Fresh US-led military offensives have completely destroyed a town in Afganistan
gar | 22.01.2011 20:27 | Anti-militarism | World
Fresh US-led military offensives have completely destroyed a town in southern Afghanistan, as public discontent continues to grow over civilian casualties.
The US-led military alliance says the operation targeted Taliban militants in the violent Kandahar Province. Media reports, however, say most of the victims in Tarok Kolache town were Afghan civilians.
According to the Daily Mail report, the bombing completely erased the town and its surroundings from the map. -- Thousands of Afghan nationals residing in Iran have taken to the streets of a northwestern city to decry the “suspicious” anti-Tehran protests in Afghanistan as an “enemy plot.”
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Fresh US-led military offensives have completely destroyed a town in southern Afghanistan, as public discontent continues to grow over civilian casualties.
The US-led military alliance says the operation targeted Taliban militants in the violent Kandahar Province. Media reports, however, say most of the victims in Tarok Kolache town were Afghan civilians.
According to the Daily Mail report, the bombing completely erased the town and its surroundings from the map. The British daily has also published images of the town before and after the operation in a bid to show the scale of destruction. The developments come as a recent report says US-led military operations have inflicted over USD 100 million in damages on public property in southern Afghanistan.
Afghans blame foreign troops and their military operations for civilian deaths. The rising number of civilian casualties has increased anti-US sentiments in the troubled region. The Afghan interior ministry has recently said that 2010 has been the deadliest year for civilians since the US-led invasion in 2001. The ministry says more than 2,000 civilians lost their lives in violence across Afghanistan. Civilians have been the main victims of violence in Afghanistan, particularly in the country's troubled southern and eastern provinces, where they are killed by both militant and foreign fire. The surge in violence comes despite the presence of 150,000 foreign troops, which are engaged in the so-called war on terrorism.
Thousands of Afghan nationals residing in Iran have taken to the streets of a northwestern city to decry the “suspicious” anti-Tehran protests in Afghanistan as an “enemy plot.”
Protesters hailed the solidarity between Iran and Afghanistan on Saturday, a Press TV correspondent reported.Shouting slogans like “The enemy's plot is to sow discord” and “Muslims, stay vigilant!” and carrying banners reading “Viva Iran and Afghanistan,” the crowd proceeded through the streets of Mashhad, the capital of Khorasan Razavi Province.One Afghan figure delivering a speech at the event, condemned the latest move as “anti-Islam,” saying, “Those who gathered outside the Iranian Embassy in Kabul and insulted Iranian officials and the Islamic Republic's flag, which bears the pure name of 'Allah,' were provoked and deceived by the global arrogance.
gar
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"town" my arse
22.01.2011 21:07
The impact of coalition operations in Afghanistan is often bogged down in statistics and political manoeuvring.
But these photos of a devastated village in the Arghandad River Valley show the horror of war in stark reality.
Tarok Kolache, a small settlement in Kandahar, has been completely erased from the map after an offensive by the U.S. army.
Before and aftermath: The picture on the left shows the village of Tarok Kolache in the Arghandab River Valley. The picture on the right is the same location following allied air strikes, which completely obliterated the village
Before and aftermath: The picture on the left shows the village of Tarok Kolache in the Arghandab River Valley. The picture on the right is the same location following allied air strikes, which completely obliterated the village
Taliban militants had taken control of the village and battered the coalition task force with homemade bombs and improvised explosive devices.
And after two attempts at clearing the village led to casualties on both sides, Lieutenant Colonel David Flynn, commander of the Combined Joint Task Force 1-320th gave the order to pulverise the village.
His men were ‘terrified to go back into the pomegranate orchards to continue clearing [the area]; it seemed like certain death’, writes West Point graduate Paula Broadwell on the Foreign Policy blog.
Instead of continuing to clear the tiny village, the commander approved a mine-clearing line charge, which hammered a route into the centre of Tarok Kolache using rocket-propelled explosives.
