One day after Afghan President Hamid Karzai lashed out at the US and implied that more than one US soldier was involved in the mass murder of 16 Afghans in Kandahar’s Panjwai district last weekend, a delegation from the Afghan parliament is claiming that at least 15 US soldiers “accompanied by 2 helicopters” were involved in the massacre. From Khaama Press:
A delegation of the Afghan parliament members who visited Kandahar province said at least 15 US troops were behind the assassination of 16 Afghan villagers at Panjwai district in this province.
The delegation included 5 Afghan parliament members who were sent by the Afghan House of Representatives to find out the facts behind the massacre of 16 Afghan civilians at Panjwai district.
The delegation presented its findings report to the Afghan House of Representative which states that the civilians massacre was plotted where at least 15 US troops were involved.
A member of the Afghan parliament Shakila Hashimi who presented the report to the Afghan House of Representatives said false statements were given to the Afghan people by provincial governor Toryalai Weesa and US commander saying that the shooting was carried out by a single US soldier.
She also added, the assassination was carried out by 2 groups of US soldiers consisting of 15 to 20 soldiers and were accompanied by 2 helicopters.
Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
17 Comments
Doesn’t forbade at all well if this is the level of US-Afghan cooperation.
Its worth reading up some of the details of this unfortunate incident in Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panjwai_shooting_spree
So what’s the Afghan’s angle on this? Could this part of the karazi vs Obama/Biden feud & it’s his way of ‘pushing’ back?
Piecing together the public accounts…
It appears that this is a crime of personal retribution against one specific family.
Bates was in the area long enough to get the lay of the land and know who was who.
There may be specific evidence linking the dead to the injured soldier for it’s plain that Sgt. Bates passed up other Afghans — and it now appears that all of the dead are related by blood.
In which case, Sgt. Bates has adopted Pashtunwali for himself. ( It sanctions blood feud/ revenge. )
If the US Army adopted Pashtunwali every day would be as bloody as this.
——-
In a larger sense, we need to get out.
It’s entirely too likely that the dead family was involved in either planting the IED or in tacitly permitting our patrol to suffer from it.
It is impossible for America to change that behavior with Marshall Plan thinking.
All NGOs need to be shut down and evacuated.
All COIN needs to end. After all, this isn’t an insurgency. It’s an invasion by proxy — by Islamabad. For the locals, the Taliban stick out like a sore thumb. They’re Pakistani born and bred — in the FATA. Whatever local talent they use is coerced.
It’s bizarre to contemplate — but our campaign against AQ has been morphed into fixing the unfixable: Pashtun culture and islamist ideology.
The American public never signed off on this Pygmalion Project.
It is becoming more obvious as the BS in afghanistan developes in more and more complex scenarios..that our dear obama is in cahootes with the afghan pres karzai.
They are muslim brothers wanting to take down the USA in whatever way they can….
Funny. But I don’t recall witnesses from initial AP stories mentioning anything about helicopters flying around, or 15 or 20 soldiers being involved. AP is probably suppressing this.
Pajhwok (Afghan news agency) has this story 3/17:
http://www.pajhwok.com/en/2012/03/17/probe-team-women-sexually-assaulted-killing-panjwai
The divide between US media and Afghan media calls for investigation by responsible journalists. What’s going on? Is this the ‘big spin’?
Blert, very insightful thinking on your part.
Trying to convince those people that this was the deed of a ‘lone nut’ would be like trying to convince the OJ jury that those murders too were the deed of a ‘lone nut.’
The motive for his act may well be the fact that he wasn’t promoted by the military; hence, he’s out to get revenge against our military. If so, this constitutes an act of treason in the most serious sense of the term.
I believe it may prove to be wise to suspend forced repeat deployments to combat zones any military personnel out of that base in Washington State that has now gotten a bad name over incidents like these.
Let any deployments from there be done strictly on only a voluntary and a case-by-case basis.
I also think that there should be some kind of a national referendum by the Afghan people whether
at least our conventional forces should be allowed to stay or go.
Finally, I would like to see only voluntary deployments sent over there to be gradually phased in, at least with respect to the conventional forces being deployed over there.
