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Thread: WAR On Terror?

  1. #1
    US Afghan air strike 'killed 40'
    US airstrike in Afghanistan
    US air strikes have been blamed for many civilian deaths

    Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said about 40 people were killed in a US air strike in southern Kandahar province.

    Many more were wounded when a wedding party was hit. US officials confirmed civilian deaths and are investigating.

    "We cannot win the fight against terrorism with air strikes," Mr Karzai said in comments directed at US President-elect Barack Obama.

    Mr Karzai has repeatedly criticised the high level of civilian casualties in such bombings.

    The latest civilian deaths underline the challenges facing the US president-elect and future commander-in-chief.

    Demand

    The incident happened late on Monday evening in Shah Wali Kot district, a remote part of Kandahar province.

    Map

    International forces had been involved in an operation against the Taleban - an air strike was called in but the missile struck a wedding party by mistake, killing as many as 40 people, women and children among them.

    "My wounded son was in my arms, right here, bleeding," the father of the bride, Roozbeen Khan, told AFP news agency. "He died last night.

    "I lost two sons, two grandsons, a nephew, my mother and a cousin."

    Villagers said a wedding lunch had just ended when someone, perhaps a Taleban fighter, fired at international troops on a nearby hill, AFP reported. The soldiers returned fire and called in air support.

    A spokesman for US forces confirmed there had been civilian casualties and expressed sorrow for what had happened.

    An investigation is under way into what went wrong.

    In a statement, Mr Karzai demanded an end to civilian casualties.

    "My first demand from the US president, when he takes office, would be to end civilian casualties in Afghanistan and take the war to places where there are terrorist nests and training centres," he told reporters.

    The BBC's Ian Pannell in Kabul says there may be little sympathy for the Taleban in many parts of Afghanistan, but there is even less sympathy for coalition forces when incidents like this leave innocent Afghans dead.

    It is likely to loom large in the new relationship between Presidents Karzai and Obama when the new US administration is sworn in, our correspondent says.

    Deaths

    Correspondents say that civilian casualties are hugely damaging to foreign forces trying to wage a "hearts and minds" campaign in Afghanistan.

    Afghan civilian holds a picture of family members allegedly killed by the US
    The issue of civilian casualties is hugely controversial

    Last month the US military said that air strikes on 22 August killed 33 Afghan civilians, many more than previously acknowledged.

    And in another notorious incident, an Afghan parliamentary investigation in July found that a US air strike in the same month killed 47 civilians in the eastern province of Nangarhar.

    Regional officials said those casualties were also attending a wedding party and that the bride had been killed.

    Figures released in September by the United Nations said there had been a sharp increase in the number of civilian casualties - some caused by the coalition but most by the Taleban - in Afghanistan in 2008.

    It said that from January to August 2008, 1,445 civilians were killed - a rise of 39% on the same period last year.

  2. #2
    US raid kills eight' in Pakistan

    MAP

    Foreign reporters shot in Peshawar
    Taleban bring new fear to Peshawar

    Missiles fired by a suspected US drone have killed at least eight militants in a Pakistani tribal region on the Afghan border, local officials say.

    The missiles destroyed a house in a remote village, they said.

    The attack took place in North Waziristan which is known to be a hub of al-Qaeda and Taleban militants.

    In recent weeks, more than 100 people - among them suspected militants and many civilians - have been killed in the tribal areas in attacks by US missiles.

    The issue has become extremely sensitive in Pakistan where anti-American sentiment is rising.

    Pakistan's government says such unilateral American operations undermine its own counter-insurgency strategy.

    Meanwhile, an Afghan and a Japanese journalist have been shot and wounded in the city of Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province. Earlier this week, an American aid worker was shot dead in Peshawar and an Iranian diplomat was kidnapped.

    'Hearts and minds'

    The latest drone attack took place in the early hours of Friday morning in a village near the town of Razmak in North Waziristan not far from the Afghan border.

    Archive image of a US "hunter-killer" drone, the MQ-9 Reaper, which has been deployed in Afghanistan
    It is the second drone attack reported in the area in recent days

    Two missiles fired from a drone struck a house in the village, destroying it completely, reports said.

