“Death to America” Fury at NATO Massacre in Kandahar

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai has condemned another NATO massacre of civilians in Afghanistan, the latest in its blase Wham! Bam! Sorry Ma’am! policy of slaughter from Kosovo to Kabul. This time it was a bus strafed with automatic weapons fire in Zhari, Kandahar Province. The victims included a woman.

Photo: “Death to America” Fury at NATO Massacre in Kandahar

The result of NATO’s most recent escapade in Afghanistan on Monday afternoon, when a patrol of international troops opened fire on a bus full of civilians is 18 people injured and four dead, including a woman according to local news sources.

The massacre sparked off mass protests and outrage in Kandahar, where the chant of the day was “Death to America”. Dozens of outraged citizens called for the ousting of President Hamid Karzai, who condemned the killings claiming that such actions violate NATO’s commitment towards safeguarding civilian life.

Admitting the incident, which took place in the Zhari District of Kandahar Province, NATO has not confirmed the nationality of the soldiers involved but Afghan eye-witnesses have been reported by Afghan Voice as stating that they were Americans.

The NATO version is that the bus was approaching its convoy at high speed and ignored flares and other warnings to stop, after which the troops at the back of the patrol opened fire. A NATO statement, which expresses deep regret at the tragic loss of life, also confirms that “once engaged, the vehicle stopped”. Only then did they see it was a bus full of civilian passengers.

The bus driver, who escaped uninjured, had a different version of the events. Quoted by AFP News Agency, he said that “They opened fire on us and I fell unconscious. The people who were killed were sitting in the seats just behind me”.

If after ten years this is the best NATO can do to protect civilian lives, maybe it is time to adopt the strategy used by the Israeli Defence Force when massacres of civilians are perpetrated, namely to make the snide remark “They shouldn’t have been there”. In this case, it is not the Afghan civilians, who are in their own country, but rather NATO itself.

All NATO has done is to fragment Afghan society to breaking point, installing a corrupt puppet regime from the fringes of society and to oversee a 40-fold increase in the production of opium, while paying off the Taleban not to attack, before then admitting that talks were being held with some of the Taleban to form an alliance.

If NATO presence is synonymous with installing a regime of drug traffickers and protecting farmers as they harvest their crop (there is immense photographic evidence of this) then it is clear that NATO itself is nothing more or less than a cabal of arms traffickers which has now become also a club for drug barons.

Is THIS the Organization which oversees the foreign policy of its member states, in many cases against their Constitutions?

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

PRAVDA.Ru