A statement by March Forward!
In one of the most
shocking massacres of the nearly decade-long war in Afghanistan, nine
children between the ages of 9 and 15 were killed March 2 in a NATO
airstrike. The children were collecting wood to heat their homes outside
of Nanglam, in Kunar province.
The only surviving member of the
group, an 11-year-old boy named Hemad, recounted watching his friends
killed in front of him: “The helicopters … hovered over us and started
shooting. They fired a rocket which landed on a tree. The tree branches
fell over me and shrapnel hit my right hand and my side. [The
helicopters] shot the boys one after another.” (The New York Times,
March 2)
The uncle of one of the boys, who was part of the search
party that discovered what had happened, said, “Some of the dead bodies
were really badly chopped up by the rockets. The head of a child was
missing. Others were missing limbs.”
This is just the latest in a
rising tide of violence against innocent civilians in northeastern
Afghanistan. In Ghaziabad, scores of people, including children, were
murdered in an airstrike in late February. Over the last month, at least
65 Afghans have been killed by U.S./NATO forces, prompting mass outrage
and demonstrations. Hundreds of people protested in Nanglam after the
massacre, as have people in other villages and towns after other similar
atrocities. The reason there is popular support for those fighting the
occupation is quite obvious.
Although General David Petraeus
publicly apologized for the incident in Nanglam, he took a very
different tone behind closed doors. Petraeus made the preposterous,
dehumanizing claim that NATO was not responsible for the recent
massacres and that the parents had actually set their own children on
fire to frame the occupation forces.
One of the meeting attendees
who confirmed that Petraeus had made this ridiculous claim said: “I was
dizzy. My head was spinning. This was shocking. Would any father do
this to his children? This is really absurd.” (Washington Post, Feb. 21)
Petraeus’
statement typifies the imperialist arrogance of the officer corps. This
outrageous assertion, coupled with the massive civilian casualties
throughout the entirety of the war, reveals one of the fundamental
assumptions of the Pentagon brass: All Afghans are to be mistrusted and
are all potential enemies. Every Afghan is “fair game,” every Afghan is
“suspected.” As a result, using heavy weapons to obliterate any
“suspected” individual, even 9-year-old children alone on a mountain,
has become an acceptable and widely used military tool.
This
brutality has become an increasingly attractive option for NATO generals
as the war drags on. Two years after the Obama administration’s “surge”
that massively increased the number of occupying troops, no progress
has been made towards pacifying the country—in fact, it is the
resistance forces who have made gains. U.S./NATO casualties are higher
than ever before. The people of Afghanistan have refused and will never
accept foreign rule.
Constant civilian massacres only increase
the resolve of the resistance, and win more to their side. But the war
in Afghanistan itself cannot be waged without high civilian
deaths—because the war is against the Afghan people. Like the war in
Iraq, the Afghan war is for control of the region’s resources. The White
House says there must be “stability” in Afghanistan, meaning safe for
Western business and military plans. “Stability” means that the people
accept the foreign military bases on their soil that have been killing
their family and neighbors.
Which side should we be on?
The
massacre of nine children in Nanglam contains another important lesson,
especially for GIs manipulated into fighting this war of aggression.
The uncle of 14-year-old Khalid, one of the victims, said that, “The
children were all from poor families; otherwise no one would send their
sons up to the mountains despite the known threats.”
He went on
to say about his nephew: “He was studying in sixth grade of the
orphanage school and working because his father died four years ago due
to a long-term sickness. His father was a day laborer. He has 13 sisters
and two mothers. He was the sole breadwinner of the family.”
Khalid
was not a member of al-Qaeda or the Taliban; he was a student from a
poor family trying to support himself and 15 relatives. As working-class
service members, we have more in common with him than the politicians
and generals who send us to kill and die while their billionaire
supporters lay off and evict our friends and neighbors back home.
The
war in Afghanistan is not aimed at keeping the United States safe, but
at terrorizing poor and working people like Khalid and his family so
that they accept Western rule. We have the right to not be a party to
atrocities like this one, or the countless more that will be committed.
We have the right and the duty to refuse to fight this imperialist war.
