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Old 04-29-2003, 10:32 AM   #1
Dreamer128
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Join Date: March 21, 2001
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After the Airstrikes, Just Silence
No Compensation, Little Aid for Afghan Victims of U.S. Raids





Shingul, a farmer in Madoo, Afghanistan, is shown with his youngest son, Abdul Haq, who was buried alive in a U.S. airstrike Dec. 1. (Photos April Witt -- The Washington Post)


By April Witt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 28, 2003; Page A17


MADOO, Afghanistan -- There are more graves than houses in Madoo.

The mosque and many of the roughly 35 homes that once made up this hamlet in the White Mountains of eastern Afghanistan lie in rubble. At least 55 men, women and children -- or pieces of them -- are buried here, their graves marked by flags that are whipped by the wind.

Seventeen months after U.S. warplanes bombed this village and others in the vicinity of Osama bin Laden's cave complex at Tora Bora, Madoo's survivors say they can tell civilian victims of U.S. bombing in Iraq what to expect in the way of help from Washington: nothing.

"Our houses were destroyed," said Niaz Mohammad Khan, 30. "We want to rebuild, but we don't have the money. . . . We need water for our land. We need everything. People come and ask us questions, then go away. No one has helped."

Madoo is one of several enclaves in the region that the U.S. military bombed over several days in December 2001, killing an estimated 150 civilians. Once home to 300 people, Madoo has lost roughly half its population, villagers say. In addition to the dozens killed by U.S. airstrikes, many others lost their homes and moved away. The people who remain are destitute. They live crowded in the few stone and timber homes they've managed to rebuild on their own. They subsist on bread and the vegetables they grow. Several children look slight and frail.

Half a world away in Washington, finding ways to help people in such desperate need became an immediate priority for some policymakers and a dangerous precedent to others.

Congress directed that an unspecified amount of money be spent to assist innocent victims of U.S. bombing in Afghanistan, just as it recently called on the Bush administration to identify and provide "appropriate assistance" to civilian victims in Iraq. But the money has not yet reached any of the intended recipients, U.S. officials acknowledged.

"The money is there," said Tim Rieser, an aide to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.). "Mistakes were made. Mistakes are made in wars. We all know that. But we have yet to see the administration take action to carry out the law in Afghanistan."

The U.S. Agency for International Development, for example, had $1.25 million in last year's budget to help Afghan civilians who suffered losses as a result of U.S. military action, according to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. But the agency has not spent any of that money helping Afghans who had their relatives killed, their children maimed, their homes leveled or their livestock and livelihoods destroyed by American bombing, several U.S. officials in Afghanistan conceded this week.

The biggest obstacle to delivery of the aid, officials say, has been a prolonged debate over how to assist bombing victims without compensating them. To policymakers, the distinction between easing the plight of suffering innocents and compensating the victims of war is more than semantic. Both the U.S. military and the State Department are leery of setting legal precedents for compensation and have declined to establish programs that either systematically document civilian losses or give Afghans any opportunity to apply for reparations.

Short of that, military civil-affairs units in Afghanistan have, in isolated instances, provided general humanitarian assistance to communities that happen to have suffered as a result of U.S. bombing. They are, for example, helping rebuild Bamian University -- but only, officials insist, because Bamian needs a new university, not because U.S. bombs destroyed the old one.

"Claims have never been processed for combat losses," said Col. Roger King, U.S. military spokesman at Bagram air base near Kabul, the Afghan capital.

The policy debate has gone on too long, Rieser said. "It's tricky," he said. "We don't imagine going around handing out dollar bills to people. We are sensitive to the issues. If we were to announce some kind of a claims program, every single person in Afghanistan would sign up. It's just not feasible.

"But we do know about a lot of these bombing incidents. We know there is a real need there. Why not start doing something about it in the context of our overall aid program? All Congress is saying is, don't leave out the people who suffered serious losses on account of our mistakes. It should have happened already."

