A cover-up of US massacre at Mazar-i-Sharif

[IndianaGreen]

How many DUers remember the big debate about the Mazar-i-Sharif massacre, which included the death of CIA agent Mike Spann, the torture of John Walker Lindh, and the psychopath warlord Rashid Dostum? Looks like all of the stuff we suspected our government of doing is now coming to light.

New York Times on Northern Alliance war crime

A cover-up of US massacre at Mazar-i-Sharif

By Barry Grey

13 July 2009

At the end of November, 2001, US Special Forces, CIA operatives and US Army troops, backed by British commandos and working with Dostum’s militia, carried out a horrific three-day bombardment and mass execution of foreign Taliban POWs at Dostum’s Qala-i-Janghi prison fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif. In fact, the Taliban from Kunduz who died in metal containers were originally slated to be shipped to Qala-i-Janghi, but were diverted because of the US-led slaughter that was then underway at the fortress.

The exact number of defenseless POWs who were slaughtered at Qala-i-Janghi remains unknown, but most estimates place the toll in the many hundreds. Unlike the mass murder of Taliban in the desert near Shibarghan, the carnage at Qala-i-Janghi is well documented. News video at the time showed US jets and helicopter gunships dropping bombs on the prison compound, Northern Alliance troops firing from ridges into the prison yard, and dozens of corpses and body parts littering the grounds of the fortress.

Under US direction, Northern Alliance forces poured gasoline into basement hideouts where Taliban prisoners had sought refuge and ignited them, burning scores of people alive. They followed this by flooding the basements with freezing water. On December 1, after three days of mass murder, some 85 survivors surrendered. Most of these were subsequently shipped to the US prison camp at Guantanamo.

Dead POWs were found after the attack with bullets to their heads and their hands tied behind their backs, making clear that they had been executed. A documentary film entitled House of War: The Uprising at Mazar-i-Sharif, containing footage shot during the rampage by international journalists, was aired by CNN on August 3, 2002.

The attack began when POWs, provoked by CIA agents who were interrogating them, killed their main tormentor, CIA operative Johnny “Mike” Spann, and his partner fled and called for US air strikes to put down what he called a prisoner revolt.

Top Bush administration officials bear direct responsibility for this war crime, which recalls the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and atrocities carried out by Nazi forces in Europe during World War II. In the days leading up to Qala-i-Janghi, then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld vetoed an offer from Northern Alliance commanders besieging Kunduz to allow Afghan Taliban to return to their homes and foreign Taliban to be placed under United Nations jurisdiction in return for their surrender.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/nyag-j13.shtml

[aquart]

1. Well, that was one approach.

Seems not to have worked. Other than that, I have zero problem killing Taliban men. Just as they have no problem killing women.

[IndianaGreen]

2. Our pal Rashid Dostum tied a rival to the threads of a tank

and then watched the poor fellow being torn to shreds as he held a banquet for his other henchmen. This was our ally in Afghanistan, a total psychopath!

[IndianaGreen]

3. Update: US 'won't investigate Afghan killings'

US 'won't investigate Afghan killings'

Sunday 12 July 2009

The Obama administration has announced that it will not investigate the 2001 killings of thousands of Afghan prisoners of war who were allegedly slaughtered by US-backed warlords.

In November 2001 as many as 2,000 prisoners died in transit after surrendering during one of the Taliban regime's last stands at Kunduz.

Witnesses have claimed that forces with the US-allied Northern Alliance forced the prisoners into sealed cargo containers over the two-day voyage to Sheberghan prison, suffocating them and then burying them en masse using bulldozers to move the bodies.

Northern Alliance commanders have admitted that some of their troops opened fire on the containers, killing those within.

The mass deaths were brought up anew on Friday in a report by The New York Times on its website.

The New York Times quoted government and human rights officials who accused the Bush administration of failing to investigate the alleged executions.

And the paper cited US military and CIA ties to Afghan General Abdul Rashid Dostum, whom human rights groups accuse of ordering the killings.

The Defence Department and FBI have never fully investigated the incident.

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/world/us_won_t_investigate_afghan_killings