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Friday January 4 12:04 AM ET
Afghan Government Silent on U.S. Bombing CasualtiesBy Jane Macartney KABUL (Reuters) - Villagers say U.S. jets killed 107 civilians. The United Nations (news - web sites) believes 52 died. But with the United States maintaining it is striking Taliban and al Qaeda targets, the new Afghan government has been steadfastly silent over the increasingly embarrassing -- and potentially destabilizing -- cases of what Washington calls collateral damage. Interior Minister Yunis Qanuni is not available. The diary of Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah is full. Defense Minister Mohammad Fahim has nothing to say. Outside the Presidential palace occupied by interim leader Hamid Karzai stretch the convoys of cars of tribal chieftains who have traveled from far and wide through Afghanistan (news - web sites)'s mountains and along its pot-holed roads to pay their respects. He doesn't have time to talk, say officials at the gate. ``I don't have information about that,'' said Minister for Information and Culture Raheen Makhdoom. The new government, less than two weeks old, is under mounting pressure as U.S. jets and bombers continue to prowl their skies in search of fugitive Taliban or al Qaeda fighters -- sometimes killing residents in bombing raids. KILLED AS THEY SLEPT The latest incident, a devastating bombing raid on a village in eastern Afghanistan, now threatens to cast a shadow over Karzai's authority to govern. Villagers in the eastern village of Qalaye Niazi told Reuters that in the early hours of Sunday, at least one jet, one B-52 bomber and two helicopters swooped down, opened fire in blistering raids and killed 107 people as they slept in their baked-mud homes. Qalaye Niazi, about four km (2.5 miles) north of the Paktia provincial capital, Gardez, was obliterated. The United Nations said the dead included 17 men, 10 women and 25 children, and quoted a reliable local source for the information that 52 people had been killed. U.S. officials said the village was a legitimate target, its buildings used as an ammunition dump by Taliban militia or fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and his al Qaeda network. The United Nations said Thursday it was so concerned about the incident its chief in Afghanistan, special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, planned to raise the issue not only with Karzai but with U.S. diplomats. ``The government really doesn't want to say anything,'' said one Afghan analyst who declined to be identified. ``The leaders have said the U.S. forces can operate in Afghanistan until they have cleared out all the Taliban and al Qaeda. So what can they say now?'' he said. ``They must be hoping that people will forget as time passes.'' TRIBAL RIVALRIES But the residents of Paktia said they would not forget. ``These planes will not be here forever,'' a tribal leader of Paktia, told Reuters Television in the village this week. ``We will have a reckoning with these people in Kabul when the time is right.'' The people of Paktia may be a force to be reckoned with. Their people are from the second-largest tribe in Afghanistan, the Ghilzais. They have not always been friends of Afghanistan's largest tribe, the Durranis, and Karzai is the leader of a sub-tribe of the Durranis. Karzai now finds himself caught between tribal chieftains increasingly angered by what appears to be a string of mishits by U.S. jets, and his own pledges to the Americans that they may stay and carry out their mission to eliminate al Qaeda from the soil of Afghanistan. For most Afghans, it is time to stop the raids as their lives gradually return to some semblance of normality after five years of radical Taliban rule when men had to grow long beards, women stayed inside and television was banned and after the two months of blistering U.S. bombing that destroyed the fundamentalist militia. The destruction of Qalaye Niazi is not the only instance of collateral damage to confront Karzai and his government. Paktia province is a region where the Pentagon (news - web sites) believes remnants of bin Laden's al Qaeda network and the Taliban may be still active or in hiding. One of the most deadly incidents took place just two days before the December inauguration of the new interim government in Kabul, when U.S. jets struck a convoy carrying tribal elders and guests en route to the ceremony in Kabul. U.S. officials insist the convoy had opened fire on U.S. aircraft just before it was bombed and had been carrying leaders of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and the Taliban. Some 65 people were killed in that attack, and tribal elders who went in a delegation to Karzai said they had won his agreement to ask the Americans to cut back bombing of the region. That does not seem to have happened. And with bin Laden and his protector, Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, still on the run there is little likelihood that the words of the fledgling government will carry much weight in Washington. |
