A village is destroyed. And America says nothing happened

Very good article below by a British journalist in Afghanistan doing his job and reporting events that we never hear about in "The New York Times", "Washington Post" or CNN etc. Civilian deaths are extremely high and mounting. High tech weapons make little difference if you bomb indiscriminately. In Vietnam we destroyed the village in order to save it, here we destroy the village in the hopes of killing a few terrorists and sacrifice dozens of innocents in the process. Please visit my nonprofit website.
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Thank you. Gavin.

The village where nothing happened is reached by a steep climb at the end of a rattling three-hour drive along a stony road. Until nothing happened here, early on the morning of Saturday and again the following day, it was a large village with a small graveyard, but now that has been reversed. The cemetery on the hill contains 40 freshly dug graves, unmarked and identical. And the village of Kama Ado has ceased to exist.

Many of the homes here are just deep conical craters in the earth. The rest are cracked open, split like crushed cardboard boxes. At the moment when nothing happened, the villagers of Kama Ado were taking their early morning meal, before sunrise and the beginning of the Ramadan fast. And there in the rubble, dented and ripped, are tokens of the simple daily lives they led.

A contorted tin kettle, turned almost inside out by the blast; a collection of charred cooking pots; and the fragments of an old-fashioned pedal-operated sewing machine. A split metal chest contains scraps of children's clothes in cheap bright nylon.

In another room are the only riches that these people had, six dead cows lying higgledy-piggledy and distended by decay. And all this is very strange because, on Saturday morning – when American B-52s unloaded dozen of bombs that killed 115 men, women and children – nothing happened.

We know this because the US Department of Defence told us so. That evening, a Pentagon spokesman, questioned about reports of civilian casualties in eastern Afghanistan, explained that they were not true, because the US is meticulous in selecting only military targets associated with Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida network. Subsequent Pentagon utterances on the subject have wobbled somewhat, but there has been no retraction of that initial decisive statement: "It just didn't happen."

So God knows what kind of a magic looking-glass I stepped through yesterday, as I travelled out of the city of Jalalabad along the desert road to Kama Ado. From the moment I woke up, I was confronted with the wreckage and innocent victims of high-altitude, hi-tech, thousand-pound nothings.

The day began at the home of Haji Zaman Gamsharik, the pro-Western anti-Taliban mujahedin commander who is being discreetly supplied and funded by the US government. The previous day I had followed him around Jalalabad's mortuary, where seven mutilated corpses were being laid out – mujahedin soldiers of Commander Zaman who had been killed when US bombs hit the government office in which they were sleeping. And now, it had happened again.

There they were in the back of three pick-up trucks – seven more bloody bodies of seven more mujahedin, killed when the guesthouse in which they were sleeping in the village of Landi Khiel was hit by bombs at 6.30am yesterday morning.

Commander Zaman is a proud, haughty man who fought in the mountains for years against the Soviet Union, but I've never seen him look so vulnerable. "I sent them there myself yesterday,'' was all he could say. "I sent them for security.''

But the commander provided us with mujahedin escorts of our own, and we set off down the road to Landi Khiel. We found the ruins of the office where the first lot of soldiers had died, and the guesthouse where they perished the previous morning. And there, in the ruins of a family house, was a small fragment of nothing. It was the tail-end of a compact bomb. It bore the words "Surface Attack Guided Missile AGM 114", and a serial number: 232687. It was half-buried in the remains of the straw roof of a house where three men had died: Fazil Karim, his brother Mahmor Ghulab, and his nephew Hasiz Ullah. "They were a family, just ordinary people," said Haji Mohammed Nazir, the local elder who was accompanying us. "They were not terrorists – the terrorists are in the mountains, over there.''

So we drove on in the direction of the White Mountains, where hundreds of al-Qa'ida members, and perhaps even Osama bin Laden himself, are hiding in the Tora Bora cave complex. A B-52 was high in the sky; a billow of black smoke was visible, blooming out of the valley. Something, surely, was happening over there. And then we reached the ruins of Kama Ado. Among the pathetic remains I found only one sinister object - an old leather gun holster with an ammunition belt. It is conceivable that a handful of al-Qa'ida members had been spending the night there, and that US targeters learnt of their presence.

But after 22 years of war, almost every Afghan home contains some military relic, and the villagers swore they hadn't seen Arab or Taliban fighters for a fortnight. Certainly there could not have been enough terrorists to fill the 40 fresh graves. One person told me a few holes contained not intact people, but simply body parts.

We had been warned that white faces would meet an angry reception in the village where nothing happened, but I encountered despair and bafflement. I had only one moment of real fear, when an American B-52 flew overhead. We halted our convoy, clambered out of the cars and trotted into the fields on either side. The plane did a slow circle; I was conscious of electronic eyes looking down on us, the only traffic on the road. Then, to everyone's relief, the bomber veered away.

Before we left the city, an American colleague in Jalalabad telephoned the Pentagon and informed them of our plans to travel to the village where nothing happened. I can't help wondering, in these looking-glass times, what that B-52 would have done to our convoy if that telephone call had not been made. Perhaps nothing would have happened to me too.

