Special Forces Kill Pregnant Women, NATO Covers It Up
The excellent Jerome Starkey broke this story last week, about a night raid conducted on Feb. 12 by NATO and Afghan forces near the town of Gardez.
The raid was on the home of a Commander Dawood (who like many Afghans uses only one name,) a well-loved man who had worked closely with US and coalition forces in the area. That night, Dawood was hosting a baby-naming party for his grandson.
At around 3 a.m., one of the musicians at the party went outside to use the toilet, saw a group of armed men near the house and ran back inside to warn the others. Dawood went outside and was immediately shot by a man on the roof.
Dawood’s brother, a government prosecutor in the district was next to die, as he stood in the doorway shouting that he worked for the government, according to an eyewitness I spoke with today.
“He said, ‘We work for the government, we are with you.’ That was when the bullets tore into him,” Mohammad Sabhir, a relative of Dawood and the prosecutor told me. “Three women were standing behind him. When he was killed, they were too.”
One of those women was Sabhir’s wife, Bibi Shirin, who was pregnant and the mother of four children under the age of five. The other was Bibi Saleha, also pregnant. She had 11 children. The third was an 18-year-old bride to be. Her wedding was planned for this summer.
Until today, it was unclear exactly which coalition forces were involved in the raid, though the victim’s families are convinced that Americans were involved.
A senior NATO commander told me this afternoon that it was a joint operation between coalition Special Forces and Afghan Special Forces. He did not know what country the NATO unit came from, but said that 18 NATO contributors have Special Forces operators in Afghanistan.
Apparently the soldiers thought they were targeting a Taliban stronghold. They were wrong.
As if this situation could get any worse, NATO denied killing the women. A press release from their HQ, released after the raid, made it sound as if the women were dead when the soldiers got there, and had been bound and gagged before being murdered execution style. The release also stated that the soldiers had been fired upon as they approached the house.
When Starkey questioned NATO spokesman Rear Admiral Greg Smith, he gave quite possibly the dumbest quote of this war:
“If you have got an individual stepping out of a compound, and if your assault force is there, that is often the trigger to neutralise the individual. You don’t have to be fired upon to fire back.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but in order to “fire back” don’t you first have to be “fired upon?”
But this is semantics.
Five innocent people are dead (not counting the unborn babies) and the entire province is in a rage. The victim’s families have turned down a compensation payment from the government, calling it “blood money.”
“Life means nothing to me now,” Sabhir told me. “If the government does not bring the people who did this to justice my family and I will get revenge on American convoys.”
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Mr.Tobia.Whyel this dose not surprise me much,we have seen this type of thing before. Complaints are not new to the special forces.6o minutes did a item on the special forces that aired in Jan,last year “The quiet professionals” and in that one they accidentally shoot some kids.I would say the cover team could not spin it right this time.And the SF.can by pass McChrystal.Maybe because they work for the CIA.
There’s something common to every culture of the “Judeo-Christian” (and I would include “Islamic”) tradition. When you do something wrong, you can come out of it better liked, or at least not as hated, if you just do the following:
1) Confession
2) Contrition
3) Compensation
The first two are considered “Catholic” terms, but everybody has the concept. You can not mealy-mouth, not-really-an-apology your way out of doing that much harm.
I don’t see any coalition forces going to jail in Afghanistan, not this century. But they could confess error, apologize abjectly and handsomely, and ask humbly what help or compensation could make this right.
This “they ran the roadblock” stuff actually manages to make it much worse.
Frankly, in lieu of a trial, they should at least be able to assure the aggrieved that the perps (sorry, “good guys who made an honest mistake”) will be out of the country immediately, never to return.
I think special forces guys are very career-driven and shipping them home will probably be regarded as a cruel & unusual punishment…which in turn might finally cut down the endless string of these stories we seem to have to endure.
Journalists who watch the war up close in Afghanistan earn my admiration for their fortitude and professional courage.
I have served as an investigative reporter since the late 1960s, operating amdist occasional life-threatening situations within the United States. But even when I was young and courageous (reckless?), I probably would have lacked the whatever-it-takes to report from a war zone.
Every time I post to my T/S blog about the criminal justice system, I realize that the sometimes life-and-death sagas I disseminate about wrongful convictions cannot equal in moral outrage senseless war deaths from Afghanistan and Iraq, among other current locales involving United States soldiers and less obvious operatives.
For me, these invasions that exercise so-called American might have little to do with political ideology, with Democratic or Republican electoral strategies. Instead, I think about the failure of policymakers and the troops doing their bidding to follow the Golden Rule; the ill will taking root around the globe (mixed in with some good will, admittedly); the billions of wasted dollars, money that could go along way to repairing a malfunctioning American criminal justice system.