-Caveat Lector-
This may be heavy for survivors of abuse.
Cats, Dogs and 'Collateral Damage'
David McGowan
October 16, 2001
(The village referred to throughout this article is variously spelled
Kadam, Karam, and Koram. It is unclear which is the correct spelling.)
"One week after United States-led forces began bombarding Afghanistan,
disturbing evidence is emerging of unacceptably high civilian casualties
and ill-defined military and political objectives. Afghans reaching the
Pakistani city of Peshawar 60 kilometres from the border said the
bombing on Friday of Kadam, a small rural community in Surkh Rud
district near the eastern city of Jalalabad, had killed scores, possibly
hundreds of civilians." (1)
So said the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday, October 15. This
was just one of many reports filed Sunday and Monday concerning the
destruction of an Afghan village. The first of these reports were based
on the eyewitness accounts of the survivors of the attack, some
seriously wounded, who fled into neighboring Pakistan.
A report in the Guardian began: "Serious blunders by American
warplanes may have killed at least 100 civilians in Afghanistan,
according to eye-witness accounts obtained by the Observer. Two U.S.
jets, they said, had bombed a village in eastern Afghanistan, killing
more than 100 people." (2) According to one witness cited, the jets
circled back twice to unload additional ordnance on the village.
The Guardian also noted that while "Western politicians have
been quick to dismiss the claims as propaganda ... apparent confirmation
of serious casualties among non-combatants is beginning to emerge. If
the evidence is accurate, an attack on Karam village, 18 miles west of
Jalalabad, last Thursday was the most lethal blunder yet by Allied
forces." (2)
An article in the Independent held that Karam was just one of
several villages to be targeted: "Something went terribly wrong at the
end of the week. In conversations with refugees, a string of names come
up again and again: Darunta, Karam, Torghar, Farmada - insignificant
villages where, according to consistent accounts by eyewitnesses, as
well as those of the Taliban propaganda machine, hundreds of civilians
were killed." (3)
Among the refugees that Independent reporter Richard Parry spoke
to, he found that "many have seen at first hand the devastating effects
which the attacks have begun to have on civilians. In hospitals, refugee
camps and in the homes of friends, they describe how it feels to find
yourself directly below one of the most technologically sophisticated
bombing campaigns in history." (3)
U.S. officials were quick to deny civilian casualties and
denounce the witness accounts as propaganda. Taliban officials countered
by allowing Western reporters into the country to view the carnage at
Karam first-hand. The journalists, skeptical of what they assumed would
be a staged scene, filed reports that revealed their shock and revulsion
at what they encountered.
A reporter for The Times described the scene at a nearby
hospital: "In a gloomy Jalalabad hospital ward Ahmed Zai clings to his
one-year-old son as they lie on a dirty sheet. Both have shrapnel wounds
... Across the crowded ward three-year-old Rahmed cries for his mother.
Bandages cover his head, arm and legs. Blood is oozing through ...
Doctors tell us that both of his parents are dead ... Along with
twenty-five others in this hospital Ahmed and Rahmed were in the village
of Koram." (4)
In the village itself, the reporters were met with harrowing
scenes of carnage and human suffering. First, however, their Taliban
escorts had to subdue the wrathful villagers: "As we approached Koram,
climbing a rocky hillside, the villagers erupted in fury, charging down
the hill with shovels in hand. We had experienced orchestrated protests
during our drive from the Pakistan border, but this was altogether
different." (4)
An Associated Press writer made a similar observation: "Waving
shovels and sticks, enraged villagers surged toward foreign journalists
brought here Sunday by Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia to see what
officials say was the devastation of a U.S. air attack. 'They are coming
to kill us! They are coming for information, to tell the planes where to
bomb!' angry and terrified villagers shouted as they charged the
reporters." (5)
These were, mind you, ordinary Afghan villagers who - after just
one week of terror bombing allegedly aimed at eliminating terrorism and
keeping the Western world safe for democracy - were so enraged that they
were prepared to violently attack the first Westerners they laid eyes
on. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm feeling a whole lot safer
already.
