American commanders admitted this week that American Special Operations killed three Afghan women during a nighttime raid gone wrong back in February. What makes this story even more awful is that the American commanders have been covering up the murders and lying about it for two months now. Sequence of events:
1) American-led assault on a home near Gardez resulting in the murder of two civilian men, a district prosecutor and a local police chief who came outside armed with guns to investigate and the murder of three women, one was the pregnant mother of six and another was the pregnant mother of 10. The raid occurred after a party at their home celebrating the birth of a baby boy.
2) Survivors of the raid accused American-led forces of murdering the women.
3) NATO Officials claim its raiding party had stumbled upon the “bodies of three women who had been tied up, gagged and killed” and hidden in a room in the house and indicated that perhaps family members were responsible for their deaths.
4) Afghan led team of investigators found evidence that blood had been washed off the walls of the home and couldn’t find bullet wounds in walls of the home or in the women’s bodies, suggesting that someone had dug the bullets out of the bodies of the women to hide the nature of their deaths. The Afghan investigation team alerted American and NATO commanders that evidence at the scene had been tampered with.
5) NATO officials maintained that, “nothing pointed conclusively to the fact that our guys were the ones who tampered with the scene.”
6) After further reports emerged NATO finally admitted on Sunday night that “international forces” (American Special Operations and Afghan forces conducted the operation) were responsible for the women’s deaths and issued a statement saying they “deeply regret the outcome of this operation, accept responsibility for our actions that night, and know that this loss will be felt forever by the families.”
I know there’s the fog of war, I know things get confusing and I do not believe that any individual solider went into that house desiring to kill three women or was pleased that he did so after the fact. But they did kill those women, they knew they killed those women and they deliberately lied about it and even tried to blame the women’s family. And if the reports are true that they dug bullets out of their bodies, that’s heinous. It’s these kind of civilian casualties and disrespect for civilian lives that are eliciting tirades about American forces from President Karzai, infuriating Afghans and creating support for the Taliban.
Info from the NYT
