Posted on 11/29/2001 6:56:10 AM PST by dead
Opposition forces battling Taliban resistance near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar are reported to have massacred up to 160 captured Taliban fighters in the presence of United States military personnel.
An opposition commander said the Taliban who refused to surrender last week during a battle to control the strategic town of Taktha Pul, east of Kandahar, were executed despite attempts by US special forces to intervene.
"We tried our best to persuade [the Taliban] to surrender before we attacked," the unnamed commander told Reuters. "We asked them many times, quoted the Koran and even offered them money.
"They replied with abuse, so we had no choice. We executed around 160 Taliban that were captured. They were made to stand in a long line, and five or six of our fighters used light machine-guns on them."
He confirmed that seven or eight US military personnel, who had been travelling with the opposition forces as advisers and had been filming the battle, tried to stop the executions.
As opposition forces closed in on Kandahar, the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, appealed to his troops to join him in a fight to the death to defend their remaining territory around the city, the movement's spiritual heartland and last stronghold.
"I am sitting in a bunker like you to defend Islam," he said in a message believed to have been broadcast in the Kandahar region on Wednesday. "I am not scared of death, and you should not be scared of death.
"The real fight against the forces of infidels has started now. We were waiting for the American troops. Kill American troops and their agents wherever you find them."
The Taktha Pul executions come amid mounting international protests over the slaughter of hundreds of Taliban prisoners earlier this week when Northern Alliance troops, backed by US and British special forces, crushed a revolt in a fort outside the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.
The US suffered its first battlefield fatality of the war during the revolt, with the death of a CIA operative, Johnny Michael Spann, confirmed yesterday.
The two mass killings of Taliban prisoners have increased concerns about the brutal tactics of opposition forces and are likely to complicate allied efforts to persuade Taliban forces to surrender.
Alliance commanders say they now plan to send their forces south of Kabul towards Kandahar, a move that would increase the pressure on the Taliban but would be likely to anger Pakistan, a vital US ally already concerned by its advance across much of the country.
The CBS television network in the US reported growing signs that the Taliban were crumbling, with the defection of senior members, including the head of military intelligence and at least two government ministers, some of whom had crossed into Pakistan.
But as hundreds of US marines continued their build-up at an airfield base south-west of Kandahar, Taliban troops were reported to have regained territory east of the city that was captured by opposition fighters earlier this week. The Taliban also appeared to remain in control of the town of Spin Boldak.
Pentagon officials confirmed that they were now focusing the air campaign against caves and tunnels around Kandahar and the eastern city of Jalalabad, where Osama bin Laden is suspected to be hiding.
Mass killings? Excuse me? As you read down inside the article, it states the Taliban REFUSED TO SURRENDER AND KEPT FIGHTING. That is not quite the same as being lined up against a wall and being summarily executed, though the beginning of the article and subsequent passages make it sound as though the two actions are one and the same. Being killed in battle because you refused to surrender, or smuggling weapons into a prison and fomenting an uprising may be SUICIDE, but they are a far cry from execution!
Semper Fidelis
What the heck is a "light" machine-gun? Does this mean they were gunned "lightly"?
"Waiter, I'll have white toast lightly buttered, and please have that bus boy machine-gunned lightly."
How can anyone who refuses to surrender expect NOT to get killed, summarily or otherwise? The sheer stupidity of reporters dithering over this amazes me.
What more can you do?
To hammer the word massacre into our collective brains.
I have seen the frequency of this word's use increasing steadily over the past few weeks.
Obviously, our lack of gravitas is causing this hegemonistic nation to act in a jingoistic way by massacring people.
They were not routed, summarily defeated, or even simply killed. They were apparently massacred.
The media, long ago, lost the ability to simply portray the facts and course of events. They only desire to
influence base emotions now. That is their main drive, everything else is secondary .
You are not defending Islam, Omar. You are dishonoring Islam. And you are fighting for yourself--for your own perverse sense of "pride" and "manly honor"--not for God or God's will or for Islam, regardless of what you might profess.
That sound you hear reverberating throughout the mountains of the Hindu Kush is The Devil laughing! Laughing because you sold your soul to him for revenge--revenge against the "foreigners" who dared to invade "your lands" and to adulterate "your culture".
You prayed to a god of vengeance--and that god is not God; it is Satan!
And the greatest irony is that you knew it all along! You knew all along that you were praying to Satan--not God. And therein lies your greatest sin.
But there is a way out. Take it! It may not save your life, but it will save your soul.
Turn to The One True God, the God of Peace, Love, Mercy, and Forgiveness.
It doesn't matter what you call Him. Call Him Allah. But He is not the false god to whom you have been praying.
Acknowledge and confess your sins to Him. Ask His forgiveness. Ask that you do His will; do not ask God to do your will.
If you live, reveal your redemption to all the world.
There is still time.
I am praying for you.
That may indeed indicate that there is a purpose for dredging it up and repeating it, as if it were news.
Then again, maybe the reporter is just filling space, because he has no news.
Again this article was written for one purpose only.
To hammer the word massacre into our collective brains.
You’re right, but it is backfiring on the media. The world has changed.
When most Americans hear that these men are being “massacred”, they smile and feel good about where their tax money is going to for a change.
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