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Hanan Habibzai:Remember the massacred prisoners (video)
REMEMBER THE MASSACRED PRISONERS
By Hanan Habibzai,STAFF WRITER
Veterans Today Afghanistan Bureau
(Editor’s note: In 2001 Americans and their Tajik allies slaughtered 2,000 POWS in Northern Afghanistan, a barbaric war crime. Veterans Today calls for an investigation of this act, those who ordered it and those who covered it up. The first group of names, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, we all know. There are more…)
The war in Afghanistan has entered its 10th year, a year of both stalemate and suffering.Everyone is thirsty to see peace and stability in his or her environment across Afghanistan but they are not sure. Even the idea of peace carries great danger.
“If the war criminals who tried to destroy innocent families who worked with the Taliban gain power, returning to peace will be impossible,’ said 23 year old Jailani.
His father was amongst those Taliban prisoners who were captured in Kundoz province in October 2001 never to be seen again. Jailani was 13 when his father Shah Ghasi left him behind along with his mother and elderly grandmother.
‘He was working at the provincial police headquarter when the Taliban decided to surrender Kundoz to US backed Northern Alliance forces. American air power had made holding this region untenable for the Taliban.
“Later we have been told that my father has taken to Shaberghan but he never returned,” he said.Jailani can’t dare to go outside his village in Kundoz which he doesn’t want to be named. ‘My father was serving with Taliban regime to bring us food’, he says.
‘The people who killed my father are in power, I don’t think there would be a peace until these foes are using official status to suppress their rivals’, Jailani was speaking via telephone.
(Please note ironic introduction)
Every day events are shaping the public views; even recently President Karzai admits that the Taliban are ‘fighting for patriotism’. In a press conference on 12th April 2011 he clearly indicated that ‘with small weaponry Taliban are getting around by foot, they don’t come by tanks, vehicles, or airplanes so it is a war of patriotism,’ he said.
This time President Karzai tried to question what has now become an international war a different way.Karzai recently witnessed the killing of nine children in Kunar province as well as the publication of tragic images of death bodies of Afghan civilians in ‘Rolling Stone’ which influenced his opinion.
Karzai is becoming a more reluctant ally of NATO.
NATO has no other role than to defend Hamid Karzai’s regime and they are finding that increasingly impossible.They are fighting against the Taliban to increase the rule of Karzai’s government across the country.
With all their war technology from around the world, NATO’s efforts have been more than unsuccessful and pushing the Taliban out of the country. One decade’s presence in Afghanistan means bloodshed but no achievement.
Thousands of Afghans who died following the US-invasion of Afghanistan were alive during the Taliban regime, and at least they were bringing food for their kids. Today, thousands of their remnants including children remain between the death and life. The poverty, injustice, state corruption and violence badly shake and distress them.
Now, after a decade of war and bloodshed everyone is talking about negotiation with the Taliban whose regime had been removed ten years ago by US-led military invasion. Thousands of Taliban prisoners have been brutally massacred in the north, and many other have been tortured in connection with their resistance to what they believe to be a foreign invasion.
However negotiations and peace talks are good things but what about the atrocities, massacre and bloodsheds? Who will pay the price? Will there be an accounting? Will there be justice?
At this point, if I return to Jailani; I may face thousands of other Jailanis who are unlikely to forget the injustice of those who killed their loved ones. “Those who massacred thousands including my father are a small group that holds power in Afghanistan. They are few people who divided official posts within themselves and are using the authority against the nation.”
“I remind those involved in the peace talks of our blood, if they forget it you will never see the peace agreement and a return to permanent welfare in the country,” he added.
The people of Afghanistan want peace but, after ten years of war, they aren’t willing to walk away with nothing. If you ask an ordinary Afghan, you will hear. Peace is desired, peace is wanted above all but peace will not come without justice.
The people of Afghanistan will no longer allow themselves to be ruled by the corrupt, by war criminals, will no longer all themselves to live in poverty and desperation while others grow rich and fat through theft.
Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=96648
Posted by Hanan Habibzai on Apr 17 2011, With 0 Reads, Filed under World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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A more accurate assessment would be hard to find. Perhaps, like the Lybians, the Afgan people also long to be free. Americans need to realise that “big oil” is the reason we are in Afghanistan. Not theirs, Russias. And the fact that the Taliban curtailed the production of Opium. Unfortunately for them, that didn’t sit well with the New York Banksters and the City of London. World’s Policeman? More like World’s Enforcers.
Anyone who hasn’t put the parallels between the corrupt South Vietnamese government, its use of heroin production and trafficking to finance its own duplicitous agenda and ineffectual attempts to gain popular rural support by now is in SERIOUS DENIAL !
The taliban are a nasty piece of work but that is an Afghan problem. I understand Cheney’s friends tried to negotiate a pipeline from the oil fields of the former Soviet Republics down to Pakistan but failed to take into consideration what that means when dealing with a country of tribes. The pipeline remains a pipe-dream.
Of course the Taliban are fighting against an foreign occupier and this gets them lots of support. The US has to accept theys tay in the country another hundred years or they up and leave now and cut the losses.
The US imposed (through the UN again) elections were a sham and very un-Afghan. If we respected Afghan traditions we would have organized another loya Jurga of tribal leaders, much more efficient in a country like Afghanistan.
Oh, and as Clinton and Obama rant about Libya’s alleged use of cluster bombs, maybe we can remind them the US used cluster bombs in Iraq and still does in Afghanistan as Israel has on every attack against Lebanon, not to mention Israel’s use of napalm against civilians in Gaza.
Bring the troops home.
Entire Afghanistan’s government dominated by voilent faces grew up with bloodstain hands, are irritating to us American and NATO’s support for Afghanistan against Pashtuns ,the majority ethnic group of the country. Since 2002 They made delebrate efforts to remove Pashtuns from power because they hate them,in 1990s the rise of Taliban marked an end to the atrocities committed by these warlords against the people of Afghanistan. Once agains Taliban appeared as a force which may put the interests of thos war criminals at the resk. For Taliban it is the time to talk directly with US and NATO but there should be commitments for justice and an accountability,the war crimes should not be forgotten.
“The war in Afghanistan has entered its 10th year, a year of both stalemate and suffering. Everyone is thirsty to see peace and stability”
Not 10 years but at least 20 for the Afghans (ad the Soviet part of the war, for the same purpose, see map of natural resources).
Not everyone is thirsty to see peace. Lots of people like war and profit from it, a lot have political ambitions and careers connected to it, a lot others experiment with new killing devices, new interrogation techniques, new tortures, and various equipment. A lot of “peace” officers get lots of overtime at US airports running the circus of frisking people and bogus car searches, terrorizing passengers, etc. And I pass thousands of others indirectly profiting from war and all its consequences.
I hope Hanan will report more correctly in the future because otherwise he sows disinformation.
Marc
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