In 2009, anti-government militants commandeered two fuel tankers in northern Afghanistan. While they were crossing the Kunduz river, the trucks got stuck in the mud. People from the area started offloading fuel from the trucks.
This story is fairly well known. And it is the first of ten case studies in a 2014 Amnesty International report on the failures of the United States and other nations to investigate and prosecute killings of civilians by their forces in Afghanistan.
An Omar Kheil resident described the scene to Amnesty International:
Dozens of men and boys rushed to the area; people were doing what they could to bring free fuel home. Some of our relatives in Omar Kheil informed people in Waziri village and other villages about the free fuel, so many people from the surrounding villages came. I went twice but then I got tired. It was almost midnight when I stopped bringing fuel home; I changed my clothes and went to bed.
Left in the Dark: Failures of Accountability for Civilian Casualties Caused by International Military Operations in Afghanistan, Amnesty International
German troops called in United States airstrikes on the trucks. In the middle of the night, some 80 civilians were killed. The true number is not known.
A villager who arrived on the scene just after the air strike described the immediate aftermath:
There were people everywhere: someone’s limb was missing; someone’s hand was missing; many people were buried under the mud; it looked like the Day of Judgment. People were crying, calling names, shouting and running around; I pray that no one experiences such a situation.
Another told Amnesty International:
People who had been killed and injured were everywhere. They were in the river, by the river bank, in the fields ... The wounded were screaming and crying. Some people were burned and it was difficult to identify them; some people were missing body parts, including their head. I have never seen such a horror in my entire life; it was a nightmare.
This became a major political issue in Germany. A top General, a Deputy Defense Minister, and a Labor Minister all resigned, basically for the coverup. No criminal prosecution has been successful, though.
The United States has had no such thing. United States action in the war in Afghanistan is not anywhere near a major political issue, except perhaps the issue of our withdraw.
In 2010, United States airstrikes killed some 21 unarmed civilians traveling in minibuses in Uruzgan province. It was a major event in Afghanistan. General Stanley McCrystal went on Afghan television, and promised "a thorough investigation to prevent this from happening again".
Nothing actually was done.
The same unit that had called in the airstrikes was implicated in the outright horrific 2012 executions and torture in Wardak province. Again, nothing in accountabilty has been accomplished.
There is an open investigation as of this August, diaried here. But previous investigations have gone nowhere.
Concern is expressed at the unlawful killing of at least 19 individuals in the district of Nerkh in the province of Wardak, Afghanistan in late 2012 and early 2013, as well as at the reported lack of progress in the investigations on these cases launched by the US and Afghan authorities.
Letter from UN Special Rapporteurs
Since I've
diaried repeatedly on this story, I'll omit further detail.
Bush-era torture will still crop up as a major political issue and subject of discussion in the United States. But the Wardak executions and torture do not.
And neither does the wider and more general lack of accountability for civilian killings in the wars.
It will often be said, that Afghanistan is the war George W. Bush took his eyes off of, to go invade Iraq.
It wasn't just George W. Bush who did that, though.
It is probably not the most popular political opinion to be expressing at this moment. But it was pretty much the whole nation that took its eyes off of Afghanistan, to go read about Iraq.
And the lack of accountability for civilian killings in our war in Afghanistan involves a national failure, not only a military or an administration one.
With eyes now on the airstrike on the hospital in Kunduz, I'll suggest that it would take some sustained rather than temporary attention to get an effective investigation, as Médecins Sans Frontières is asking for.
MSF demands a full and transparent account from the coalition regarding its aerial bombing activities over Kunduz on Saturday morning. MSF also calls for an independent investigation of the attack to ensure maximum transparency and accountability.