US massacres civilian village, bombings escalate

Afghans carry away victims of US bombing.

Compiled by Eamon Martin

Nov. 7— Last week, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld summoned his top military brass to his office at the Pentagon. “The war isn’t going well,” he said, his voice rising as he complained at the lack of progress against the Taliban. “Either we have something spectacular this weekend or heads will roll.”

Rumsfeld got his wish, although heads did roll, but not the ones of whom he was probably referring. US forces entered their fifth week of military assaults on Afghanistan, leaving a farming village and hospital in ruins and dozens of civilians slaughtered. Showing no sense of distraction by these events, the US continued with a dramatic escalation of its carpet-bombing campaign by further employing controversial weapons known for their ability to eliminate all forms of life within a one mile radius.

The US deployed its fearsome 15,000lb “daisy cutter” fuel-air bombs, guided by scores of American special forces troops who were dropped onto Afghan soil over the weekend. US aircraft are now flying up to 120 sorties a day. Far from just trimming flowers, the blast impact of the misnomered, massive bombs is said to be similar to that from a small tactical nuclear weapon. General Peter Pace, vice-chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: “They make a heck of a bang when they go off and the intent is to kill people.”

The escalated bombings came as George W. Bush made a satellite address to a conference of 17 Eastern European countries. Without a trace of irony, Bush exhorted, “Freedom is threatened once again. These terrorist groups seek to destabilize entire nations and regions. They are seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Given the means, our enemies would be a threat to every nation and eventually to civilization itself.” Bush also said that countries that did not offer concrete military help in the war would be held “accountable for inactivity."

Dozens massacred in farming village ‘with no military targets’

Rubble and fresh graves marked with the flags of martyrs are all that remains of a tiny Afghan village after a US bombing raid this week. Western journalists and human rights organizations published the clearest evidence yet of mass civilian casualties caused by the US military coalition. At least 60 people were killed on the night of October 22 in Chowkar-Karez, a small farming village, according to reports based on the accounts of journalists, eyewitnesses in the village and survivors ferried to a hospital in the Pakistani city of Quetta.

The Pentagon reluctantly admitted that an AC-130 Spectre gunship attacked the village.

According to the villagers, however, there were several aircraft, not just one. Explosions from the attack pulverized the mud walls of houses and gouged craters 15 feet deep in the ground. The planes then returned and opened fire on terrified villagers running through the streets, causing the worst of the casualties. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), the first organization to publish the eyewitness accounts, the villagers were unanimous in saying no relevant target was in the area.

“If there were military targets in the area, we’d like to know what they were,” said Sidney Jones, Asia director of HRW.

Visiting journalists counted 18 fresh graves but were told the villagers had not been able to sort out the many severed limbs and body parts to give each person their own final resting place.

Locals said about 20 villagers survived the attacks, when wave after wave of US jets pounded the community with heavy bombs and cannon fire, destroying everything in sight.

Foreign reporters saw the devastation first-hand: every house had been flattened and huge craters could be seen in the surrounding fields. The village was a scene of utter ruin. Long cracks had opened up in the ground where the bombs struck. Trees were broken and splintered, cars burned and torn. Even cooking pots were riddled with bullet holes. BBC journalist Simon Ingram reports: “What we found was a scene of total destruction. A number of houses, about 40 or 50 in all, completely destroyed,” he reported.

“As we buried the dead, the planes came again,” spoke an old farmer called Mangal, who said he lost 30 relatives including 12 women and 14 children.

Mangal could not understand why the United States had attacked an innocent farming village. “I’m not aware of our crime and why we were bombed. There were no Taliban here,” he said.

The village was littered with the debris of village life, including children’s clothes, women’s sandals, and the rotting carcasses of dead sheep.

Afghan children killed by US bombs.

The Taliban says between 90 and 100 civilians, almost the entire population of the village, were killed in the attack.

The Pentagon says the community was supporting terrorists from the al-Qaeda network and deserved its fate.

