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Project
start: September 25, 2004
The
Afghan Victim Memorial Project:
An
Online Memorial to the civilians killed by the U.S. Bombing, Invasion
and Occupation of Afghanistan after September 11th
List of Individual Victims – The
Obama presidency since January 21, 2009
Documentation
of Innocent Afghans Killed by Commander-in-Chief Obama’s
Military since January 21, 2009 “Change
You (and Afghans) Can Believe In”?
======================================================================================
 Sat
Jan 24, 7:35 AM ET
Afghans
protest against a raid by U.S.-led coalition forces in the Mehtar Lam
district of Laghman province which they said killed civilians January
24, 2009. U.S.-led coalition forces killed 15 militants, including a
woman, during an operation targeting a Taliban commander in the eastern
Afghan province of Laghman overnight, the U.S. military said Saturday.
A provincial Afghan official and a village elder told Reuters up to 22
civilians had been killed during the raid, an assertion denied by the
U.S. military, which said it had no reports of civilian deaths "at this
point. REUTERS/Rafiq Shirzad (AFGHANISTAN)
To
use the language of the U.S. military propaganda establishment, “yet again, this shows the [insurgents'] U.S’
complete disregard for innocent Afghan civilians."
The
following data base picks up where the prior ones covering the Bush
years left off. Supporting
documentation (usually involving multiple sources) exists for each of
the incidents reported herein. The
aim is to provide as accurate as possible accounts of U.S. and/or NATO
attacks which caused the deaths of innocent Afghans and/or
tribespersons living in the Afghan-Pakistan borderlands. U.S, NATO,
official Afghan, and most of the western media go to great lengths to
censor either by commission (lying) or omission (silence) reports of
such attacks. We can expect redoubled efforts at such censorship and
disinformation under the Obama regime with powerful assists provided by
the humanitarian imperialists (such as Soros-funded Human Rights Watch,
National Public Radio, Harvard’s Carr Center, and the like).
Obama simply redefines the old Bush policies and
tactics in Afghanistan which largely remain in place, in Operation Redefinition:
 March 31, 2009. To see click on http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=222759&title=redefinition-accomplished Further details in Peter Baker, “The Words Have Changed, but Have the Policies,” New York Times (April 2, 2009) at http://www.e-ariana.com/ariana/eariana.nsf/allDocs/4B45C0BE085482E18725758C004DE0C2?OpenDocument
Herschel
Smith in his “Captain’s Journal” on April 13, 2009, a very pro-military
website, wrote about the U.S. Marine assault on April 1, 2009 upon Now Zad in
Helmand province. After describing the U.S. Marines’ move into Now Zad, Smith
posted a photo with the following commentary,
“That was the answer we were
looking for…
God Bless the U.S. Marines in
Now Zad, Afghanistan”
All that was missing was a prancing Dallas
Cowboy cheerleader - MWH.
Source: http://www.captainsjournal.com/category/now-zad/
___________________________________________________________________________
From older men to younger girls, the U.S
and NATO forces
spare no one in their “democracy of death” excused by apologies for
“collateral
damage.”
A middle school principal, Qabol Khan, was
killed while
driving a car by U.S. forces in Khost on February 6/7, 2009. The young
girl was
killed by U.S forces on September 9, 2008, in the massacre at Azizbad.
In
a rare example of independent photo journalism, Lynsey Addario (New
York Times, February 19, 2009))
published photos of some wounded victims of U.S/NATO actions in
Afghanistan.
The first photo shows Gul Juma, 9, who lost her arm in a NATO attack in
Sangin
village in December 2008. The second photo shows legless Rabia, 70,
living in a
Kabul refugee camp whose husband and son were killed by NATO forces.
The third
photo shows Syed Mohammad, 67, in his home in the Hotkeil neighborhood
of
eastern Kabul. U.S. Special Forces and their Afghan satraps burst into
his home
and executed four members of his family.
