people had been killed in Saturday's attack on Khan Agaha. Television photos taken by Britain's Sky News showed footage of the F-18 dropping bombs, hitting a mud and timber family home. The TV report said ten members of a family were missing under the rubble and another twenty were injured. A five year-old girl lay in a wheelbarrow with a bloodied face.
On Monday, October 29th, citing Reuters, The Times of India reported from Kabul,
"a US bomb flattened a flimsy mud-brick home in Kabul on Sunday blowing apart seven children as they ate breakfast with their father. The blast shattered a neighbour's house killing another two children …..the houses were in a residential area called Qalaye Khatir near a hill where the hard-line Taliban militia had placed an anti-aircraft gun."

The Afghan town of Charikar, 60 kms north of Kabul, has been the recipient of many US bombs and missiles. On Saturday, November 17th, US bombs killed two entire families -- one of 16 members and the other of 14 -- perished, together in the same house.

On the same day, bomb strikes in Khanabad near Kunduz, killed 100 people. A refugee, Mohammed Rasul, recounts himself burying 11 people, pulled out of ruins there [ibid].

Little mention made in the U.S mainstream press. Even better, seven weeks into the war, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times could write without shame,
"…..although estimates are still largely guesses, some experts believe that more than 1,000 Taliban and opposition troops have probably died in the fighting, along with at least dozens of civilians."

Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands, as we shall document.
Apparently, the only real casualties noted are those either connected to a western enterprise or organization, or those "independently verified" by western individuals and/or organizations. In other words, the high levels of civilian casualties are simply written off to 'enemy' propaganda and ignored.

American attack on Afghanistan is anything but a 'just war'. First, the disproportionate U.S. response of making an entire other nation and people 'pay' for the crimes of a few is obvious to anyone who seeks out the real 'costs' perpetrated upon the people of Afghanistan. Action should be based upon some measure of proportionality, which here clearly is not the case. Secondly, this war does little to impede the cycle of violence of which the 9/11 are merely one manifestation. Thirdly, by defining these events as a war rather than a police action without providing any argument for the necessity of the former, the American attack was un-necessary and, hence, not 'just.'
It is simply unacceptable for civilians to be slaughtered as a side-effect of an intentional strike. Slaughter is slaughter. Killing civilians even if unintentional is a crime.

A barbarous U.S. Air bombardment which has killed an average of 41 - 47 civilians per day since that fateful evening of Sunday, October 7th. When the sun set on December 10th, at least 2,700 - 3,000 Afghan civilians had died in U.S bombing attacks.

It should be noted that the independent, private Afghan Islamic Press [AIP] agency in Islamabad, Pakistan reported consistently lower cumulative casualty figures than the Taliban: on October 13th, AIP reported 250 whereas the Taliban listed 300 civilians killed; on November 6th, the AIP listed 633 while the Taliban reported about 1,500 civilian deaths. The A.I.P. data listed 204 people killed in Kandahar, 163 in Nangarhar province east of Jalalabad, 92 in Kabul, and 79 in Herat. Many of the Taliban claims about civilian casualties are later confirmed by journalists on the scene, eye-witnesses, survivors, families of victims, U.N. sources, NGOs [like RAWA and Emergency Italy] etc..

A tabulation for October 31st enters a figure of 15 civilians dying in a bombing attack of a Red Crescent hospital in Kandahar. Three different assessments were made in the aftermath:

1. The Taliban claimed the raid killed 11 people;
2. The Pentagon said the strike missed both the hospital and another Red Crescent building nearby, and commented "it was a legitimate terrorist target, intentionally struck.."
3. Journalist later saw a large crater in the center of the clinic and hospital vehicles crushed by collapsed masonry. One doctor reported 15 dead and 25 seriously injured.
The bombing incidents described in this report mostly involve Afghan civilians killed by virtue of proximity to what U.S military planners deemed were "military targets." For example, nine mosques in five provinces were bombed, killing more than 100 civilians.

Ms. King of the A.P., reports on an incident which took place on Saturday, October 13th . The civilian areas of Qala Mir Abas and Qala Wakil were hit as part of the U.S bombing of Kabul airport. The Pentagon admitted that an incorrectly programmed 'smart bomb' missed a military helicopter at Kabul airport and fell into a residential neighborhood. Whereas the Taliban claimed that 4 civilians had been killed, Ms. King mentions that an A.P. correspondent who went to the scene was able to only 'confirm' one civilian death.
A 2,000 lb. JDAM bomb was dropped from a Navy F-18 in a pre-dawn raid upon a series of mud homes in the Qala Mir Abas neighborhood, 2 kms. south of Kabul airport. Major British, Pakistani, and U.S newspapers which mention a figure of four killed and eight injured including women and children. The figure of four seems the most plausible: it is cited in six other newspapers and the bomb was very large - hitting a neighborhood at a time when people were sleeping.