Human Rights Watch has been interviewing civilians who end up in Pakistani hospitals, and has found that in almost all cases, survivors were forthcoming about the presence of Taliban or al-Qaeda military positions near where the bombs fell. Six survivors of Chowkar-Karez interviewed by HRW were all adamant that there was nothing in their remote village that ought to have attracted the interest of the US military. A detailed examination of the scene revealed no evidence that the village might have been used by Taliban fighters or any other reason for it to have been targeted.

Witnesses talked to by the Western reporters said that US planes opened fire on people as they attempted to flee the bombs.

The Pentagon has made no further statements, even though the attack was raised in three different press briefings.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld — asked again this week about the incident after the journalists visited the site — professed ignorance. “I cannot deal with that particular village,” he replied.

Later, unidentified Pentagon officials told CNN that “The people there are dead because we wanted them dead."

“I brought my family here for safety, and now there are 19 dead, including my wife, my two children, my brother, sister, sister-in-law, nieces, nephews and my uncle,” Mehmood, a survivor, said.

Naseer Mohammed, 20, and his niece, Najia, 14, had nearly made it out of the compound when the bullets started raining down. One bullet caught Najia squarely in the chest, killing her instantly. The attack lasted an hour. By the time it was over, 18 members of his family were dead, five of them children. All were killed by gunfire after they ran into the open.

Without exception, what few villagers survived say the first bomb was dropped around 11pm, that most people immediately ran outside in fear and were then mowed down by gunfire from circling gunships.

“They were huge planes,” Mohammed said. “If the Taliban and Osama bin Laden are the targets then why were they shooting at us?”

On the other side of Quetta, Sabir Ahmed — the smallest survivor from Chowkar Karez — lies limply on an outsized hospital bed. His tiny head is swathed in bandages after doctors operated to remove shrapnel from his brain. In pain, he cries out for his mother, tears collecting in his eyes. His sister Shaida is a poor substitute. “He just asks again and again for his mother,” she said. “He does not understand where she has gone.”

US jets damage Kandahar hospital

Just a few days before the attack on Chowkar-Karez, while US Attorney General John Ashcroft warned US citizens about an imminent terrorist outbreak on US soil, fifteen civilians including five women and children were killed when a US jet bombed an Afghani hospital and a neighboring house.

The Afghan Red Crescent Society clinic and the house were destroyed in the attack, one of two waves of bombing raids around dawn.

“This is an American atrocity. They are not hitting the Taliban or Osama bin Laden, they are hitting residential areas,” said Kandahar resident Mohammad Ali at the scene of the attack.

Doctor Syed Abbas, who was slightly injured in the attack, told a group of foreign journalists that 15 people were killed in the house and 25 others severely injured in the assault on the hospital.

An AFP reporter said the small medical facility was in ruins and the house had collapsed. Earlier Wednesday he heard several loud explosions rock the city as US jets flew overhead.

“This is the worst type of state terrorism that the White House administration is perpetuating in Afghanistan,” Taliban ambassador Zaeef said.

No escape from the ‘daisy cutter’

Afghanistan is now being attacked with huge 15,000lb fuel air bombs that kill every creature within a square mile radius of the impact point.

The first of these weapons, sometimes called “daisy cutters”, were dropped on Sunday with the aim of terrorizing Taliban troops opposing Northern Alliance forces.

Short of nuclear weapons, fuel air explosives are the most powerful weapons in the US arsenal.

Eleven of these BLU-82s were used to devastating effect during the 1991 Gulf war, with one attack alone killing an estimated 4,500 Iraqi troops.

According to one British Army expert: “lethality to personnel is 100 per cent” - which is military speak for saying anyone caught by the explosion dies.

The weapons are a combination of warheads, which first explode and spread a kerosene vapor into the atmosphere. A secondary explosion then ignites the fuel vapor, creating a massive pressure wave. Anyone caught in the conflagration is incinerated and the blast wave sucks out oxygen behind it, creating a vacuum that ruptures lungs.

“Personnel near the ignition point are obliterated,” added the expert. “Those on the fringes are likely to suffer internal injuries - burst ear drums, crushed organs, ruptured lungs, severe concussion and possibly blindness.”

