- WASHINGTON - A month after
U.S. forces stormed two compounds in central Afghanistan and killed 16
people, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld confirmed Thursday that the casualties
were U.S. allies.
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- The admission of error was the first since Oct. 26, when
the Defense Department conceded that its bombs had struck a Red Cross warehouse
in Kabul for the second time in a month. The war in Afghanistan has been
fought largely in secret, and the Pentagon has been slow to respond to
charges of casualties among civilian and allied forces.
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- A senior Pentagon official said Thursday that inquiries
have been completed into about 15 incidents contested by Afghan witnesses
dating to early October, including two ''friendly fire'' episodes that
killed U.S. troops in northern and central Afghanistan. Officials in Rumsfeld's
office have given permission for the military to release its findings on
those incidents. But the military's Central Command, which is running the
war from Tampa, has refused repeated requests to make the results public.
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- Adm. Craig Quigley, Central Command's spokesman, said
Thursday the list is being updated and will be released ''in the next couple
of days.''
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- When information has been released, the Pentagon usually
has defended its actions. Despite widespread reports that allies were killed
in last month's strike on Hazar Qadam, Rumsfeld would not call it a ''mistake''
and said there would be no disciplinary action. An unclassified summary
of the investigation states: ''Despite the fact (that) the mission was
determined after the fact to have been against friendly Afghani forces,
there were no systemic errors in the targeting process, mission planning
or mission execution.''
Even some Pentagon officials have expressed frustration that Central Command
has been too slow to produce its findings. In the case of the raid on Hazar
Qadam, it took a month to release the military's conclusions; Afghanistan's
interim leader, Hamid Karzai, told reporters nearly three weeks ago that
the U.S. military had owned up to its mistake.
There are at least two other cases in which Afghans say the U.S. military
there admitted making mistakes even as the Pentagon denies it:
* Karzai said this month that U.S. military leaders told him a Dec. 20
aerial attack on a convoy in eastern Afghanistan was also an error. The
Pentagon continues to say, however, that the strike killed Taliban leaders,
not tribal elders on their way to Karzai's inauguration.
* Villagers in Chukar, 37 miles northeast of Kandahar, told reporters that
U.S. officials have promised reparations for an Oct. 22 air raid that the
Afghans say killed 93 civilians. But Pentagon officials have stood by their
assessment that Chukar was a Taliban encampment populated by al-Qaeda ''collaborators.''
''They deny and deny until the information is undeniable,'' said Carl Conetta,
director of the Project on Defense Alternatives, a liberal think tank.
It estimates that 1,000 to 1,300 civilians have been killed.
Defense Department officials say it has been extremely difficult to sort
through conflicting claims from Afghan civilians and regional warlords
often fighting with each other. In Hazar Qadam, U.S. intelligence officials
monitored the area for several weeks. They watched suspicious nighttime
gatherings, identified stolen United Nations vehicles and saw what appeared
to be illicit arms distribution, a Pentagon official said.
The intelligence was not strong enough to warrant an airstrike but was
too much to ignore, Rumsfeld said. Central Command authorized a commando
raid on two separate compounds in the area.
When U.S. forces attacked on Jan. 23, Afghans at one of the compounds quickly
surrendered. At that compound, two locals died and 26 were captured. At
the other location, Rumsfeld said, Afghans opened fire, and U.S. forces
responded, killing 14 and capturing one.
''It is no mistake at all, if you're fired on, to fire back,'' Rumsfeld
said.
Rumsfeld denied charges from some of the detainees that they were beaten
after they were captured. He also shrugged off Afghan claims that bodies
were found handcuffed or in their beds.
As it turned out, the casualties were forces controlled by warlord Jan
Mohamud, an ally of Karzai. A Pentagon official said Thursday that a half
dozen of those men were criminals who hoarded weapons from the Taliban
and sold them illicitly. What appeared to be Taliban military activities
was most likely criminal behavior.
- Copyright © 2002 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett
Co. Inc.
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