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| Afghanistan |
| Report says CIA-trained Afghan forces behind war atrocities |
| 2019-10-31 |
| ISLAMABAD (AP) ‐ Heavily armed men burst into the home in the middle of night, hustling four brothers into separate rooms, their hands bound. Afghan special forces then shot them in the head and heart. The operation, the CIA-trained Afghan unit said, targeted Islamic State militants in a remote region of eastern Nangarhar Province. In reality, the raid took place in the province’s capital of Jalalabad, within earshot of Justice Ministry offices. In an interview with The Associated Press, the family said the dead brothers included a school teacher and an assistant to a member of Afghanistan’s parliament. The truth of their deaths was eventually revealed by local and international media and the country’s intelligence chief, Masoom Stanikzai, was forced to resign. But that’s not enough, says Human Rights Watch in a new report released Thursday documenting what it says are mounting atrocities by U.S.-backed Afghan special forces and rising civilian deaths by both American and Afghan forces. It calls for an investigation into whether the U.S. has committed war crimes in Afghanistan. The report says U.S.-led peace talks to end the 18-year-old war have omitted addressing the fate of the Afghan special forces that work "as part of the covert operations of the Central Intelligence Agency." The report suggests either disbanding them or bringing them under the control of the Defense Ministry. "These troops include Afghan strike forces who have been responsible for extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances, indiscriminate airstrikes, attacks on medical facilities, and other violations of international humanitarian law, or the laws of war," it says. Speaking with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, several Afghan, Taliban and U.S. officials, including some who are involved in trying to resuscitate peace talks, said the Taliban won’t agree to reduce attacks without a reduction in violence from the U.S. and Afghan side. President Donald Trump ended negotiations with the Taliban over what he said was the insurgents’ unacceptable level of violence. According to HRW and several U.N. reports, Afghan special operations units are now partly responsible for rising civilian deaths and rights abuses. They operate with seeming impunity under Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, the National Security Directorate, and hold nondescript names like Unit 01 or Khost Protection Forces. HRW’s report, the culmination of a nearly two-year investigation, documented instances of families terrorized by night raids, summary executions and disappearances of people, some of whom are never heard from again. In preparing the report, researchers interviewed 39 Afghans directly impacted by offenses and several witnesses in nine different provinces. The report tells of raids in Zurmat in eastern Paktia Province. Witnesses said Afghan and U.S. strike forces blew open the door of one home and shot dead four men as the family watched. In a second house, three shopkeepers and a guest, all home for a holiday, were shot and killed, said a witness. In a third incident in Zurmat, a religious teacher and two construction workers were killed. Quoting the Afghanistan Analysts Network, an independent research organization, the report said the three brothers operated a shop in the center of the city of Ghazni. In southern Kandahar province in March, an Afghan strike force arrived in Panjwai in the night and took away two men. One has not been heard from since. A few weeks later in a nearby village, witnesses said a 60-year-old school principal was shot and killed by the strike force after separating him from the women in his household. The body was left in the courtyard. The incidents prompted demonstrations by local residents who complained to researchers: "Why are we always being killed by them? What’s our mistake?" Human Rights Watch shared its findings with both the U.S. and Afghan authorities. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #9 Phoenix Program redux. Good. Chieu hoi, baby. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2019-10-31 13:00 |
| #8 So they are fighting terrorists with terror tactics? They do not - they don't kill women and children. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2019-10-31 12:52 |
| #7 ^ The US Army School of the Americas happened to have courses on counter-insurgency as we practiced at the time. Simple idea, right: "This how we do it if you want to work with us..." This became twisted into a fevered conspiracy theory of how we, the US, became responsible for all sorts of "bad things". As if the militaries trained by the Spanish colonial administrators... (I am not singling out the Spanish here -- read about how the Germans, French, Dutch acted in their colonies if you want an eyeful!) ...didn't have a rich history of "nasty things" to do to revolutionaries!. Bah! Humbug! |
| Posted by: magpie 2019-10-31 09:50 |
| #6 So they are fighting terrorists with terror tactics? Oh Golly. |
| Posted by: Cesare 2019-10-31 09:49 |
| #5 CIA-trained Afghan forces behind war atrocities Well, at least they don't spy on their president. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2019-10-31 09:42 |
| #4 The operation, the CIA-trained Afghan unit said, targeted Islamic State militants in a remote region of eastern Nangarhar Province. Could we have the "Not this s**t again?" graphic for this article? I heard the same song and dance from the leftists concerning the US training officers that ended up running "death squads" in Central America. Humans are not robots. Once they go out on their own they will make judgements under their own morality, not ours! |
| Posted by: magpie 2019-10-31 09:34 |
| #3 Remember the Iraqi "farmers" who were killed while tending their crops at night? |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2019-10-31 07:52 |
| #2 Oh dear! Herb will have to crank out his Goatherder Memeâ„¢! |
| Posted by: Frank G 2019-10-31 07:13 |
| #1 Extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances are sometimes necessary. Those complaining are the ones losing to rightful law enforcement. |
| Posted by: Dron66046 2019-10-31 07:13 |