One US Special Forces soldier added, “It is a very violent and painful way to die.”

Allies set for ferocious escalation of ground war

Some military planners say a winter of heavy commando raids is imminent and will be followed by a spring offensive in which 20,000 troops or more will be put on the ground.

However, British military officials suspect that America is drawing up contingency plans for something even more substantial: a full invasion, on the scale of Desert Storm, using the equivalent of three military corps - up to 300,000 troops.

Geoff Hoon, the UK Defense Secretary, held talks in Washington this week with Rumsfeld, his US counterpart. Speaking after yesterday’s talks, Rumsfeld said that, while the numbers of US special forces now on the ground were nowhere near those used in the Second World War or Korea, “we have not ruled that out”. Hoon added: “Nor have we.”

British Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the Chief of the Defense Staff, said last week that the war in Afghanistan was the toughest military operation since the Korean War and could last several years.

The Pentagon has been rethinking its use of ground forces inside Afghanistan in the wake of near-disaster during the October 20 Special Forces assault on Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s complex.

The intensity and ferocity of the Taliban response “scared the crap out of everyone” according to a senior military officer. The Delta team stormed Mullah Omar’s complex near Kandahar, but found little of value, and then, “as they came out of the house, the shit hit the fan. It was like an ambush.” The team immediately began taking casualties and evacuated.

One Delta Force soldier said that military planners “think we can perform f***ing magic. We can’t. Don’t put us in an environment we aren’t prepared for. Next time, we’re going to lose a company.” Twelve Delta members were wounded, three of them seriously.

One military man reports that Delta Force officers were “still outraged” last week as after-action arguments over how best to wage a ground war continued.

The report by respected US journalist, Seymour Hersch, said the Pentagon could not give details “because it doesn’t want to appear that it doesn’t know what it’s doing”. Another senior officer said: “I don’t know where the adult supervision for these operations is. General Franks (Central Commander of the Army) is clueless.”

Meanwhile, the CIA prepares for a new phase in the war on the ground as the issue of torture comes to the fore in Washington.

Behind the scenes, reports from Washington say that the agency is now short of agents who know how to torture or to extract information. The CIA was amply staffed with people who developed torture expertise during the ‘dirty wars’ in Central and South America, but these agents have gone into retirement.

Now the agency is trying to redevelop and retrain agents in “rough” interrogation techniques. Among them are the use of high-decibel music, and recordings of dying people and animals.

One intelligence source told UK newspaper, The Observer, that former agents are being drafted back to advise the CIA on how to conduct “interrogations involving an element of physical pressure."

The US war so far has racked up a bill of at least $400 million, and could rocket up to $1 billion tax dollars a month for the duration of the conflict, according to defense budget analysts.

The White House has reiterated that bombing will escalate during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins in mid-November.

Since it began, up to 130,000 Afghan refugees have fled into Pakistan to escape US military action in Afghanistan.

Sources: Agence France Presse, Associated Press, BBC News Service, The Guardian (UK), The Independent (UK), In These Times, The Observer, The Scotsman (UK), Scripps Howard News Service, Sunday Herald (UK), The Telegraph (UK), The Times (UK), Toronto Globe & Mail, Washington Times

CNN chairman orders ‘balance’ in war news

By Howard Kurtz

Washington, DC, Oct. 31— The chairman of CNN has ordered his staff to balance images of civilian devastation in Afghan cities with reminders that the Taliban harbors murderous terrorists, saying it “seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan.”

In a memo to his international correspondents, Walter Isaacson said: “As we get good reports from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, we must redouble our efforts to make sure we do not seem to be simply reporting from their vantage or perspective. We must talk about how the Taliban are using civilian shields and how the Taliban have harbored the terrorists responsible for killing close to 5,000 innocent people.”

As more US bombs have landed in residential areas, causing damage to such places as a Red Cross warehouse and senior citizens’ center, the resulting television images have fueled criticism of the American war effort. This has sparked a growing debate, which began with the Osama bin Laden videotape, about how the media should handle stage-managed pictures from Afghanistan.

