Rolling Stone: The A-Team Killings

[kpete]

The A-Team Killings
BY MATTHIEU AIKINS | November 6th, 2013
Last spring, the remains of 10 missing Afghan villagers were dug up outside a U.S. Special Forces base – was it a war crime or just another episode in a very dirty war?


A flier of Afghans who were seized by the Special Forces and never seen again.

..............................

Last winter, a twelve-man 'A-Team' of American Special Forces arrived in Wardak Province, Afghanistan. Within six months of their arrival, the team would be forced out of the province by the Afghan government, amid allegations of torture and murder against the local populace that, if true, would amount to some of the gravest war crimes perpetrated by American forces since 2001.

According to local villagers, eight civilians had been killed by the Americans and their translators during operations. Another ten had been arrested by the team and subsequently disappeared. Neither the Afghan government nor the Red Cross was able to locate them, and the American military categorically denied any responsibility for their fate--even after human remains were found buried just outside the Special Forces' base.



........over the past five months, Rolling Stone has interviewed more than two dozen eyewitnesses and victims’ families who’ve provided consistent and detailed allegations of the involvement of American forces in the disappearance of the 10 men, and has talked to Afghan and Western officials who were familiar with confidential Afghan-government, U.N. and Red Cross investigations that found the allegations credible. In July, a U.N. report on civilian casualties in Afghanistan warned: “The reported disappearances, arbitrary killings and torture – if proven to have been committed under the auspices of a party to the armed conflict – may amount to war crimes.”

....................................

My feature article, The A-Team Killings, is now out in the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine. The results of five months of investigation, the article presents detailed evidence to support the allegations that American forces were complicit in a campaign of murder and torture. These revelations come at an extremely sensitive time for the Afghan and American governments, which are locked in negotiations over the future of US forces in Afghanistan. The US military has opened a criminal investigation--will there be justice for the missing men of Wardak and their families?

http://www.rollingstone.com/feature/a-team-killings-afghanistan-special-forces#ixzz2jsoEws1f
http://www.eschatonblog.com/2013/11/didnt-it-occur-to-anybody-to-just-say-no.html#comment-1111216215

[bemildred]

1. That's pretty much what they do, special forces, you know.

They are not social workers, they are "counter-terrorists". You send them in somewhere, you better know who they are supposed to kill, and you better make sure they know.

[Capt. Obvious]

2. I know guys that did that - they were framed for a crime they didn't commit

They now work as soldiers of fortune out of the L.A. underground.

[WinkyDink]

11. I'm sure they were "framed." *rollingeyes*

[Comrade Grumpy]

6. I think the old-fashioned name for that is "death squads."

[Jesus Malverde]

12. Grumpy, that term has been "disappeared"..nt

[librechik]

3. Thank goodness they opened an investigation

this should be prosecuted --not much hope there will be appropriate punishment tho. The new normal approves of torture, when it chooses to.

[faithjoy_arsenal]

4. ?

worse scenario

[gopiscrap]

9. welcome to DU

[Jesus Malverde]

5. COIN

Counter insurgency operations at a very basic level involve.

1. Detaining people.
2. Torturing them
3. Getting actionable information
4. Acting on the actionable information by killing or kidnapping new targets
5. Starting at 1 again.

Occasionally the NSA or CIA will throw a bone their way so they can skip the torture/kidnapping and go straight to the killing.

[SQUEE]

7. .. wrong.

How much COIN, or PROIN have you done, certain teams are sent in to be more proactive, others to fundamentally "teach savages to use soap". Green beanies are known as international drill sgts for a reason, and asymetrical warfare is by its very nature messy and dirty, this is why we should not even be there. When ever we assign our troops to these unwinnable wars, we face the problem of becoming the monsters we hunt, so let's stop hunting.

[Jesus Malverde]

8. The "savages" are the ones training the local militias to kill.

The people of vietnam, indonesia, el salvador, guatemala, colombia and countless others never heard the "use soap" message, from their unmarked graves.

[MisterP]

10. remember, Latin America 1954- was just *practice*

[Jesus Malverde]

13. Watch Highly Disturbing Footage of Detainee Abuses in Afghanistan

As Afghan soldiers abuse a prisoner, American Special Forces stand idly by

During the course of my investigation for Rolling Stone into allegations of war crimes committed by U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan, I obtained this video, which appears to show unidentified American soldiers watching as Afghans — likely a mix of Afghan National Army personnel and interpreters — torture and interrogate a prisoner. The video was floating around on Afghan social media pages, but has since apparently been removed. The Americans are visible around the one-minute mark.

These are not the same soldiers from ODA 3124 that I wrote about for the investigation. We don't know who they are. However, based on their facial hair and appearance they are probably from a U.S. Army Special Forces team. Moreover, the uniform pattern that they seem to be wearing did not see general use in Afghanistan until 2010. (I showed the video to a former Green Beret, who concurred with that assessment.)

Not much is said in the video. The Afghans discuss how to hold down the prisoner in Pashto-accented Dari; the man screams, in Kandahari-accented Pashto, "oh my father" as he is whipped, and pleads with his captors that he will tell them whatever they want to know. Afterward, the uniformed Afghan leans over and asks him if he has any weapons, which the prisoner denies. (A spokeswoman says that ISAF is aware of the video, and has referred it to the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, which also confirmed an ongoing investigation.)

The scene depicted in the video, and similar allegations of torture that were made to Rolling Stone in the investigation, fit with a general pattern of recurring abuse in U.S. and Afghan custody that has been documented by the UN, Congress, and human rights groups in Afghanistan since 2001. While the main detention facilities in Afghanistan have technically been transferred to Afghan control, American military units are allowed to hold detainees for "tactical questioning" for up to two weeks. On an isolated firebase occupied by a tightly-knit special forces team, that means the detainees are at the mercy of their enemies. "If an ODA member was killed or critically injured then I can see tactical questioning getting way out of hand," the former Green Beret tells me. For special forces and the interpreters, there is little sympathy for the men who want kill them. "Unless you've been in combat and had people who want to shoot you in the face, you can't understand what it's like," one special forces officer told me. "There's a reason that they say that war is hell. Because it is hell."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/videos/watch-highly-disturbing-footage-of-detainee-abuses-in-afghanistan-20131107

http://music.yahoo.com/video/watch-highly-disturbing-footage-detainee-233923497-rolling-stone.html

[onethatcares]

14. Please

tell me again why we are in Afghanistan.

[Blue_Tires]

15. Can't say I'm surprised...

Probably much more hideous things going on in the world of covert warfare...