U.S Special Forces Admit to Killing 3 Innocent Afghan Women

In an awful breaking story from Afghanistan, U.S Special Forces have been forced to admit to the killing of two pregnant Afghan women, one Afghan teenage girl, and two Afghan men, all innocent civilians.  Worse, evidence continues to emerge that the Special Forces tried to cover up the raid, claiming that the women had been tied up and stabbed to death before the soldiers' arrival.

The raid occurred on February 12th in southeastern Afghanistan, near Gardez. A party was taking place at the home of Afghan police chief Commander Dawood to celebrate the birth of a newborn baby. According to reports in The Times of London, around 3 a.m. one of the party's guests went outside and American Special Forces soldiers shined lights in his face. He went back inside shouting that the Taliban was outside, and Commander Dawood began running towards the family quarters and was shot and killed by U.S soldiers. The three women were killed in this same volley of fire. Dawood's brother, Saranwal Zahir, a prosecutor, was killed while standing in the doorway to the compound shouting that he was innocent.

U.S Special Forces apparently entered the home soon after and tampered with evidence, removing bullets from the bodies of the women and dousing the bullet wounds with alcohol. A senior Afghan official quoted in The Times of London says that the bodies of the women were marked by big holes, that bullets had been removed from the scene (eleven bullets were fired, but only seven were found at the crime scene) and that the Special Forces closed off the area to Afghan investigators from 4 a.m. to 11 a.m. Mohammed Tahir, the father of the teenage girl killed in the raid, was interviewed in The New York Times claiming he saw soldiers removing bullets with knives.

NATO and the U.S Special Forces promptly tried to cover the incident up with a press release stating that two "insurgents" who had "engaged" Special Forces soldiers (in fact the men had not fired a shot and were protesting their innocence) had been killed and, incredibly, that the joint forces in Gardez had made a "gruesome discovery" of women who had been "tied up, gagged and killed." Until yesterday, NATO was telling journalists that the women had been killed in honor killings, presumably by their family members.

The horror of this story illustrates all that is deeply, terribly wrong with the ongoing war in Afghanistan.  The fact that the family members of the women killed have now threatened suicide attacks if their deaths are not avenged shows just what kind of impact this occupation is having: it is creating further trauma and terror, turning the population violently against the United States and towards the Taliban. Mohammed Tahir summed it up most tragically and profoundly in the Times of London: "They teach us human rights, then they kill a load of civilians."

Photo credit: Isafmedia