    Local officials say all those killed were militants.

    They say they cannot confirm whether any foreigners were among the dead.

    The BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan in Islamabad says this area is part of territory under the control of local Taleban commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur. It was the target of a similar drone attack last Friday, in which 11 militants were reported killed.

    The latest attack comes days after Pakistan's President Asif Zardari's appeal to US president-elect Barack Obama to review the strategy of attacking targets in Pakistan's tribal areas.

    "It's undermining my sovereignty and it's not helping win the... hearts and minds of people," Mr Zardari told CBS News.

    North Waziristan is known as a haven for Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters who enter Afghanistan and the US administration suspects that senior al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are hiding there.

    The United States has stepped up missile attacks from drones in the region in recent weeks.

    There have been nearly 20 strikes in the past three months and, while US officials say al-Qaeda leaders are being successfully targeted, local tribesmen say scores of civilians have been killed.

    Most of the missile strikes have taken place in the Waziristan region, where no Pakistani military operation is in progress.

    Last week, Pakistan told the visiting head of US Central Command General David Petraeus that the missile strikes were "counter-productive" and detrimental to the so-called "war on terror"

  3. #3
    well dunno but tis truth innocent people also die in a war .
    but well dunnno ..i hate this war n stuff .so Disappointing :|

  4. #4
    US forces killed 16 civilians: Karzai: Times Of India
    26 Jan 2009, 0048 hrs IST, AP

    KABUL: President Hamid Karzai has condemned a US operation he says killed 16 Afghan civilians, while hundreds of villagers denounced the
    American military during an angry demonstration.

    Karzai said the killing of innocent Afghans “is strengthening the terrorists”. Two women and three children were among the 16 dead, Karzai said in a statement.

    He also announced that his ministry of defense sent to Washington a draft technical agreement — also sent to Nato headquarters — that seeks to give Afghanistan more oversight over US military operations.
    The president’s criticism follows a US raid early on Saturday that American officials said killed 15 armed militants. Afghan officials said those killed were civilians.

    “The US military said ‘We are sorry for this incident and after this we are going to coordinate our operations with Afghan forces,’” governor Latifullah Mashal said.

  5. #5
    ALI MARDAN, Afghanistan — It was 1982. Abdul Bashir's family were celebrating his sister's wedding. A moment later, bombs slammed into the crowded village square, killing 30 men, women and children.

    "I was nine years-old. It was early in the morning during my sister's wedding when the (Soviet) jets bombed us," Abdul Bashir told Reuters on Saturday, February 14.

    "You can see I lost one of my eyes, and my teeth. My brother was wounded. My sister, father and my aunt were martyred," he said.

    "I can never forget."

    Those who survived the attack took up arms against the invading Soviet troops, which invaded Afghanistan in 1979.

    Under the ferocity of the Afghan resistance attacks, Moscow withdrew troops from Afghanistan in on February 15, 1989.

    Twenty years after the Soviet withdrawal, the West is repeating the same mistakes in Afghanistan.

    "There have already been some mistakes during military operations, Burhanuddin Rabbani, ex-president and a former anti-Soviet guerrilla leader, said.

    More 455 Afghan civilians were killed in a string of bungled US and NATO strikes last year, according to UN estimates.

    "And the mistakes are continually being repeated," said Rabbani

    Same Mistakes

    The West's dependence on military force to solve the Afghan conflict is a repeat of the same Soviet mistakes.

    "I tell you this for sure, that if NATO and America put all their attention on fighting, and invest only in the military, they will not win," Rabbani said.

    The US is considering to send another 25,000 troops to add to the nearly 70,000 foreign forces in Afghanistan.

    "Numbers don't solve anything," said Soviet Veteran Shamil Tyukteyev, 59, who led a regiment in Afghanistan from 1986-88.

    "You can't put a soldier outside every house or a base on every mountain. We saw it ourselves, the more troops, the more resistance."

    During the Soviet occupation, Moscow surged troops several times up to 120,000 soldiers.

