[WOT]Americans Massacre a Truckload Afghanis US Major Media Silent

mykyll

Inactive
Delete if this is a dupe.

The 1 hour documentry is featured on the webpage.

myk

*snip* from politrix .org
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Americans Massacre a Truckload Afghanis US Major Media Silent
Posted on Wednesday, July 07 @ 21:01:28 EST

On Democracy Now!, the U.S. broadcast premiere of a documentary film called “Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death.” The film provides eyewitness testimony that U.S. troops were complicit in the massacre of thousands of Taliban prisoners during the Afghan War. It tells the story of thousands of prisoners who surrendered to the US military’s Afghan allies after the siege of Kunduz. According to eyewitnesses, some three thousand of the prisoners were forced into sealed containers and loaded onto trucks for transport to Sheberghan prison. Eyewitnesses say when the prisoners began shouting for air, U.S.-allied Afghan soldiers fired directly into the truck, killing many of them. The rest suffered through an appalling road trip lasting up to four days, so thirsty they clawed at the skin of their fellow prisoners as they licked perspiration and even drank blood from open wounds.

Witnesses say that when the trucks arrived and soldiers opened the containers, most of the people inside were dead. They also say US Special Forces re-directed the containers carrying the living and dead into the desert and stood by as survivors were shot and buried. Now, up to three thousand bodies lie buried in a mass grave.

The film has sent shockwaves around the world. It has been broadcast on national television in Britain, Germany, Italy and Australia. It has been screened by the European parliament. It has outraged human rights groups and international human rights lawyers. They are calling for investigation into whether U.S. Special Forces are guilty of war crimes.

But most Americans have never heard of the film. That’s because not one corporate media outlet in the U.S. will touch it. It has never before been broadcast in this country.

Today, Democracy Now! brings you the premiere broadcast of “Afghan Massacre” in the United States.

“Afghan Massacre” is produced and directed by award-winning Irish filmmaker Jamie Doran. Doran is has worked at the highest levels of television film production for more than two decades. His films have been broadcast on virtually every major channel throughout the world. On average, each of his films are seen in around 35 countries. Before establishing his independent television company, Jamie Doran spent over seven years at BBC Television.

The film was researched by award-winning journalist Najibullah Quraishi, who was beaten almost to death when he tried to obtain video evidence of US Special Forces’ complicity in the massacre. Two of the witnesses who testified in the film are now dead.

“Afghan Massacre: the Convoy of Death” - produced and directed by award-winning Irish filmmaker Jamie Doran.
 

Ought Six

Membership Revoked
Warlords' crimes: Secrets of an Afghan grave


John Heffernan and Jennifer Leaning
The International Herald-Tribune
Monday, February 9, 2004

WASHINGTON While the Bush administration publicly embraces accountability for Saddam Hussein and other alleged perpetrators of crimes against humanity, warlords in Afghanistan continue to reign, exempted from punishment. Even as Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's president, struggles to control the wayward regional commanders, the United States is providing them with a perverse legitimacy.

Ultimately, those most culpable in past, present and possible future injustices must be held accountable.

Call them what you want - regional leaders, commanders or warlords - Abdurrashid Dostum, Atta Mohammad and the others may be responsible for mass killings that fill graves in the barren landscape of northern Afghanistan. They rely on a culture of impunity that is traditional among warlords in northern Afghanistan to sustain them in power.

As investigators for Physicians for Human Rights, we visited dozens of mass graves in the vicinity of Mazar-i-Sharif. The victims lie in layers, with the most recent on top.

Reputedly, Northern Alliance commanders thwarted a Taliban assault in 1997, killing thousands. In 1998 the Taliban took Mazar-i-Sharif and murdered thousands in retaliation.

Two years ago, the U.S.-led coalition, allied with the Northern Alliance, defeated the Taliban and drove them out of power. Between 8,000 and 10,000 Taliban and Al Qaeda forces reportedly surrendered at the northern city of Konduz to the Northern Alliance, led by two rival commanders, Dostum and Atta Mohammad. Some of the captured forces were sent to Guantánamo Bay, where many remain. Others were held in Afghan prisons. While some were released, hundreds, maybe thousands, are still unaccounted for.

Where are they? In January 2002, we found nearly 3,000 of them being held in squalid conditions in an old prison in the town of Shebarghan, about an hour west of Mazar-i-Sharif. The prison was under the control of Dostum, whose palatial headquarters were across the street.

But even counting those crowded into the dilapidated prison, the whereabouts of many remained unknown. We began to suspect that a significant portion might have met their fate on the way there. Indeed, after we left the prison and traveled down the road a few miles into the desert, we smelled the unmistakable odor of decaying flesh and soon found bulldozer tracks and skeletal remains.

A few months later, under the auspices of the UN high commissioner for human rights, our forensic expert exhumed 15 bodies and performed preliminary autopsies on three. Initial findings confirmed that the deaths were caused by asphyxiation. Witnesses later reported that hundreds of prisoners had died in sealed container trucks taking them to Shebarghan. For months, Physicians for Human Rights called for investigation of the grave site, only to be stonewalled by the U.S. Defense and State Departments.

After reports of the mass grave were widely publicized, the United Nations agreed to investigate the site, and Dan Bartlett, the White House spokesman, said, "The proper course for an investigation or inquiry will be made at a later date."

