our lovely allies WAS Re: MDDM: ch.70: T-t-t-t-tox?

[Doug Millison]

At 10:22 AM -0400 8/18/02, Bandwraith at aol.com wrote:
>"Later on their bones were fished up again and made
>into charcoal, and charcoal into ink, which Angelo,
>having a dark sense of humor, used in all his subsequent
>communications with Faggio, the present document
>included" [CL49, Perrenial Lbrary, H&R, p.74]



Re:  mass graves:  apparent confirmation, by the mainstream press, of
reports circulated by alternative media many month ago...


http://www.msnbc.com/news/795153.asp

The Death Convoy of Afghanistan
Witness reports and the probing of a mass grave point to war crimes. Does
the United States have any responsibility for the atrocities of its allies?
A NEWSWEEK investigation

By Babak Dehghanpisheh, John Barry and Roy Gutman
NEWSWEEK
Aug. 26 issue -  
[...] In January, two investigators from the Boston-based Physicians for
Human Rights had argued their way into the nearby Sheberghan prison. What
they saw shocked them. More than 3,000 Taliban prisoners-who had
surrendered to the victorious Northern Alliance forces at the fall of
Konduz in late November-were crammed, sick and starving, into a facility
with room for only 800. The Northern Alliance commander of the prison
acknowledged the charnel-house conditions, but pleaded that he had no
money. He begged the PHR to send food and supplies, and to ask the United
Nations to dig a well so the prisoners could drink unpolluted water.
        But stories of a deeper horror came from the prisoners themselves.
However awful their conditions, they were the lucky ones. They were alive.
Many hundreds of their comrades, they said, had been killed on the journey
to Sheberghan from Konduz by being stuffed into sealed cargo containers and
left to asphyxiate. Local aid workers and Afghan officials quietly
confirmed that they had heard the same stories. They confirmed, too,
persistent reports about the disposal of many of the dead in mass graves at
Dasht-e Leili. [...]

        How many are buried at Dasht-e Leili? Haglund won't speculate. "The
only thing we know is that it's a very large site," says a U.N. official
privy to the investigation, and there was "a high density of bodies in the
trial trench." Other sources who have investigated the killings aren't
surprised. "I can say with confidence that more than a thousand people died
in the containers," says Aziz ur Rahman Razekh, director of the Afghan
Organization of Human Rights. NEWSWEEK's extensive inquiries of prisoners,
truckdrivers, Afghan militiamen and local villagers-including interviews
with survivors who licked and chewed each other's skin to stay
alive-suggest also that many hundreds of people died.

[...]  The killings illustrate the problems America will face if it opts to
fight wars by proxy, as the United States did in Afghanistan, using small
numbers of U.S. Special Forces calling in air power to support local
fighters on the ground. It also raises questions about the responsibility
Americans have for the conduct of allies who may have no -interest in
applying protections of the Geneva Conventions. The benefit in fighting a
proxy-style war in Afghanistan was victory on the cheap-cheap, at any rate,
in American blood. The cost, NEWSWEEK's investigation has established, is
that American forces were working intimately with "allies" who committed
what could well qualify as war crimes.

[...]  How seriously has the United Nations pursued investigations of what
happened at Sheberghan? The reports of atrocity come at a time when the
international community is desperately trying to bring stability to
Afghanistan. Well-meaning officials may be wondering if a full-scale
investigation might set off a new round of Afghan slaughter. Would it be
worth it? A confidential U.N. memorandum, parts of which were made
available to NEWSWEEK, says that the findings of investigations into the
Dasht-e Leili graves "are sufficient to justify a fully-fledged criminal
investigation." It says that based on "information collected," the site
"contains bodies of Taliban POW's who died of suffocation during transfer
from Konduz to Sheberghan." A witness quoted in the report puts the death
toll at 960. Yet the re-port also raises urgent questions. "Considering the
political sensitivity of this case and related protection concerns, it is
strongly recommended that all activities relevant to this case be brought
to a halt until a decision is made concerning the final goal of the
exercise: criminal trial, truth commission, other, etc."
Newsweek International August 26 Issue

[...]
        For some, the agony in the containers was intensified because they
were tied up. This appears to have been a fate reserved for Pakistani-and
perhaps other non-Afghan-prisoners. Mahmood, 20, says he surrendered at
Konduz along with 1,500 other Pakistanis. All were bound hand and foot
either with their own turbans or with strips ripped from their clothing, he
says. Then they were packed in container trucks "like cattle," he says. He
reckons that about 100 people died in his container.
        The drivers remain tormented by what they took part in. "Why
weren't there any United Nations people there to see the dead bodies?" asks
one. "Why wasn't anything being done?" Another driver shook uncontrollably
as he spoke with NEWSWEEK.
        The convoys of the dead and dying, along with many truckloads of
living prisoners, seem to have arrived at Sheberghan for perhaps 10 days.
Prying eyes were kept away. The Red Cross, learning of the arrivals of
prisoners from Konduz, applied on -Nov. 29 to get into Sheberghan. Dostum's
commander at the prison promised that access would be granted within 24
hours. In fact, it was not until Dec. 10 that the Red Cross got into the
prison. By then, most of the bodies had probably been buried.
[...]
        A widening circle of organizations and individuals know, in broad
terms, what happened after the fall of Konduz. The Red Cross has questioned
survivors and compiled a report about the events; top officials at the Red
Cross's Geneva headquarters have met to discuss, inconclusively, what to do
next. A pair of U.N. investigators were present when Haglund dug his trial
trench across the Dasht-e Leili grave site. After questioning local
witnesses, they, too, compiled a report. Two U.N. entities-the Assistance
Mission to Afghanistan and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights-have
also been mulling what to do. "You have to understand, you're dealing with
a potentially explosive issue here," says a Red Cross official in
Afghanistan, explaining why he was hesitant to discuss the matter. Until
now, anyway, the American military has not conducted a full-fledged
investigation, nor has it been asked to participate in one by other
agencies. U.N. sources say that their inquiries have not implicated U.S.
forces. Publicly, the Pentagon has kept its distance.
[...]
        Over the three days that the first convoys of dead were arriving at
Sheberghan, Special Forces troops were in the area. There was also a
separate, four-man U.S. intelligence team, in combat gear, at the prison
doing first selections of Qaeda suspects for further questioning.
[...]
        It may not be easy for Americans to summon much sympathy for
Taliban or Qaeda prisoners. But the rules of war cannot be applied
selectively. There is no real moral justification for the pain and
destruction of combat if it is not to defend the rule of law. The line is
tough to hold even in a conventional conflict. In a proxy war, it's much
more difficult. The dead at Dasht-e Leili are proof of that.
       
------------------------------------------------------------------------
With Donatella Lorch in Washington, Karen Breslau in San Francisco and
Stryker McGuire in London
       
       © 2002 Newsweek, Inc.