    However, the surges failed to crush the Afghan resistance.

    "It's like fighting sand. No force in the world can get the better of the Afghans," said Oleg Kubanov, a stocky 47-year-old former officer with the Order of the Red Star.

    "It's their holy land, it doesn't matter to them if you're Russian, American. We're all soldiers to them."

    Yury Shaidurov, a 47-year-old former Soviet solider, said the best lesson the West could take from the Soviet experience was to simply accept defeat.

    "They'll never win," he said.

    "They have to run before it is too late."

    Source: IslamOnline

  6. #6
    US blasted for human rights violations
    Tue, 17 Feb 2009 08:54:19 GMT
    Inmates at the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
    Anti-terror measures by the US and the UK have seriously damaged the standing of international human rights laws, a study reveals.

    The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) said in its recent report that human rights violations committed in anti-terror efforts worldwide have been shocking.

    The report, based on a three-year global study, declares that many measures employed in the fight against terrorism after the 9/11 attacks on the US were illegal and counter-productive.

    "In the course of this inquiry, we have been shocked by the extent of the damage done over the past seven years by excessive or abusive counter-terrorism measures in a wide range of countries around the world," said ICJ member Arthur Chaskalson.

    The report says that since 9/11 many countries have sought detention without trial, illegal disappearance and torture to provoke public fear of anti-terror measures.

    The ICJ also took a swipe at Britain and the US, affirming that the two countries have "actively undermined" international law with their anti-terror efforts.

    The report which covers over 40 countries urges countries to seek 'change', affirming that the legal processes implemented after World War II were "well-equipped to handle current terror threats".

    "It is now absolutely essential that all states restore their commitment to human rights and that the United Nations takes on a leadership role in this process. If we fail to act now, the damage to international law risks becoming permanent," reads the report.

    According to the report, US President Barack Obama must move to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp as soon as possible in a "human rights compliant manner", with inmates either charged or released.

    The Geneva-based ICJ, which is a non-governmental organization promoting the observance of the rule of law and the legal protection of human rights, bases its report Assessing Damage, Urging Action on the experiences of people who have undergone torture in secret prisons and those held for extended periods without access to the external world, including lawyers and courts.

  7. #7
    US troops kill 13 civilians, 3 militants
    Sat, 21 Feb 2009 21:13:01 GMT
    More than 2,000 civilians were killed in insurgency-linked violence last year.
    US forces in Afghanistan confirm that 13 civilians and only 3 militants were killed in an operation originally meant to eradicate insurgents.

    The US military at first had said that 15 militants were killed in air strikes in the western province of Herat late Monday.

    However, local officials later objected, saying that six women and two children were among the dead. Following the claim, a team of Afghan and coalition troops visited the site and launched an investigation.

    "Coalition forces confirmed three militants and 13 non-combatants were killed during a coalition forces' operation near Gozara district, Herat province, February 17," the coalition said in a statement, which did not identify the deceased.

    "We expressed our deepest condolences to the survivors of the non-combatants who were killed during this operation," said US Brigadier General Michael Ryan.

    Civilian casualties have been a major source of tension between Kabul and Washington, which leads the foreign force in Afghanistan.

    The US-led forces, among other troops, are under scrutiny because of their 'disregard for civilian lives', which has resulted in public outrage and has flamed anti-US sentiments.

    The United Nations said this week that more than 2,000 civilians were killed in insurgency-linked violence last year, the highest civilian death toll since the 2001 ouster of the Taliban.

  8. #8
    CAIRO — American Muslims are angry over FBI's sending informants into mosques to spy on worshippers, warning that the move risks sewing mistrust between the sizable minority and security agencies.

    "Infiltrating mainstream mosques the way FBI informants infiltrate white supremacist groups illustrates the FBI's perception of American Muslims as a community that must be constantly monitored, instead of being treated as an equal partner in fighting crime and terrorism," the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in a statement cited by the MSNBC website on Friday, February 28.