Although U.S. Special Forces were present at the surrender and embedded in the headquarters of Dostum and Atta, they have said they did not follow the trucks and never saw sealed containers. Dostum himself acknowledged that up to 200 prisoners of war died in his forces' custody.

The mass grave, possibly containing hundreds if not thousands of bodies, has yet to be fully investigated and remains unprotected. Some eyewitnesses have either been killed or disappeared, and no offers of protection by international security forces in Afghanistan have been forthcoming.

Sergio Viera de Mello, the former UN high commissioner for human rights who was killed in Baghdad, understood the importance of the investigation, as do Karzai and the former head UN representative in Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi. All publicly supported securing the site.

The United States, however, has refused to support a full investigation publicly. This not only gives the warlords a new confidence that they will retain their power and never be held responsible for past crimes, but severely undermines support for justice and the rule of law.

Some say that Afghanistan, struggling to recover from a quarter-century of war, is too fragile to support efforts to account for past crimes. Others, including Afghan human rights groups, say unless crimes are dealt with, a corrosive culture of vengeance will persist and there will be no peace.

The wounds of Afghanistan will never fully heal if those most responsible are given a wink and a nod. If the U.S. government continues its cavalier approach toward its proxy forces, choosing to look the other way and ignoring universally accepted laws and principles of war, its goal of spreading democracy and the rule of law will never be met in Afghanistan.
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John Heffernan is senior communications associate for Physicians for Human Rights. Jennifer Leaning is a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and a board member of Physicians for Human Rights.

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The idea that Americans can babysit our Afghani allies at all times and prevent all abuses of prisoners is a stupid and naive one. The Afghans are a bloody people, and they have bloody ways. This is not a mystery to anyone.
 

'plain o joe'

Membership Revoked
“Afghan Massacre: the Convoy of Death” - produced and directed by award-winning
Irish filmmaker Jamie Doran.

To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, call 1 (800) 881-2359.
 

calliope

Contributing Member
I would also recommend Jeff Rense's July 1st interview with Dr. Mohammed Daud Miraki on Afganistan. It's the 1st and 3rd hour of the program since the interview was interruped by a knock on Dr. Miraki's door. The program is available on Jeff's archives:
http://www.talkone.com/rensearchives.htm
 

Ought Six

Membership Revoked
aif:
"Voting for leaders who would allow and cover up such doings is inexcusable."
One could argue that GW may have okayed a coverup of Northern Alliance misdeeds, but to say he 'allowed' it to happen is assinine. Do you seriously think that GW can control individual groups of Afghan tribesmen from D.C., while our troops were engaging the Taliban enemy in active combat? Could *any* leader do so? Obviously not.

Next time think before you speak. :rolleyes:
 

Charlie

Membership Revoked
Any of you folks ever talk to WWII Vets about what they did during the Normandy Invasion? I did and guess what......No prisoners.....they all were taken to what my friend called......"The prison camp over the hill." Ratatatatatatat No time for this stuff while the war is hot. Nasty stuff war.

Have you had fun the last 50 years going to Woodstock and playing video games while spending your parents money.......... Just think....you could have instead been marching in Hob Nailed Boots?" Speaking German and Japanese...... Hey....no Middle East Problem.......yer buddie Hitler would have killed every Jew on the planet. And once done with them, I am sure he would have gone on to finish off all the Muslims as well.

Honor your veterans for doing your dirty work while you snivel and whine in internet bulletin boards.

Supporting the other side is just plain treason. Go buy another ticket to Michael Moores latest movie if you want to support the other side.

War ain't pretty, but I like to be safe! If they shoot some people that want to kill me........so be it.

Remember....the role of the military is to KILL PEOPLE AND BREAK THINGS. It is not to be a meals on wheels program like Carter and Clinton lied to you about.

You polly correct whiners will be the death of us!
 

Mephib

Senior Member
A post by teenage arm-chair generals and pseudo-moralists. Democratic Underground is in your future. Please peddle it elsewhere.

As if the media would pass up the slightest possible excuse to undercut support for our troops. Are you kidding? They think just like you guys.
 

grommit

Senior Member
Could this film be like the propaganda that started the balkans fiasco, film shot showing starving people standing in line for food behind barbed wire... but the film was shot from inside an enclosure and the people in line were there freely on the outside?

I would not put any atrocity past the muslims that won any battle anywhere. They can be ruthless! If they were in charge of a convoy of their defeated foes, there is no limit to what they may have done.

There are many situations in war where taking prisoners is self defeating. Either there is no way to care for them, or there is not way to protect either them or yourself. If me or mine are fighting for our very lives, and taking prisoners would be certain mortal defeat, well, I choose mine.

I have no idea what the actual circumstances of the film are, and I doubt watching it would give definitive answers either way, but I guarantee that it was produced to push one side and not the other.
 

Satanta

Stone Cold Crazy
_______________
Oh. Another 'Blame America' thread. Don't blame the Afgans who did the shooting. That was Americas fault.

Don't blame the Muslims that blow up kids and women in Iraq-that's Americas fault.

9/11? Well like some of you keep posting-America;s fault too.

The rest of what I'd say would get this post moved but I won't because there are certain posters here that post one-trick-pony shows and EVERYONE needs to keep them in mind.
 
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