By : MARC W. HEROLD

 

The air attack on Afghanistan began at 8:57 p.m. local time on October 7. The following day, Reuters carried an interview with a 16-year-old ice cream vendor from Jalalabad who said he had lost his leg and two fingers in a Cruise missile strike on an airfield near his home:

"There was just a roaring sound, and then I opened my eyes and I was in a hospital," said Assadullah, who had been taken across the border to Peshawar for medical help. "I lost my leg and two fingers. There were other people hurt. People were running all over the place."

Multiply this scene by two or three hundred and you begin to approximate the reality on the ground in Afghanistan. A reality that is blithely dismissed by the Pentagon and the compliant U.S. corporate media with the statement, "the claims could not be independently verified."

 

November 24, 2001, seven weeks into the war, Los Angeles Times reporter M.H. Paul Richter could write without shame, "...although estimates are still largely guesses, some experts believe that more than 1,000 Taliban and opposition troops have probably died in the fighting, along with at least dozens of civilians."

Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands, as we shall document.

 

In fact, a careful analysis of published reports shows that Afghanistan has been subjected to a barbarous air bombardment, which has killed an average of 60-65 civilians per day since October 7. When the sun set on November 23, at least 3,006 Afghan civilians had died in U.S. bombing attacks.

 

In tabulating these totals I have relied upon Indian daily newspapers (especially The Times of India, considered the equivalent of The New York Times), three Pakistani dailies, the Singapore News, British, Canadian, and Australian (Sydney Morning Press and Herald Sun) newspapers, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) based in Peshawar, the Agence France Press (AFP), Pakistan News Service (PNS), Reuters, BBC News Online, al-Jazeera, and a variety of other reputable sources.

 

Apparently, the only casualty reports considered "real" by the mainstream U.S. press are those either issued by a western enterprise or organization, or "independently verified" by western individuals and/or organizations. In other words, the high levels of civilian casualties reported elsewhere (for example reports by Robert Fisk, Justin Huggler, and Richard Lloyd Parry of The Independent and Tayseer Allouni of al-Jazeera.) are simply written off as "enemy propaganda" and ignored.

 

For a typical example of minimization consider: "Truth and Lies About Taliban Death Claims" published in a major British newspaper, (The Sunday Telegraph, November 4, 2001. Authors Macer Hall and David Wastell solemnly declare that "far fewer Afghan civilians have been killed by American bombs than is claimed by Taliban propaganda." Citing "an intelligence report obtained by The Sunday Telegraph," which purportedly employed data gathered by satellite and unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, they allege that most Taliban claims are falsehoods and propaganda. They then present a list of Taliban claims and counter it with "the Truth," as per the intelligence report, NOT their own independent research!

 

I publish below both the Taliban claims and the "truth" as per the intelligence report, followed by my own assessment in the last column. Five bombing incidents that occurred during October 2001 are examined, showing, in my assessment, a civilian death toll of at least 239!

 

 

 

 

 

