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1/8/2002 (9:59) |
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Afghan horror, toll of US bombing
By Rory Carroll
QALAYE NIAZI: The attack here was as sudden and devastating as the Pentagon intended. American special forces on the ground confirmed the target and three bombers, a B-52 and two B-1Bs, did the rest , zapping Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders in their sleep as well as an ammunition dump.
The war on terrorism came no cleaner and Commander Matthew Klee, a spokesman at the US central command in Tampa, Florida, had reassuring news: 'Follow-on reporting indicates that there was no collateral damage.'
Some of the things his follow-on reporters missed: bloodied children's shoes and skirts, bloodied school books, the scalp of a woman with braided grey hair, butter toffees in red wrappers, wedding decorations.
The charred flesh sticking to rubble in black lumps could have been Osama bin Laden's henchmen, but survivors said it was the remains of farmers, their wives and children, and wedding guests. They said that more than 100 civilians died at this village in eastern Afghanistan.
Survivors lacked the bewilderment common to those who have been bombed, because they had an explanation: a tribal rival had manipulated the Americans into attacking here to further his political ambitions in Paktia province.
The Pentagon said that it had indications senior Taliban and Al Qaeda officials were at the site and that two surface-to-air missiles were fired at the aircraft during the December 29 raid. The bombs set off secondary explosions consistent with stockpiled ammunition.
The Pentagon has produced no evidence that missiles were fired at the planes but there was a stockpile. From the ruins of two houses yesterday (SUN) spilled boxes of Russian, Chinese and Iranian rockets.
Diehard Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters are said to still rove Paktia and its neighbouring provinces of Paktika and Khost, where a US soldier was killed at the weekend. Qalaye Niazi's role seemed clear to Commander Klee: 'You have a known Al Qaeda-Taliban leadership compound.'
But survivors say they stored the ammunition six weeks ago on the orders of retreating Taliban troops. When the regime fell they notified authorities but no one came to collect the ammunition. 'We left it. What else were we supposed to do with it?' said Taj Mohammad, the village elder.
It was stored in two unfinished houses in a five-house complex six miles (10km) north of the collection of mud-brick compounds which passes for Qalaye Niazi's centre. The complex housed 10 families who grew wheat, apples and grapes, said Mohammad.
About two dozen guests had crammed into the three occupied houses for a wedding, raising the number of occupants to more than 100, said the elder. The bombers came early in the morning.
Precision-guided bombs vaporised all five buildings and a second wave an hour later hit people digging in the rubble and, judging from hair and flesh on the edge of three 40 feet holes some distance from the complex, those trying to flee.
Two days later villagers with shovels and tractors extracted the remains. A hand, an ankle, a bit of skull, sometimes an entire torso. They buried some in 11 graves, each said to contain several people, and relatives from Khost took some for burial in the mountains.
One villager said 32 died. The United Nations said 52, including 10 women and 25 children. Mohammad said at least 80. Other villagers said 92. Staff at the hospital in Gardez said 107.
Innumeracy, rapid burial, damage to bodies, propaganda, remoteness - they all conspire to shred certainty in this and other bombings. It is no one's job to count the dead.
The UN said that its envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, would discuss this village with US diplomats. The Pentagon has shifted slightly from its initial certitude and promised to investigate a raid which Donald Anderson, chairman of the House of Commons foreign affairs select committee, denounced as a massive failure of intelligence.
That civilians were present there can be little doubt. Taliban and Al Qaeda too? Survivors swear not. Yet there is little venom for the US. 'They were given bad information by bad Afghans,' said Hinzer Gul, echoing neighbours.
Haji Saifullah, head of Paktia's shura, or tribal council, said: 'Our local enemies are delivering this information to the Americans as if Taliban or Al Qaeda people are here, and Americans just bomb without any search.'
The finger was collectively pointed at Aghi Badshah Khan Zadran, 58, an anti-Taliban commander who controls Khost province and is lobbying the interim government to add Paktia and Paktika provinces to his fiefdom.
The Guardian News Service.
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