Sixteen people were killed and five wounded by a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan today.
The first version of the story that came out was this:
An American soldier wandered outside his base in a remote southern Afghan village shortly before dawn Sunday and opened fire on civilians inside homes, killing at least 16, Afghan and U.S. officials said.
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Officials shed no light on the motive or state of mind of the staff sergeant who was taken into custody shortly after the alleged massacre.“It appears he walked off post and later returned and turned himself in,” said Lt. Cmdr. James Williams, a military spokesman.
U.S. military officials stressed that the shooting was carried out by a lone, rogue soldier, differentiating it from past instances of civilians killed accidentally during military operations.
But that story made little sense to me. Why would someone go out into the dark of the night and break into three houses and deliberately kill everyone there with shots to the head? That didn’t sound like a panic reaction. And why then return to the base?
Now a different version is emerging and it seems that the military spokespersons lied in their first reports:
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, March 11 (Reuters) – Western forces shot dead 16 civilians including nine children in southern Kandahar province on Sunday, Afghan officials said, in a rampage that witnesses said was carried out by American soldiers who were laughing and appeared drunk.
One Afghan father who said his children were killed in the shooting spree accused soldiers of later burning the bodies.
Witnesses told Reuters they saw a group of U.S. soldiers arrive at their village in Kandahar’s Panjwayi district at around 2 am, enter homes and open fire.
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Haji Samad said 11 of his relatives were killed in one house, including his children. Pictures showed blood-splattered walls where the children were killed.“They (Americans) poured chemicals over their dead bodies and burned them,” a weeping Samad told Reuters at the scene.
“I saw that all 11 of my relatives were killed, including my children and grandchildren,” said Samad, who had left the home a day earlier.
Neighbours said they awoke to crackling gunfire from American soldiers, whom they described as laughing and drunk.
“They were all drunk and shooting all over the place,” said neighbour Agha Lala, who visited one of the homes where the incident took place. “Their bodies were riddled with bullets.”
The only good one might say about these soldiers is that they probably held back from filming themselves pissing over the children they killed.
The incident reminds me of the Haditha massacre:
The Haditha killings (also called the Haditha incident or the Haditha massacre) refers to the incident in which 24 unarmed Iraqi men, women and children were killed by a group of United States Marines on November 19, 2005 in Haditha, a city in the western Iraqi province of Al Anbar. All those killed were civilians.
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An initial Marine Corps communique reported that 15 civilians were killed by the bomb’s blast and eight insurgents were subsequently killed when the Marines returned fire against those attacking the convoy. However, other evidence uncovered by the media contradicted the Marines’ account.
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The investigation claimed it found evidence that “supports accusations that U.S. Marines deliberately shot civilians, including unarmed men, women and children”, according to an anonymous Pentagon official.
The whole issue was then processed through military courts for over six years and in the end not one of the soldiers involved was indicted or faced penalties.
It is likely that the same processing will happen on today’s case and that six years from now everyone involved, including those who made up the lone-wolf cover-up story, will walk off free and without any serious penalty.
But it is also likely that six years from all U.S. soldier will have left Afghanistan. It is a sad thing to say, but if today’s murder accelerates the retreat of western forces from Afghanistan the deaths today may not have been completely in vain.
