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Military Exonerates Itself From Wrong-doing

What else is new? The US does it:

A military spokesman said the probe into the Dec. 6 attack that killed the children concluded the military had followed the rules of war properly. The attack drew criticism from the Afghan government and the United Nations.

The children were killed by an A-10 ground-attack aircraft as they played near a village in Ghazni province. A man was also killed, but the military admitted that a suspected Taliban militant targeted in the raid escaped. The military apologized after the incident.

Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty said releasing details of the report would compromise U.S. intelligence.

"The results are classified 'top secret' because of the intelligence involved and the targeting involved," Hilferty said. "You can follow all of the laws of land warfare and still, unfortunately, have tragic incidents."

And Pakistan does it, too:

Relations between tribal elders and the military have been strained recently over the deaths of a number of civilians in a tragic shooting incident blamed on soldiers and described by the government as a case of "mistaken fire."

Following angry complaints from the local community, the government was quick to constitute a three-member committee to inquire into the 28 February incident.

But the probe is unlikely to satisfy the tribesmen because the committee's three members are military and civil officers who the tribesmen say cannot be expected to give an independent report.

The deaths of the civilians, six of whom were Pakistani tribesmen and six Afghan refugees, has fuelled tension in the area and made it even more difficult for the army to win the hearts and minds of the tribal people while pursuing al-Qaeda and Taleban suspects.

Writer Rahimullah Yusufzai also notes that the Ahmadzai Waziri tribe was fined $95,000 for "collective responsibility" in failing to prevent rocket attacks, presumably by al-Qaeda militants hiding in the area, against the Pakistani army and paramilitaries.

I hope there's a good novelist living among the Waziri, because he or she would have plenty of good material. Even as they are being fined by Pakistan, the army is trying to recruit the tribesmen in the hunt for Osama bin Laden (who, thanks to the election year, has suddenly moved up the priority list of the BushAdmin; shock, gasp, etc.) Pakistani senators have arrived in the area offering economic incentives. Rahimullah Yusufzai, as consultant to ABCNews (the guy gets around it seems—or the British and US media, like their compatriots in intelligence, don't know many Central Asians), reports that the Waziri are rightly confused:

...it wasn't that long ago that the United States was begging the tribesmen to help the same Arab fighters in a "holy war" against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

"These tribesmen keep telling Pakistani authorities, 'We can't understand how the mujahedeen, the holy warriors, have now become terrorists,' " Yusufzai said.

Posted by kevinmoore at March 10, 2004 04:04 PM | TrackBack