============================================================
An unarmed Afghan man executed
on March 5, 2008
outside
Hyderabad, Kandahar Province. An unarmed Afghan man was stopped at a
checkpoint by Sgt. Joseph D. Newell, 39, of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd US
Special Forces Group from Ft. Bragg (N.C.). The Afghan man was shot by
Newell who then cut off the dead man’s ear. Newell was charged with
premeditated murder and mutilating a dead body. An Afghan who served as
a translator to Newell's Special Forces team testified that the victim
had his hands in his pockets while being questioned and subsequently
shot by Newell, and that the victim's hands remained in his pockets
after the killing. According to defense lawyers, Newell believed the
unidentified Afghan to be a Taliban insurgent who posed a threat to
him. On February 25, 2009, a U.S. military jury acquitted Newell.
Justice in America?
Killed by a US Special Forces Master Sergeant with U.S. 3rd Special Forces Group ============================================================
U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan Kill with Utter Impunity.
In
memory of
Abdul Habib
Mohammed Ali, brother of Abdul
between
1-2 AM, January 16, 2008
in a two-family house in
Kandahar city. Neil Durkin of Amnesty International (certainly not Human Rights
Watch) wrote in the British daily, The
Telegraph, about this incident in its issue of February 27, 2009, that is
more than 13 months after the murderous attack by U.S. Special Forces based at
Firebase Gecko:
Between 1-2am on the rainy night of 16
January 2008, a large number of international military personnel wearing desert
camouflage surrounded the house of two brothers living in a two-family house in
Kandahar. According to various family members, the soldiers knocked loudly on
the door. One of the brothers, Abdul Habib, went to answer it and was shot. Numerous
soldiers ("the Americans", say the family) dragged Abdul out into the
courtyard and shot him at least five more times. Then, inside the house, the
soldiers saw the other brother - Mohammed Ali - running up the stairs from his
basement dwelling and he too was hit by at least seven rounds and killed
instantly. Members of the household say that soldiers then searched everywhere
("they even opened a package of biscuits"), found nothing (no
weapons, nothing else) and left.
This is the family's account, in some
respects backed up by neighbours. Is it accurate? You could try asking the US
command at the local base - "Firebase Gecko". Except they don't want
to talk about it. NATO has denied any involvement, while local Afghan police
are apparently staying out of it (local residents say that the police who
operate a permanent checkpoint near the brothers' home were specifically told
by the soldiers shortly before the incident not to respond if they heard
gunfire).
The UN
expert Philip Alston has tried to investigate the case, noting that the
victims "are widely acknowledged, even by well-informed government
officials, to have had no connection to the Taliban". He's got nothing out
of the US commander about what happened. In fact Firebase Gecko is widely
perceived as untouchable, not least because US Special Forces ("other
government agencies" like the CIA) operate from there.
Executed in middle of the night by U.S. Special Forces
============================================================
Featured
article: What Napoleon Can Teach Obama About Guerrilla Warfare The Huffington Post
06/12/2009
By Sheldon Filger
For
nearly eight years, the United States has been engaged in a
low-intensity conflict of high stakes in Afghanistan. Prior to 9/11,
this impoverished, mountainous nation was regarded by Washington as an
anachronistic backwater, ceasing to be a strategically important entity
since the withdrawal of the Soviet Union's army of occupation, followed
soon after by the demise of that former superpower. It was only with
the realization that the Taliban regime in Kabul had furnished a
non-state actor, Al-Qaeda, with an operational base for planning the
onslaught that killed thousands of Americans in New York City,
Washington, DC and Pennsylvania that U.S. geopolitical calculations
involving South Asia were transformed.
Ironically, even after
9/11, the Bush administration still considered Afghanistan somewhat of
a backwater theatre of operations, choosing to mount its major military
effort in Iraq, a country that did not attack America. For most of the
last eight years, the battle against a resurgent Taliban has been
fought by a small contingent of U.S. troops, reinforced by a dozen or
more NATO allies involving a multitude of microscopic deployments, each
with its own unique rules of engagement. The opposition to the Islamist
forces in Afghanistan can best be described as a multi-headed hydra
mounted on a small body. Military specialists, especially those with
expertise on counterinsurgency and partisan warfare, would not be
surprised at the current negative character of the war in Afghanistan,
which has spilled over into Pakistan, in the process destabilizing that
nuclear-armed state.
President Barack Obama has long been
opposed to the military adventure in Iraq, on the grounds that it had
dangerously distracted the United States from focusing on crushing
Al-Qaeda and its allies in Afghanistan. History has already validated
Obama's assessment on what the correct priority should have been for
the U.S. armed forces. The question now facing Obama and his
administration is what strategy to pursue in Afghanistan. The fragments
that have emerged so far seem to indicate two trends: modestly
reinforce the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan, while linking the
Taliban and Al-Qaeda presence in neighboring Pakistan to the overall
theater of operations.
