The depravity of the ‘war on terror’

A recent report concerning a massacre in Afghanistan by US Special Forces throws light on the moral depravity of Washington’s “war on terror”.

Rolling Stone magazine published an article, “The A-Team Killings”, by Kabul-based investigative journalist Matthieu Aikins. The A-Team was a Special Forces unit stationed in Wardak province near Kabul.

On 6 November 2012, a 39-year-old Afghan farmer named Mohammad Qasim disappeared after being arrested by the A-Team. He was never heard from again. Months later, a shepherd saw a wild dog digging at human remains later identified as Qasim’s.

Interviewed on Democracy Now!, Aikins described another incident: “Omar [a pseudonym] and his neighbour Gul Rahim, a 28-year-old shopkeeper, were digging a stump in front of their house when an IED [improvised explosive device] hit the US Special Forces team as they were travelling nearby their village of Poland Khan. This was on 10 November.

“And they soon saw Americans coming down the road toward them, so they went inside. Two translators and a bearded American burst into their house, started beating them, dragged them out to an orchard [not belonging to either man], where they found a command wire for the IED.”

As the Americans held Omar and beat him, one of the Afghan translators “took Gul Rahim about ten paces away and raised a pistol to the back of his head and fired three shots, killing him in front of the Americans.

“Omar then says he was taken away to the US Special Forces base. He was held for several days, suspended, whipped with cables” and released after interrogations. Aikins was subsequently able to interview him. Three other villagers corroborated Omar’s story.

In February, the Special Forces soldiers burst into the home of Bibi Shereen in the night. She tried to talk to the soldiers, who held her back and smashed her chest with the butt of a gun as they took away her son, a university student named Nasratullah.

Two days later, villagers found his body under a bridge. Shereen testified on video with translation: “One of his fingers was cut off. He was beaten very badly. His body was swollen from torture, and his throat was slit.”

Other men were rounded up by the A-Team and “disappeared”. Mass demonstrations erupted in Wardak demanding that the Karzai government put a halt to these crimes. Finally, President Karzai demanded that the A-Team leave the province, and they were forced out in April.

After they were gone, bodies of “disappeared” men were found just outside the former A-Team base. So far, Afghan officials say they have uncovered the bodies of 10 men who disappeared after being arrested. Eight other Afghan civilians were killed by the unit during operations.

Aikins spent five months in Wardak, painstakingly gathering testimony of witnesses as well as information collected by the UN, the Red Cross and the Afghan government.

But even as the bodies were coming out of the ground in April and May, the US military adamantly stuck to the story that there had been investigations clearing the A-Team of any wrongdoing.

Finally, in July, the case was turned over to the Army Criminal Investigative Command (ACIC), which is supposedly conducting a new investigation. However, the ACIC is yet to contact Aikins for his testimony, nor has it contacted any of the witnesses on the ground in Wardak.

It is inconceivable that the war crimes committed by the A-Team are an isolated incident, or that the instances of other similar crimes that have come to light are either.

It is true that the Special Forces units as well as clandestine CIA units enjoy special privileges of being largely exempt from any oversight, and that they have been given special training to warp their minds.

But it is in the very nature of a war of invasion and occupation that the majority of those occupied hate the occupiers. Even regular soldiers begin to see not only those who take up arms against the occupation but the population at large as the enemy.

As many returning soldiers in Iraq Veterans Against the War (which includes Afghan veterans too) have publicly confessed, ordinary soldiers in such a situation can commit war crimes too.

One aspect of the mental illnesses many veterans suffer is illustrated by a shocking statistic: every day on average, 22 soldiers still in uniform commit suicide. That doesn’t count the many more veterans now out of the armed forces who do likewise.

The poor treatment these cannon fodder receive when they return is another aspect of the story.

The blame rests with the government that cynically sends young men and women into imperialist wars waged to extend capitalist power and profits.