Date of U.S. bombing	Taliban 'claim' as stated in report:	Pentagon/State Department 'truth' :	My assessment :
October 11	Bombed Karam village, 200 killed.	Hit military base on hillside. While possible civilians killed, Taliban claims are predictably exaggerated	Two jets bomb the mountain village of Karam comprised of 60 mud houses, during dinner after evening prayer time, killing 100-160 in Karam alone. Reported by: DAWN, the Guardian, the Independent, International Herald Tribune, the Scotsman, the Observer, and BBC News.
October 13	Missile hits civilian homes in Kabul, killing civilians	Pentagon acknowledges a stray missile accidentally struck a populated Kabul area, killing or injuring civilians.	In early a.m., F-18 drops 2'000 lb JDAM bombs upon the dirt-poor Qila Meer Abas neighborhood, 2 kms. south of Kabul airport, killing 4. Reported in : Afghan Islamic Press, Los Angeles Times, Frontier Post, Pakistan Observer, the Guardian, and BBC News.
October 21	Bombed Herat hospital, killing 100+ civilians.	Pentagon admits missing military barracks, but says hospital is "considerable distance" from where bomb landed and bomb blast unlikely to cause civilian deaths.	F-18 dropped a 1'000 lb cluster bomb on a 200-bed military hospital and mosque, missing the target by 500-1000 meters. Reported in Afghan Islamic Press, Pakistan News Service, Frontier Post, the Guardian, Times of India, Agence France Presse, and by the U.N.
October 29	Hit mosque in Kandahar, killing civilians. Note; I have NOT been able to find this Taliban claim.	No air strike in the general area. Claim is a lie.	A pre-dawn bombing raid and 8-9 cluster bombs fell on October 24th on the mosque in the village of Ishaq Sulaiman near Herat, killing 20. Reported in : Agence France Presse, Reuters, DAWN, the Herald, etc.
October 31	Red Crescent clinic in Kandahar hit, killing 11.	A military target was hit and a Red Crescent hospital was in vicinity---100s of meters away and was undamaged.	Pre-dawn raid,F-18 drops a 2'000 lb JDAM bomb on the clinic, killing 15-25. The clinic is reduced to a mangled mess of iron and concrete [photo]. Reported in : DAWN, the Times, the Independent, the Guardian, Reuters, and Agence France Presse

 

 

Who is lying?

 

To make the war on Afghanistan appear 'just', it becomes imperative to completely block access to information on the true human costs, and the actions of Bush-Rumsfeld-Rice speak eloquently to this effort: For example, calling in all the major U.S. news networks to give them their marching orders, buying up all commercial satellite imagery available to the general public, sending Powell to Qatar to persuade the independent al-Jazeera news network, and, when that fails, targeting the Kabul office of al-Jazeera for a direct missile hit. For the most part, the major U.S. corporate media appear to have obeyed the Pentagon directives and given sparse coverage to the topic of civilian casualties.

 

When faced with the indisputable "fact" of a civilian hit, the Bush team's standard response was that a nearby military facility was the real target. In almost every case we can document, this turned out to be a long-abandoned military facility. For instance, in the incident where four night watchmen were killed at the offices of a United Nations de-mining agency in Kabul, the Pentagon claimed it was near a military radio tower. U.N. officials, however, say the tower was a defunct medium-and short-wave radio station, situated 900 feet away from the bombed building, and hadn't been in operation for over a decade.

 

On October 19, U.S. planes circled over Tarin Kot in Uruzgan early in the evening, then returned after everyone had gone to bed and bombed a residential area, two miles away from the nearest Taliban base. Mud houses were flattened and families destroyed. The first round of bombs killed 20, and as some of the villagers were pulling their neighbors out of the rubble, more bombs fell, killing 10 more. One of the villagers recalled: "We pulled the baby out, the others were buried in the rubble. Children were decapitated. There were bodies with no legs. We could do nothing. We just fled." Richard Lloyd Parry, "Families Blown Apart, Infants Dying. The Terrible Truth of This 'Just War'," The Independent (October 25, 2001).

 

On October 21, planes apparently targeting a Taliban military base--long abandoned--released their deadly cargo on the Kabul residential area of Khair Khana, killing eight members of one family who had just sat down to breakfast. Sayed Salahuddin, "Eight Die From One Family in Kabul Raid," at XTRAMSN (October 22, 2001.

 

The following day, planes dropped BLU-97 cluster bombs (made by Aerojet/Honeywell) on the village of Shakar Qala near Herat, completely missing the Taliban encampments located five to seven hundred yards away and destroying or badly damaging 20 of the village's 45 houses. "Cluster Bombs Are New Danger to Mine Clearers," The Times (October 26, 2001) Fourteen people were killed immediately and a 15^th died after picking up the parachute attached to one of the 202 bomblets dispersed by the BLU-97.

