Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Service for massacred attacked
Militants assail Karzai team at memorial
PANJWAI, Afghanistan — Militants riding motorcycles attacked a highlevel Afghan government delegation during a memorial service Tuesday in the village where a U. S. soldier is said to have killed 16 people, most of them women and children, in a door-to-door rampage two days earlier.
The Tuesday assault, on a mosque in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province, left at least one Afghan soldier dead and punctured the calm that had largely prevailed in Afghanistan since the massacre. There was no immediate claim of responsibility from the Taliban, whose roots are in the area. But the attack belied the Afghan government’s efforts to present itself as in control of the situation in Kandahar, where anger over Sunday’s killings is perhaps deepest.
A reporter for The New York Times at the memorial described 20 minutes of heavy gunfire that pinned
down members of the delegation, including Qayum Karzai and Shah Wali Karzai, brothers of President Hamid Karzai; Gen. Shir Muhammad Karami, the chief of staff of the Afghan army; the provincial governor, Tooryalai Wesa; and the deputy interior minister, Gen. Abdul Rahman Rahman. They appeared to have escaped unharmed and soon after the gunfire subsided sped back to Kandahar city, the provincial capital, on a highway closed to other traffic.
Abdul Rahim Ayobi, a member of the parliament from the Kandahar province, said bullets had struck near the delegation. An Afghan military prosecutor and a second person were injured, said Gen. Abdul Raziq, the Kandahar provincial police chief, who confirmed the death of the soldier. Afghan security forces returned fire and killed three militants.
As word of the attack on the delegation spread, the government’s media center in Kandahar initially denied it had taken place, writing on Twitter: “Media! plz don’t publish things which aren’t confirmed, there is no combat, there is no fire, all is well. everything calm and safe.”
The delegation, which had been sent by Karzai, paid compensation to the wounded and the families of those killed in the rampage. Each death was compensated with about $2,000 and every person wounded was given about $ 1,000. The U. S. government also plans to pay compensation although it is not clear how much or when.
Despite the deepening antipathy to U. S. forces in the country, Afghanistan had largely been calm since Sunday’s killings, leaving unrealized Western fears of a repeat of the unrest that spread across the country last month after the burning of Korans by U. S. soldiers. The only demonstration since Sunday took place Tuesday morning in the city of Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, where about 1,000 people burned an effigy of President Barack Obama and blocked a highway for about an hour, chanting “Death to America” and “Death to the Jews.”
They demanded an immediate public trial for the U.S. soldier accused of carrying out the killings and urged Karzai not to sign a strategic partnership deal with the United States, which is being negotiated. The soldier will be tried through the military justice system, U.S. officials say.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has said he could face capital punishment.
Obama pledged Tuesday that a thorough investigation would be conducted into the killings.
“The United States takes this as seriously as if this was our own citizens and our own children who were murdered,” Obama said, in his first public remarks since the shootings Sunday. He said he was “heartbroken by the loss of innocent life,” calling it outrageous and unacceptable.
“It’s not who we are as a country, and it does not represent our military,” he added.
The Americans have stressed they consider the killings a crime that is distinct from the deaths of civilians during military operations — a view not shared by most Afghans, where thousands of civilians have died at the hands of the U.S.led coalition and the Taliban in the past decade.
The Taliban have sworn revenge for the massacre. A vitriolic statement Tuesday, the group’s third since the killings, threatened that the dead civilians would be avenged by the beheading of any U. S. soldiers captured by the insurgents. Calling themselves “the Islamic Emirate mujahedeen” and “the true defenders of our oppressed people,” they warned U. S. forces that “nothing will content us but avenging every single one of the martyrs, with the help of God, by killing and beheading your sadist soldiers in every inch of the country.”
The Taliban have on rare occasions captured U.S. and allied soldiers, but most people seized by the militants have been aid workers and journalists.
The Taliban’s statement also claimed the killings had been carried out by more than one U.S. soldier, echoing allegations by many politicians, religious leaders and residents there.
During remarks at the memorial Tuesday, Karami, the army chief of staff, said the government was continuing to investigate.
“We can’t say whether one individual or several are involved in shooting,” he said, “but we are working hard, and we will meet the special operations commander and other officials.”
Marine Gen. John Allen, the top commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, said Monday in Washington that an Afghan soldier on guard duty Sunday reported seeing a U.S. soldier walk off the base. That report prompted a head count, which revealed that the staff sergeant was missing. A search party was organized, but others on the base could not find the missing soldier before the attacks occurred, Allen said.
Panetta said the soldier returned to the base on his own, told others what he had done and turned himself in.
Members of the Afghan delegation investigating the killings said one Afghan guard working from midnight to 2 a. m. saw a U. S. soldier return to the base around 1: 30 a. m. Another Afghan soldier who replaced the first and worked until 4 a.m. said he saw a U.S. soldier leaving the base at 2:30 a.m. It’s unknown whether the Afghan guards saw the same U.S. soldier.
If the gunman acted alone, information from the Afghan guards would suggest that he returned to base in between the shootings.
“We’re still investigating and looking at evidence, but right now everything points to one shooter,” said Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, a spokesman for the U.s.-led coalition in Kabul.
Col. Gary Kolb, a spokesman for the U. S.- led military coalition in Kabul, said a 48- hour probable- cause assessment was completed and that the service member continues to be confined.
U. S. officials have identified him as a married, 38year-old father of two who was trained as a sniper and recently suffered a head injury in Iraq.
A senior military official said investigators are looking into the possibility that alcohol played a role.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is under way, said it’s unclear whether the suspect had been drinking before disappearing from his base or whether alcohol was simply found in his living space there. Military rules prohibit the use or possession of alcohol in a war zone.
Obama insisted that the furor stirred up by the rampage would not alter the U.S. policy or timetable as it winds down the war in Afghanistan. The administration, he said, was on track to withdraw 23,000 troops by the end of the summer. That would remove the troops added for the “surge” in 2010 and lower the total number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to 68,000.
“There’s no question that we face a difficult challenge in Afghanistan,” Obama said Tuesday, speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House. “But I’m confident we can continue the work of meeting our objectives, protecting our country and responsibly bringing this war to a close.”
U.S. military commanders want to keep as many troops as possible in the country until the Dec. 31, 2014, target date for having all combat forces out. They fear a too-rapid pullout would risk surrendering the security gains made in recent years.
But the White House faces the prospect of intensifying political pressure to end the military mission, especially after events such as the burning of Muslim holy books by U. S. troops last month that triggered a wave of Afghan violence, including the killings of at least six U.S. troops by Afghan troops.
Rep. Adam Smith, Dwash., a top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, is among those calling for a faster withdrawal.
“It is time to bring our troops home, and, while the president has laid out a responsible path to do so, we should continue to look for every opportunity to accelerate our timeline,” Smith wrote in an opinion piece in USA Today.
“We should have been gone a long time ago,” Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.VA., said in an interview. “It’s time to come home and rebuild America.” Information for this article was contributed by Taimoor Shah, Matthew Rosenberg, Sangar Rahimi, Rod Nordland and Mark Landler of The New York Times ; and by Mirwais Khan, Deb Riechmann, Rahim Faiez, Sebastian Abbot, Heidi Vogt, Pauline Jelinek, Bob Burns, Rahmat Gul, Robert Burns, Lolita C. Baldor, Donna Cassata, Anne Gearan, Ben Feller and Julie Pace of The Associated Press.