Beltway Area Indymedia

An independent Afghan human rights commission report released today shows that U.S. Marines committed indiscriminate killings in the Nangahar province of Afghanistan on the morning of March 4, 2007. A platoon of Elite Special Operations Marines shot at occupied cars and bystanders that “reports uniformly indicate … were exclusively civilian in nature and that no kind of provocative or threatening behavior on their part preceded the attacks.” The Afghans were killed in several locations along a 16-kilometer stretch of road.

The report, which is available at http://www.aihrc.org.af/Investigatoin.pdf , was based on numerous interviews, including of victims, eyewitnesses, clinic and hospital officials, Afghan National Police representatives, and local leaders. The researchers also made numerous visits to the scene and observed the available physical evidence.

Evidence shows that Marines killed at least 12 people, and wounded at least 35. Those shot include a one-year-old, a four-year-old, and elderly villagers. Witnesses saw Marines attack people in taxis, a woman in a yard, and people in a bus.

The Marines’ indiscriminate killing apparently followed a suicide attack on the Marines by a vehicle borne improvised explosive device (VBIED). No Marines were killed in that attack, although one was wounded by shrapnel, as were some Afghan civilian bystanders. Then, US Marines unleashed volleys of fire on numerous Afghanis that reports show the Marines had no reason to believe were involved.

U.S. officials claimed the Marine unit came under small arms fire following the VBIED attack. The day after the attack, US military spokesman Maj. William Mitchell was quoted in a BBC News Release saying, “we believe it’s possible that the incoming fire from the ambush was wholly or partially responsible for the civilian casualties.”

However, the report notes, “every single Afghan civilian and official interviewed strongly denied the occurrence of an SAF [small arms fire] attack on US forces.” A surviving driver said, “I was following a road leading to the main road about 500 meters away from the site of the explosion in the Spin Pul area. My car was stopped 40 meters away from the ISAF convoy, which was on the main road. Suddenly they opened fire on my car and shot more than 240 bullets. I myself jumped out of the car and got injured, but my father, friend and my nephew were killed in the car.”

The report notes, “If such an [small arms] attack [on US forces] did indeed occur, as is claimed by the US military, it was almost certainly very limited in scope and restricted to the immediate site of the VBIED incident. Accordingly, the suggestion that the incoming fire from the ambush was to a major part responsible for the civilian casualties does not appear to be accurate. ”

The US military itself has apparently backed away from this assertion. The Washington Post reports that, “U.S. officials familiar with the report by the constitutionally mandated Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission said its findings are ‘troubling’ and consistent with the U.S. military's preliminary investigation.”

The Washington Post ran an article in today’s paper about the report, which had been made available in draft form at the time. Although it noted some of the key findings, it also ignored and distorted other important findings. The article fails to mention threatening of journalists and destruction of their photos, and bizarrely refers to the Marines’ killing spree of civilians who had nothing to do with any attack a “counterattack.”

The Post article does not say a word about journalists being threatened and their images deleted. However, the human rights commission’s report notes that seven journalists representing eight news organizations reported that their access to the area was hindered and their images deleted. At least one journalist explained that his life was threatened by the military. The cameraman said he was told, “delete the photographs or we will delete you.” Another journalist reported that he was told through a translator that, “if any of this incident is released or shown on any media then the reporter will face the consequences.”

The human rights commission report concluded, “In the aftermaths of the attack several journalists were hindered from accessing the site and some were expressly threatened and forced to delete all pictures and videos they had taken. This obstructed the ability of the media to seek, receive and impart information about the incident and so constitutes a violation of the right to freedom of expression.”

One would hope that threatening the life of journalists for exercising their democratic rights, particularly under the mantle of spreading “freedom” and “democracy” would be worth prominently reporting. This intimidation is even more alarming given the larger pattern of attacking known media outlets, imprisoning and reportedly torturing journalists, and even killing journalists in “liberated” Afghanistan and Iraq.