 

U.N. mine-clearing officials in the region have noted that 10-30% of the missiles and bombs dropped on Afghanistan have not exploded, posing a lasting danger. Pakistan News Service - PSN (October 20, 2001) and Amy Waldman, "Bomb Remnants Increase War Toll," New York Times (November 23, 2001). On November 26, following days of heavy bombing of Shamshad village in Nangarhar province, there are reports of up to three Afghan children being blown up and at least seven wounded by a cluster bomb while they were collecting firewood and scrap. " Afghan Children Killed Amassing Scrap of American Bombs," Pakistan News Service (November 26, 2001), "One dies, six injured as cluster bomb explodes," The Frontier Post (November 27, 2001).

 

There are several instances of bombs being dropped on areas of no military significance. On October 25, a bomb hit a fully loaded city bus at Kabul Gate, in Kandahar, incinerating 10-20 passengers. Owen Brown, "'Bus Hit' Claim as War of Words Hots Up," The Guardian (October 26, 2001)Then, on November 18 and 19, U.S. planes bombed the mountain village of Gluco--located on the Khyber Pass and far away from any military facility--killing seven villagers. Phillip Smucker, "Village of Death Casts Doubts over U.S. Intelligence," The Telegraph (November 21, 2001).

 

A reporter for The Telegraph who visited Gluco, noted: "Their wooden homes looked like piles of charred matchsticks. Injured mules lay braying in the road along the mountain pass that stank of sulphur and dead animals..."

Noor Mohamed, a wheat trader who travels the Chaman to Ghazni highway on business, recalls seeing the bombed-out, twisted, and still smoking remains of a 15-lorry fuel convoy just north of Kandahar during the week of November 29. He says he was sickened by the sight of the charred remains of the drivers and all the dozens of unfortunate souls who had bargained for a ride to Chaman. Paul Harris, "Warlords Bring New Terror," The Observer (December 2, 2001).

 

Upon arriving at a refugee camp on the Pakistan border, Abdul Nabi, told the A.F.P. on October 24 that he had seen two groups of bodies--of 13 and 15 corpses-- of civilians near bombed out trucks on the road between Herat and Kandahar. "UN Says Bombs Struck Mosques, Village as Civilian Casualties Mount," Agence France Presse in Kabul (Oct. 24), cited in The Singapore News (October 24, 2001).Our data reveals that this attack was carried out on October 22, against four trucks carrying fuel oil.

 

The U.S. Air Force's use of weapons with enormous destructive capability--including fuel air bombs, B-52 carpet bombs, BLU-82s, and CBU-87 cluster bombs (shown to be so effective at killing and maiming civilians who happen to come upon the unexploded "bomblets")--reveals the emptiness of its claim that the U.S. has been trying to avoid Afghan civilian casualties.

 

"Even though civilian deaths have not been the deliberate goal of the current bombing--as they were for the attackers of 9/11--the end result has been a distinction without a difference. Dead is dead, and when ones actions have entirely foreseeable consequences, it is little more than a precious and empty platitude to argue that those consequences were merely accidental." Tim Wise, "Consistently Inconsistent: Rhetoric Meets Reality in the War on Terrorism," at ZNET (November 15, 2001)

 

The U.S. bombing campaign has also directly targeted certain civilian facilities deemed hostile to its war success:

--On October 13, bombs destroyed Kabul's main telephone exchange [Civilian casualties unreported.]

--On October 15, bombs destroyed Kabul's power station, killing 12. Mentioned in BBC News Online (October 23, 2001).

--In late October, U.S. warplanes bombed the electrical grid in Kandahar, knocking out all power, but the Taliban were able to divert some electricity to the city from a generating plant in Helmand province, but that, too, was later bombed. From "Bombing Alters Afghans Views of U.S.," Pakistan News Service-PNS (November 7, 2001).

--On October 31, the U.S. launched seven air strikes against Afghanistan's largest hydroelectric power station adjacent to the huge Kajakai dam, 90 kilometers northwest of Kandahar, raising fears that the dam might break. Richard L. Parry, "U.N Fears 'Disaster' Over Strikes Near Hydro Dam," The Independent (November 8, 2001)

--On November 12, a guided bomb scored a direct hit on the Kabul office of the al-Jazeera news agency, which had been reporting from Afghanistan in a manner deemed hostile by Washington. See "U.S Targeting Journalists Not Portraying Her Viewpoint," The Frontier Post (November 20, 2001), at: www.frontierpost.com.pk

--On November 18, planes bombed religious schools (Madrasas) in the Khost and Shamshad areas.