“I want to make sure we’re not used as a propaganda platform,” Isaacson said in an interview yesterday.

“We’re entering a period in which there’s a lot more reporting and video from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan,” he said. “You want to make sure people understand that when they see civilian suffering there, it’s in the context of a terrorist attack that caused enormous suffering in the United States.”

While some CNN correspondents are concerned about having a “pro-America” stamp on their reports, all the networks are clearly sensitive to charges that they are playing into enemy hands. After national security adviser Condoleezza Rice asked the network news chiefs not to show bin Laden videotapes live and unedited, MSNBC and Fox News did not air the next one and CNN showed only brief excerpts.

Jim Murphy, executive producer of the “CBS Evening News,” said of the CNN instructions: “I wouldn’t order anybody to do anything like that. Our reporters are smart enough to know it always has to be put in context.”

Murphy said he doesn’t believe “the danger is extremely high that showing what we know, and covering what the other side purports, is really going to change the mood of the nation. We know a terrible thing happened, it will take time to deal with and mistakes will be made along the way. That’s war.”

NBC News Vice President Bill Wheatley took a similar tack, saying: “I’d give the American public more credit, frankly. I’m not sure it makes sense to say every single time you see any pictures from Afghanistan, ‘This is as a result of September 11th.’ No one’s made any secret of that.”

But Fox News Vice President John Moody said the CNN directive is “not at all a bad thing” because “Americans need to remember what started this.... I think people need a certain amount of context or they obsess on the last 15 minutes of history. A lot of Americans did die.”

saacson’s memo said the network, in covering Afghan casualties, should not “forget it is that country’s leaders who are responsible for the situation Afghanistan is now in.”

Said Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism: “It sounds as though they’re worried about people being mad at them more than about providing the information that is useful.”

In a second memo, Rick Davis, CNN’s head of standards and practices, said it “may be hard for the correspondent in these dangerous areas to make the points clearly,” so he suggested language for the anchors:

: “‘We must keep in mind, after seeing reports like this from Taliban-controlled areas, that these US military actions are in response to a terrorist attack that killed close to 5,000 innocent people in the US’ or, ‘We must keep in mind, after seeing reports like this, that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan continues to harbor terrorists who have praised the September 11 attacks that killed close to 5,000 innocent people in the US,’ or ‘The Pentagon has repeatedly stressed that it is trying to minimize civilian casualties in Afghanistan, even as the Taliban regime continues to harbor terrorists who are connected to the September 11 attacks that claimed thousands of innocent lives in the US’ ... “Even though it may start sounding rote, it is important that we make this point each time.”

But aren’t viewers who don’t live in caves well aware of the Sept. 11 backdrop?

“People do already know it,” Isaacson said yesterday. “We go to Ground Zero all the time. We cover the memorial services. We cover people’s lives that have been touched. I just want to make sure we keep a sense of balance.”

Source: Washington Post

Women In Black to vigil in Asheville

Statement of Asheville Women In Black

Asheville, North Carolina, Nov. 5— During 1988 in Israel, a group of women began gathering in silent vigil to mourn victims of violence and to demand peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Their powerful witness soon spread throughout networks of women around the globe, and women have been gathering publicly to grieve the senseless violence of war and mourn the victims ever since under the title “Women In Black.” In Belgrade, Women In Black vigils have been held weekly since 1991 to protest war and the Serbian regime’s policies of nationalist aggression. In New York City, Women In Black stands in silent vigil in front of the New York Public Library every Wednesday, centering their action in the aftermath of September 11 on “mourning the dead and feeling deep sympathy with the bereaved and injured” as well as opposing a war of vengeance which only causes more suffering.