For example, on April 8, 2003, US tanks fired on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, which was widely known to house numerous journalists. Two journalists were killed and three injured. The Nation reported on attacks on Al Jazeera on 12/1/05:

"The United States bombed [Al Jazeera] offices in Afghanistan in 2001, shelled the Basra hotel where Al Jazeera journalists were the only guests in April 2003, killed Iraq correspondent Tareq Ayoub a few days later in Baghdad and imprisoned several Al Jazeera reporters (including at Guantánamo), some of whom say they were tortured. In addition to the military attacks, the US-backed Iraqi government banned the network from reporting in Iraq.

"Then in late November came a startling development: Britain's Daily Mirror reported that during an April 2004 White House meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, George W. Bush floated the idea of bombing Al Jazeera's international headquarters in Qatar. … The meeting took place on April 16, at the peak of the first US siege of Falluja, and Al Jazeera was one of the few news outlets broadcasting from inside the city. Its exclusive footage was being broadcast by every network from CNN to the BBC."

The stated reason for deleting reporters’ photos of the aftermath of the March 4 massacre was “investigative integrity.” The chief of staff to the top U.S. commander in eastern Afghanistan, Colonel Victor Petrenko said “civil and military authorities will reluctantly exercise the right to control what a journalist is permitted to document” for ”investigative integrity.” The suggestion that destroying evidence — in this case independent photos taken from afar — could increase the integrity of an investigation is absurd, as is the assertion that occupying military authorities have a “right to control what journalists can document.” The much more plausible reason would be that the military did not want evidence of the mass killing and the Marines’ culpability to be released.

Indeed, a cameraman shooting for the Associated Press whose work was deleted reportedly contained pictures of the dead civilians. The implausible March 5 claim by the US spokesperson that all of the dead could have been the result of an attack on the Marines also points to the obvious conclusion: that the military wanted to hide the truth. This is also consistent with their refusal to allow Afghan police to enter the scene and the US military picking up all of the shells and other evidence before the Afghan police were allowed in.

The US military forces that claimed they were preventing anyone else from documenting the aftermath of the killings in order to protect the investigation’s “integrity” apparently completely failed to criminally charge anyone for the killing spree. It was apparently only after the Afghan human rights commission report was prepared — more than a month after the massacre — that the US even opened a criminal investigation. On Wednesday, it announced that NCIS probe was initiated on Monday.

In addition to omitting the obstruction of and threatening of journalists, at one point the Post article refers to the Marines’ indiscriminate killing of passersby as a “counterattack.” The article also says:

"On the Afghanistan shootings, Marine Corps officials said it would be standard for an infantry unit to use heavy fire to counterattack ambushers and leave the 'kill zone' quickly, but they said there are concerns about reports that the unit killed civilians as far as 10 miles away."

The implication of this statement is that the only reason the officials expressed concern is that the civilians were killed as far as 10 miles away. The Post’s use of the word “counterattack” and quoting of the Marine officials talking about counterattacking “ambushers” without explaining that the evidence strongly suggests there were no “ambushers” left alive after the suicide attack to “counterattack” presents a distorted picture. As noted above, every single Afghan witness said that there was not an attack other than the VBIED, whose driver died in the suicide attack.

I should note that the report itself did not use the word “massacre.” However, all available evidence points to this being an accurate use of the word. The American Heritage Dictionary defines massacre as: “To kill indiscriminately and wantonly; slaughter.” Would anyone feel that randomly shooting civilians, including very young children, in the vicinity of and up to 10 miles from a crime scene in the U.S. would be anything but a massacre?

The “St. Valentines Day Massacre” involved the killing of seven people in Chicago in 1929. The “Goleta Postal Massacre” involved a 2006 rampage where eight were killed. Five people were killed in the “Witchita Massacre’” in a weeklong crime spree by two brothers in 2000. And, 13 people were killed by two high school students in Columbine, Colorado before the students killed themselves. In the Nangahar province of Afghanistan, the overwhelming available evidence suggests that US Marines who were no longer under any attack randomly killed civilians who did nothing threatening. They apparently killed children, old people, women, and other noncombatants. If combatants acting under the authority of our government using bullets and guns paid for by our taxes commit a massacre, the least we can do is speak out, and that includes calling it what it is.