Along the outer edge of the largest U.S. Army base in Afghanistan, a firing range sits on a training ground facing Afghan villages where civilians have been killed, dismembered, crippled, and burned by U.S. military ammunition.
Bagram Airbase is located just north of Kabul and the training ground, unfenced and poorly marked, has made numerous Afghan villagers the victims of unexploded ordnance, errant bullets, and metal shrapnel.
“There is no barrier between nearby villages and the range,” reports the Washington Post, “it is unclear where the dusty townships end and the vast military training area begins. The only apparent warnings are scrawled in faded, barely decipherable English lettering on concrete blocks: ‘Small Arms Range’ and ‘Weapon Range.’ There is no translation in Dari or Pashto, the two most common languages in Afghanistan.”
The U.S. Army’s official safety regulations instruct soldiers to “protect civilian and military populations who live and work near live-fire operational ranges,” while Pentagon recommendations state that “physical controls, including fences, barriers, and signs should be constructed where necessary, and will require on-going maintenance.”
But the U.S. has refused to build a fence or barrier around the firing range or to relocate it away from civilians, arguing it would be too expensive. One has to wonder how much they would pay if their children and loved ones were being killed and mutilated, instead of nameless Afghans.
Below are some of photographs the Washington Post has published of the Bagram training grounds, the surrounding villages, and a few of the innocent Afghans effected by their neighboring war base. The Post’s captions will also appear with the photos. You can view the whole gallery here.
It's always a shame when civilians are hurt, especially children. On the other hand, how many incidents does it take for the local village to realize there is a weapons range next door, and they need to graze their sheep somewhere else? Bagram has always been a military zone. When the Soviets were in Afghanistan, Bagram was their chief operating base. In other words, since 1979, Bagram has been kind of a bad place to hang out and graze sheep. I find it hard to believe that the civilians in the area don't know this. Now, there is a photo here that leaves a giant clue as to what is actually happening. This is the photo of Afghan children sifting through shrapnel. Someone (my guess is their parents) sends these kids onto an active weapons range to collect scrap metal. The results are not surprising. I am normally a fan of news coverage from Antiwar.com, but I find this story unfairly biased.
Hey, look at this guy justifying for the murderers. Why don't you move your home some place else?
Rather than blaming the criminals, you blame the victims. Your sense of moral balance is really off balance.
Empire — Is brutal imperialism — Is nation without a conscience
The uneducated lower half of America does not vote, educated middle-class vote Democrat, rich ruling class vote republican and the greedy result is our brutal imperialism going down in Afghanistan. Voters without a conscience, eagerly voting for the war-hawk politicians best qualified to plunder the world, and all the heavenly realms sit in wonder as to what the ultimate conclusion might be.
"…instead of nameless Afghans…" But THAT is the point. They are nameless and they are look upon as chattel and worthless, expendable, and not worthy of care by the Archons. The same way the Vietnamese villagers were expendable, the same way the Bosnian villagers were expendable, the way the Iraqis were expendable…
As for the children of those responsible, they believe that will never happen.
Yeah, whenever the relatives of these murdered civilians strike back, the corporate media will bust out the familiar refrain: "Why do they hate us!?" and will quickly conclude that they hate us for our freedoms and our made-in-China blue jeans.
This country is the number one violator of human rights in the world. It is also the number one in the entire history of human race as previous empires never killed a million.
Not to worry. This only collateral damage, needed in order to achieve peace and all that. Besides, they're all brown so who cares?
We have reams of rules and regulations regarding the construction, maintenance, and employment of firing ranges here in the US as well as every other nation where we have such facilities. Why, then, do we just throw the book out in Afghanistan? If we're going to be there for another decade or so you'd think we'd be looking at decent training facilities, right? You don't win hearts and minds by making things even more dangerous for the locals, you know.