Starting Friday, November 9, Asheville Women In Black will begin regular vigils in the center of Asheville to grieve for all victims of violence, including those killed in the September 11 attacks and those being killed and injured in Afghanistan by US military action; and to call for peace. Anne Craig, who is helping to bring together the Asheville Women In Black actions, explains: “We gather to be part of an international network of women opposed to war and militarism; to be public witnesses of protest against US military action in Afghanistan and all of the violent conflicts currently taking place in our world. We wear black as an expression of sorrow. We invite women to stand with us in silence to reflect about themselves and women who have been raped, tortured, or killed, women who have been “disappeared,” whose homes have been demolished, whose loved ones have been murdered. One thing is clear: violence begets more violence. Patriarchal, militaristic insistence upon pursuing the path of violence perpetuates and increases hatred, mistrust, despair, and death. Humanity must seek and practice nonviolent processes to resolve conflict. We despair for all caught in the cycle of violence — politicians, soldiers, terrorists, civilians — promoting violence can never foster life. It does not lead to a safer world. Violence cannot lead to peace.”

Women In Black is a loose network of women world-wide committed to peace with justice and actively opposed to war and other forms of violence. It is not an organization, but a means of mobilization and a set of tactics for action. Women In Black stand in vigil, often silently, to mourn; they stand against the violence of war, rape as a tool of war, everyday violence against women, and all human rights abuses. Each Women In Black group is autonomous, and chooses its own focus, most often mourning the victims of personal and state violence in the group’s particular part of the world.

One of the inspirations for starting this type of action in Asheville is the fact that Women In Black, San Francisco, is being targeted by the FBI. Ronnie Gilbert, who sang with Pete Seeger and the Weavers, is a part of SF Women In Black, and recently published an article drawing parallels between the current loss of civil liberties and the McCarthy era, during which she faced harassment and repression because of her political beliefs, as did many Americans. Beth Trigg, who is helping start Asheville Women In Black says, “I was deeply affected when I heard that the FBI was targeting Women In Black. Is even grief a crime in this country? Is our culture so alienated from the heart that we can allow a group of women who are simply grieving to be scapegoated?”

According to Gilbert, “Because my group is composed mostly of Jewish women, we focus on the Middle East, protesting the cycle of violence and revenge in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. The FBI is threatening my group with a Grand Jury investigation.” She continues, “So what is to investigate? That some of us are in contact with activist Palestinian peace groups? This is bad? The Jewish Women In Black of Jerusalem have stood vigil every Friday for 13 years in protest against the occupation; Muslim women from Palestinian peace groups stand with them at every opportunity. We praise and honor them, these Jewish and Arab women who endure hatred and frequent abuse from extremists on both sides for what they do. We are not alone in our admiration. Jerusalem Women in Black is a nominee for the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize, along with the Bosnia Women in Black, now ten years old.”

In solidarity with the women who are facing Grand Jury investigation, and more importantly in determination to allow a space for mourning the dead and grieving loss of life in senseless acts of violence, women in Asheville are taking up the mantle of Women In Black.

According to one of the women who will be standing vigil in Asheville, “Our government has tried to steal from us the time to grieve those who died on September 11—Bush is telling everyone to ‘get back to normal, don’t let them think we’re afraid, spend money and go on with business as usual.’ We refuse to comply. We need to grieve. We have to take this public space to mourn all of those who have died, on September 11 in this country and in Afghanistan since we starting terrorizing the people there and all over the world wherever there has been war and violence. We are particularly grieving for all of those being scared, hurt, and killed right now in Afghanistan.”

Women In Black Asheville mourns for the men, women, and children who have already died in the US’s war of revenge, as for all those killed in wars fought by our government, either overtly or by proxy through the training and financing of terrorists, assassins, and torturers. Our hearts are with the families of the victims of the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador 20 years ago, carried out by troops trained at the US Army’s School of the Americas and with the victims of the “drug wars” in the US and in Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America. We are full of rage and sorrow for all of the women and girls even in our own community who are not safe in their own homes. We call for an end to US training and funding of terrorists, at the “School of Assassins” and elsewhere, and for an immediate end to military action in Afghanistan. We stand against the horrible loss of life caused by violence and war, and call for truth-telling, grief, and healing as the first steps toward peace. Women In Black will gather on Friday at 6pm at Vance Monument in Asheville. Bring candles and wear black. For more information, call Anne Craig at 252-4536.