Forums dot lukpac.org

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ar ... Apr27.html

washingtonpost.com
After the Airstrikes, Just Silence
No Compensation, Little Aid for Afghan Victims of U.S. Raids

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

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics ... sfeld.html

May 1, 2003
Rumsfeld Says Most of Afghanistan Now Secure
By REUTERS


Filed at 1:13 p.m. ET

KABUL (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Thursday the bulk of Afghanistan was now secure and U.S.-led forces had moved from major combat operations to a period of stabilization and reconstruction.

But U.S.-backed Afghan President Hamid Karzai admitted his government still had not been able to establish a strong administration countrywide and much more needed to be done.

Speaking at a news conference after talks in Kabul with Karzai and heads of the U.S.-led coalition pursuing Taliban and al Qaeda remnants, Rumsfeld said:

``We are at a point where we clearly have moved from major combat activity to a period of stability and stabilization and reconstruction activities.''

Rumsfeld said the bulk of the country was secure, but added: ``I should underline, however, there are still dangers, still pockets of resistance, in parts of the country.''

Rumsfeld's statement came as President Bush was preparing to declare an end to combat in Iraq on Friday and in spite of an upsurge of attacks blamed on Taliban remnants that have killed more than a dozen Afghan government soldiers and four Americans in just over a month.

Karzai, whose authority still does not extend much beyond Kabul after nearly a year and half in power, told the news conference his government suffered from a severe lack of trained personnel needed to establish its rule in the provinces.

``Have we achieved something from last December (2001) to today? Yes,'' he said. ``Is it enough? Should we do more? Yes a lot more has to be done.''

Rumsfeld said the United States would continue to work with the government to build a national army to make sure any resistance would be ``dealt with properly and efficiently.''

More than 7,000 U.S. troops -- part of an international force of more than 12,000 -- remain in Afghanistan eighteen months after a massive U.S.-led bombing campaign helped drive the fundamentalist Taliban from power.

TALIBAN ACTIVITY OFFERS ``OPPORTUNITY''

At the news conference, he said the coalition still expected to see more Taliban activity, but this could be advantageous.

``We see ebb and flows of activities. Sometimes when activity increases, that offers us an opportunity to go in and deal with them. We expect there will be flareups from time to time, as they happen, they will be dealt with.''

Rumsfeld said he hoped to expand the work of military Provincial Reconstruction Teams, currently limited to three areas, to speed development and boost security.

He said Washington hoped to be able to encourage more countries to take part in the initiative, which has been criticized by aid organisations worried that their work will be associated with U.S. political aims.

Washington sees the teams as a way to bolster security before elections due next year in the absence of a countrywide peacekeeping force sought by Kabul and the United Nations.

Rumsfeld was in Kabul for half a day after a Gulf tour that included what was seen as a symbolic victory stop in Baghdad.

Nearly 5,000 Afghan troops have been trained by U.S., French and British forces and that number is supposed to rise to about 9,000 by the time of elections, but critics say the process has been too slow and many of the trained troops have deserted.

Lieutenant General Dan McNeill, commander of the military effort in Afghanistan, told reporters there would continue to be some areas of Afghanistan that would be ``a little bit messy.'' ``But certainly we have got the upper hand.''

He said aid organisations should take advantage of stability in most of the country to take bold steps in reconstruction. Aid groups, meanwhile, complain their work is hampered by a continuing lack of security, especially at the Pakistan border.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/26/inter ... 6AFGH.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

April 26, 2003
In Afghanistan, Violence Stalls Renewal Effort
By CARLOTTA GALL


ABUL, Afghanistan, April 25 — In the middle of the main road between Kabul and Kandahar lie two bombed-out, rusted fuel trucks, destroyed in American strikes in October 2001. That no one — not the Americans, nor international aid workers, nor Afghans themselves — has dragged them out of the way shows how little has been done to mend Afghanistan since the 2001 war, despite promises of copious foreign assistance.

