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Interested
Joined: 10 Feb 2003
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 Posted: Fri May 15, 2009 7:46 pm Post subject: Rumsfeld's renegade unit blamed for 100s of innocent deaths |
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Rumsfeld's renegade unit blamed for Afghan deaths
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Special Forces group implicated in three incidents that claimed the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians / MarSOC was set up by former defence secretary despite opposition from within the Marine Corps.
A single American Special Forces group was behind at least three of Afghanistan's worst civilian casualty incidents, The Independent has learnt, raising fundamental questions about their ongoing role in the conflict.
Troops from the US Marines Corps' Special Operations Command, or MarSOC, were responsible for calling in air strikes in Bala Boluk, in Farah, last week � believed to have killed more than 140 men, women and children � as well as two other incidents in 2007 and 2008. News of MarSOC's involvement in the three incidents comes just days after a Special Forces expert, Lieutenant-General Stanley McChrystal, was named to take over as the top commander of US and Nato troops in Afghanistan. His surprise appointment has prompted speculation that commando counterinsurgency missions will increase in the battle to beat the Taliban.
MarSOC was created three years ago on the express orders of Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary at the time, despite opposition from within the Marine Corps and the wider Special Forces community. An article in the Marine Corps Times described the MarSOC troops as "cowboys" who brought shame on the corps.
The first controversial incident involving the unit happened just three weeks into its first deployment to Afghanistan on 4 March 2007. Speeding away from a suicide bomb attack close to the Pakistan border, around 120 men from Fox Company opened fire on civilians near Jalalabad, in Nangahar province. The Marines said they were shot at after the explosion; eyewitnesses said the Americans fired indiscriminately at pedestrians and civilian cars, killing at least 19 people.
The US Army commander in Nangahar at the time, Colonel John Nicholson, said he was "deeply ashamed" and described the incident as "a stain on our honour". The Marines' tour was cut short after a second incident on 9 March in which they allegedly rolled a car and fired on traffic again, and they were flown out of Afghanistan a few weeks later.
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The so-called "tactical directive" was introduced last September in the wake of the international uproar that followed the Azizabad deaths. It requires troops to exercise "proportionality, restraint, and utmost discrimination" when calling in air strikes. Claims that bombs were dropped in last week's incident in Farah long after the fighting finished suggest those directives may not have been followed by MarSOC.
Meanwhile, Afghan MPs have called for new laws to regulate the presence of foreign forces in Afghanistan, and limit use of air strikes, house searches and Special Forces operations. Sayed Hussein Alemi Balkhi, one of the chief proponents of the planned legislation, said: "Special Forces, all forces, should be regulated by the law. If they won't accept that we have to ask bigger questions about what they are doing here." |
Edited for being too long. Full article is linked at top of post.
Last edited by Interested on Fri May 15, 2009 8:24 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Infoseeker
Joined: 06 Feb 2003
Location: Lurking somewhere near Seoul
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| Posted: Fri May 15, 2009 8:19 pm Post subject: |
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Linking off from that article I found this:
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It is astonishing to discover that the same small American unit, the US Marine Corps' Special Operations or MarSOC, has been responsible for all three of the worst incidents in Afghanistan in which civilians have been killed. Its members refer to themselves as "Taskforce Violence" and the Marines' own newspaper scathingly refers to the unit as "cowboys".
The US military commanders in Afghanistan must have known about MarSOC's reputation for disregarding the loss of life among Afghan civilians, yet for 10 days, they have flatly denied claims by villagers in the western Afghan province of Farah that more than 100 of their neighbours had been slaughtered by US air strikes.
Everything the US military has said about the air strikes on the three villages in Bala Boluk district on the evening of 4 May should be treated with suspicion � most probably hastily-concocted lies aimed at providing a cover story to conceal what really happened. Official mendacity of these proportions is comparable to anything that happened in Vietnam.
The US military now seem to have dropped their previous suggestion that Taliban gunmen had run through the village streets lobbing grenades into houses because villagers had failed to give them a cut of the profits from the opium crop. No evidence was produced for this unlikely tale. Witnesses saw no signs of grenade blasts or machine gun fire. A US official source in Washington eventually admitted that the claim was "thinly sourced".
Survivors from Gerani, Gangabad and Khoujaha villages say that there had been fighting nearby but the Taliban had long withdrawn when US aircraft attacked. This was not a few errant sticks of bombs but a prolonged bombardment. It had a devastating effect on the mud-brick houses and photographs of the dead show that their bodies were quite literally torn apart by the blasts. This makes it difficult to be precise about the exact number killed, but the Afghan Rights Monitor, after extensive interviewing, says that at least 117 civilians were killed, including 26 women and 61 children.
The US military has now fallen back on the tired old justification that the enemy was using civilians as human shields. This certainly is not satisfying infuriated Afghans from demonstrating students at Kabul university all the way to President Hamid Karzai. Whatever MarSOC troops thought they were doing in Bala Boluk, the killing of so many civilians will do nothing but strengthen the Taliban. |
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/patrick-cockburn-these-killings-will-only-strengthen-the-taliban-1685705.html
I must admit I'm getting really sick of hearing the hoary old 'but they were using human shields!" excuse. I'm sure that most of the time it is utter bs. |
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Sleepy in Seoul
Joined: 15 May 2004
Location: Going in ever decreasing circles until I eventually disappear up my own fundament - in NZ
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| Posted: Fri May 15, 2009 9:21 pm Post subject: |
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| I'm not sure if this is an attempt by America to win its first war on its own for more than 100 years or simply one reason why it hasn't. Or maybe it's something else... |
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Blueberry
Joined: 15 Apr 2009
Location: Wonju
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| Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 11:07 am Post subject: |
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| Infoseeker wrote: |
I must admit I'm getting really sick of hearing the hoary old 'but they were using human shields!" excuse. I'm sure that most of the time it is utter bs. |
You don't even know how to spell propaganda, do you? |
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ytuque
Joined: 29 Jan 2008
Location: I drink therefore I am!
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| Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 8:05 pm Post subject: |
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| Infoseeker wrote: |
the Marines' own newspaper scathingly refers to the unit as "cowboys".
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The Marine Corps Times credits this quote to an unidentified source in the US Army. |
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rollo
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: China
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| Posted: Wed May 20, 2009 2:00 pm Post subject: |
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| Obviously Sleepy in Seoul has missed a few news broadcast. I do believe that the a U.S. army numbering less than 120,00 men defeated an Iraqi army of of over 500,000 in less than two weeks. But then all of tho victories Britain and it's slave states over the GErmans in wwII before the u.s. entered the conflict were so brilliant. Oh now i remember Gritain and its lackys didnt win any victories until the U.s. entered the war But as to this unit i believe they were reconnisence unit that's job is to locate enemy troop buildups and call in air strikes. So better to look at the air units not the ground troops. this is not to excuse the civillian deaths just for acccuracy. I do believe it was American air power which ended Serbian aggression in Yugoslovia. |
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