    Craig Monteilh, a California resident, admitted Wednesday that he had been recruited by the FBI from July 2006 to October 2007, to spy on worshippers at several Orange County in South California.

    He approached mosques and Islamic centers as a convert enthusiastic to know more about jihad to defend Muslim causes.

    Monteilh, who worked for the FBI in late 2003 as an informant on white supremacist and narcotics cases, used to provoke worshippers to speak about jihad and record their words.

    "Law-abiding Muslims at mainstream mosques and Islamic centers are being incited and entrapped by former criminals with questionable characters," CAIR said.

    Last year, media reports unveiled that FBI agents were monitoring mosques in California's cities of Los Angeles and San Diego.

    Since 9/11, Muslims, estimated between six to seven million, have become sensitized to an erosion of their civil rights, with a prevailing belief that America was targeting their faith.

    *
    Counterproductive

    The Muslim advocacy group warned that the mosque informants risk to undermine trust between American Muslims and security agencies.

    "The use of an informant to infiltrate mosques in Southern California, has re-ignited feelings of anger, disillusionment and mistrust among American Muslims toward the FBI."

    CAIR stressed that American Muslims have proved by actions not words that they are committed to keep their country safe.

    "The American Muslim community has never waivered from its commitment to keeping America safe, nor has it hesitated from cooperating with various law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, in ensuring the security of all US citizens."

    In June 2007, CAIR has reported Monteilh to the FBI as a possible terrorist.

    It noted that Monteilh had been aggressively pushing mosque frequents to speak out against the US government and join jihad.

    The umbrella Muslim group said that Muslims had worked hard to develop a partnership with the FBI in the past years.

    "Unfortunately, the FBI's counter-productive actions damage the trust between Muslims and law enforcement and trample our Constitutionally-mandated civil liberties.
    Source: IslamOnline

  9. #9
    HERAT: Afghan villagers yesterday mourned relatives buried in mass graves after US-led airstrikes that the Red Cross said killed dozens and local officials said may have killed 100 civilians.

    “During the aerial bombardment and ground operations, more than 100 people have died,” western Afghanistan police spokesman Abdul Rauf Ahmadi told AFP yesterday, basing his information on reports from police, the Red Cross and locals.

    “Twenty-five to 30 of them are Taleban, including from Chechnya and Pakistan, and the rest are civilians including children, women and elderly people,” he said.

    Villagers who survived the bombing of houses packed with terrified civilians told Reuters by telephone dozens of members of one extended family alone had died. They wept as they spoke of orphaned children and burying loved ones’ fragmented remains.

    “My son and my daughter in-law have been killed and left me with a 13-month-old baby,” said Gul Bibi from Geraani village.

    “Their remains were buried in a mass grave with others, and I didn’t even have a chance to see my son’s face for the last time because his body was blown apart,” she sobbed.

    Rohul Amin, governor of Farah province, where the bombing took place late on Monday and fighting raged into Tuesday, said he feared 100 civilians had been killed. Provincial police chief Abdul Ghafar Watandar said the death toll could be even higher.

    If confirmed, those even higher figures could make the incident the single deadliest for Afghan civilians since the campaign to topple the Taleban in 2001.

    Afghan President Hamid Karzai called the civilian deaths “unjustifiable and unacceptable.” He sent a joint Afghan-US delegation to investigate.

    US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the Obama administration “deeply, deeply” regretted the loss of innocent lives as a result of the US bombing and would undertake a full review of the incident.

    The bombings that lasted around an hour killed 50 members of Bibi’s neighbor Sayed Azam’s extended family, Azam said.

    “There were Taleban in the area and fierce fighting took place during the day but it ended when it was dark. People thought the fighting was over when suddenly bombings began,” he told Reuters.

    Jessica Barry, spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the Geneva-based group had sent a team, which reached the scene of the airstrikes.

    “There were women and there were children who were killed. It seemed they were trying to shelter in houses when they were hit,” she said. The team saw houses destroyed and dozens of bodies, providing the first international confirmation of the incident.

    Among the dead was a first-aid volunteer for Afghanistan’s Red Crescent, killed along with 13 members of his family, Barry said. The Red Cross could not determine whether fighters were among the dead, she added.

