requests for assistance were made to cordon the A[rea of] O[perations] with support from A[fghan] N[ational] Police and local coalition forces in search of H[igh] V[alue] I[ndividual]. A P[rovincial] R[econstruction] T[eam] is enroute to AO.
1) Target was an A[l] Q[aida] Senior Leader
2) Patterns of life were conducted on 18 June from 0800z 1815z (strike time) with no indications of women or children on the objective
3) The mosque was not targeted nor was it struck initial reports state there is no damage to the mosque
4) An elder who was at the mosque stated that the children were held against their will and were intentionally kept inside
UPDATE: 18 0850Z June 07
– Governor Khapalwak has had no success yet in reaching President Karzai (due to the President’s busy schedule today) but expects to reach him within the hour (P[resident] o[f] A[fghanistan] reached later in the afternoon ~ 1400Z)
– The governor conducted a Shura [consultation] this morning, in attendance were locals from both the Yahya Yosof & Khail Districts
– He pressed the Talking Points given to him and added a few of his own that followed in line with our current story
– The atmospherics of the local populous [sic] is that they are in shock, but understand it was caused ultimately by the presence of hoodlums
– The people think it is good that bad men were killed
– The people regret the loss of life among the children
– The governor echoed the tragedy of children being killed, but stressed this could’ve been prevented had the people exposed the presence of insurgents in the area
– The governor promised another Shura in a few days and that the families would be compensated for their loss
– The governor was asked what the mood of the people was and he stated that “the operation was a good thing, and the people believe what we have told them”
There is less clipped military jargon than usual in this war log entry. The report is untypically loquacious, and in relatively plain English, because the slaughter of the seven children turned into quite a scandal, and because President Karzai was making ever louder protests about the civilian death toll from US operations in Afghanistan. But otherwise the report is representative of the kind of documents that surfaced when the Afghan war logs were first published on 25 July 2010. On that day,
Davies wrote: “The United Nations’ special rapporteur for human rights, Professor Philip Alston, went to Afghanistan in May 2008 to investigate rumours of extrajudicial killings. He warned that international forces were neither transparent nor accountable and that Afghans who attempted to find out who had killed their loved ones ‘often come away empty-handed, frustrated and bitter’. Now, for the first time, the leaked war logs reveal details of deadly missions by TF 373 and other units hunting down JPel targets that were previously hidden behind a screen of misinformation. They raise fundamental questions about the legality of the killings and of the long-term imprisonment without trial, and also pragmatically about the impact of a tactic which is inherently likely to kill, injure and alienate the innocent bystanders whose support the coalition craves.”
The
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A hitherto veiled face of the Afghan war was thus revealed in the story of TF 373 and the hit-lists. Another veil was lifted to reveal the relentless toll taken on perfectly innocent civilians by the jittery troops riding in convoys. The foreign troops – not just Americans, but also British, Germans and Poles – were understandably terrified of roadside bombs, or of suicide bombers driving up to them in cars or on motorbikes. In theory there are strict regulations about the graded series of warning steps that soldiers have to take in Afghanistan before firing to kill. These are the procedures governing EOF – “Escalation of Force”. In reality, as log entries repeatedly implied, some soldiers tended to shoot first and ask questions later.
The field reports almost never contained any direct admissions of misbehaviour: these entries are written by comrades, and designed to be viewed by more senior officers. But the Americans were a little less inhibited when giving accounts of the conduct of their allies than they were when writing up their own behaviour. As a result, David Leigh and his colleague Rob Evans were able to tease out clusters of what looked like excessive use of force against civilians on the part of certain British units. They identified a detachment of the Coldstream Guards which had recently taken up position at Camp Soutar in Kabul. The Coldstream Guards’ unofficial blog described their mood at the time: “The overriding threat is that of suicide bombers, of which there have been a number in the recent past.”
Four times in as many weeks, this unit appears to have shot civilians in the town in order to protect its own members. The worst was on 21 October 2007, when the US soldiers reported a case of “blue-on-white” friendly fire in downtown Kabul, noting that some unknown troops had shot up a civilian vehicle containing three private security company interpreters and a driver. The troops had been in “a military-type vehicle that was brown with a gunner on top … There were no US forces located in the vicinity of the event that may have been involved. More to follow!” They updated a short while later, saying “INVESTIGATION IS CONTROLLED BY THE BRITISH. WE NOT ABLE TO GET THE COMPLETE STORY. THIS EVENT BELONGS TO THE BRITISH ISAF FORCES.”
