US Kill Teams Target Afghan Civilians as Trophies
Tuesday, March 22, 2011 – by Staff Report
Commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for possible riots and public fury triggered by the publication of “trophy” photographs of US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of defenceless Afghan civilians they killed. Senior officials at Nato’s International Security Assistance Force in Kabul have compared the pictures published by the German news weekly Der Spiegel to the images of US soldiers abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq which sparked waves of anti-US protests around the world. – UK Guardian
Dominant Social Theme: Mistakes happen. (Over and over.)
Free-Market Analysis: How long shall this agony continue? Bestial acts are being committed (see article excerpt above) but the US is not disengaging from Afghanistan anytime soon. The Pentagon brain-trust now projects 2014 as the year in which US forces (some of them) will depart Afghan in earnest, turning the job of nation-building over to a 400,000-strong military and civilian police force.
Additionally, there is always the possibility that the Afghan government will want the US to have a further presence. Thus it is very possible that US forces will construct bases to share with Afghan troops, guaranteeing some level of additional availability in Afghanistan. The US has withdrawn from Iraq, but still maintains a rump force of some 50,000 at various bases throughout that country.
The longer these wars continue, the worse it gets. Young men, taught to kill with industrial efficiency (itself an unnatural act) may eventually exhibit psychopathologies that come with the ongoing pressures of “winning hearts and minds.” In truth, there is very little possibility of winning over the Pashtuns and their Taliban fighting forces at this late date. These are people who regularly blow themselves up as they attempt to fight back against what they consider to be an occupying force.
Perhaps the decade-long war would be more tolerable to participants and the American public alike if someone could verbalize exactly what the troops are fighting for. Initially, it was acknowledged that the Taliban were not a terrorist threat, even though – according to the official American story – the Taliban sheltered Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. But having driven the Taliban from power some nine years ago, the US did not withdraw.
The longer the war continues, unfortunately, the more opportunity there is for young soldiers to behave badly and even brutally. In Iraq there was the Abu Ghraib scandal, where US troops humiliated and even tortured incarcerated opponents of the US occupation. And now there is the Afghan “Kill Team” scandal in which rogue US troops apparently murdered civilians and then posed next to their carcasses, as if the dead were big game trophies.
To its credit, the US Army has acted. Twelve men are currently being tried for their roles in killing three civilians as part of these activities. But the problem is apparently bigger than this as Germany’s Der Spiegal magazine has reportedly obtained more than FOUR THOUSAND Kill Team photos, many apparently showing Americans posing with dead Afghans. Der Spiegal, so far, plans on publishing no more than three photos; the popular news site Drudge.com has posted them as well, in today’s “lede.” Top US brass has been in full damage-control mode for over 100 days, according to media reports.
Five of the soldiers are on trial for pre-meditated murder, after they staged killings to make it look like they were defending themselves from Taliban attacks, the UK Guardian informs us. “Other charges include the mutilation of corpses, the possession of images of human casualties and drug abuse. All of the soldiers have denied the charges. They face the death penalty or life in prison if convicted. The case has already created shock around the world, particularly with the revelations that the men cut ‘trophies’ from the bodies of the people they killed.”
Such stories, along with photographs, have caused massive allied paranoia. In Kabul, foreign offices are on “lockdown,” including the United Nations, which has restricted staff to its compound. There are worries about demonstrations and fears that the Taliban may exploit heightened tensions by launching attacks.
NATO and Pentagon officials are also worried about what the mercurial Afghan president Hamid Karzai might say about the emerging news regarding US Kill Teams. Karzai is supposed to make a speech about which parts of Afghanistan should be placed under home rule in upcoming months, and the fear is that he will bring up the latest incidents. Karzai wants US bombing sorties and nighttime raids to stop.