In a very real sense, the war here has not ended — as shown by an attack today that killed two American soldiers and by a planned visit on Sunday from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Nearly every day, there are killings, explosions, shootings and targeted attacks on foreign aid workers, Afghan officials, and American forces, as well as continuing feuding between warlords in the regions.

No clear picture exists of who will provide the security to stop the bloodshed: the government of President Hamid Karzai, which still has no national army or police force; or the international force of 5,000 peacekeepers here in the capital; or the 11,500 Americans, Romanians and other foreign soldiers still in the provinces hunting for the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

For months now, the American military here has talked of moving into "Phase Four," which would mean winding down combat activities and entering a period of reconstruction. Yet the military is still mounting large-scale combat operations in the pursuit of armed groups of rebels in mountain hideouts, and turning villages upside down in a search for suspects and weapons that is making the foreign presence ever more unpopular with Afghans.

In southern and eastern Afghanistan, the exiled Taliban movement has been resurgent since December. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a renegade mujahedeen commander and former American ally, has called for a holy war against "occupying forces."

The attack today, which killed an American soldier near a Special Forces base close to Shkin in eastern Afghanistan, was particularly brazen. About 20 rebels opened fire on a platoon of American and Afghan soldiers in broad daylight, wounding at least six other soldiers before retreating across the border to Pakistan, as many attackers have in recent weeks. A second American soldier later died of wounds from the battle, Reuters reported.

Cross-border violence has risen so much that President Karzai, apparently with the backing of the United States, took the unusual step this week of naming the fugitive Taliban leaders he wants Pakistan to hand over to his government in Kabul.

His administration appears equally hamstrung, however, when it comes to reducing the power of the warlords, who often put personal interest before national unity, but who have been virtually the only source of security for ordinary Afghans, who have been looking for safety and some form of economic subsistence since Afghanistan began to fall into chaos more than two decades ago, during the Soviet invasion in 1979.

Fixing the Kabul-Kandahar road, one of the main arteries of the country, has been a priority of the Karzai government. It is part of the American-led $180 million plan to repair main roads and provide hundreds of jobs. Yet now, in the second year of reconstruction, there is no sign of any work being done all along this 300 miles of ruts and holes.

American soldiers at their headquarters at Bagram Air Base, near Kabul, share many of the apprehensions of the Afghan public — despite their public, official optimism on their ability to secure both Afghanistan and Iraq. "I don't feel comfortable watching us start on another war when this remains unfinished," one soldier at Bagram said recently, insisting on anonymity. "It would have been better if we could have moved into Phase Four before they started in Iraq."

After their grueling hikes through the Afghan mountains, American troops often head back to base with little to show for their effort. The international coalition here regularly announces that weapons caches have been seized and destroyed, but there have been few important arrests made, and no pause in attacks on American bases and Afghan government posts and personnel.

A recent two-week operation with 500 Special Forces and airborne infantry troops in the Baghran Valley in the southern province of Helmand failed to net its main prey — Abdul Waheed, the local chief of Baghran, and another former Taliban commander, Mullah Kabir. Both men got away, and Mr. Waheed later told friends that he had made it to the safety of Quetta in Pakistan, an American official said.

The continuing airborne assaults and rough searches are angering Afghan villagers, especially when fatal errors are made. One of those, an airstrike that was meant for a group of rebels but that hit a house in eastern Afghanistan this month, killed 11 members of a family as they slept. The bombing occurred near Shkin, where today's attack happened and where the first signs of renewed rebel activity emerged last Dec. 21, when an American soldier on patrol was shot dead.

The recent operation in Helmand left one shepherd dead and five people injured, three of them children. A trail of houses was trashed and looted; other families wept to see their male breadwinners detained.

The popularity of the American presence was also not increased by the deaths of two men among a group of Afghans arrested and held for interrogation at Bagram Air Base in December.

Small boys make obscene gestures at American troops as they pass by villages in Khost Province, and villagers complain that the Americans are arresting the wrong people, often because they are misled by the local militias working with them who hunt down personal enemies.