There are no official estimates of how many Afghan civilians have been killed by U.S. bombs. A survey published last year by the human rights group Global Exchange estimated the number at more than 800.

A year and a half after the U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban and al Qaeda, bombs are still falling on Afghan civilians as U.S. forces combat a resurgence of terrorism aimed at destabilizing the government of President Hamid Karzai. In eastern Afghanistan this month, a U.S. warplane mistakenly killed 11 members of one family when a 1,000-pound laser-guided bomb missed its intended target and landed on a house.

And Madoo still lies in ruins.

The village, 25 miles south of Jalalabad, is not accessible by road. It is a short but arduous hike through mountain gorges from the Pakistan border. On the horizon jut the black peaks of Tora Bora, home of the cave complex where an estimated 1,000 of bin Laden's fighters are believed to have gathered after the defeat of the Taliban last fall.

It was late afternoon on Dec. 1, 2001, when U.S. warplanes appeared over Madoo. The people of Madoo were observing Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting.

"It was the time of breaking fast, and we were just sitting together to have dinner," Munir, 12, recalled. "We heard the voice of the planes, and we went outside to see what was happening. A bomb landed on our home. There weren't any Taliban or Arabs with us. For nothing they dropped bombs here."

After the first bombers left, Munir's mother and 8-year-old sister were dead. His infant brother, Abdul Haq, was buried alive. Relatives spied the boy's foot sticking out of a mound of dirt and dug him out.

The bombers returned three times, villagers said. In all, the people of Madoo say they buried at least 55 loved ones.

Many bodies were too damaged to identify. Some of the dozens of mounds in Madoo's hillside burial ground are marked with two and three pieces of wood, signifying that the remains of more than one person are interred there.

The people of Madoo remain puzzled by Americans. A retired Ohio lawyer, who read about one Madoo boy injured in the bombings, was so moved that he visited and gave each survivor about $300. People bought tents and clothes and wheat seeds to plant. But Madoo's losses outstripped one man's largess.

Munir's youngest brother, now a toddler, coughs frequently and swipes at his runny nose. His family, whose home and meager possessions were destroyed in the bombing, lives with relatives.

"Before, it was good here," Munir said. "The people and my father worked on the land. Life was better than it is now. We have lost everything."

Munir's father, Shingul, 55, who is raising his four surviving children alone, tried to talk about his late wife and daughter but could only turn away and weep.

"If we were doing something wrong, I could understand this," he said when he regained his voice. "But it was Ramadan and we were breaking the fast. The main problem we have now is that we have nothing. We would really appreciate it if someone could help."

