‘WE WANT PEACE’
Drone kin ask for aid, A’stan exit
Relatives of the Afghan aid worker who was mistakenly killed along with nine family members in a US drone strike in Kabul last month have requested help leaving the country and compensation for their suffering.
“Whether in America or another country, we want peace and comfort for our remaining years,” Samim Ahmadi, a 24-year-old stepson of slain aid worker Zmaray Ahmadi (above), told The Washington Post on Saturday.
“Everyone makes mistakes. The Americans cannot bring back our loved ones, but they can take us out of here.”
Zmaray Ahmadi, 38, a longtime worker for a California-based food charity group and his family’s sole breadwinner, was among 10 civilians — including seven children — killed on Aug. 29, when a Hellfire missile from a Reaper drone struck his car outside the home they shared in the capital.
In the following days, US military officials characterized the attack as a “righteous” strike that had prevented an ISIS-K terrorist from bombing the Kabul airport, but on Friday, the Pentagon admitted that it had made “a tragic mistake” and that Zmaray had been wrongly targeted.
Now the Ahmadi family is pleading for help leaving the Talibancontrolled country, as well as for monetary reparations.
“We didn’t have money to bury our relatives,” Zmaray’s 32-yearold brother, Emal Ahmadi, told The Washington Post. “We had to borrow the funds.”
“We are worried,” said another brother, Ajmal Ahmadi, according to the newspaper. “We feel under threat because we are so exposed to the public by the media. Everyone got to know that we have worked for foreigners, served in the Afghan army as well as the Afghan intelligence agency.”
Still, Emal expressed relief that Zmaray and their family would no longer be seen as terrorists.
“The Americans kept emphasizing they killed an ISIS-K terrorist,” he told the paper. “Now, we are happy they have acknowledged their mistake and confirmed that they killed innocent people.”
Now Emal is demanding the US punish those responsible for killing his family members.
“The US government must punish those who launched the drone strike,” he said, according to The Washington Post. “They knew and saw there were children on the ground. Can anyone bring them back?”
The family also ripped the US government for not reaching out to deliver a personal apology.
“No one has apologized, no one has helped us,” another relative, Romal Ahmadi, told the newspaper. “Americans can’t bring back our brother, children, our nephews. If they apologize that would be sufficient.”
The family, Romal said, now wants to leave the country for somewhere safer, because Afghanistan isn’t a “good place to be.”
Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie Jr., commander of US Central Command, admitted the fatal mistake in a press briefing on Friday.
“I am now convinced that as many as 10 civilians, including up to seven children, were tragically killed in that strike,” he said. “We now assess that it is unlikely that the vehicle and those who died were associated with ISIS-K or a direct threat to US forces.”