Due to unavailability of data in many cases, e.g., for November 3, 4, 11 and 13, and for the effects of massive carpet-bombing by B-52s after October 30th. could not be made.

On November 17th, massive carpet-bombing by B-52s of Khanabad in Kunduz province, killed over 150 civilians. As has been amply commented upon elsewhere, the widespread bombing has also stopped truck traffic [carrying supplies] and has contributed to the utter collapse of Afghanistan's hospital system in the heavily bombed areas like Kandahar [as staff fear going to work]. No account is taken here either of bombing causing indirect casualties [e.g., from lack of water, power, medical care, etc.]. The Afghan hospital system had collapsed by late October under the bombing onslaught as hospital staff fled for safety. Those wounded able to, head off to clinics in Pakistan, while "those too wounded or poor to make the journey have been left to die in their homes in Kandahar" [ibid]. In Kabul's 300 bed children's hospital, supplies ran out and most of the staff fled.

The report raises trenchant questions about mainstream U.S reporting and official government claims, about the alleged accuracy of so-called 'smart' weapons, and about the revealed differential values put upon human lives by U.S military strategists and their political bosses. The mainstream press states that U.S bombing 'works' to achieve its goal- “Killing people”.

When faced with the indisputable 'fact' of having hit a civilian area, the Bush-Blair team responds that a military facility close-by was the target. Every case like this, turns out to be a long abandoned military facility. For example, in the incident where four night watchmen died when the offices of a United Nations de-mining agency in Kabul was bombed, the Pentagon said it was near a military radio tower. U.N. officials said the tower was a defunct, abandoned medium and short wave radio station that hadn't been in operation for over a decade and was situated 900 feet away from the bombed U.N. building. On October 19th, U.S. planes had circled over Tarin Kot in Uruzgan early in the evening, then returned after everyone went to bed and dropped their bombs on the residential area , instead of on the Afghan Mujahedin base two miles away. Mud houses were flattened and families destroyed. An initial bombing killed twenty and as some of the villagers were pulling their neighbors out of the rubble, more bombs fell and ten more people died. A villager involved explained:
"We pulled the baby out, the others were buried in the rubble. Children were decapitated. There were bodies with no legs. We could do nothing. We just fled."
On October 21st, U.S planes apparently targeting their bombs at a Taliban military base -- long abandoned -- released their deadly cargo on the Kabul residential area of Khair Khana, killing eight members of one family who had just sat down to breakfast. A day later, on October 22, U.S planes dropped BLU-97 cluster bombs [made by Aerojet/Honeywell] on the village of Shakar Qala near Herat. Twenty of the village's 45 houses were destroyed or badly damaged. They missed the Taliban encampments located 500-700 yards away and killed -14 people immediately with a 15th dying after picking up the parachute attached to one of the 202 bomblets dispersed by the BLU-97.

On October 25th, a U.S. bomb hit a fully loaded city bus at Kabuli Gate, in Kandahar, incinerating 10-20 passengers. Another typical example was provided when U.S. planes bombed the mountain village of Gluco, located on the Khyber Pass, on Sunday and Monday [November 18-19th], killing seven villagers. The village was far away from any military facilities. A reporter for The Telegraph visited Gluco, noting:
"their wooden homes looked like piles of charred matchsticks. Injured mules lay braying in the road along the mountain pass that stank of sulphur and dead animals…."

The wheat trader, Noor Mohamed, recounted the effects of U.S. bombing on the highways of Afghanistan. Noor travels the Chaman to Ghazni road for his wheat business. During the week of November 29th, he saw the burnt-out, twisted, still smoking mess just north of Kandahar of a 15 lorry fuel convoy. The charred remains of the drivers and all the dozens of unfortunate souls who had bargained for a ride to Chaman, sickened Noor.

A refugee, Abdul Nabi, told the AFP on October 24th, upon arriving in a refugee camp on the Pakistan border, how he had seen two groups of bodies -- 13 and 15 corpses -- remainders of civilians near bombed out trucks on the road between Herat and Kandahar.

