[R-G] Afghans riot over air-strike atrocity

[Sid Shniad]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/afghans-riot-over-airstrike-atrocity-1681070.html 

Afghans riot over air-strike atrocity 

Witnesses say deaths of 147 people in three villages came after a sustained 
bombardment by American aircraft. 

By Patrick Cockburn, in Herat 
The Independent UK: May 8, 2009 

Shouting "Death to America" and "Death to the Government", thousands of 
Afghan villagers hurled stones at police yesterday as they vented their fury 
at American air strikes that local officials claim killed 147 civilians. 

The riot started when people from three villages struck by US bombers in the 
early hours of Tuesday, brought 15 newly-discovered bodies in a truck to the 
house of the provincial governor. As the crowd pressed forward in Farah, 
police opened fire, wounding four protesters. Traders in the rest of Farah 
city, the capital of the province of the same name where the bombing took 
place, closed their shops, vowing they would not reopen them until there is 
an investigation. 

A local official Abdul Basir Khan said yesterday that he had collected the 
names of 147 people who had died, making it the worst such incident since 
the US intervened in Afghanistan started in 2001. A phone call from the 
governor of Farah province, Rohul Amin, in which he said that 130 people had 
died, was played over the loudspeaker in the Afghan parliament in Kabul, 
sparking demands for more control over US operations 

The protest in Farah City is the latest sign of a strong Afghan reaction 
against US air attacks in which explosions inflict massive damage on 
mud-brick houses that provide little protection against bomb blasts. A claim 
by American officials, which was repeated by the US Defence Secretary Robert 
Gates yesterday in Kabul, that the Taliban might have killed people with 
grenades because they did not pay an opium tax is not supported by any 
eyewitnesses and is disproved by pictures of deep bomb craters, one of which 
is filled with water. Mr Gates expressed regret for the incident but did not 
go so far as to accept blame. 

The US admits that it did conduct an air strike at the time and place, but 
it is becoming clear, going by the account of survivors, that the air raid 
was not a brief attack by several aircraft acting on mistaken intelligence, 
but a sustained bombardment in which three villages were pounded to pieces. 
Farouq Faizy, an Afghan radio reporter who was one of the first to reach the 
district of Bala Baluk, says villagers told him that bombs suddenly, "began 
to fall at 8pm on Monday and went on until 10pm though some believe there 
were still bombs falling later". A prolonged bombing attack would explain 
why there are so many dead, but only 14 wounded received at Farah City 
hospital. 

The attack was on three villages - Gerani, Gangabad and Koujaha - just off 
the main road. It is a poppy growing area of poor farmers and there were 
several fields of poppies near the villages. The Taliban are traditionally 
strong here and the police and soldiers waiting around the villages were 
said by eyewitnesses to be frightened. This would explain why Afghan army 
commanders might have been eager to call for US airstrikes, though they 
would have needed the agreement of American special operations officers. 

Provincial officials, including the governor Rohul Amin, say that in the 
lead-up to the bombing there was heavy fighting between hundreds of Taliban 
and the Afghan Army and police. Going by Mr Faizy's account there had been, 
"a fight some seven or eight kilometres from the three villages in which two 
Afghan Army and a US Humvee were destroyed. A third Afghan Army vehicle was 
captured." Three police were killed and four wounded, as was one American 
and one Afghan army soldier. This was hardly a major military engagement, 
but the pro-government forces seem to have got the worst of it and their 
burned out vehicles still stand in the road. 

The loss of life in Afghanistan from air strikes is often worse than in Iraq 
where houses are more modern and usually have basements. In the villages in 
Farah, people were living in compounds with mud brick walls which crumbled 
easily. Pictures of the aftermath of the attack show people standing beside 
the remains of a relative which often only looks like a muddy pile of torn 
meat. One elderly white bearded man, said by neighbours to have lost 30 
members of his family, squats despairingly beside a body that has been torn 
into shreds. Among the few wounded to stay alive is a child with a badly 
burned face. 

One reason why US bombing inflicts such heavy civilian casualties in 
Afghanistan and Iraq is that both are very poor countries in which houses 
are very crowded. When the US used air strikes and heavy artillery with 
little restraint in the siege of Fallujah in 2004 it caused serious loss of 
life. Wedding parties in both countries have often been mistaken for 
"terrorist" gatherings and bombed. 

In Afghanistan opinion polls show that support for the Taliban and for armed 
attacks on foreign forces rises sharply after events like the bombing in 
Farah. President Hamid Karzai frequently criticises the US military for 
wantonly inflicting civilian casualties, attacks which his opponents say is 
an opportunistic effort to burnish his nationalist credentials. 

The Taliban increasingly use tactics developed by insurgents in Iraq, 
notably suicide bombing on a mass scale and IEDs, or mines in the road 
detonated by a control wires or electronically. In Helmand province 
yesterday a suicide bomber killed 12 civilians in an attack on a foreign 
military convoy near the bazaar of the town of Gereshk. No foreign troops 
were killed by the explosion, though two were wounded.