From Conquest to Bloodbath

“First the foreign troops entered the guest room and shot two of them. Then they entered another room and handcuffed the seven students. Then they killed them…"

By Adel – PeaceMaker

January 8, 2010

When the additional troops President Obama sent (21,000 troops in March and 30,000 more in December) to Afghanistan, the USA would end up with one achievement, and that is more civilian casualties.

On December 29th, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released figures indicating that Afghan civilian deaths had risen by 10% in the first ten months of 2009, from 1,838 during the same period a year earlier to 2,038.

On the same day the UNAMA report was made public, a U.S. air assault killed four Afghans in the northern province of Baghlan. A father and his three sons were among the casualties. The raid also wounded eight other innocent civilians.

The following day a NATO missile strike killed five to seven Afghan civilians in Helmand province, including three children. Later a spokesman for the governor of the province confirmed that seven innocent civilians had been killed and wounded.

Far more atrocious news broke the same day, December 30th, according to the next day's edition of The Times of London, "American-led troops were accused...of dragging innocent children from their beds and shooting them during a night raid that left ten people dead" in Kunar province near the Pakistani border. The victims were innocent children between the ages of 11 and 17.

A statement was later issued on the official website of the Afghan president that said in part: "That a unit of international forces descended from a plane Sunday night into Ghazi Khan village in Narang district of the eastern province of Kunar and took ten people from three homes, eight of them school students in grades six, nine and ten, one of them a guest, the rest from the same family, and shot them dead."

In a telephone interview, the slain students' headmaster (of the local school), described the details of President Obama's and top U.S. and NATO military commander Stanley McChrystal's new special operations-led counterinsurgency approach as it was applied to his pupils:

“Seven students were in one room," said Rahman Jan Ehsas. “A student and one guest were in another room, a guest room, and a farmer was asleep with his wife in a third building."

“First the foreign troops entered the guest room and shot two of them. Then they entered another room and handcuffed the seven students. Then they killed them. Abdul Khaliq (the farmer) heard shooting and came outside. When they saw him they shot him as well. He was outside. That’s why his wife wasn’t killed.”

NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) attempted to evade responsibility for the murders by claiming "the raid was a joint operation and it was still under investigation," which was quickly exposed when Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Zaher Azimy said, "Afghan troops had not taken part."

These raids which result in carnage follow a pattern that has become sadly familiar in Afghanistan over recent years. As is often the case, international forces insisted militants were killed, but the victims end up being civilians.

With the increase of U.S. and other NATO nations' troops to over 150,000 in the near future, the killing of Afghan civilians will grow exponentially.

On the other side of the border, Washington's and NATO's proclaimed Afghanistan and Pakistan (Af-Pak) war is no less murderous.

The Dawn Media Group, reported that Afghanistan-based US drones killed 708 people in 44 predator attacks targeting the Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal areas between January 1st and December 31st, 2009.

For each so-called-terrorist killed by US drones, 140 innocent Pakistanis also had to die. Over 90% of those killed in missile strikes were civilians – On average, 58 civilians were killed in these attacks every month, 12% every week and almost two people every day.

The U.S. launched deadly drone missile attacks in Pakistan's North Waziristan on both ends of the New Year. On December 31st "Five people were killed and at least two more injured" and on January 1st  "A US pilotless aircraft fired a missile into Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal district" and "the attack destroyed a car and killed three people."

In the second case a regional security official was quoted by Reuters as stating "The bodies were burned beyond recognition. We are trying to determine their identity."

On January 3rd five more people were killed in the same part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas by American drone attacks. However much the U.S., NATO and the Western media attempt to sanitize these killings, the Pakistani government figure - that over 99 percent of the victims are civilians - is a damning indictment of what can only be characterized as wanton war crimes.

Over eight years of bombing villages, conducting deadly raids against civilian, and extending the war into Pakistan have produced nothing but death and destruction. Afghan and Pakistani civilian’s deaths have climbed equally. They will rise even more in 2010 as the war, in its 10th year, is broadened further and intensified.