Fleeing refugees have also become the Pentagon's "new targets of opportunity." During the couple weeks since November 25th , numerous first-hand reports tell how hovering U.S aircraft seeking out "targets of opportunity" in the Kandahar region, have fired missiles and dropped bombs upon fleeing taxis, trucks, and buses. A 39 year old, Afghan refugee in a Quetta hospital, Rukia, who lost her family of five children on December 3rd when a U.S bomb was dropped upon her neighborhood in Kandahar, tells a typical story. She fled Kandahar before she could bury her children, as she was wounded in her stomach and had her left arm shattered in the bomb blast. She was nearly bombed again on the Kandahar to Spin Boldak highway, as a relative was driving her to a hospital in Quetta. Rukia said,
"They're bombing anything that moves. It's not true that they bomb civilians by accident. They're targeting the innocent people."
On December 4th, an ambulance in Kandahar was struck killing four. On December 2nd, a jeep carrying civilians was hit near Spin Boldak killing 15. On December 1st, Reuters [12/1/01] reported a U.S attack on four trucks and 5 buses on the highway to Spin Boldak, killing 30. Dawn [12/2/01] cited the incineration by air of three refugee vehicles in front of the Maji Hotel in Arghisan on December 1st. On November 30th, U.S planes bombed two trucks on the highway from Herat, killing at least four. On November 27th, attracted by the lights of a vehicle, U.S bombers hit a hamlet of five houses between Kandahar airport and the city, killing Mohammed Khan's entire family of 5 and 10 others. Mohammed Khan also fled to Chaman for hospital treatment for his arms and legs. On December 6th, a Pakistani truck carrying fresh fruits was attacked by U.S planes on the highway between Spin Boldak and Kandahar.

Intense urban bombing causes high levels of civilian casualties. Afghan civilians will die, and must die, as 'collateral damage' of U.S air attacks. From the point of view of U.S policy makers and their mainstream media boosters, the 'cost' of a dead Afghan civilian is zero as long as these civilian deaths can be hidden from the general U.S public' view. The 'benefits' of saving future lives of U.S military personnel are enormous, given the U.S public's post-Vietnam aversion to returning body bags.

The absolute need to avoid U.S. military casualties means fling high up in the sky, increasing the probability of killing civilians:
"……..better stand clear and fire away. Given this implicit decision, the slaughter of innocent people, as a statistical eventuality is not an accident but a priority -- -in which Afghan civilian casualties are substituted for American military casualties."
The argument goes deeper and that race enters the calculation. The sacrificed Afghan civilians are not 'white' whereas the overwhelming number of U.S. pilots and elite ground troups are white. This 'reality' serves to amplify the positive benefit-cost ratio of certainly sacrificing darker Afghans today [and Indochinese, Iraqis yesterday] for the benefit of probably saving American soldier-citizens tomorrow.

When the "other" is non-white, the scale of violence used by the U.S. government to achieve its state objectives at minimum cost knows no limits.
The use by the U.S.Air Force of weapons of enormous destructive capability -- including fuel air bombs, B-52 carpet bombing, BLU-82s, and CBU-87 cluster bombs [shown to be so effective at killing and maiming civilians who happen to come upon the unexploded 'bomblets'] -- reveals the emptiness in the claim that the U.S. has been trying to avoid Afghan civilian casualties.

The 1000 and 2000 JDAM-type bombs which hit the Red Cross warehouse in Kabul and the village of Kama Ado, are designed to "inflict maximum damage over the widest battlefield area."
In so many words, intent matters little but race matters much.

Seven Days of Ignominy

• October 11th - the farming village of 450 persons of Karam, west of Jalalabad in Nangarhar province is repeatedly bombed, 45 of the 60 mud houses destroyed, killing at least 160 civilians. Ms. Tur Bakai, who survived the attack, but all of whose children died in the attack, said, her voice barely audible, "I was asleep. I heard the prayers and suddenly it started. I didn't know what it was;
• October 18th - the central market place, Sarai Shamali in the Madad district of Kandahar is bombed, killing 47 civilians;
• October 21st - a cluster bomb falls on the military hospital and mosque in Herat, killing possibly;
• October 23rd - in the early a.m. hours, low-flying AC-130 gunships repeatedly strafe the farming villages of Bori Chokar and Chowkar-Karez [Chakoor Kariz], 25 miles north of Kandahar, killing 93 civilians;
• November 10th the villages of Shah Aqa and a neighboring sidling, in the poppy-growing Khakrez district, 70 kilometers northwest of Kandahar are bombed, resulting in possibly over 300 civilian casualties;
• November 18th - carpet-bombing by B-52's of frontline village near Khanabad, province of Kunduz, kills at least 100 civilians.

