Rapp blind to US war crimes

by Daya Gamage

Exhibiting its conspicuous agenda, well-garnished by the pro-separatist elements of the global Tamil Diaspora to further reprimand Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva this March session, to pave the way towards hauling this South Asian nation towards an internal mechanism, the United States last week took an unprecedented step to declare - in its official American Embassy website - ‘committing war crimes in killings civilians'.

The Twitter message pasted in the diplomatic page depicts Washington's departure from usual diplomatic practices this writer was accustomed to during his 25-year professional association with the Colombo Mission, to blatant disregard of fair play and impartiality of an issue as civilian demise during a military battle the Sri Lankan Military launched to wrest its authority in Tamil Tiger-controlled lands of a sovereign nation.

Carrying a photograph in the official American Embassy website of the State Department Head of the Office of Global Criminal Justice Stephen Rapp and Ambassador Michele Sison at a northern Sri Lanka location with the caption reading ‘St Anthany's Ground - site of January 2009 killing of hundreds of families by army shelling’ was indeed a pre-concluded determination that the Sri Lankan Military was in fact guilty of war crimes and genocide.

The Asian Tribune, in a previous analysis, noted that the October 2009 Rapp Report admitted that the information his office at the State Department received were ambiguous.

A special investigative report carried in the Asian Tribune during the time he released the Sri Lanka report disclosed, with details, how he, as the Special Prosecutor of the Rwandan Genocide, concealed US culpability in those mass killings by the Rwandan Patriotic Forces led by Paul Kagame - now that country's president - whitewashing the American intervention in Kagame's brutal effort.

Similarly, questions can now be raised whether Ambassador Stephen Rapp, the Head of the State Department's Office of Global Criminal Justice, would take effective steps to investigate the American culpability in the many killings in the Afghan/Pakistan region of innocent unarmed civilians.

We account here, for Ambassador Rapp's convenience, some of the brutal killings of civilians in that region by the United States military forces.

Indiscriminate killings

US indiscriminate killings of civilians in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region:

(1) Bombing blows away innocent marriage party in January 2002. The attack on Qalaye Niazi (in Afghanistan) was as sudden and devastating as the Pentagon intended.

American Special Forces on the ground confirmed the target and three bombers, a B-52 and two B-1Bs, did the rest, zapping Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders in their sleep as well as an ammunition dump.

The war on terrorism came no cleaner and Commander Matthew Klee, a spokesman at the US central command in Tampa, Florida, had reassuring news: “Follow-on reporting indicates that there was no collateral damage.”

Some of the things his follow-on reporters missed: Bloodied children's shoes and skirts, bloodied schoolbooks, the scalp of a woman with braided grey hair, butter toffees in red wrappers, wedding decorations.

The charred meat sticking to rubble in black lumps could have been Osama bin Laden's henchmen, but survivors said it was the remains of farmers, their wives and children and wedding guests. They said more than 100 civilians died at this village in eastern Afghanistan.

About two dozen guests had crammed into the three occupied houses for a wedding, raising the number of occupants to more than 100, said the elder. The bombers came early in the morning.

Precision-guided bombs vapourised all five buildings and a second wave an hour later, hit people digging in the rubble and, judging from hair and flesh on the edge of three 40ft holes some distance from the complex, those trying to flee.

One villager said 32 died. The United Nations said 52, including 10 women and 25 children.

Mr Mohammad said at least 80. Other villagers said 92. Staff at the hospital in Gardez said 107.

(2) In mid-May 2002, at least 10 persons were killed and many others were wounded when a US war plane bombed a village in the eastern Afghan province of Khost.

A wedding was in progress in the village when people fired into the air in traditional celebrations and US helicopters flying over the area could have mistaken it for hostile fire. An aircraft later bombed the area for several hours.

It quoted sources as saying that terrified residents had been confined to their homes through fear and had not been able to remove dead bodies and evacuate the injured to hospitals for some time after the attack.

Wedding guests

(3) May 2004 : “Among the dead were 27 members of the extended Rakat family, their wedding guests and even the band of musicians hired to play at the ceremony, among them Hussein al-Ali from Ramadi, one of the most popular singers in western Iraq. Dr Alusi said 11 of the dead were women and 14 were children,” The Guardian/UK reported.

The wedding feast was finished and the women had just led the young bride and groom away to their marriage tent for the night when Haleema Shihab heard the first sounds of the fighter jets screeching through the sky above.

It was 10.30pm in the remote village of Mukaradeeb by the Syrian border and the guests hurried back to their homes as the party ended.

As sister-in-law of the groom, Mrs Shihab (30) was to sleep with her husband and children in the house of the wedding party, the Rakat family villa. She was one of the few in the house who survived the night.

“The bombing started at 3.00am,” she said from her bed in the emergency ward at Ramadi General Hospital, 60 miles west of Baghdad. “We went out of the house and the American soldiers started to shoot us. They were shooting low on the ground and targeting us one by one,” she said.

She ran with her youngest child in her arms and her two young boys, Ali and Hamza close behind. As she crossed the fields, a shell exploded close to her, fracturing her legs and knocking her to the ground.

By the time the sun rose the following day over the Rakat family house, the raid had claimed 42 lives, according to Hamdi Noor al-Alusi, Manager of the al-Qaim General Hospital, the nearest to the village.

