The Afghan Cover-up

Workers World, August 8, 2002

How much longer can the Bush administration expect to keep fooling workers with its claims that U.S. empire expansion is really a "war on terrorism" to defend democracy and human rights?

Maybe not too long, if the latest news out of Afghanistan is an indication.

A preliminary United Nations investigation of the July 1 U.S. bombing of the village of Kakarak, Afghanistan, that killed 50 civilians--including 25 members of one family at a wedding party--has found evidence of a major Pentagon cover-up.

The investigation's preliminary findings, first reported by the Times of London on July 29, found no corroboration of U.S. claims that its aircraft were fired on from the ground. It also points out how Washington has given conflicting accounts of what happened.

Most damning of all, the UN investigation team found "clear evidence" that U.S.-led coalition forces quickly arrived on the scene after the air strikes and "cleaned the area," removing evidence of "shrapnel, bullets and traces of blood."

Women in the area told investigators that their hands were tied behind their backs to prevent them from interfering in the "cleansing."

Pentagon officials have claimed that cameras mounted on an AC-130 fighter plane showed gunfire coming from the ground. But the brass has not released the film for independent analysis. UN investigators found no evidence to back the claim.

The bloody attack angered people throughout the world and sparked the first street protest in Afghanistan against the U.S. since the military occupation began last October.

Earlier this year the U.S. bombed another wedding party, supposedly mistaking celebratory rifle fire for some kind of attack on the occupation forces.

According to statistics compiled by University of New Hampshire professor Marc Herold, U.S. forces killed at least 3,780 civilians between Oct. 7, 2001, and May 14, 2002. The Guardian of London reported that "indirect" casualties of U.S. intervention--victims of starvation, disease, etc.--could number 20,000.

A UN source told the London Times that the report on the July 1 incident was produced by a team of "experienced and reputable UN people, who have been in the region a while and know it well."

Naturally, the United States is heading up its own investigation of the attack in collaboration with its Afghan puppets: President Hamid Karzai and the Northern Alliance mercenary army. After the Times of London report, Washington immediately denied there was any evidence of a cover-up, even though the Pentagon investigative team has not started to compile its report and has no timetable to finish.

"The more it drags on, the harder it is to prove and probably the people investigating want it to go slowly and die away," an unnamed UN official told the Times of London.

Behind the scenes the Bush administration is undoubtedly twisting arms and threatening officials in an effort to make the UN team's final report less damning, or to bury it altogether.

But the revolutionary workers' movement, anti-imperialist and anti-war forces must use this and similar incidents to educate workers, communities and youths here about the real methods and aims of the U.S. "war on terrorism." Then these criminal acts and human tragedies can be turned into a weapon to forge solidarity between people in the U.S. and Afghanistan against the occupation as well as new wars of imperialist aggression.

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