At 3.a.m, Saturday morning, as part of the intense bombing campaign of Tora Bora, U.S. B-52 bombers made four passes over Kama Ado, dropping twenty-five 1,000 lb. JDAM MK-83 bombs, each 10 feet long. Kama Ado is a ten hour hike away from Tora Bora. Khalil Rahman survived because he had gone outside to urinate when a bomb struck his home, killing his 12 relatives. Sprina, a 50 year old widow, wounded in the attack, lost 38 of her 40 relatives. Hassan and other villagers say that in the following day, the saw only 40 of the 250-300 residents of Kama Ado. Kamal Huddin said that 156 of the 300 residents of Kama Ado had perished.

A second nearby village Khan-e-Mairjuddin, was bombed a few hours earlier with a likely death toll of 100-200, with 50 confirmed deaths by Saturday morning. And a third village, Zaner Khel, also reported being hit with scores of civilian casualties, when U.S. warplanes bombed the nearby house of a minor Taliban official.
Mohammed Gul, who worked at Kandahar military hospital, spoke to the BBC in the Pakistani border city of Quetta:
"Because of the bombing no one can sleep. Women and children can not eat or drink anything. Everyone is looking to the sky and waiting and thinking when will the American aircraft come and start killing them."

People arriving in Quetta from Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan:
"The situation was very bad in Kandahar. Americans were bombing day and night.
A resident of Kabul speaking of the destruction in the capital:
"I am surprised by those who claim to be defending human rights. Those who claim that the terror attacks were carried out by the followers of Osama and his group, may be wrong.

"No one can go to sleep for whole night up to the morning. Their planes come proudly at a low altitude and as a result the plastic in all our windows and doors - whose glass has already been broken - started shaking in this cold weather.
Despite US radio broadcasts in local languages, many Afghans have no clear idea of why they are under attack.

David Rhode wrote in The New York Times [December 12, 2001] about the bombing of the village of Mowshkheyl in Paktika province. At 4 a.m. on Sunday morning , December 9th , the American planes struck just as families were preparing the daily predawn meal that is part of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. A day earlier, a group of "Arabs" had passed through the village on their flight from Kandahar. The bomb released hundreds of smaller bombs that sprayed the area with shrapnel, reported Bibi Hawa, aunt of a 6 year old girl paralyzed by the attack, hospitalized in Ghazni. The girl, Palwasha, has a tiny shard of metal which neatly severed her spinal chord. The girl's mother, Rose, was struck by shrapnel which tore through her abdomen. The hospital doctor spoke about other injured dying. Thirteen people were killed and more than 40 were injured, said Bibi Hawa.

Abuse of Human Rights by the US led coalition forces

A report was obtained concerning the homicides of two unarmed civilian Afghan prisoners by U.S. armed forces in 2002 at the Bagram Collection Point. The prisoners, Habibullah and Dilawar, were chained to the ceiling and beaten, which caused their deaths. Military coroners ruled that both the prisoners' deaths were homicide. Autopsies revealed severe trauma to both prisoners' legs, describing the trauma as comparable to being run over by a bus.

Mr. Habibullah died on December 4, 2002 at the hands of several U.S. soldiers. They hit the chained man with so-called "peroneal strikes," or severe blows to the side of the leg above the knee (incapacitates the leg by hitting the common peroneal nerve).

Dilawar, who died on December 10, 2002, was a 22-year-old Afghan taxi driver and farmer who weighed 122 pounds and was described by his interpreters as neither violent nor aggressive.

When beaten, he repeatedly cried "Allah!" The outcry appears to have amused U.S. military personnel, as the act of striking him in order to provoke a scream of "Allah!" eventually "became a kind of running joke," according to one of the MP's. "People kept showing up to give this detainee a common peroneal strike just to hear him scream out 'Allah,' " he said. "It went on over a 24-hour period, and I would think that it was over 100 strikes."
The Times reported that:
On the day of his death, Dilawar had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.
"A guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.
"Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying. Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen.
It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.
The investigative file on Bagram, showed that the mistreatment of prisoners was routine:
shackling them to the ceilings of their cells, depriving them of sleep, kicking and hitting them, sexually humiliating them and threatening them with guard dogs -- the very same behavior later repeated in Iraq.

In November 2001, SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) program's chief psychologist, Col. Morgan Banks, was sent to Afghanistan, where he spent four months at Bagram. In early 2003, Banks issued guidance for the "behavioral science consultants" who helped to devise Guantánamo's interrogation strategy.

"When people decry civilian deaths caused by the U.S. government, they're aiding propaganda efforts. In sharp contrast, when civilian deaths are caused by bombers who hate America, the perpetrators are evil and those deaths are tragedies.