[iwar] Warcrimes by "Damage Inc."

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Date: 2002-01-28 06:15:28


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Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 14:15:28 -0000
Subject: [iwar] Warcrimes by "Damage Inc."
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January 28, 2002

U.S. RAID

After Green Beret Operation, Townspeople Have Questions About Bound Bodies

By CRAIG S. SMITH

ORUZGAN, Afghanistan, Jan. 27 — No American had visited this
mountain-ringed town recently, residents said today, until early
Thursday, when helicopters dangling Humvees descended from the sky and
spilled shouting, shooting Special Operations forces into two small
compounds, a mile and a half apart. Two hours later, 21 local soldiers
were dead and 27 others had been captured and taken away.

At daybreak, when neighbors and a few who escaped the carnage ventured
back to inspect the damage, they said they found the charred bodies of
more than a dozen men who had been shot and burned in the rooms of one
of the compounds.

Townspeople said they had also found two bodies outside the compound,
their hands tied behind them with strips of tough white plastic.

The Pentagon defends the raid as an appropriate military action. "We
take great care to ensure we are engaging confirmed Taliban or Al
Qaeda facilities," Maj. Bill Harrison, a spokesman for the United
States Central Command in Tampa, Fla., said today. "As a result of
this mission, we detained 27 individuals, and believe that our forces
engaged the intended target."

But in dozens of interviews this weekend, residents in this town about
100 miles north of Kandahar in central Afghanistan said the two-hour
raid before dawn, which ended with an American plane firing at the
compound, was an error.

The compound where the most people died is a former grade school that
was briefly used by the Taliban late in the war, the townspeople say.
More recently, it has been used as a weapons depot for a local
disarmament drive.

At the scene, Ahmad Shah, a wizened farmer whose house is 100 yards
from the school, said he had helped move one of the two bound bodies.
He said "I never had seen anything like" the binding, adding, "It was
very strong, and we couldn't open it and finally had to cut it off."

All the dead have now been buried, so their bodies were not available
for examination.

During the raid, Mr. Shah said he heard people in the compound
shouting: "For God's sake, do not kill us! We surrender!"

All the officials and local commanders interviewed in the area,
including the provincial governor, insist that Taliban and Al Qaeda
fighters are no longer in the area, which has been quiet since the
interim government took power in Kabul on Dec. 22. The local people
expressed surprise that if the United States was worried about an arms
depot, it did not first come to check out the situation, especially
considering the absence of fighting in the area.

Many of the people interviewed here said they suspected that the
United States had been misled by false intelligence information
deliberately spread by one of the two factions in town that were vying
to control weapons left behind by departing Taliban. The weapons had
been collected to put them under the control of the interim
government, as part of a campaign also being carried out elsewhere in
the country.

Many people here suspect that in their infighting, one side or the
other gave a false tip to the American forces in order to destroy its
rival, only to have the Pentagon act against both compounds.
Throughout the war, the Pentagon has solicited local intelligence, but
much of the information is unreliable.

But the Pentagon says it has other ways of getting information,
including U-2 planes and spy satellite reconnaissance photos, Predator
drones and RC-135 planes that collect electronic transmissions. In
this case, Major Harrison declined to say what intelligence the
American forces had relied on.

The people here say there was no notice given to the people in either
compound that they were under any threat. No American intelligence
personnel visited the compounds before the raid, people who were in
them say.

People in the town, describing the dispute between the factions, said
it had been created by a recent change in governors, both of whom were
appointed by Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai. It rested on
who is the rightful district government chief and who has the right to
collect weapons.

Each group had amassed a sizable arsenal during a government-ordered
disarmament program, and in the dispute over who is truly in charge,
neither side has been willing to turn over its weapons.

Sayeed Muhammad, 25, a soldier who had been posted for a month at the
school, said he had wakened to the sound of gunfire shattering the
windows and door of the room in which he and 11 other men were sleeping.

"There was only one gun in the room," Mr. Muhammad said, picking at a
bloody bandage on his foot during an interview tonight. He said Shah
Muhammad, a cousin, had grabbed the gun and started shooting from the
door.

Sayeed Muhammad said the gun, an AK-47, had only four bullets. Many of
the men in the room were killed almost immediately, he said.

"I jumped through the back window and felt something hit my foot as I
did," he said. Outside, he said, he was blinded by the light of a big
vehicle parked 50 yards away. "I ran for the gate, and I don't know
how I made it out alive," he said.

Mr. Muhammad, who wears a black turban that is customary in this area
and which the Taliban adopted, said there had been no Taliban or Al
Qaeda in the compound. "We were working for the governor of the
province and for Hamid Karzai," he said.

Jan Muhammad Khan, who was recently appointed governor of Oruzgan
Province by Mr. Karzai, said in an interview on Saturday that the men
in the compound had been working for him. While the Pentagon has said
the raid was directed at a munitions store, Mr. Khan disputed that,
saying the men at the compound had been collecting weapons left behind
by departing Taliban.

Sayeed Muhammad said he had watched from a nearby mosque as the
gunfire and shouting died down and a helicopter landed atop the
schoolhouse, apparently to retrieve the American troops. Within
minutes of the helicopter's departure, Mr. Muhammad said, a large
plane fired what he believed were rockets into the compound.

The Pentagon says the munitions at the school were destroyed by fire
from an AC-130U, a flying warship, but neither room in the school used
to store weapons was seriously damaged. Both still held mortar rounds
and cannon shells. Residents said looters had taken lighter weapons,
including hundreds of AK-47's.

In the compound, two letters on Taliban letterhead were retrieved from
the room where the charred bodies of compound's two commanders were
found. One urges an unidentified district government chief to return
AK-47's seized from someone described as "our friend." The other
discusses a prisoner exchange. Neither is dated.

Among other papers retrieved from the room was a letter calling for
support of the loya jirga, a tribal congress that is to meet this year.

Neighbors of the school, as well as Mr. Muhammad and another soldier
who escaped from the compound, said the school had been used by local
Taliban officials during their last weeks in power.

Without being told of the Taliban letters, Mr. Muhammad was asked if
the Taliban had left anything behind. He pointed to the room in which
the letters were found and said the Taliban had left some papers there.

When shown the letters, Mr. Muhammad and the other soldier said they
predated their commanders' presence in the compound.

At dawn, people who live near the schoolhouse recalled, they had
gathered in the courtyard to collect the dead, 19 in that compound.

Obiad Ullah, 37, said he had found a man named Abdul Rauf lying on a
pile of stones that morning. Mr. Rauf's body was covered with blood,
and his hands were bound behind him with a plastic strip.

Mr. Shah, the farmer who lives near the school, said he had found the
other dead man, Shah Muhammad, lying face down near the compound's
gate. One of his thigh bones was protruding from his leg, and half of
one foot was missing, this witness said. His hands, too, were bound
behind his body.

The 27 who were captured came from the other compound, where two
people were reported killed. Muhammad Yunas, one of two men claiming
to be Oruzgan's district government chief, who controlled that
compound, said that after the soldiers and their captives were gone,
gunfire and rockets rained from the sky, destroying the ammunition dump.

Mr. Yunas said he had found a piece of paper showing an American flag
on the windshield of one of the compound's destroyed trucks. Large
letters on the paper read, "God Bless America," and in one corner,
someone had written: "Have a nice day. From Damage, Inc."


Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information



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