Will President Obama's approach on
Afghanistan prove more efficacious than that of George W. Bush? The
lessons of history raise doubts that deserve serious reflection. The
United States has not had a stellar record in winning wars against
determined insurgents fighting a fierce guerrilla war. Vietnam is a
conspicuous reminder that even hundreds of thousands of American
troops, backed by massive technical means and a powerful airforce,
cannot guarantee victory.
There is a voice from the distant past
who has something to say that is highly relevant to the military
challenges facing the U.S. military in Afghanistan. The Swiss military
theoretician, Antoine Henri Jomini, served as a senior staff officer in
Napoleon's army during the Peninsular War. This brutal conflict, fought
on the Iberian Peninsula, began with the occupation of Spain by the
French army. The population revolted, leading to a savage conflict that
gave rise to the term "guerrilla war." The British sent a small but
well disciplined professional army to aid the Spanish insurgents, under
the command of the Duke of Wellington. In five years the combined army
of Spanish guerrillas and British regular troops utterly defeated the
French. Napoleon's defeat in the Peninsular War, combined with his
forced retreat from Russia, brought about his ultimate downfall.
When
writing his seminal work, Art of War, Jomini applied the lessons he had
learned during the Peninsular War to form general principals and
doctrine on guerrilla and insurgent conflicts. The principals he laid
down align with the American experience in Afghanistan with chilling
relevance.
"When the people are supported by a considerable
nucleus of disciplined troops, the difficulties are particularly
great," wrote Jomini. "The invader has only an army, whereas his
adversaries have both an army and a people in arms, making means of
resistance out of everything and with each individual conspiring
against the common enemy."
With centuries of virtually
uninterrupted warfare, including a brutal Soviet occupation that the
Afghans successfully resisted, a large component of the country's male
population is well trained in small arms tactics, making expert use of
their land's barren and mountainous terrain. Just as Wellington's
troops added stiffening to the ranks of the Spanish guerrilla fighters,
there exists a large corps of veteran fighters, including commanders,
that multiplies the effectiveness of the younger insurgents joining the
ranks of the Taliban in sufficient numbers to extend the conflict
indefinitely.
Jomini provides a description of what he learned
about insurgencies in the Peninsular War, lessons that are applicable
two centuries later in the mountains of Afghanistan:
These
obstacles become almost insurmountable when the country is difficult.
Each armed inhabitant knows the smallest paths and their connections;
he finds everywhere a relative or friend who aids him. The commanders
also know the country and, learning immediately the slightest movement
on the part of the invader, can adopt the best measures to defeat his
projects. The enemy, without information of their movements and not in
a condition to reconnoiter, having no resource but in his bayonets and
certain of safety only in the concentration of his columns, is like a
blind man. His combinations are failures. When, after the most
carefully concerted movements and the most rapid and fatiguing marches
he thinks he is about to accomplish his aim and deal a terrible blow,
he finds no signs of the enemy but his campfires. So while, like Don
Quixote, he is attacking windmills, his adversary is on his line of
communications, destroys the detachments left to guard it, surprises
his convoys and his depots, and carries on a war so disastrous for the
invader that he must inevitably yield after a time.
Unless
President Barack Obama restores the military draft, raises an army of
several hundred thousand soldiers to occupy and guard every vital
installation in Afghanistan, and convinces the American people that
they must sustain such a massive occupation for possibly decades, and
accept substantial casualties and massively increased military
expenditures, he will lack the means to challenge the insurgency in a
decisive manner. As commander in chief, therefore, Obama is faced with
two choices. He either maintains the status quo with slightly more
troops, which will mean only prolonged stalemate. Or he can refocus
U.S. objectives on the limited goal of ensuring Afghanistan never again
allows its territory to be used as a base to attack the United States.
The
first choice only promises a higher list of dead and maimed Americans,
and frightful expenditures at a time of profound economic and financial
crisis. The latter choice opens up the possibility of a negotiated
resolution of the conflict, leading to the attainment of U.S. national
security objectives without the permanent occupation of a land
historically hostile to all foreign armies.
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