Tension in both Afghanistan and Pakistan is already heightened because of the shooting by a CIA contractor of two Pakistanis that were supposedly trying to rob him. The contractor has now been flown back to the US but there have been ongoing demonstrations over the affair that were further heightened last week by a drone attack that killed some 40 Pashtun elders.
The US and NATO approach such incidents serially, apologizing as necessary and explaining or denying when possible. But the larger picture is continually more questionable, and even discouraging. As we’ve pointed out many times (along with many other alternative news publications) both Iraq and Afghanistan have been poisoned with radioactive dust from depleted uranium weapons that have given rise to numerous babies with birth defects and also a considerable increase in cancer. Meanwhile, escalating US attacks are under General David Petraeus are causing numerous civilian casualties; most recently nine boys collecting firewood were blasted into pieces by US bomb-pilots who mistook them for Taliban fighters.
It is highly doubtful at this point that the US and NATO can win the hearts and minds of 40 million Pashtuns located in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The solution has been to build up non-Pashtun military and civilian forces that are supposed to number in excess of 400,000 before the final allied drawdown. Since there is considerable ethnic tension between the populations from which these forces are drawn and the Pashtuns themselves, what the US is actually creating in Afghanistan is a recipe for civil war.
Meanwhile, the poisoning of Afghanistan via depleted uranium weapons will continue, along with the drone attacks, mounting civilian deaths and on occasion the brutal eruptions evidenced by these Kill Team incidents.
We have long suggested that the real reason for the war is to subdue the tribal Pashtuns that have proven a problem for Anglo-American elites for over a century now. The British tried to subdue the Pashtuns 100 years ago and were forced to withdraw. The Russians tried to do the same thing 25 years ago and it cost them their empire. Now the Americans and NATO are taking their turns in this poor, bloody, riven land.
Afghanistan is a “graveyard of empires” for a reason. The Pashtuns have occupied the same land for perhaps 2,000 years; the Pakistan Punjabis may be an equally ancient tribe. The Pashtuns especially tend to defend their lands aggressively, maybe because they’ve been invaded so many times. The Anglosphere elites are just one more challenge, though certainly a persistent one. London’s City in our view wants to crush these tribal presences once and for all to ensure that the upcoming, planned one-world order will not be upended by an independent Near Asia. It is impossible to have world government when a fairly large territory remains unpacified.
But given what is occurring and the length of time for which this war has already been prosecuted the likelihood that the Pashtuns shall give in seems less and less feasible. The longer the occupation continues, the more opportunity there is for atrocities to occur. These are not anomalous incidents but predictable ones. It would seem a fairly futile battle at this point. With the US facing a budgetary meltdown and a new war in Libya, one wonders how long it is realistically possible to pursue Afghan hostilities. Tensions with Pakistan are rising, not falling, and this means that Pakistan safe havens will continue to be available to Taliban fighters.
Conclusion: What is needed is a new approach. One hoped that when Barack Obama took office, hostilities would wind down; instead they have ratcheted up, but seemingly without any additional success, no matter what the Pentagon claims. Instead of resolutely continuing, NATO and American forces should call a halt and let the killing cease.
Posted by Zenbillionaire on 3/22/2011 4:31:15 AM
@ DB
“The longer the war continues, unfortunately, the more opportunity there is for young soldiers to behave badly and even brutally.”
Let’s think back on all the good things we’ve done. On all the selfless humanitarian good that has occurred over the course of our lives and the lives of our children. Of all the moral and ethical support we have passed on to them.
Then let’s ask why they’re posing with human corpses.
Posted by Timur The Lame on 3/22/2011 6:54:35 AM
Today’s conclusion to the self evident morass in Afghanistan implies a situation that the various groups within the US power structure are incapable of reading history, seeing how the war is going and all the while expecting local forces to eventually maintain ‘stabilty’.
Surely they know that the Soviet Union used the same face saving method of setting up a local army to mask their retreat. It lasted about as long as their own South Vietnamese experience.
I never allow myself to think that these people are somehow ignorant of the reality in which they find themselves.
