In memory of

Abdul Kareem’s trucker companion

died on December 17, 2001

on the highway between Kandahar and Qalat, ten days after the Taliban abandoned Kandahar. Kareem was driving a fuel truck as part of a 3-truck convoy. A hovering U.S warplane dropped a bomb on the lead tanker which exploded (presumably killing its driver). The second tanker caught fire. Kareem pulled his handbrake, crashed through the window, and found himself in Kandahar’s Mir Wais Hospital. From a ditch, he watched an AC-130 gunship strafe the immobilized tanker trucks. From his hospital bed, Kareem said that the U.S attack “was not a mistake…they saw…they even saw the people and shot at them and didn’t allow them to run away. They knew they were civilians.”

U.S war planes including an AC-130 gunship