..instead, you post ugly Nazi paraphernalia and attempt to paint us with the broad brush of Nazism simply for wanting to avenge the events of 9/11....

Save the spin, Sammy. You're the one who said you wanted to 'nuke Afghanistan.' And at this point, you don't even know whether Bin Laden's there.

You're pathetic.

...I wonder how you would feel if Melbourne or Sydney came under the kind of terrorist act that New York City sustained on 9/11....

For starters, I wouldn't want to 'nuke' a country without first finding out if those responsible were there, as you originally posted.

British contribution to defeating the Japanese: surrendering Singapore to an out of ammunition inferior Japanese force.

Australian contribution: helped British surrender at Singapore, ran around in the jungles of New Guinea, provided coast watchers to the US Navy.

US contribution: everything else, from Guadalcanal to Okinawa to Tokyo Bay.

If it wasn't for the bloody Yanks, your mother would have been a "comfort lady" for the Japanese Imperial Army, and you would be a "half caste" bowing low while serving Saki in a Japanese Imperial Army brothel in Melbourne.

You're very welcome for your freedom, now go ahead and slime the nation that saved your freedom. We can take it, we are well used to being slobbered on and nipped by the American protected puppies in Europe.

...after 9/11, the muslims lost whatever sympathy I might have had. After 9/11, and the reaction of the Muslim world to it, I no longer care...

Awwww.

Let it all out, Sauron.

After 9/11, it's okay to be a racist.

Gee, it's too bad they didn't publish the pictures of the 4,000 South Vietnamese civilians buried alive with their hands tied behind their backs with wire after the North Vietnamese took Hue during Tet.

War is hell, simpleton. If you were to insist that all wars be fought so cleanly and purely that no civilians were ever hurt by your side, you would be speaking Japanese today, carrying towels in your mother's Japanese Imperial Army brothel in Melbourne.

Don't bother to thank the bloody Yanks for saving your freedom. We will work out a deal with the Chinese eventually, and this time we will not come running to protect your daughters from being forced to become "comfort ladies" for the PLA.

For one thing, Commander Zaman would have a good deal to say about where the strikes are directed, so that there is the real possibility that he and his had some role in the errors, if there were any. He would have not only requested but begged for the air support; he needs to master the direction of it.

...if you think war is so bad why did your Country send troops to Viet Nam?...

First up, what 'war'? There hasn't been such a disparity in military capability since the Battle of Omdurman. But the point is, this story was an eyewitness account of civilian casualties, and deserved to be discussed here on that basis. Instead, a bunch of hysterical morons start posting that the story was written by a 'Limey', so it must be a lie; or attacking the paper who published the story; or saying 9/11 means Afghanistan should have been 'nuked.'

Watching wankers like you and your posse certainly explains how the My Lais happen.

...we can take it, we are well used to being slobbered on and nipped by the American protected puppies in Europe....

Trav?

Take the chip off your shoulder and stick it where the sun don't shine, bud.

...your attempt to equate Hitler's actions, or motives, or methods, to the USA's procecution of the war in Afganistan: shows me just how little you know or understand about either...

You better read my posts a bit more carefully, Mr. Stomper. I have not and would not make that equation.

However, I'll certainly draw parallels between the mindless jingoism and warmongering hysteria of some who post here and, say, the German public in September 1939. And there's no way I'll sit quietly reading FR while some Freepers are saying 'the VC and the Taliban did it, so that makes it okay.' Can't you see how wrong that is, to become one's enemy?

Start learning Chinese today Byron, you may get a front desk job in one of the PLA brothels.

Natuarally you won't resist when the Chinese come, why would you? Someone innocent might get killed, and as you have so elequently stated, defeat is better than that.

Besides, what would you resist with? Your "RattleTrap Class" submarines? Your handful of antique tanks? Your jets without missiles?

And after the Chinese swarm ashore, will you fight back in a guerrilla war of attrition, at any cost to preserve your freedom?

Oh, I forgot, you were all willingly disarmed.

Like I said, learn Chinese now, so you can get a good front desk job dealing with PLA officers, and not just the job of towel boy for the Chines enlisted troops in the PLA brothel.

One thing for sure: don't ask Uncle Sam to save your goody two shoes pure as the snow butts.....again. We ain't coming. You ain't worth it.

Learn Chinese....mate. You'll make fine slaves, if you make it worthwhile for your new masters to keep you alive.

...start learning Chinese today Byron, you may get a front desk job in one of the PLA brothels....

Let's see. It's 2:30AM on Saturday night, over there.

How about putting the cap back on the bottle and calling it a night? Because this stuff about my mother being a comfort woman is showing an ugliness in your soul that won't look too good by the harsh light of day. And, since you raised the issue, we have an excellent relationship with the People's Republic of China. You're the guys they're challenging.

..are we out of line to hope for a little slack? At least from our friends?...

Of course not. And if there's any Australian more supportive of and more friendly toward the United States than me, I've never heard of him.

But now let me ask you something. When is someone going to say 'enough!', to the hate driven macho that is starting to smother this website? Have you considered that, for any Mohammed Attas-to-be, visiting FR would now be a great way of revitalising their motivation?

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