EurasiaNet Eurasia Insight - "Why Do They Use Bombs?": Grieving Afghans Demand Answers

EURASIA INSIGHT

"WHY DO THEY USE BOMBS?": GRIEVING AFGHANS DEMAND ANSWERS
Halima Kazem 7/03/02

On July 1, roughly 40 Afghan civilians died and 100 suffered injuries when American bombs fell on the southern province of Oruzgan. 25 members of a wedding party, many of them women and children, died. Transitional president Hamid Karzai angrily called for a full explanation from American commanders. As grisly as this scene was, for some Afghans it evoked memories along with sorrow. "When I heard about the bombing in Oruzgan, I thought the day I lost my kids had returned," said Sahibad, a Kabul resident who survived American bombings in the fall of 2001. "My heart bleeds for the families who now have to dig through the rubble for their loved ones, like I did."

American officials have confronted grieving survivors of errant bombs before, but the July 1 episode � which the Pentagon has promised to investigate � may damage support for US maneuvers in Afghanistan. "The people that are supposed to help us are hurting us," said Sahibad. "We don’t want to start hating Americans, but if they keep making mistakes like this, we have no choice." Sahibad lives in eastern Kabul and says he works 14-hour days as a house cleaner at a guesthouse in Kabul’s ritzy Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood, where many local and foreign dignitaries stay. Last October he lost two children, aged nine and one, to an anti-Taliban bomb.

Fighting back tears, Sahibad describes how his children died. "My little girl had kneeled down in front of the window, she was fascinated by the US planes flying over our home. Those were the same planes that took her life minutes later." He wiped a stray tear from his chin, continuing the story. Sahibad says his infant son’s body flew halfway across the house when the bomb hit, but he could not recover the little boy’s body before he spent several days digging through rubble. The corpse had ended up tangled in the family’s living room carpet, he says.

Though the US-led campaign swiftly ousted the Taliban, Sahibad questions the campaign’s huge reliance on aerial attacks. "Why do they use bombs, it is such an inaccurate way of getting the enemy," he said. "One slip of the hand and you could kill hundreds or thousands of people."

Whatever happened on July 1 might have involved bad intelligence or bad execution, but it was certainly a slip. Initial reports say that American-led forces were flying over Oruzgan’s Deh Rawud district at 1am, when they came under fire from wedding revelers in the village of Kakarak, who were firing weapons in the air to celebrate. This is a tradition in many parts of rural Afghanistan. Probably under the assumption that this was enemy fire, locals say, planes fired on the target. Apparently one bomb went 3,000 meters off target, hitting the village. A group of officials from the US military, the Afghan government and the US Embassy in Kabul are currently in the bombed area, assessing the damage. Americans have dismissed the idea that planes responded to festive firing, calling the shots too orderly to be joyful, and have instead focused on the possibility that the victims may have been standing near an antiaircraft site.

Americans say AC-130 gunships may have been tracking al-Qaida fighters. But Afghan politicians want a deeper explanation. In a statement released by the Afghan Foreign Ministry, President Hamid Karzai "called officials and commanders of the United States forces to his office and strongly advised them of the grave concern and sorrow" after the civilian deaths. Karzai insisted that coalition forces "take all necessary measures to ensure that military activities to capture terrorist groups do not harm innocent Afghan civilians."

Karzai, some suspect, spoke with unprecedented anger as a result of pressure from fellow ethnic Pashtuns. Ongoing US-led military activity has shaken Pashutn-dominated areas like Kandahar, which had been the Taliban’s southern capital. If Afghans feel threatened by the American forces, they could become more sympathetic to extremists, making antiterror efforts more dangerous.

Unofficial reports estimate that thousands of Afghans have died by "friendly fire" during US bombing campaigns since October 2001. [For more information see the Eurasia Insight archives.] "I don’t think the US wants to kill poor Afghans but I just don’t know what the answer is," said Sahibad. Sahibad says the fact that neither the United States nor the Afghan government offered any aid to survivors of bombings makes matters worse. "I lost my home and my two children and never had anything returned to me," said Sahibad. (American officials have reportedly paid US dollars to survivors of an errant February raid in Kandahar.)

While Sahibad expresses sorrow, eight-year-old Ameena shows only anger. In autumn 2001, Ameena says, an American bomb hit her house in the northern city of Kunduz. "In one second I lost my mother, my six siblings, my cousins and my auntie. The house fell right on top of them," Ameena said. Ameena’s father, barely alive, was pulled out from under the rubble. His family says he has spent the last six months in bed suffering from nightmares and delusions.

Ameena’s uncle laughed nervously at the little girl’s furious report. "She is too young to understand how complicated these situations are. I sometimes get very angry when I miss my family, but other times I think for every one of my family members that died that day, a million Afghans were saved from the brutality of the Taliban," said Ameena’s uncle.

Ameena is less forgiving, "I just wish I could play with my brothers and sisters like I used to, I hate who ever did this to me," she said. When asked whether she wants to go to America, she says, "No, I don’t like America."

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