A war crime, plain and simple
In the early hours of 3 October, at least 12 medical staff and 10 patients in a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, were killed during an hour-long air raid by US planes. Dozens more were wounded, and another 33 people are still missing. Within hours, they were stripped of their humanity, reduced to the equivalent of a bit of rubble by their murderers.
“Collateral damage” may have occurred, according to colonel Brian Tribus, spokesperson for US forces in Afghanistan. Over the next four days, US army brass narrated four more stories. I choose the words deliberately. They were fictions dreamed up to absolve US forces of a war crime.
First, US troops were under fire from the compound. Then the Afghan troops called for air support. Then it was all supervised carefully by command; so no crime. Finally, general John Campbell, commander, US Forces-Afghanistan and NATO’s Operation Resolute Support, admitted: “A hospital was mistakenly struck”. He added, “We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility”.
Whether because of his own ambiguous weasel words, or those of the world’s press, the blame that formerly lay at the feet of the Afghan troops was not clearly refuted.
Who knows how many times such crimes have been perpetrated by these champions of honour, freedom and imperialism? This time they were exposed by Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF or Doctors Without Borders). MSF, unlike other aid organisations in war zones, does not recognise borders and imperialist definitions of enemies and friends; it treats everyone in need.
It was their hospital, and they quickly called the air strike by its correct name – a war crime.
Capitalist law is hardly a benchmark for humanitarianism, but it does at times provide something of a limit on the barbarity of imperialist war. In the Geneva Convention, it is accepted that an attack on a hospital is a war crime.
At the time of writing, the US has not challenged MSF’s statement that US forces had been informed of the coordinates for the hospital as recently as 27 September. Or that the deadly bombardment continued for 30 minutes after both the Afghan government and the US had been notified that the hospital was under attack. The US even apologised to MSF.
But MSF is not an organisation to kowtow to imperialist butchers. It repeated its call for an independent enquiry. As it pointed out, blaming the Afghan forces for calling for air support proves that the US and the Afghan forces deliberately bombed a protected medical facility with no warning, confirming that this was a war crime.
Without MSF’s defiance, and its determination to pursue the US over this crime, who would ever have known the truth? US obfuscation and lies, peddled faithfully by the world’s “quality press” such as the New York Times and Washington Post, illuminate what happens when only the local inhabitants know the truth, or when aid organisations self-censor to protect their own standing with the US.
David A. Graham in the Atlantic, after excusing the US’s vagaries, commented: “But it looks bad for the official story to keep changing, and it’s bad news that the blame is moving closer to the US”. Bad news indeed. Not what the US or its loyal lap dogs expect in war zones.
Was this a deliberate act to terrorise the local civilians and emphasise that anyone who does not oppose the Taliban are regarded as not worthy of human rights? To drive the MSF out?
We may never know. By the time you read this, who knows how many more tales will have been spun and beamed around the world?
