Registered: Jul 2000
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Posts: 7236

Whether one thinks that the following article is true, false, anti-american, anti-war, pro-taleban, pro-terrorist or whatever. It does pose an intersting question about what we do and do not get told. To what level the information we do receive in 'official' breifings is accurate, or too what level the information is 'glossed' for our palette. Read on and express an opinion on both the validty of the piece and the question which still exists even if you think the piece to have no foundation in fact.

Please note also, that if someting has been said officially now about this, then please let me know. I've been out all day so not seen any of todays news yet.

The village where nothing happened: by Richard Lloyd Parry in Kama Ado, Afghanistan

The village where nothing happened is reached by a steep climb at the end of a rattling three-hour drive along a stony road. Until nothing happened here, early on the morning of Saturday and again the following day, it was a large village with a small graveyard, but now that has been reversed. The cemetery on the hill contains 40 freshly dug graves, unmarked and identical. And the village of Kama Ado has ceased to exist.

Many of the homes here are just deep conical craters in the earth. The rest are cracked open, split like crushed cardboard boxes. At the moment when nothing happened, the villagers of Kama Ado were taking their early morning meal, before sunrise and the beginning of the Ramadan fast. And there in the rubble, dented and ripped, are tokens of the simple daily lives they led.

A contorted tin kettle, turned almost inside out by the blast; a collection of charred cooking pots; and the fragments of an old-fashioned pedal-operated sewing machine. A split metal chest contains scraps of children's clothes in cheap bright nylon.

In another room are the only riches that these people had, six dead cows lying higgledy-piggledy and distended by decay. And all this is very strange because, on Saturday morning – when American B-52s unloaded dozen of bombs that killed 115 men, women and children – nothing happened.

We know this because the US Department of Defence told us so. That evening, a Pentagon spokesman, questioned about reports of civilian casualties in eastern Afghanistan, explained that they were not true, because the US is meticulous in selecting only military targets associated with Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida network. Subsequent Pentagon utterances on the subject have wobbled somewhat, but there has been no retraction of that initial decisive statement: "It just didn't happen."

So God knows what kind of a magic looking-glass I stepped through yesterday, as I travelled out of the city of Jalalabad along the desert road to Kama Ado. From the moment I woke up, I was confronted with the wreckage and innocent victims of high-altitude, hi-tech, thousand-pound nothings.

The day began at the home of Haji Zaman Gamsharik, the pro-Western anti-Taliban mujahedin commander who is being discreetly supplied and funded by the US government. The previous day I had followed him around Jalalabad's mortuary, where seven mutilated corpses were being laid out – mujahedin soldiers of Commander Zaman who had been killed when US bombs hit the government office in which they were sleeping. And now, it had happened again.

There they were in the back of three pick-up trucks – seven more bloody bodies of seven more mujahedin, killed when the guesthouse in which they were sleeping in the village of Landi Khiel was hit by bombs at 6.30am yesterday morning.

Commander Zaman is a proud, haughty man who fought in the mountains for years against the Soviet Union, but I've never seen him look so vulnerable. "I sent them there myself yesterday,'' was all he could say. "I sent them for security.''

But the commander provided us with mujahedin escorts of our own, and we set off down the road to Landi Khiel. We found the ruins of the office where the first lot of soldiers had died, and the guesthouse where they perished the previous morning. And there, in the ruins of a family house, was a small fragment of nothing. It was the tail-end of a compact bomb. It bore the words "Surface Attack Guided Missile AGM 114", and a serial number: 232687. It was half-buried in the remains of the straw roof of a house where three men had died: Fazil Karim, his brother Mahmor Ghulab, and his nephew Hasiz Ullah. "They were a family, just ordinary people," said Haji Mohammed Nazir, the local elder who was accompanying us. "They were not terrorists – the terrorists are in the mountains, over there.''