The question may be what is the higher game?
The plan may be partially revealed by their eagerness to enter the Libyian fray and the fomenting of unrest carried out in other areas of the Middle East.
The only answer I can guess at is that their business plan demands war and more war evidenced by the stated fact that they are engaged in a ‘war on terror’, a war that is not quantifiable hence perpetual war.
I think that any talks of withdrawing are temporary bromides to quell domestic unrest. I had read that XE has upwards of 100,000 mercenaries still in Iraq so that withdrawl was only cosmetic.
I can’t but see that any invasion post 911 is/was to establish a permanent beachhead in that region.
The individual atrocities that occur stimulate this. The backlash requires more vigilance, surges and drone sorties which inevitably end up being spun as progress.
My two Yen.
Cheers-
http://www.thedailybell.com/1913/US-Kill-Teams-Target-Afghan-Civilians-as-Trophies.html
Centurean2\'s Weblog 
London 7/7 Bombing: Islamist Who Trained Was US Informant
2011
An American jihadist who set up the terrorist training camp where the leader of the 2005 London suicide bombers learned how to manufacture explosives, has been quietly released after serving only four and a half years of a possible 70-year sentence, a Guardian investigation has learned.
The unreported sentencing of Mohammed Junaid Babar to “time served” because of what a New York judge described as “exceptional co-operation” that began even before his arrest has raised questions over whether Babar was a US informer at the time he was helping to train the ringleader of the 7 July tube and bus bombings.
Lawyers representing the families of victims and survivors of the attacks have compared the lenient treatment of Babar to the controversial release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
Babar was imprisoned in 2004 – although final sentencing was deferred – after pleading guilty in a New York court to five counts of terrorism. He set up the training camp in Pakistan where Mohammad Sidique Khan and several other British terrorists learned about bomb-making and how to use combat weapons.
Babar admitted to being a dangerous terrorist who consorted with some of the highest-ranking members of al-Qaida, providing senior members with money and equipment, running weapons, and planning two attempts to assassinate the former president of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf.
But in a deal with prosecutors for the US attorney’s office, Babar agreed to plead guilty and become a government supergrass in return for a drastically reduced sentence.
The Guardian has obtained a court document which shows that on 10 December last year – six years after his initial arrest and subsequent guilty plea – he was sentenced to “time served” and charged $500 (£310) by the court in a “special assessment” fee. The document also reveals that Babar had by then spent just over four years in some form of prison and more than two years free on bail.
Graham Foulkes, a magistrate whose 22-year-old son David was killed by Khan at Edgware Road underground station in 2005, said: “People get four and a half years for burglary. They can get more for some road traffic offences. So for an international terrorist who’s directly linked to the death of my son and dozens and dozens of people to get that sentence is just outrageous.”
Fifty-two people were killed and 784 injured on 7 July 2005 when four suicide bombers detonated rucksacks filled with explosives and nails on London’s transport system in the morning rush hour.
The lawyer representing the families of the dead and survivors, Clifford Tibber of the law firm Anthony Gold, said they would be devastated to learn that Babar had served only a small proportion of his possible sentence.
“Babar admitted setting up and funding training camps attended by the 7/7 bombers,” Tibber said. “When the British government released Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber who received a life sentence, on compassionate grounds after eight years the Americans were furious. Imagine how the bereaved and the survivors will feel about [Babar’s] paltry sentence.”
A remark from the sentencing judge that Babar “began co-operating even before his arrest”, has raised the possibility, supported by other circumstantial evidence obtained by the Guardian, that he may have been an informant for the US government before his detention by the FBI in April 2004.
Babar facilitated the London bombers’ knowledge of bomb-making when he invited around a dozen British jihadists to attend a camp that he had helped set up in north-west Pakistan in the summer of 2003.