    US forces in Afghanistan acknowledge they were involved in fighting and airstrikes in the province’s Bala Boluk district, which began on Monday and continued into Tuesday after Taleban militants seized a village and clashed with Afghan troops. Survivors said they were frustrated that Afghan and foreign teams that visited the village had not offered any help.

    “They just photographed us and that was it,” said 60-year-old Haji Mohammad Shah, who lost nine family members including his wife, daughter and grandchildren.

    Watandar, the provincial police chief, said Taleban militants had herded villagers into houses in Geraani and Ganj Abad that were then struck by US-led coalition warplanes.

    “The fighting was going on in another village, but the Taleban escaped to these two villages, where they used people as human shields. The airstrikes destroyed 17 houses,” he said, adding the toll was imprecise.

    Villagers trucked about 30 dead bodies to the provincial capital Farah City, said Gov. Amin.

    Taleban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi confirmed there had been fighting and said all casualties from airstrikes were civilians.

    “The government and foreign troops must compensate the affected people, we don’t want apologies any more,” he said by telephone from an undisclosed location.

    ¬
    Source: Arab News

  10. #10
    CAIRO – Some American experts are accusing the FBI of "cooking" an alleged plot to attack Jewish synagogues and military planes in New York by implanting an informant in a mosque to induce people into terror intrigues. "This whole operation was a foolish waste of time and money," Terence Kindlon, a New York-based lawyer, told the Sunday Times on May 24.

    "It is almost as if the FBI cooked up the plot and found four idiots to install as defendants."

    Police arrested four people last week on charges of plotting to attack two Jewish synagogues and a military base in New York.

    The FBI had sent an informant, Shahed Hussain, to the Masjid al-Ikhlas mosque in Newburgh to lure people to talk about jihad.

    As Hussain, a former New York state motel owner who became an FBI informant in 2002 to avoid deportation to Pakistan after fraud charges, used to trigger discussions about jihad.

    He was accused by some worshippers of being a government agent.

    "Anyone with any smarts knew to stay away from Hussain," notes Salahuddin Mustafa Muhammad, the imam of Masjid al-Ikhlas mosque.

    Hussain later met James Cromitie, described by authorities as the ringleader of the plot, and together hatched up the attack plan.

    He provided the group with bogus C4 explosive and a fake Stinger missile and launcher supplied by the FBI.

    Many experts took issue with the FBI’s reliance on undercover informants – known as confidential witnesses (CWs) – who lure people into far-fetched plots that are then foiled by the agents monitoring them.

    "One question that has to be answered is: did the informant go in and enlist people who were otherwise not considering trouble?" asked Kevin Luibrand, a lawyer who represented a Muslim businessman caught up in an FBI sting three years ago.

    "Did the government induce someone to commit a crime?"

    Dimwits

    Many believe the suspects, three petty criminals and a mentally ill Haitian immigrant, none of whom had any connection with any known terrorist group, were an easy catch for the authorities.

    "They were all unsophisticated dimwits," contends Kindlon, the New York-based lawyer.

    Cromitie is a 44-year-old ex-convict and so are David Williams, 28, and Onta Williams, 32.

    The fourth suspect is Laguerre Payen, 27, a Haitian former Catholic and paranoid schizophrenic.

    Kindlon also questioned the high-profile arrest which involved heavily armed SWAT teams who were watching as the suspect planted the dud bombs outside the two synagogues before hauling them away in handcuffs.

    "Did they really need all those men in ninja suits with M16 rifles to arrest four idiots?"

    Flanked by more than 100 homeland security and counter-terrorist specialists, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg praised the police officers and federal agents who helped disrupt a plot "that would make the country gasp."

    State Governor David Paterson described the alleged plot as "a heinous crime".

    But Kindlon, a former marine sergeant, finds that laughable and fears that domestic US agencies focus on fantasists as opposed to real terrorists.

    "Somewhere, someone in Al-Qaeda must be laughing."

    Source: IslamOnline

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