That's a tragedy on its face. But NATO led a cover-up operation of this incident following a Times of London report on the inconsistencies that existed between NATO's explanation of the raid and the claims of survivors and witnesses.
A night raid carried out by US and Afghan gunmen led to the deaths of two pregnant women, a teenage girl and two local officials in an atrocity which Nato then tried to cover up, survivors have told The Times.
The operation on Friday, February 12, was a botched pre-dawn assault on a policeman’s home a few miles outside Gardez, the capital of Paktia province, eastern Afghanistan. In a statement after the raid titled “Joint force operating in Gardez makes gruesome discovery”, Nato claimed that the force had found the women’s bodies “tied up, gagged and killed” in a room.
A Times investigation suggests that Nato’s claims are either wilfully false or, at best, misleading. More than a dozen survivors, officials, police chiefs and a religious leader interviewed at and around the scene of the attack maintain that the perpetrators were US and Afghan gunmen. The identity and status of the soldiers is unknown.
This story appeared in the Times on March 13. ISAF proceeded to obfuscate further, going as far as to call out the reporter, Jerome Starkey, by name in response.
KABUL, Afghanistan (March 13) - The allegation made by Times UK reporter Jerome Starkey that NATO "covered up" an incident that was conducted outside Gardez in Paktia province is categorically false.
Additionally, Mr. Starkey incorrectly quoted Rear Adm. Greg Smith of ISAF when he did not include the word "armed" in the following sentence: "If you have got an [armed] individual stepping out of a compound, and if your assault force is there, that is often the trigger to neutralise the individual. You don't have to be fired upon to fire back."
All the while, keep in mind that McChyrstal has implemented policy (announced BEFORE Gardez) limiting night raids in Afghanistan -- ignoring Hamid Karzai's call for an outright band -- to curb civilian casualties.
Then, ISAF released this late Easter Sunday:
KABUL, Afghanistan (Apr. 4) – A thorough joint investigation into the events that occurred in the Gardez district of Paktiya Province Feb. 12, has determined that international forces were responsible for the deaths of three women who were in the same compound where two men were killed by the joint Afghan-international patrol searching for a Taliban insurgent.
The two men, who were later determined not to be insurgents, were shot and killed by the joint patrol after they showed what appeared to be hostile intent by being armed. While investigators could not conclusively determine how or when the women died, due to lack of forensic evidence, they concluded that the women were accidentally killed as a result of the joint force firing at the men.
So what is the physical proof of the coverup? There have to be bullet holes, right? The New York Times:
A NATO official also said Sunday that an Afghan-led team of investigators had found signs of evidence tampering at the scene, including the removal of bullets from walls near where the women were killed. On Monday, however, a senior NATO official denied that any tampering had occurred.
[...]
The admission was an abrupt about-face. In a statement soon after the raid, NATO had claimed that its raiding party had stumbled upon the “bodies of three women who had been tied up, gagged and killed” and hidden in a room in the house. Military officials had also said later that the bodies showed signs of puncture and slashing wounds from a knife, and that the women appeared to have been killed several hours before the raid.
And in what could be a scandalous turn to the investigation, The Times of London reported Sunday night that Afghan investigators also determined that American forces not only killed the women but had also “dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath” and then “washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened.”
A spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, Zemary Bashary, said that he did not have any information about the Afghan investigation, which he said remained unfinished.
In an interview, a NATO official said the Afghan-led investigation team alerted American and NATO commanders that the inquiry had found signs of evidence tampering. A briefing was given by investigators to General McChrystal and other military officials in late March.
“There was evidence of tampering at the scene, walls being washed, bullets dug out of holes in the wall,” the NATO official said, adding that investigators “couldn’t find bullets from the wounds in the body.”
The investigators, the official said, “alluded to the fact that bullets were missing but did not discuss anything specific to that. Nothing pointed conclusively to the fact that our guys were the ones who tampered with the scene.”
Digging bullets out of the victims? Denying medical treatment to buy time for cover? Of course, the investigation is (supposedly) ongoing, but the implications are quite dire here.
But, true to form for the likes of cable news, it's too bad this isn't a major story this morning. CNN and Fox are all over a Tiger Woods press conference (SEX!), scheduled today for 2 p.m. One would think this atrocity and cover-up would be front and center for any news outlet. Not so. That's a commentary on the sad state of mainstream news outlets. I credit sites like Rethink Afghanistan (not to mention Jerome Starkey, who broke this story, and the NY Times for ... at least having it) for keeping focus on this unfolding exposition. But Rethink Afghanistan is no cable news conglomerate. I sincerely hope this gets attention down the road. Without coverage, such egregious behavior in our name goes without accountability. It's time the media stand up to the Pentagon's PR machine.
Update: Glenn Greenwald expands on the American media's failure in this case, specifically that of CNN and the New York Times, as opposed to international reporting that relied on actually legwork and not official Pentagon sources.
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