A Certainty Of Denial, To Be Followed By Some Chance Of Sheep

By Steve Hynd

This is an update to my post yesterday about the latest incident involving mass civilian casualties in Afghanistan. I spoke too soon - it has been suggested the locals may be lying.

Government spokesman Siamak Herawi said 52 people, many women and children, were killed by a NATO-rocket attack on Friday in Sangin, Helmand province, but the NATO-led force said a preliminary investigation had not yet revealed any civilian casualties.

...Karzai strongly condemned the attack and asked NATO troops to prioritize the protection of civilians in their military campaign, his office said in a statement citing the same casualty figures for the attack.

ISAF, however, insisted that a joint investigation with the Afghan government had so far found no evidence of civilian deaths, while a provincial official suggested local residents could even have made it up.

"The villagers took the joint team to a graveyard in Rigi village and they claimed that 35 people were buried there, but the graves seemed to be old," said Dawood Ahmadi, a spokesman for the provincial governor, referring to the village where the incident is supposed to have taken place.

"The team have not found any evidence to show that the civilians were killed," he said. "They may have been lying but we are there to find out."

There are various compensation packages for civilians caught up in the fighting, but ISAF has reported many cases of wrongful claims.

An ISAF spokeswoman said the team was still in the area, trying to establish the truth.

"We take any civilian casualty very seriously but there was no report of operational activity in Rigi," said Lt. Cmdr. Katie Kendrick.

Now first, "Dawood Ahmadi, a spokesman for the provincial governor" is the same guy who happily repeated his boss's paranoid allegations about Italian doctors being hitmen for hire a while back. His boss Gulab Mangal, the Helmand governor, is a lunatic who is aware that sycophantic pandering to the US military is the only way he keeps his job and is to say the least not the most reliable partner for such an investigation.

Secondly, a BBC reporter who went to the village spoke to eyewitnesses who say they lost close relatives.

Witnesses said the attack had come in daylight as dozens sheltered from fighting in nearby Joshani.

Mohammed Khan, a boy aged about 16, said helicopters had circled over the village before the incident. He said that he had warned other children to take cover.

But his mother told him not to worry them. He went further away and was shielded by a wall that saved his life when the attack started.

"I heard the sound of the rocket land on our house. I rushed in screaming with my father and saw bodies lying in the dust� I found I was even standing on a dead body."

One of the bodies was his brother.

"He had been lying asleep in the afternoon when they were killed," Mohammed said.

How difficult can it be to check whether this guy had a brother and now doesn't?

So we're back to the old pattern. investigate, deny, be surprised by independent evidence, admit and apologise. Sometimes with added sheep. It has happened too many times already and despite promises to do better it keeps happening.