So we drove on in the direction of the White Mountains, where hundreds of al-Qa'ida members, and perhaps even Osama bin Laden himself, are hiding in the Tora Bora cave complex. A B-52 was high in the sky; a billow of black smoke was visible, blooming out of the valley. Something, surely, was happening over there. And then we reached the ruins of Kama Ado. Among the pathetic remains I found only one sinister object _ an old leather gun holster with an ammunition belt. It is conceivable that a handful of al-Qa'ida members had been spending the night there, and that US targeters learnt of their presence.

But after 22 years of war, almost every Afghan home contains some military relic, and the villagers swore they hadn't seen Arab or Taliban fighters for a fortnight. Certainly there could not have been enough terrorists to fill the 40 fresh graves. One person told me a few holes contained not intact people, but simply body parts.

We had been warned that white faces would meet an angry reception in the village where nothing happened, but I encountered despair and bafflement. I had only one moment of real fear, when an American B-52 flew overhead. We halted our convoy, clambered out of the cars and trotted into the fields on either side. The plane did a slow circle; I was conscious of electronic eyes looking down on us, the only traffic on the road. Then, to everyone's relief, the bomber veered away.

Before we left the city, an American colleague in Jalalabad telephoned the Pentagon and informed them of our plans to travel to the village where nothing happened. I can't help wondering, in these looking-glass times, what that B-52 would have done to our convoy if that telephone call had not been made. Perhaps nothing would have happened to me too.

Last edited by Spooky on 12-05-2001 at 12:29 AM

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Oregon. America.
Posts: 2084

"Whoever dies with the most toys wins."

Barbarians. Fucking high-tech barbarians.

"It's evolution, baby."

Thanks for the read, Sp00ky.

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Kansas City
Posts: 7504

Obviously, this needs investigating. A secondary report would go a long way towards confirming this for me.

It would not shock me if this were true, and if the military were lying.

What's the original source on this?

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location:
Posts: 7236

Ok that story was on the cover of The Independent yesterday. Personally, I think if it is true, then I don;t undertsand why the Pentagon have denied it entirely. I mean they have accepted 'collateral damages' so why can this not be counted in that?

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Registered: Jan 2001
Location: Zion
Posts: 4550

How much information is too much information? The press is constantly hounding the spokespeople for precise information regarding every aspect of our involvement in Afghanistan. Where should they draw the line? I don't blame the media for asking. They are only trying to satisfy the masses of people watching the 24 hour coverage with the same fervor as rubbernecking at a car accident. We, as civilians, require too much information. We seem to be o.k. with the fact that information given to us could jeopordize the lives of our soldiers in a battle as long as we get the full scoop. Modern technology lets Wolf Blitzer stand in the desert and transmit the latest story while cruise missles fly over his head. Wars of past had a sort of "buffer" time; time for the military to censor, edit, or otherwise omit information that they deemed unnecessary for the public to know. Now, they watch their own attacks on CNN.

I do expect a certain amount of denial from the military. If we knew every gruesome detail of a war, we wouldn't want to support it. The military knows that innocent lives will be taken. They just aren't going to advertise or acknowledge it.

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Registered: Jul 2000
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Posts: 7236

Cruise, the points you make are valid. But surely you agree that if it transpires that this did actually happen then the military are in a sticky position. Denial of knowledge ie 'I am not aware of that' would be excusable, but to actually say 'it did'nt happen' (assuming of course that that was the exact phrase used) is a concern no? Particularly of course if it is shown to be contrary to the case beyond reasonable doubt.

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Registered: Jan 2001
Location: Zion
Posts: 4550

If I were a betting man, I'd say that yes, it did happen. I don't agree with them saying "this did not happen." I think that in any military situation we've ever been in there has been instance of denial by our military when they know full well that the accusations are true. Killing innocents is never good press for Mother Green and her killing machines. I don't think that the military has prepared itself for the type of journalists that are now covering these squirmishes. Reporters are sneaking into countries and risking death to get the story. I think the military lies to them out of lack of a better solution.

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