The official statement reads largely the same as the others do. “An individual with a weapon” is spotted during the raid and after being determined a threat “was shot and killed.” Other than a protest in Jalalabad nothing was unusual.
Most of the time the story would end there. We would never hear who the “individual” was, we certainly would never hear that troops ransacked the home during the raid. In ordinary cases, this would be just another Afghan with a gun, killed by NATO troops and chalked up as a combat death.
But this time we do know the victim. Amanullah, a 30 year old auto mechanic and father of five, who made a panicked phone call to his distant relative, Afghan MP Safiya Sidiqi, that the family compound was being raided by what he assumed was a “gang of thieves.”
He had no reason to think anything different. After all, who figures that the US would launch a night raid against the family home of a member of parliament? Shot six times by the raiding US troops, including in the face and heart, Amanullah was slain on the spot.
The killing sparked yet another protest, in the nearby city of Jalabad, over the repeated NATO killings of civilians. Sidiqi wants to see the soldiers involved in the attack arrested and charged in the killing. NATO has yet to comment, but is unlikely to offer anything more than the customary apology and a small sum of money.
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Actually, they were not a gang of thieves. Worse, they were a gang of assassins.
That's the price you pay for us giving you freedom.
The killing of Afghan civilians by the US and NATO is reaching critical mass.
so what they kill our men and hang them in the streets so i say kill them all let god sort them out
We have freedom of speech, so here's my freedom at work: Lou , you are an asshole and are typical if the immoral bastards that run this world from the safety of their tv sets and computer screens.
Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius –"Kill them all–God knows his own" was first uttered by the Cistercian Monk Arnaud Amalric in the Albigensian Crusade–which, incidentally was Christian against Christian–and pertained to the execution of prisoners.
It became popular among US troops in the form, "Kill them all, let God sort them out" during Vietnam.
In Vietnam it was used in regard not to killing prisoners mainly but to killing civilians indiscriminately.
There are hints–no more than hints at the moment–that the Blackwater barbecue was a deliberate set up, and designed, along with all the publicity, to spark both the insurgency and the leveling of Fallujah, thus turn the "occupation" into something much more vicious than it had been to that point.
If so, the USMC were as much marks as the locals.
Whether it was set up or not, the US Military reaction, in an invasion which had been engineered on utterly false pretences, was not only a crime, but worse than that, a mistake.
Afghan civilians being killed by foreign military operations has led to mounting tension between the foreign countries and the government of Afghanistan.
jane
Afghan civilians being killed by foreign military operations has led to mounting tension between the foreign countries and the government of Afghanistan.
jane