© 2003 The Washington Post Company


Taliban Reviving, Afghan Gov't Faltering

April 7, 2003

(CBS) Security forces swept through remote hills in northwestern Afghanistan on Monday in search of several hundred suspected Taliban fighters blamed for launching a recent wave of attacks. The fighters' names and native villages were discovered on lists found in the pockets of five senior Taliban commanders captured during fighting in Badghis province last week, said Abdul Wahed Tawaqli, spokesman for the governor of neighboring Herat province. Those captured included Mullah Badar, a former governor of Badghis under the Taliban, whose government was ousted by U.S. forces and Afghan opposition groups in 2001. "In the pockets of these senior commanders, we found lists detailing the names and native villages of those who've been attacking us," Tawaqli said. "We've been looking for them house by house, one by one." Afghan authorities say Taliban remnants are reorganizing in an effort to destabilize the fledgling government of President Hamid Karzai. Southern Afghanistan in particular has been wracked by several attacks in the last few weeks by suspected Taliban fighters, including the murder of a Red Cross worker Ricardo Munguia and an ambush on a U.S. military convoy that killed two American servicemen. Before executing the International Red Cross worker, the Taliban gunmen made a satellite telephone call to their superior for instructions: Kill him? Kill him, the order came back, and Munguia, whose body was found with 20 bullet wounds last month, became the first foreign aid worker to die in Afghanistan since the Taliban's ouster from power 18 months ago. There is little to stop them. The soldiers and police who were supposed to be the bedrock of a stable postwar Afghanistan have gone unpaid for months and are drifting away. Officials announced a landmark program Sunday to disarm, demobilize and reintegrate an estimated 100,000 fighters across Afghanistan over the next three years. The U.N.-sponsored program with start in July and last up to three years, the government said. But officials admitted it will not be an easy task: Most of Afghanistan has long been ruled by warlords with vast private armies who have frequently battled one another. At a time when the United States is promising a reconstructed democratic postwar Iraq, many Afghans are remembering hearing similar promises not long ago. Instead, what they see is thieving warlords, murder on the roads, and a resurgence of Taliban vigilantism. "It's like I am seeing the same movie twice and no one is trying to fix the problem," said Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghanistan's president and his representative in southern Kandahar. "What was promised to Afghans with the collapse of the Taliban was a new life of hope and change. But what was delivered? Nothing. Everyone is back in business." Karzai said reconstruction has been painfully slow — a canal repaired, a piece of city road paved, a small school rebuilt. "There have been no significant changes for people," he said. "People are tired of seeing small, small projects. I don't know what to say to people anymore." When the Taliban ruled they forcibly conscripted young men. "Today I can say 'we don't take your sons away by force to fight at the front line,'" Karzai remarked. "But that's about all I can say." From safe havens in neighboring Pakistan, aided by militant Muslim groups there, the Taliban launched their revival to coincide with the war in Iraq and capitalize on Muslim anger over the U.S. invasion, say Afghan officials. Abdul Salam is a military commander for the government. Last month he was stopped at a Taliban checkpoint in the Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar and became a witness to the killing of Munguia, a 39-year-old water engineer from El Salvador. International workers in Kandahar don't feel safe anymore and some have been moved from the Kandahar region to safer areas, said John Oerum, southwest security officer for the United Nations. But Oerum is trying to find a way to stay in southern Afghanistan. To abandon it would be to let the rebel forces win, he says. The Red Cross, with 150 foreign workers in Afghanistan, has suspended operations indefinitely. Today most Afghans say their National Army seems a distant dream while the U.S.-led coalition continues to feed and finance warlords for their help in hunting for Taliban and al Qaeda fighters. Karzai, the president's brother, says: "We have to pay more attention at the district level, build the administration. We know who these Taliban are, but we don't have the people to report them when they return." Khan Mohammed, commander of Kandahar's 2nd Corps, says his soldiers haven't been paid in seven months, and his fighting force has dwindled. The Kandahar police chief, Mohammed Akram, says his police haven't been paid in months and hundreds have just gone home. "There is no real administration all over Afghanistan, no army, no police," said Mohammed. "The people do not want the Taliban, but we have to unite and build, but we are not."

Lower article from; http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/09/11/attack/main310701.shtml
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Old 04-29-2003, 01:24 PM   #2
MagiK
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Didn't see the Afghanies sending aid to us on 9/11 Of course the terrorists were just using afghanistan as a base and were not really from there...but I think its still a fair comparison. The Taliban DID aid Al-queda and umm we do send food to Afghanistan. Just because the mainstream press left the country doesnt mean all the Americans did.
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Old 04-29-2003, 02:56 PM   #3
Wutang
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Once the major roads get built along with major phone lines all over the country, Afghanistan should become more homogenized (sp?). Factionalism should disappear when people begin talking and travelling from one end of the country to the other.

It may take 20 years but eventually, afghanistan will shed it's warlordism phase.

Course just getting the major roads and phone lines built is a huge chore in itself.

I think something is going to have to give in terms of letting the peacekeepers travel into areas outside the major cities and having the warlords agreeing to let the US build roads.
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Old 04-29-2003, 10:30 PM   #4
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It's true that the Taliban is trying to get a foothold in Afghanistan again, but i don't think they are a serious threat anymore. gotta stay vigilant though, stranger things have happened.
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