Most of the incidents in which U.S. or Coalition forces kill civilians involve air strikes. The story excerpted below reports an incident in which ground-troops apparently overreacted to a suicide bomb attack, machine-gunning many civilians as they drove away. Subsequent news reports indicated that the U.S. military’s own investigation found evidence that the Marines did indeed react irresponsibly.
The event described below event contrasts sharply with how Spanish NATO forces in Afghanistan interact with Afghans. On a recent trip to New Zealand, my wife and I met a Spanish Army Captain who was on temporary leave from his duties in Afghanistan. He told us that the Spanish Army in Afghanistan makes an effort to interact peacefully and productively with the locals. Instead of focusing on finding and capturing Taliban and Al Qaeda, they focus on humanitarian efforts such as building water infrastructure, bridges, and schools. He told us that not a single Spanish soldier has been killed in Afghanistan.
New York Times, 15 April 2007
U.S. Marines Assailed for Response to Bomb
by Carlotta Gall
New York Times
Kabul — U.S. Marines reacted to a bomb ambush in eastern Afghanistan last month with excessive force, hitting groups of bystanders and vehicles with machine gun fire in a rampage that covered 10 miles of highway and left 12 civilians dead, including an infant and three elderly men, according to a report published by an Afghan human rights organization…
Families of the victims said … that they had demanded justice from the U.S. military and the Afghan government, and they described the aftermath of the Marines’ shooting, which occurred in Nangarhar province.
One 16-year-old newly married girl was cut down while she was carrying a bundle of grass to her family’s farmhouse, according to her family and the report. A 75-year-old man walking to his shop was hit by so many bullets that his son did not recognize the body when he came to the scene.
In the weeks immediately after the episode, the U.S. military began an investigation, and it is now exploring possible criminal charges, senior military officials said. The Marines involved in the episode are being kept in Afghanistan, but the rest of their 120-man company has been pulled out of the country.
A U.S. spokesman in Afghanistan, Lt. Col. David Accetta, said … that the military was … approving condolence payments for families of the wounded and dead…
In its report, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission condemned the suicide bomb attack that initially struck a convoy of a Marine Special Operations unit on March 4, wounding one American, and said there may also have been small-arms fire directed at the convoy immediately after the blast.
But it said the response was disproportionate, especially given the obviously nonmilitary nature of the Marine’s targets long after the ambush.
“In failing to distinguish between civilians and legitimate military targets, the U.S. Marines Corps Special Forces employed indiscriminate force,” the report said. “Their actions thus constitute a serious violation of international humanitarian standards.”
The bombing and subsequent shooting were the most high-profile of a number of alleged human rights violations documented by the human rights commission. The report comes amid resurgent Taliban violence and coalition reprisals that are costing an increasing number of civilian lives and have brought harsh criticism of the government and international forces.
…
A spokesman for the military’s Central Command said the human rights commission’s report had been forwarded to Adm. William Fallon, the senior U.S. officer in the region, for review.
The deputy director of the commission, Nader Nadery, warned that incidents like the highway shooting have greatly contributed to outrage in Afghanistan, undermining efforts by coalition forces to win people’s support away from the Taliban.
“There is a high level of frustration among the public and civilians that they are victims of both sides of the conflict,” he said.
The suicide bomb attack happened about 500 yards along the road from the bridge that gives the village its name, White Bridge, on the main highway about 25 miles east of the town of Jalalabad.
A man driving a minibus in the opposite direction to the Marine unit exploded his vehicle as he passed the convoy of five or six humvees, according to the commission’s report, which was drawn from interviews with witnesses, police officers, community leaders, and hospital officials.
One Marine was wounded by shrapnel from the blast, it said.
In the days after the episode, the U.S. military said that the convoy had come under a “complex ambush from several directions,” but the human rights commission questioned this.
Two humvees then moved forward 500 yards to the bridge and opened fire with roof-mounted machine guns on a car that had stopped on a side road. The gunners then swung their weapons around and began firing on the nearby riverbed and fields. They killed six people instantly and wounded at least another, the report said.
The driver of the car, a veteran mujahadeen fighter named Lewanai, 45, was wounded but survived … by diving out of his door and scrambling behind a mound of earth. The big guns shredded his car and the three people inside: his father, Hajji Zarpadshah, 80; his uncle, Hajji Shin Makhe, 75; and his nephew, Farid Gul, 16. Nadery said that the vehicle had been hit by 250 bullets. “It was an illegal action,” said Lewanai… “I know the Army rules, and when I heard the blast I stopped my car, I was thinking in case they shoot me,” he said in an interview. “They opened fire and were shooting for 10 minutes.”
