The Empire 10

De Los Angeles Times onderzocht Amerikaanse oorlogsmisdaden in Afghanistan.

'Two Deaths Were a 'Clue That Something's Wrong'

A Special Forces team in Afghanistan failed to alert its superiors. Witnesses tell of torture.

WAZI, Afghanistan — The Green Berets of ODA 2021 were on high alert as their convoy rumbled down the winding, rutted road that day in March 2003. The team had been tipped that armed men loyal to the notoriously volatile warlord Pacha Khan Zadran lay in wait around the bend.As they approached this mountain village in eastern Afghanistan, the Americans spied the warlord's fighters high on a ridge to their right. They scrambled for cover behind their trucks and Humvees.
Moments later, machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades rained down on their vulnerable position. Though pinned down, the Americans responded with a fusillade of their own."The air was snapping like Rice Crispies [sic]," the Special Forces team's newly assigned commander, Chief Warrant Officer Kenneth C. Waller, 32, wrote in a florid after-action report. "So many rounds were flying back and forth that lead was overcoming the oxygen in the air."The battle raged for 45 minutes, then A-10 attack planes and Apache helicopters flew in and strafed the Afghans into retreat.There were no casualties among the 17 Americans on patrol that day. "It seemed as if we had an angelic bubble surrounding our position," Waller reported to headquarters.Though Waller filed several detailed and colorful accounts of the battle, he apparently omitted any mention of what happened next.As some members of ODA 2021 pursued the warlord's men into the hills, others moved into the village to search the mud-walled houses for fighters.They detained three unarmed men for questioning. Two of them, brothers Jan and Wakil Mohammed, told the soldiers they were just returning from evening prayers at the mosque and had nothing to do with the shootout.Suddenly, another band of five or six Green Berets emerged from the hills where they had been chasing Pacha Khan's men. They had no interpreters."Those soldiers were running toward us and yelling in English, and we didn't understand what they were saying," Jan Mohammed recalled in an interview. Amid the confusion, he said, his brother grew frantic. Wakil, a woodcutter and father of two, raised his hands and shouted in Pashto, "De Khoday day para ma me vala!" according to his brother. "For God's sake, don't shoot me!"There was a burst of gunfire from one soldier, Jan Mohammed said, and three rounds ripped into Wakil. One struck him in the mouth. He fell dead at his brother's feet.'

Nederland steunt de Amerikaanse politiek in Afghanistan. Lees verder over onze bondgenoten in de zogeheten 'war on terror.'
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-torture25sep25,1,603975.story?coll=la-headlines-nation