The destruction only escalated, however, with ’49,200lbs of ordnance’ dropped on the village via air strikes and ground-launched rockets, which saw it swiftly blown off the face of the earth.
The results of the battery were adjudged to have left ‘NO CIVCAS’ - no civilians killed.
But with Tarok Kolache bombarded with close to 25 tons of explosives, assuming some collateral damage does not seem unjustified.
Outside analysts have not been able to assess the impact of the bombing on civilians due to security concerns.
However, it has been agreed that 'extreme' operations such as the destruction of an entire village are likely to have a negative impact on attempts to improve coalition-Afghan relations.
Erica Gaston, an Open Society Institute researcher based in Afghanistan, told Wired the erasure of Tarok Kolache was exactly the type of behaviour that would deal a body blow to Afghan acceptance of the presence of the International Security Assistance Force.
'But for this, I think [NATO] would have started to get some credit for improved conduct,' Ms Gaston wrote in an email.
'Some Kandahar elders (and I stress ’some,’ not ‘all’ or even ‘most’) who had initially opposed the Kandahar operations were in the last few months expressing more appreciation for ISAF conduct during these operations, saying they had driven out the Taliban and shown restraint in not harming civilians.
'I think this property destruction has likely reset the clock on any nascent positive impressions.'
However, astonishing pictures like those above could become a regular feature of coalition operations in Afghanistan, with ISAF commander General David Petraeus approving both construction and destruction projects.
According to Ms Broadwell's post on Foreign Policy, General Petraeus has approved $1million worth of reconstruction projects but also told his commanders in the south of Afghanistan to 'take a similar approach to what 1-320th was doing on a grander scale as it applies to the districts north of Arghandab'.
Miss Broadwell, who has served as a major in the U.S. Army, was educated at Harvard University before completing a PhD at London University's War Studies Department.
Her Linkedin profile page states that she also graduated from the U.S. military academy West Point, and has worked for the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force.
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fact checker
22.01.2011 21:20
Bob
Sematics demolished by semtex
22.01.2011 22:57
Nor is it an isolated incident according to Shah Muhammed Ahmadi, the district governor of Arghandab District, who reported all the 40 homes in the village of Khosrow were flattened by a salvo of 25 missiles, and that another 120 to 130 houses in Arghandab had been similarly demolished this winter.
This is becoming very reminiscent of the Nixon/Kissenger carpet bombing of Cambodia that brought the Khmer Rouge to power.
Danny
Unjust War, Ilegal Violence.
24.01.2011 18:42
Chaired by U.S. Judge Jackson wrote into international world law that the planning and doing of Aggressive war is the supreme international crime on the planet earth, as it actuates all other crimes high, low, big and small. He further says that it is the supreme international crime whether Germany does it or the U.S.A. does it.
The U.S. Constitution says that all international treaties signed on to by the U.S.A. are to be treated as the supreme laws of the land. This proves that internationally and nationally the U.S. Imperialist military are guilty of breaking world law, and committing the supreme worst sort of war crimes on the planet earth, and as the world leader of the Imperialist Camp, they are organizing all that is lawless and wrecking as their weapon of choice.
There is nothing political in this event as in the U.S.A. political discourse is not a political process, as they use the political word to disinform the Polity of America and world people. And if the Tuson Killing spree was done, as the U.S. Imperialists say, by a mentally-ill madman, what then is their excuse for doing it one a worldwide basis. Mentally-ill killing of the peoples goes on by U.S. Imperialism, and how can the worlds' people find justification for the U.S.A. when it violates the national and international laws of the anti-fascist covenants to which the vast majority of the worlds' people are signed on to as de facto world law. Re-tool to the renewables and end the fossil fuel wars, before they end the oxygen they burn out of the atmosphere. Nature cannot replace the oxygen with the present burn out policies of the present Imperialist Camp.
Papryus