In a debriefing with US law enforcement agents in 2004, Babar told US prosecutors about Khan, whom he knew as “Ibrahim”. British terrorism investigators showed Babar an unclear surveillance photo of Khan in August 2004, but Babar failed to identify him.
He has said that when he saw pictures of Khan in newspapers after the bombings he alerted the US authorities straight away: “I told them [the American authorities] that was the person that was Ibrahim. I had mentioned Ibrahim before July 2005.”
After his guilty plea in 2004, Babar spent a good proportion of his four and a half years outside the regular prison system. He flew to testify in trials in the UK and in Canada and met law enforcement officers from around the world.
In 2008 he was granted bail awaiting final sentencing, after being warned by a judge that his conviction on five terrorism offences carried a maximum 70-year term.
Although a probation report dated 9 July 2010 recommended that Babar remain in jail for another 30 years, the US attorney’s office submitted their own report to the New York court, known as a 5K1, which praised Babar’s work.
One extract read out in court stated: “Over the last six and a half years the level of assistance provided by Babar to both the United States government and foreign governments has been more than substantial. It has been extraordinary.”
Speaking in court about Babar’s role in helping to jail British, Canadian and American terrorists, the assistant US attorney Brendan McGuire described Babar’s co-operation as exceptional, and he recommended that he be given a significantly reduced sentence.
Babar’s defence lawyer, Daniel Ollen, told the court that during the two years his client had been out on bail, he had “paid his debt to society” and had settled into a new life with his wife and daughter.
Ollen said the government’s positive statements on behalf of Babar in court spoke volumes about his “hugely successful” actions, and that in 30 years he had never seen a more positive 5K1 report from the government.
Speaking for the first time about the case, Ollen told the Guardian that in court “the government went to bat for him. They used words like ‘extraordinary’ and ‘unprecedented’. Babar’s co-operation really was spectacular when you get down to it.”
When sentencing Babar, the judge, Victor Marrero, praised his work, describing the sentence of four years and eight months as “reasonable and appropriate”.
“The court takes note that the government has evaluated Mr Babar’s cooperation to be significant, truthful, complete, and liable.,” Marrero said.
“[He] worked with the FBI and foreign governments to assist in investigations of terrorism organisations, including al-Qaida, and of terrorist activities such as the London bomb plot.”
“Taking into account the nature and circumstances of the offence and the history and characteristics of the defendant … the court finds that a sentence of time served is reasonable and appropriate and that such a term is sufficient but not greater than necessary to promote the proper objectives of sentencing,” Marrero said.
A law enforcement agent who arrested Babar and spent more than 500 hours debriefing him said he believed Babar was selfish.
The officer, who wished to be known as agent A, said: “Babar wasn’t a hero. He didn’t look at the American flag and suddenly become all patriotic. When his back was against the wall he did what was right for him … he was selfish.”
Further inquiries uncovered allegations from a top US terrorism lawyer who has reviewed sealed evidence in the case which suggests Babar could have been working for the US authorities before his arrest in April 2004.
Having reviewed the court transcript himself, bereaved father Graham Foulkes said: “There’s a hint from one or two of the sentences [in the transcript] that do strongly suggest [Babar’s] co-operation was going well beyond his official arrest. And it looks as if the Americans may well have known in detail what Babar was up to in Pakistan [at the time] and that is a very, very serious matter.”
When judge Marrero’s office was asked to clarify the remarks, his office declined to comment. The US attorney’s office declined to comment on whether Babar had been working with US agencies before his arrest.
The law enforcement officer involved in Babar’s arrest and debriefing also refused to discuss the allegations.
Freed from prison and no longer in the witness protection scheme, it is not known where Babar is currently living. Visiting Babar’s childhood home in the Jamaica area of Queens, New York, the Guardian was told that Babar’s mother was on holiday in Pakistan. The woman who answered the door and identified herself as Babar’s cousin did not know where Babar was living and refused to comment further.
Global Research Articles by Shiv Malik
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23210