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Afghanistan
Pays Heavy Price for U.S. 9/11 Vengeance
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“The United States, who did this, is a rich country, so why don’t they come and help us now?” |
KABUL,
October 6 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Arefa, a 33-year-old
widow, blinks away tears as she surveys the pulverized ruins of her
house in the Bibi Mahrow district of Kabul and recalls the night one
year ago when a single U.S. bomb destroyed her family.
“Eight
people from my family, everything we owned was gone in a second. A
disaster, a total disaster,” she said, barely able to form the
words.
Arefa
lost her husband and her only son, Ramazan, in the blast which also
killed her husband’s second wife and her five daughters. Two members
of another family were also killed, Agence France-Presse (AFP)
reported.
The
bomb, one of many dropped on the Afghan capital after the October 7,
2001, launch of a U.S.-led campaign against the hard-line Taliban
regime and its Al-Qaeda associates, was apparently aimed at radar
antennae on a nearby hill.
Arefa
herself was staying with a neighbor on the night she lost her husband,
who had only just returned from Iran to protect his family from the
air strikes.
Her
family was among scores of ordinary Afghans who perished under the
“friendly fire” of U.S. forces in Afghanistan
in what Washington has hailed as its most careful military campaign
ever.
A
study published earlier this year by U.S. pressure group Global
Exchange claimed that 812 Afghan civilians had died in 11 of the
country's 31 provinces as a result of the bombing campaign.
Nilfur
Shuja, a Kabul-based spokesman for the group which aims to seek
compensation for the victims of the bombing, said most of the victims
were ordinary Afghan villagers.
“They
were people who the coalition forces claimed lived near Taliban or
Al-Qaeda compounds. But in most cases we saw little evidence of
this,” he said.
“Often
the targets were just schools and mosques or in some cases where there
was Taliban involved, the bombs hit 30 yards (meters) away from their
intended target.”
In
what is considered the most damning blot on the Washington’s
military record in Afghanistan,
an attack by U.S. aircraft on a wedding in remote Uruzgan province
left 48 people dead and 118 wounded.
The
United States claims the bombing was prompted by hostile anti-aircraft
guns in the area, and that coalition aircraft attacked targets near
the wedding village only after they were fired on.
While
the Pentagon accepts that the military operation resulted in civilian
casualties, it has been unwilling to go along with Afghan figures over
the number of casualties.
Other
deeply embarrassing targets of the U.S. campaign have included a
warehouse containing aid supplies and the Kabul office of the
Al-Jazeera television network.
Even
the United States’ coalition allies have suffered under the
misdirected fire of its Afghanistan
campaign.
In
April this year two F-16 jets fired a 500-pound (225 kilo)
laser-guided bomb on Canadian ground forces engaged in a live-fire
exercise near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.
Four
Canadian soldiers were killed in the incident, which has resulted in
manslaughter charges against two U.S. pilots.
According
to U.K. newspaper, the Observer, at least
3,600 Afghan civilians are believed to have been killed since
the conflict began a year ago.
Ten thousand tons of bombs were dropped, 16 Americans
died in combat while 23 were killed in aircraft crashes or on other
duty. Three British soldiers have died, one by friendly fire, two in
an argument. Eight foreign journalists were killed.
Opium
production, banned under the Taliban, has risen from 185 tons in 2001
to 2,700 this year, the Observer reported.
Although
$15 billion in Western aid is needed for reconstruction $4.8
billion has been pledged but so far only $1.8 billion has arrived -
most of which has been spent preventing seven million Afghans from
dying of hunger, the Observer said.
Despite
the death toll, Washington insists its operations in Afghanistan
will go down in history as its least controversial foreign military
exercise.
“The
focus on minimizing civilian casualties was intense from the
beginning,” U.S. Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith claimed during
a recent visit to the Afghan capital.
“I
think it is fair to say, and students of military history will bear
this out, that the campaign here in Afghanistan
was probably the most careful campaign with the minimum amount of
collateral damage in military history.”
In
the back streets of Bibi Mahrow, Arefa will take some convincing.
“I
know they were targeting the Taliban and not us, but it was us they
bombed and they are responsible.
“I
lost my house, I lost all the wealth we had and I do not have anybody
to work to support me.
“The
United States, who did this, is a rich country, so why don’t they
come and help us now?”.
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