Among the dead were 27 members of the extended Rakat family, their wedding guests and even the band of musicians hired to play at the ceremony, among them Hussein al-Ali from Ramadi, one of the most popular singers in western Iraq.

Dr Alusi said 11 of the dead were women and 14 were children. “I want to know why the Americans targeted this small village,” he said by telephone. “These people are my patients. I know each one of them. What has caused this disaster?”

(4) October 2006: “A bomb ripped through a wedding convoy in Baghdad, killing at least 15 people, four of them children, the Interior Ministry says.” - A BBC report

“The two grainy videos, apparently taken by cellphones, showed bodies lying side-by-side on the mosque floor, covered by floral-patterned blankets and black-and-white checkered shawls. One young boy lay curled in a foetal position; others looked as though they were asleep. One child had half its head blown off.” - AP reported

US-led raids

The bodies of at least 10 children and many more adults covered in blankets and white shrouds appear in videos obtained by the Associated Press, lending weight to Afghan and UN allegations that US-led raids killed more civilians than the US reported.

The sounds of wailing women mixed with the voices of men shouting inside a white-walled mosque in the western village of Azizabad, where an Afghan government commission and UN report said some 90 civilians - including 60 children and 15 women - were killed.

(5) The Wedding Crashers by Tom Engelhardt, July 13, 2008: “That was early May of this year.

Less than two months later, halfway across the world, another tribal affair was under way. The age of the bride involved is unknown to us, as is her name.

No reporters were clamouring to get to her section of the mountainous back-country of Afghanistan near the Pakistani border. We know almost nothing about her circumstances, except that she was on her way to a nearby village, evidently early in the morning, among a party 70-90 strong, mostly women, escorting the bride to meet her groom as local tradition dictates.”

It was then that the American plane (or planes) arrived, ensuring that she would never say her vows. “They stopped in a narrow location for rest,” said one witness about her house party, according to the BBC. “The plane came and bombed the area.”

The District Governor, Haji Amishah Gul, told the British Times, “So far there are 27 people, including women and children, who have been buried.

Another 10 have been wounded. The attack happened at 6.30am. Just two of the dead are men, the rest are women and children. The bride is among the dead.”

US military spokespeople flatly denied the story. They claimed that Taliban insurgents had been “clearly identified” among the group. “[T]his may just be normal, typical militant propaganda,” said First Lieutenant Nathan Perry. Despite accounts of the wounded, including women and children, being brought to a local hospital, Captain Christian Patterson, Coalition Media Officer, insisted: “It was not a wedding party, there were no women or children present. We have no reports of civilian casualties.” The members of an Afghan inquiry, appointed by President Hamid Karzai, later found that, in all, 47 civilians had died, including 39 women and children, and nine others were wounded.

Collateral damage

(6) “The incident in Azizabad may represent the single deadliest media-verified attack on civilians by US forces since the invasion of 2001. Many bodies had to be dug out of the rubble. There may have been as many as 60 children among the dead.”

An Anatomy of Collateral Damage writes Tom Engelhardt, Asia Times, September 17, 2008:

Here are the basic facts as best we know them. On the night of August 21, a memorial service was held in Azizabad, a village in the Shindand District of Afghanistan's Herat Province, for a tribal leader killed the previous year, who had been, villagers reported, anti-Taliban.

Hundreds had attended, including “extended families from two tribes”.

That night, a combined party of US Special Forces and Afghan Army troops attacked the village. They claimed they were “ambushed” and came under “intense fire”. What we know is that they called in repeated airstrikes. According to several investigations and the on-the-spot reporting of New York Times journalist Carlotta Gall, at least 90 civilians, including perhaps 15 women and up to 60 children, died that night. As many as 76 members of a single extended family were killed, along with its head, Reza Khan. His compound seems to have been specially targeted.

The incident in Azizabad may represent the single deadliest media-verified attack on civilians by US forces since the invasion of 2001. Numerous buildings were damaged. Many bodies, including those of children, had to be dug out of the rubble.

There may have been as many as 60 children among the dead. The US military evidently attacked after being given false information by another tribal leader or businessman in the area with a grudge against Khan and his brother.

As one tribal elder who helped bury the dead put it, “It is quite obvious, the Americans bombed the area due to wrong information. I am 100 percent confident that someone gave the

information due to a tribal dispute. The Americans are foreigners and they do not understand. These people they killed were enemies of the Taliban.”

Here's what Ambassador Stephen Rapp needs to contemplate:

Imagine yourself at the wedding at the village of Qalaye Niazi Afghanistan in December 2001, or in Bal Khel Village Afghanistan in May 2002, or in Oruzgan Province Afghanistan in July 2002, or Mukaradeeb in western Iraq in May 2004, or in Sadr City outside Baghdad in October 2006, or riding in the Iraqi wedding procession in May 2008, or in Nangarhar Province Afghanistan in July 2008, or helping the villagers sort out the bodies of the 60 dead children in Azizabad, Afghanistan in August 2008, or in the village of Wech Baghtu, Afghanistan in November 2008, or in Farah, Afghanistan in May 2009, where the local people collected the names of over 140 dead civilians to present to the authorities.

Mr. Rapp! Turn your focus unto yourself.

Courtesy: Asian Tribune