A former mujahedeen commander, Hajji Spin Bacha Zadran, 60, who was held for a month in the Bagram detention center last fall, said he told his captors they were encouraging animosity among Afghans.

"I told them they should not arrest innocent people and they should try to be close to the people and should not make the people angry, because already now the people do not like them because they are arresting innocent people," he said in an interview at his home in the eastern town of Khost.

In a tea house in Khost, where scores of arrests have been made over the past months, residents listened keenly to a conversation about the American presence in Afghanistan.

One speaker praised the Americans because, he said, they have prevented Afghan militias' feuding. But the room fell into an appalled silence when it was suggested that American forces would stay for as long as a decade. "Oh my God!" muttered one man, turning his back on the speaker in disgust.

"There is a widening gap between the Afghan people and the Americans," warned a senior government official on his return from the eastern border regions.

American officials say the military has learned the bitter lessons of working too closely with any one clan or tribe, often ending up being used to further local vendettas. But their critics say they are not moving fast enough to cut ties with troublemakers.

The American commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Daniel K. McNeill, has stressed the importance of treating villagers with respect and of rebuilding and bringing in aid after combat operations, his top commander in southern Afghanistan, Lt. Col. John Campbell, said in a recent interview. But it does not always work.

"We will not be angry if they help us and do not bother us," said Pai Muhammad, a villager in the Baghran Valley. "Up until now, I have not become angry, but then they have not killed anyone in my family." But the villagers of Lejay were so embittered after Special Forces spent 10 days in their village, conducting searches and making arrests, that they wrote an open letter to the United Nations mission in Afghanistan.

"The Americans searched our province," the letter reads in part. "They did not find Mullah Omar, they did not find Osama bin Laden, and they did not find any Taliban. They arrested old men, drivers, and shopkeepers, and they injured women and children."

These villagers said they did not see any of the aid that United States forces said they would airlift into the region.

The escalating violence has also slowed reconstruction. A series of attacks on nongovernmental agencies culminated in the killing of an expatriate Red Cross worker in Kandahar last month, prompting most agencies to scale back their work in the most needy south and southeastern regions.

"Thousands of people are going to suffer from this," said one aid worker as he prepared to pull his team of four foreign workers out of refugee camps in the south.

Already frustrated last year by the slowness of reconstruction and the failure of aid organizations to reach the more remote areas, the American military decided last fall to use military civil affairs teams to take reconstruction efforts to the turbulent regions.

The idea is to position civil affairs personnel backed up by Special Forces for security — groups of up to 60 or even 100 people — in as many as 10 places around Afghanistan. The teams have a total of $12 million for projects they oversee, and they hire local contractors to do the building.

In Kabul, foreign diplomats have welcomed the idea of a larger military presence in the regions, particularly because no country is prepared to expand the 5,000-member international peacekeeping force in the capital out to the border regions.

But the plan was immediately criticized by relief groups. The United Nations gently pointed out that it was responsible for coordinating aid, and the nongovernmental aid agencies expressed alarm about becoming associated with the military, suggesting that the soldiers stick to the bigger projects — roads, bridges, government buildings — that aid groups cannot manage.

In the end, some aid officials say, the teams will fail because they are neither one thing nor another.

"They are undermanned, underresourced and are focusing on the wrong areas," said Paul O'Brien of CARE International, the American-based aid group, which has long experience in Afghanistan.

Most aid agencies, and many Afghans around the country, would like foreign troops to disarm the private militias, reduce continuing robbery and extortion, and curb the power of the warlords, Mr. O'Brien said.

But the military teams are concentrating on small-scale projects — building schools, or even just providing desks and latrines for them — while the larger issues of disarmament and peacekeeping are left unfinished, he said.

Rafael Robillard, the director of a coordinating body of international aid agencies in Kabul, summed up the frustration of many aid workers. "I was talking to one civil affairs guy, and we were looking at a kindergarten the American military was building, and the soldier turned to me and said, `Why aren't you guys doing anything about disarmament?' I could not believe it. The military is building kindergartens, and they are asking me, a civilian aid worker, to do disarmament! The world is upside down."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company