Afghanistan:
A Surge in U.S. Massacres of Civilians

Jan 18, 2010

On the night of December 26, U.S. forces in Afghanistan massacred 10 civilians, including 8 school-aged children, during a night-time raid in a small, remote village in Kunar Province, bordering on Pakistan.

U.S. and NATO officials tried to cover up the massacre with one lie after another. First, they denied having any information about military operations, even though western officials conceded that U.S. special forces had been operating in Kunar. A day later, the U.S. changed its story, claiming that those Afghans killed were insurgents.

However, even the Karzai government, that is, the U.S.’s own puppet government, was forced to condemn the U.S. massacre of civilians. “They gathered eight school students from two compounds and put them in one room and shot them with small arms,” said one Afghan investigator. According to the London Times, it was either U.S. Special Forces or private mercenaries working for the U.S. government who dragged the children from their beds, handcuffed them and executed them.

In response to news of the massacre, thousands of students and teachers in many cities, and throughout Kunar, took to the streets in protest. They blocked the main roads and burned American flags. In Kabul, protesters held up banners showing photographs of dead children alongside placards demanding “Foreign troops leave Afghanistan” and “Stop killing us”. Hekmatullah, a young protester, said: “We’re sick of Americans bombing us.” Samiullah Miakhel, an older man said: “The Americans are just all the time killing civilians.”

Even while the protests were taking place, a NATO drone fired a missile into a village in Helmand Province located in the south of the country, killing nine civilians, including children, leaving many more wounded. A spokesman for the local government said that people had been gathering to discuss water distribution when the air strike took place. “All of a sudden the area was bombed, eight people were killed on the spot, another died later,” one resident said. In fact, U.S. forces have often targeted large gatherings of people, especially weddings and funerals.

The massacres of civilians are becoming more frequent. Even U.N. statistics, which greatly undercount the real death toll, show a big increase in civilian deaths in the first 10 months of 2009. More than 1,050 people under the age of 18 were killed last year, according to an Afghan human rights organization.

This bloodshed promises to get worse, as the U.S. military sends tens of thousands more troops and mercenaries in the big “surge” that Obama announced in his December 1 speech at West Point.

No, the U.S. is not sending in these troops to “protect” the Afghanistan population, as Obama had the nerve to say in his speech. They’re hoping to drown the population’s resistance in oceans of blood.

U.S. troops out of Afghanistan!