Spotlight

The US reign of terror in Afghanistan

By Roger Burbach*

The Afghan people have suffered horrendously due to the US air war. Between 7 October, when the bombing started, and 6 December more than 3,767 innocent civilians died. This number surpasses the estimated casualties in the United States on 11 September in the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Given that the Afghan population is roughly one-tenth that of the United States, this would mean a proportionate death toll in the United States of about 38,000!

Moreover, as of 18 December the Pentagon insists that this reign of terror from the skies must continue, even though Afghan warlords allied with the United States are calling for an end to the bombing. The reason they want the air war to stop: their own troops are suffering casualties as their positions are bombed by US planes.

The US war in Afghanistan is a crime against humanity. Just as there are international tribunals for the atrocities committed in Rwanda and Yugoslavia, there should now be a tribunal to bring to justice US leaders like George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld for their war crimes. They are no different than Osama bin Laden. While proclaiming "holy wars" and crusades against "evil", they have both inflicted incredible horrors on civilian populations.

The civilian death toll in Afghanistan due to the US air war is carefully documented in an extensive study by Marc Herold. Excerpts of his study are carried below. Those who would like to view his more in depth report and some stunning photographs of the impact of the air war on Afghanistan, click here. The major conclusions of his research, along with more than 20 additional articles, will be part of a book that is about to be released, September 11 and the US War: Behind the Curtain of Smoke. Edited by Roger Burbach and Ben Clarke, this anthology will be jointly published by Freedom Voices Press and City Lights Publishers on 1 January. To order copies, click here.

A dossier on civilian victims of United States' aerial bombing of Afghanistan By Professor Marc W. Herold What causes the documented high level of civilian casualties - 3,767 civilian deaths in eight and a half weeks - in the US air war on Afghanistan? The explanation is the apparent willingness of US military strategists to fire missiles into, and drop bombs upon, heavily populated areas of Afghanistan. A legacy of the 10 years of civil war during the 1980s is that many military garrisons and facilities are located in urban areas where the Soviet-backed government had placed them since they could be better protected there from attacks by the rural mujahideen. Successive Afghan governments inherited these emplacements. To suggest that the Taliban used "human shields" is more revealing of the historical amnesia and racism of those making such claims, than of Taliban deeds. A heavy bombing onslaught must necessarily result in substantial numbers of civilian casualties simply by virtue of proximity to "military targets", a reality exacerbated by the admitted occasional poor targeting, human error, equipment malfunction and the irresponsible use of outdated Soviet maps. But the critical element remains the very low value put upon Afghan civilian lives by US military planners and the political elite, as clearly revealed by US willingness to bomb heavily populated regions. Current Afghan civilian lives must and will be sacrificed in order to (possibly) protect future American lives. Actions speak, and words (can) obscure: the hollowness of pious pronouncements by Rumsfeld, Rice and the compliant corporate media about the great care taken to minimize collateral damage is clear for all to see. Other US bombing targets hit are impossible to "explain'" in terms other than the US seeking to inflict maximum pain upon Afghan society and perceived "enemies": the targeted bombing of the Kajakai dam power station, the Kabul telephone exchange, the Al-Jazeera Kabul office, trucks and buses filled with fleeing refugees, and the numerous attacks on civilian trucks carrying fuel oil. In order to make the American Afghan war appear "just", it becomes imperative to completely block out access to information on the true human costs of this war. The actions of the Bush-Rumsfeld-Rice trio speak eloquently to these efforts: calling-in major US news networks to give them their marching orders, buying up all commercial satellite imagery available to the general public, sending Powell off to Qatar to lecture the independent Al-Jazeera news network and, lastly, when that failed, targeting the Kabul office of Al-Jazeera and scoring a direct missile hit on it. In mid-October, Duncan Campbell reported how the Pentagon was spending millions of dollars to prevent Western media from buying highly accurate civilian satellite pictures of the effects of the US bombing. The Pentagon decision was taken on 11 October after reports of heavy civilian casualties from overnight bombing of Darunta near Jalalabad. The Pentagon bought exclusive rights to all Ikonos satellite pictures from the Denver-based Space Imaging Inc. Lastly, as has been pointed out, major US corporate media have devoted only sparse moments to the topic of civilian casualties, obeying the Bush- Pentagon directives. Preventing the images of human suffering caused by the US bombing from reaching US audiences, creates precisely what the Pentagon and Bush seek: a "war without witnesses." The power of images in the age of global information is now clearly recognized. According to Gilbert Holleules of the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Centre for Human Rights, images have begun to replace reality. It is only when we see moving pictures that we process events as an actual experience and only when we see real people suffering that we make a personal connection to them.

*Roger Burbach is director of Censa's (Center for the Study of the Americas) Global Alternatives.