Ian Williams of The Times graphically described the village:
"One man said that he was burying his wife bit by bit as he dug her out
of the rubble. He put a severed leg into a plastic bag and dropped it
into the hole that he had dug. The stench of rotten bodies was
overwhelming in places. Dead cows and goats littered the hillside, as
did chunks of metal, shrapnel from the bombs. Of around 40 stone houses
more than half have been completely destroyed." (4)
Kathy Gannon of the Associated Press took in the scene as well:
"Villagers pointed out other evidence of an attack: a bloodstained
pillowcase by a house, bomb craters and what appeared to be a rotting
human limb. Dozens of sheep and goat carcasses were strewn about the
mud-hut village, and the air was thick with a rancid stench." (5)
Williams reported seeing "at least thirty fresh graves,
villagers praying beside them." (4) Gannon watched as an "old man knelt
by one grave, sobbing. He looked up, furiously, at journalists and their
cameras and lobbed stones to drive the outsiders away." (5) Witnesses on
the scene told the reporters that "more bodies were buried up in the
mountains, taken there by residents as they fled the now mostly deserted
community." (5)
One villager showed the visitors a piece of bomb shrapnel with
English writing on it. His wife and all five of his kids had been killed
by the bombs. Another villager demanded answers: "They are innocent
people living here. There is no military base. What is it they are
looking for in Afghanistan? Where is Osama bin Laden? He is not here.
Why did they bomb us?" (5)
Williams ended his report with the following observation: "from
the evidence we have seen Koram is no terrorist training camp or
military base. There appears to have been a horrible mistake." (4) Not
according to the Pentagon and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who put
forth the preposterous story that it was an ammunition dump near the
village that had been bombed.
As the Guardian reported, Rumsfeld claimed that "US bombs had
hit the opening to two nearby tunnels believed to be possible ammunition
dumps, causing powerful secondary explosions. People living near the
site may have been involved in storing and guarding the ammunition
store." (6) The village itself, according to the Pentagon, was not
actually bombed at all.
Despite the fact that reporters had seen and photographed bomb
craters, and had seen at least one unexploded warhead, the Pentagon
"denied there were bomb craters in the village." (6) Left completely
unexplained were the bombed-out dwellings, the livestock carcasses
strewn about, the abundance of shrapnel, and the scattered body parts.
Rumsfeld washed his hands of the affair with the following
shameless lie: "There's no question that people who were in close
proximity to these isolated ammunition dumps, who very likely were there
for a good reason because they were a part of that activity, may very
well have been casualties. They were not cooking cookies inside those
tunnels." (6)
No, actually they weren't in any tunnels at all. Some were
sleeping. Some had just been called to morning prayer by the village
mullah. All were, by any reasonable interpretation of the evidence,
civilians.
After reading these reports on Sunday evening - all from British
and Australian publications - I decided to catch the 11:00 PM edition of
ABC News to see what sort of spin the American media would put on these
well-documented reports of civilian casualties. No mention was made of
them.
They did though manage to squeeze in an important story about
some other tragic victims whose plight had previously been shamefully
ignored by all avenues of the media. The following exchange between the
talking heads 'teased' the story:
Leslie Sykes: "Still ahead - the forgotten victims of September 11th."
Phillip Palmer: "Tonight, a party to raise money for pets who lost their
owners. That is coming up."
I didn't wait up to get the details.
REFERENCES:
1. Christopher Kremmer "Alarm Grows Over Scale of Civilian Casualties,"
Sydney Morning Herald, October 15, 2001
2. Jason Burke "US Admits Lethal Blunders," Guardian Unlimited, October
14, 2001
3. Richard Lloyd Parry "It Was If the Rocks Themselves Were on Fire,"
Independent, October 14, 2001
4. Ian Williams "He Is Burying His Wife Bit by Bit as He Digs Her Out of
the Rubble," The Times, October 15, 2001
5. Kathy Gannon "Taliban Shows Fresh Graves and a Village Ruined by
War," International Herald Tribune, October 15, 2001
6. Julian Borger "Rumsfeld Blames Taliban for Civilian Deaths," Guardian
Unlimited, October 16, 2001
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