@Bill Roggio
@blert
The statements from “blert” apparently stating that the Bates shooting was an act of retribution for an IED incident should not be made unless blert has some REAL evidence. Statements like this can be taken as fact / American confession by Afghans etc and become major incidents in of themselves.
I have not found any evidence of this allegation. Even Al Jazeera News, including their often wildly anti-American opinion page, makes no suggestion of this nature. What is going on here?
@blert – it is a mistake to think Islamist ideology and Pashtun culture for the same thing. Pashtuns were (and some are) Buddhists, Hindus and Zoroastrians before Islam existed. This Hashimi, she is (to judge by her name) descended from Arabs and is a near-sayyid – therefore not a Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara or any other Afghan people. She would have the Islamist view, which seeks to submerge any other identity (ethno-linguistic, national or otherwise) within the Muslim identity. This is the goal of the Ikhwani (Musim Brotherhood) forces which the US installed in Afghanistan and selected as our interlocutors with the Afghan people. People like Rabbani (may he rest in eternal torment), Sayyaf, Masood, Hikmatyar, Fahim and the West’s darling Dr. Abdullah are all Ikhwan, not Afghan and not friends to us or the Afghan people. The angle of this story is to get the US out so that Afghanistan can provide a space for the Pan-Islamic agenda and future partnership between Muslim nations, both Shia and Sunni, against the infidel.
Thanks Villiger for the reference to Wikipedia.
blert, is this your source? Remember Pierre Salinger and TWA 800?
I have not thought of Wikipedia as a news source, I have always viewed it as a reference. Its viewed as a joke among the PhD crowd, many scientific inaccuracies have been found.
It appears as though Wikipedia is now morphing into a left wing political mouth piece. Maybe there is something to this, I don’t know. But as I said previously, even Al Jazeera news and its wildly anti-American opinion page, an organization with lots of sources on the ground in these villages, makes no such suggestion. Although now they probably soon will.
If you check the history of the Wikipedia entry you will see a few problems with the references. I think its fairly clear a small group has an agenda and they extrapolating beyond their references.
I am surprised there has not been more commentary on this bombshell allegation.
Karazais rhetoric baffles me as he owes his very position to the fact that ISAF is in the country, if we leave he is pretty much a dead man walking IMO.
Are the Pakistanis paying the Afghan-MPs to say that stuff? Or is this bull meant to corrode support for the provincial governor to make way for someone else’s ideal of a provincial governor?
Either way Karzai is screwing us yet again while demanding we keep him propped up.
Who is this family that the soldier killed? Why them? Where there other families targeted?
Was this family one of status in the community? Were they supporting the Taliban? Were members of the family fighting with the taliban? Why so many women and children but no men? Where were the men? No one fought back? Does it sound like the men in the family were gone in the middle of the night? Where would they go? Were they farmers? Why would farmers not be home sleeping in the middle of the night? Why the stories of multiple soldiers involved? Wer ethey mixing up the rescue effort afterwards with the actual killings? Are they lying to make it sound worse? Are they lying because they are in cahoots with the Taliban?
A lot of questions left unanswered. And it’s hard to believe the locals. The Taliban are fighting with a disinformation war. Are these people helping them?
The unfortunate casualties of war! Every war has it’s MY Lai’s, Andersonvilles, and/or SS-like activities. It is just the nature of the beast.
The quickest way to end the jihad is to go specifically after the imams, mullahs, and ayatollahs — all of them, especially those who produce the cannon fodder at the madrassas– and treat them in the manner they so richly deserve, instead of massacring hapless civilians. Imams are not so easily or quickly replaced as the cannon fodder, and their tunes (meaning interpretation of the Q’uran) will shift as their personal fear escalates.
No imam, mullah, or ayatollah has ever done a suicide bombing — a curious fact considering how much afterlife reward they promise to the suicide bombers. If they really think the rewards are so guaranteed, why don’t they try it themselves?
I think I will refrain from “Piecing together the public accounts…” Assigning motivation based on wildly interpretive conjecture, isn’t either valid or particularly honest. Opinion is fine. I certainly offer plenty of that myself. (plenty of it unwanted) When opinion starts imposing its own set of unsubstantiated facts, than you are on very shaky territory.
Karzis brother was one of the people targeted.
This is clearly a planned operation.
Bales is just the fall guy, like the Oklahoma City Bomber.
This is another CIA operation.