|
 At
5:00am Sunday, October 14th, IslamOnline's correspondent Hossbanollah
Abdel-Baki left
the city of Peshawar from the Valley of Khyber Road, heading to
the city of Jalalabad, the first Afghani city on the
Pakistani-Afghani border. There was one aim for this mission:
to find out what really happened in Koram after U.S. bombs hit the
village on the night of October 11th.
The
Khyber Pass is the main gateway into the South Asian peninsula.
Coming from the opposite direction, this valley leads to the
Torkham gateway taking you to Afghanistan, the graveyard of
tyrants and empires, as Afghans choose to describe their country.
On October 16th, Torkham gateway was reopened for those coming
into Afghanistan from Pakistan. Thousands of trucks loaded with
flour and foodstuffs waited on the Pakistani side of the border
for permission to enter Afghanistan.
On the side of the road were four ambulances waiting for the
arrival of injured from Afghanistan's interior.
A man injured on October 7th was carried by an ambulance to a
hospital in Peshawar.
 After
crossing the gateway, there were tens of trucks carrying apples
and grapes waiting to enter Pakistan to be sold in the markets.
However, there are hardly any stores open in Torkham's markets on
either side of the gateway, except for the odd coffee shop here
and there.
The gateway's closure has caused a severe drop in the number of
people visiting the marketplace.
Upon
reaching Jalalabad, the correspondent was on his way to the
demolished village of Koram. Koram, in the Pashtun language, means
"low place", suiting the place perfectly, as the village
lies low among the surrounding mountains.
It is an isolated village in Sarkhrod province, and lies among the
high mountains of Torgar (the Black Mountain), 40 kilometers away
from Jalalabad.
The village includes 25 to 30 homes, built primitively with rocks,
and is inhabited by families of the Pashtun tribe
"Naser", who are cattle breeders.
The Naser tribe is poor and does not own farmland or participate
in trade activities. There is not a single tree in the entire
village, and all they own is a small water spring from which they
and their cattle take turns to drink. They get most of their
foodstuff from other villages in the nearby plains, and most of
them eat cornbread year-round, because it is cheaper than the corn
itself.
They obtain what they need of life's necessities from the money
they receive from selling sheep, their wool, as well as firewood,
gathered by the women from the mountains.
 At
around 5am, and once again at 6am, the village came under heavy
attack from U.S. planes and bombs, resulting in the death of
nearly 200 of the village's residents, the injury of 17, the
demolition of the entire village and the perishing of nearly 1,000
head of cattle, according to Taliban officials and villagers who
survived the attacks.
Koram did not attend Friday prayers and heard no azan (call for
prayer) that day.
One of the village residents, Taza Jil Bin Sayed Rahman, lost 13
members of his family, including three children. He said,
"There are many villagers who are missing till now, we fear
that they may be under the ruins of the houses and caves around
the village to which people ran to for shelter during the attacks.
"The search for bodies still continues by the help of the
youth of nearby villages."
Taza Jil said that he found the body of his 70-year-old mother a
day after the attack in one of the caves, under the dust and
ruins.
The remains of Koram and its land are filled with animal carcasses
and pieces of yet unidentified flesh: is it human, or animal? The
air of the village has turned putrid, driving people away. 
Thamar Jil, a composed, seemingly educated, man, one of the
distinguished members of the Naser tribe who also lost a large
number of relatives and friends in the attack, spoke of Koram:
"There are only 48 members of the village remaining, 17
injured and the rest have moved to nearby villages. The number of
martyrs has reached 201."
His eyes wander round, and he continues: "Five American
planes attacked the village twice with a number of cruise
missiles. The inhabitants of nearby villages came to rescue the
injured and to carry the dead. Some of them were injured during
the second attack."
Thamar
Jil fears that other nearby Naser tribe villages will also become
victim to attacks in the future. There are 13 Naser villages in
the Torgar Mountains, he said, adding that there were only eight
cows and 40 goats left now in Koram. In the past, each family
owned nearly 60 to 80 head of cattle.
With sorrow, Thamar Jil complains about the Muslim countries
complying with U.S. policies, and who are not attempting to
investigate what really happened in Koram. "We have no means
to defend ourselves and our country against the U.S. strikes. If
the United States wants to face us, let them send their ground
troops so we shall remind them of the lessons we gave to the
British and Russians. We shall fight America with our strong faith
and beliefs. For Islam, we can sacrifice not just 200 lives but
two million and more, because we believe in the hereafter and the
eternal bliss in Heaven."
Thamar Jil added that they dug a big hole where torn-off limbs are
buried.
"We were unable to even bury our women. Nearby villagers
helped us carry the martyrs, including women, and to bury them in
their villages."
Speaking about the reasons for the attack, Thamar Jil said,
"There is not Arab or Arab training center here. We were
under attack only because we are Muslims."
 He
angrily criticized the Pakistani government for cooperating with
the United States in its attacks against Afghanistan and for
providing its airports and military bases for the U.S. He asked
Pakistan to send American ground forces to Afghanistan to be
fought against.
Thamar Jil also thanked the Pakistani people for their support of
the Afghani people during both during the Soviet and American
attacks.
He also blamed the Saudi government for standing by the United
States and not opposing what it is doing to Muslims. "Islam
spread from that Holy Land and it should always be protecting
Muslims everywhere in the world."
Nearby, inhabitants of the villages of Qala No and Banda left
their homes fearing future U.S. strikes.
In Jalalabad's hospital, one of those injured in Koram Lala Jil
said that five members of his family were killed and eight
injured.
Another injured person, Stan Jil, said: "We were fourteen
members in the family. Twelve were martyred and only my wife and I
are remaining injured in the hospital."
Among those injured was a six-month-old child, and among those who
died from injuries sustained in the attacks was a one-month-old
child.
 Sipping
green tea, the people of Jalalabad are now trying to use their
experience with the Soviets to make sense of what is happening now
in Afghanistan, and to interpret recent events.
Among
these interpretations are:
-
This
village was the center for Engineer Mahmoud Ahmad, one of the
past mujahideen (fighter) leaders who was part of the Younes
Khales Islamic party. Because of this previous and out-dated
information, the Americans expected that the area has become a
center for the Taliban, and so struck it using old maps
provided to them by the Soviets.
-
The
Americans probably received misinformation about the village
stating there was training center for al-Qaeda, or Arab
families or bin Laden, hiding in the village.
-
Koram's
geographical location, between high, isolated mountains, led
the Americans to think that it has centers for training, or
that it harbors some members of al-Qaeda, and hence, it was
attacked.
-
This
village was purposely hit to scare people away from the
Taliban and al-Qaeda.
-
The
attacks were targeted against Muslims to heal America's pain.
-
There
was a rumor in Jalalabad that bin Laden asked the people of
the village to leave and move elsewhere before it was struck,
in return for a monthly stipend of 1500 Pakistani Rupees for
each family. This was to allow al-Qaeda families to leave
their known homes in Jalalabad for the village.
But
those surviving the attacks strongly refuted those rumors, for
they lived through it.
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