DUCKPOND

“HUMANITARIAN” SLAUGHTER October 27, 2010

There are those in the Australian Parliament hand on heart who claim that the Afghan Occupation to be “a humanitarian mission“.

For that purpose they should have sent humanitarian missionaries and not murderers, such as some elements of the British force. One suspects the British were not on their own. And it was not simply the process of dehumanization and disorientation they proudly averred as human beings as a form of interrogation.

According to The Guardian these humanitarian heroes made it their purpose to attack civilians. Details of the atrocities first came to light from the Wikileaks, and then were confirmed and expanded on by the Ministry of Defence. Rob Evans, Richard Norton-Taylor and David Leigh report:

Details of the attacks were not released at the time, but they were among thousands of incidents mentioned in US army logs posted by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks in the summer. Today’s release came after the Guardian pressed for more details of those cases.

One cluster of incidents involved the Coldstream Guards in Kabul in autumn 2007. On 21 October, they killed one individual and wounded two others in a silver minibus while on patrol in Kabul.

The MoD says the minibus failed to stop when the soldiers signalled for it to do so, and the guardsmen shot at it.

In another incident, on 6 November 2007, the son of an Afghan general was killed. He was driving a Toyota car and was said to have accelerated towards a Coldstream Guards patrol. The soldiers could only shout a warning before shooting at the car; it skidded to a halt and the man fell out, the MoD said.

The Coldstream Guards’ unofficial blog described the mood within the detachment at the time: “The overriding threat is that of suicide bombers, of which there have been a number in the recent past.”

The second cluster of civilian casualties involved the Royal Marines, who were stationed in Helmand province.

On 19 November 2008 they shot dead a child in a white Toyota which they believed was driving towards them. “There had been a report of a suicide bomber in the area,” said the MoD.

On 4 December 2008, marines wounded a man who had been “trying to locate his family as they had moved compounds”. The marines thought he had been tracking them, the MoD says.

That month, a 12-year-old boy was wounded when a van sped towards a Royal Marines patrol and “failed to stop after verbal warnings were given”.

On 19 January 2009, two children were injured “in their abdomens by shrapnel” after missiles were fired from above by unmanned drones. The Royal Marines had called for the air strikes, fearing they were being threatened by Taliban insurgents.

A few days later, the marines shot a man and a child after they believed two men were “reporting their progress” in order to prepare a bomb attack.

A mentally ill man was shot in the last incident, on 26 March 2009. The marines had received a report of a bomb threat when a man on a motorcycle “approached the patrol driving slowly and observing them”. He disappeared after warning shots were fired. But he soon returned. The marines thought he was an “imminent threat” and shot him, according to the MoD.

The Rifles were involved in three incidents last year, including calling in RAF aircraft whose bomb killed an undisclosed number of civilians in Nad-e-Ali, Helmand last September.

The Labour MP Paul Flynn called for an inquiry into the conduct of the units in what he said could be “atrocities in the name of the British people”. “Truth has a cleansing function,” he added.

Royal Marine commandos were the last UK troops to be stationed in Sangin, one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan, before handing over to US forces earlier this year. The Rifles sustained particularly severe casualties when they were deployed in Sangin at the beginning of this year. The Coldstream Guards, one of the oldest regiments in the British army, have been deployed in Afghanistan at regular intervals.

Wikileaks now reveals some years later that the “noble cause” in Iraq was a criminal bloodbath for which the perpetrators have not being held to account, although those directly involved in the killing are suffering grievously. Those who set the up the situation have escaped all sanction. Similarly, the intensified use of drone vehicles to launch missile attacks is apparently not the only form of humanitarian slaughter unleashed by the Afghan War.

Planetary (or Global) society, no less than any other society, cannot function and survive without justice and law. It is an obscenity when criminals masquerade as do-gooders.

Of course, there is no denying that large amounts of money have allocated. have been spent on construction projects, the question remains as where it has gone. Good intentions preclude the necessity for keeping good records, or so it seems.

POSTSCRIPT:

I do not doubt that the Australian Army undertake civil construction programs in Afghanistan with the best of intentions, and there can be no doubt that after decades of war that reconstruction of basic infrastructure is very necessary. The problem in part is that in essence their primary role is that of a military force. This is the same problem that armed peace keepers have. In Afghanistan, the disconnect is realized because it is a twofold war of occupation combined with a civil war.

Suicide bombing, Robert Pape keeps reminding anybody who will listen, arises out of asymmetrical warfare as a method to remove the Occupation.

Karzai’s status as a puppet is unquestionable as is the illegitimacy of the fraudulent electoral process that reaffirmed his position. His recent bold statements that he is prepared to take both American and Persian money by the bagful, and his ban on Contractors (and I assume that includes mercenaries) serves to illustrate his desire to be seen as independent. In that sense he is responding to the wishes of the people, although as others could attest, if they had lived, he is taking a risk. Nonetheless, he must believe it worthwhile.

ELSEWHERE:

Apparently Gorbachev, who ordered the Soviet Army out of Afghanistan in 1989, does not believe a Nato victory is possible. He says that Obama is right to insist the troops leave next year. But one wonder where this is going since Russia and Nato have entered into a partnership. Some of the money spent in Afghanistan remains unaccounted for. (Reference via Truthdig).

In Counter Point, Michael Schwalbe, professor of sociology at North Carolina State University, reviews the development and future ramifications of the not some humble drone machinery that executes the humanitarian warfare in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Robert Scheer proclaims the adventure in Afghanistan is over for the US and it has been a failure. It is some humanitarian mission when:

American mercenaries are spreading mayhem across Afghanistan thanks to enormous U.S. spending on the contractors that he has ordered out of the country. “The money starts in the name of the private security companies in the hallways of the U.S. government,” Karzai stated in a clear description of the modern working of our military-industrial complex, adding: “The profits are made and arranged there … then they send the money to kill people here. … When this money comes to Afghanistan, it causes insecurity in Afghan homes and causes the killing of Afghan children and causes explosions and terrorism in Afghanistan.”

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