Unfriendly Fire in Afghanistan

This is the sort of report that deserves immediate and full investigation from the Pentagon, Congress, and apparently the CIA. From the Telegraph:

CIA 'killed 50 villagers in hunt for Taliban'

By Tom Coghlan in Kabul

Military specialists with the CIA were among a US force accused of killing more than 50 civilians during the hunt for a Taliban commander in Afghanistan.

Afghan community leaders in the Shindand district on the Iranian border say US forces destroyed several villages during the operation last month.




The American mission was conducted outside the Nato command structure and was therefore subject to different rules of engagement.

It is understood that the special forces unit included men known in America as CIA para-militaries, while support was provided by aircraft including the C130 Spectre gunship.

"There were huge planes overhead," said Haji Abdul Rasool, a tribal elder from Bakhtabad village. "I saw the bodies of children in the wreckage. After two nights we found one man alive under the rubble."

His account is corroborated by teams sent to the area by the United Nations, the Afghan government and Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission.
"We have found 57 civilian deaths in this incident," said Khazi Gulam Nabi Hakak, a human rights commission investigator. "This includes 10 women and at least 11 children. Some were drowned escaping across a river."

The UN said it had accounts of 49 civilian deaths and 1,600 families displaced by the violence. Staff at Shindand hospital said they treated 26 people, including women, children and the elderly.

The operation has caused anxiety at Nato's headquarters in Brussels and in Kabul.

US forces initially hailed the mission as a success. A US army press release claimed 136 Taliban fighters and one American soldier died in the fighting, while there were "no civilian casualties reported".

In response to the Shindand operation, Afghan president Hamid Karzai warned that Afghans' patience with foreign troops in their land was "wearing thin." After all, this was only the latest episode in which Afghan civilians had been killed during military operations mounted by NATO or US troops.

A few weeks back, the House oversight and government reform committee made splashy headlines with a hearing on the Pat Tillman friendly-fire incident and cover-up. The Tillman case deserved the attention. But practically every week in Afghanistan, civilians are being killed by US and other foreign troops. Yet the Pentagon has a long record of downplaying or denying these incidents. That routine response needs an about-face.

Posted by David Corn at May 9, 2007 10:36 AM