Utilities, news organizations, educational institutions--all seem to be "fair" targets in this war.

 

Afghan civilians living in proximity to alleged military installations will die--must die--and are part of the "collateral damage" in the U.S. efforts to conduct military operations in the sky and on the ground without U.S. military casualties. From the point of view of U.S. policy makers and their mainstream media lackeys, the "cost" of a dead Afghan civilian is zero (as long as these civilian deaths are hidden from the public) but the "benefits" of preserving U.S. military lives is enormous, given the U.S. public's aversion to returning body bags in this post-Vietnam era. The absolute need to avoid U.S. military casualties requires flying high up in the sky, greatly increasing the probability of killing civilians.

 

As John MacLachlen Gray of The Toronto Globe & Mail writes: "...better stand clear and fire away. Given this implicit decision, the slaughter of innocent people, as a statistical eventuality is not an accident but a priority--in which Afghan civilian casualties are substituted for American military casualties." ('Working the Dark Side,' October 31, 2001.)

 

It is clear that the military strategists intentionally target missiles and drop bombs upon heavily populated areas of Afghanistan. A legacy of Afghanistan's 10 years of civil war in the 1980s is that many military facilities are located in urban areas where the Soviet-backed government had placed them for better protection from attacks by the largely rural Mujahideen. Successor Afghan governments inherited these emplacements. To suggest that the Taliban used "human shields" is more revealing of the historical amnesia and racism of those making such claims, than of Taliban deeds.

 

Any heavy bombing of these military emplacements must necessarily result in substantial civilian casualties, a reality exacerbated by the admitted occasional poor targeting, human error, equipment malfunction, and irresponsible use of outdated Soviet maps. The most notable element here, however, is the very low value put upon Afghan civilian lives by military planners and the political elite. Why? I believe race has something to do with it.

The Afghanis are not "white," whereas the overwhelming majority of pilots and elite ground troops are. This "fact" serves to amplify the positive benefit-cost ratio of sacrificing the darker-skinned Afghanis today (like the Indochinese and Iraqis of former wars) so that "white" American soldiers may be saved tomorrow. In other words, when the "enemy" is non-white, the scale of violence used by the U.S. government to achieve its state objectives at minimum cost knows no limits.

 

One may point out that the mass bombing of Serbia just a couple of years ago, contradicts this view. But the Serbs, it should be noted, were tainted (read "darkened") by their Communist past--at least, in the views of U.S. policymakers and the corporate media--hence were fair game. Otherwise, there is no instance (except during World War II) of a foreign Caucasian state being targeted by the U.S. government.

 

The Afghan War is anything but a "just war," as James Carroll has adroitly pointed out in an essay in (The Boston Globe November 27, 2001) Firstly, the disproportionate nature of a response that makes an entire other nation and people "pay" for the crimes of a few is obvious to anyone who seeks out the real "costs" exacted upon the people of Afghanistan. Secondly, this war does little to impede the cycle of violence of which the World Trade Center (WTC) attacks are merely one manifestation. The massive firepower unleashed by the Americans will no doubt invite similar indiscriminate carnage in the future. Injustices will flower. Thirdly, calling the U.S. attacks a war, rather than a police action, without providing a justification for war, renders the action unjust. As Carroll writes, "...the criminals, not an impoverished nation, should be on the receiving end of punishment."

 

It is simply unacceptable for civilians to be slaughtered as a side-effect of an intentional strike against a specified target. There is no difference between the attacks upon the WTC, whose primary goal was the destruction of a symbol, and the U.S.-U.K. coalition's revenge bombing of military targets in populated urban areas. Both are criminal. Slaughter is slaughter. Killing civilians, even if unintentional, is criminal.

 

Marc W. Herold Is a Professor at the Departments of Economics and Women's Studies
University of New Hampshire Durham.