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parul
February 14th, 2003, 09:38 AM
Afghan Massacre-Convoy of Death available on video
Film exposing Pentagon war crimes premieres in US
By Bill Vann
12 February 2003

A powerful film exposing the US role in the massacre of thousands of
unarmed
prisoners of war in Afghanistan was shown for the first time in the United
States February 6.

The US premiere of Afghan Massacre-Convoy of Death was held at American
University before a largely student audience. Made by Irish documentary
filmmaker Jamie Doran, who was present for the premiere, Afghan Massacre
has
already been broadcast on national television in Britain, Germany,
Australia
and Italy, and rights to broadcast it have been sold to networks in a
total of
24 countries.

After a rough cut of the film was screened before the European Parliament
last
year, it became the subject of articles and commentaries in virtually
every
major newspaper in Europe, prompting demands by human rights organizations
and
lawyers for an official investigation. In the US, however, the film has
been
subjected to a near-total blackout by the media and unremitting hostility
from
the Bush administration, which unsuccessfully pressured the German
government
to stop its broadcast in that country.

Official Washington's hostility is well founded. Doran's film provides
irrefutable evidence that US forces in Afghanistan carried out a massive
war
crime. Working as a reporter for Japanese television, Doran covered the
US-led
siege of the Qala-i-Janghi fortress, where hundreds of captured Taliban
prisoners were killed. Footage from the fortress included in the film
presents
the images sanitized out of US coverage of the event: the broken corpses
of
young Afghans killed by US air strikes and automatic weapons fire
littering the
grounds of the fortress-many of them with their arms still tied behind
their
backs.

The film reveals what took place after this assault. As Doran notes, while
the
US and most of the world media was focused on the death of a CIA agent and
the
capture of the so-called "American Taliban," John Walker Lindh, who barely
survived the Qala-i-Janghi massacre, little attention was paid to the fate
of
the other prisoners. Some 8,000 Taliban fighters had given themselves up
to
General Abdul Rashid Dostum's Northern Alliance, which functioned as a
proxy
army for the US during the Afghan invasion.

Some 3,000 of them were crammed into private container trucks commandeered
by
Doshtum's forces. During a 20-hour drive to the Sheberghan prison, most of
these prisoners died from suffocation in the airless containers. Witnesses
interviewed in the film described how soldiers fired into the containers
when
the prisoners screamed for air and water. Others reported seeing blood
dripping
from the trucks.


Witnesses: US forces present at massacre

Several witnesses recounted that US soldiers were present as the prisoners
were
loaded into the trucks and also when the container doors were opened at
Sheberghan and hundreds of dead bodies spilled out. One soldier said that
US
troops in charge of the operation told their Afghan allies to "get rid of
them
[the bodies] before satellite pictures could be taken."

The final stage of this grisly operation was the transport of the dead and
wounded prisoners to a barren stretch of desert 10 minutes up the road,
called
Dasht-i-Leili, where the bodies were unloaded and several hundred
prisoners who
were still alive were shot to death. Again, witnesses said US Special
Forces
troops were present during these executions and when bulldozers pushed the
corpses into a mass grave.

The film begins and ends with the hideous scenes of this burial site, as
well
as a second one nearby, where the ground is littered with human bones,
bits of
clothing and shell casings. Doran has repeatedly demanded a speedy
investigation into the massacre and action by the United Nations to
protect the
gravesites against an attempt to destroy the evidence.

Human rights experts have given great weight to the diversity of the
witnesses
interviewed in the film, including soldiers, truck drivers and other
civilians
representing a wide range of Afghanistan's disparate ethnic communities.
Dostum's forces, however, have already murdered two of these witnesses,
while
others have been imprisoned and tortured.

The Word Socialist Web Site interviewed the film's director, who came to
the
premiere in Washington direct from Afghanistan, where he had attempted to
gain
critical new material for a sequel to Afghan Massacre that he is
preparing.

Doran was to meet a courier across Afghanistan's northeast border to
purchase a
videotape that includes footage of US troops at the scene of the mass
killings.
Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi, who collaborated with Doran on
Afghan
Massacre, was abducted and nearly beaten to death in an earlier attempt to
obtain the tape. The filmmaker speculates that General Dostum is intent on
keeping the tape as an "insurance policy," threatening to use it to expose
the
US role in the killings if Washington and the regime it backs in Kabul
should
attempt to deprive him of his power.

Doran said that the courier was detained by Uzbek militiamen who had told
people in the area that they were searching for a man with a videotape. He
has
reportedly been tortured.

"How many more people will have to die before the government in this
country
admits what happened?" asked Doran. He stressed that it is a priority to
protect the mass grave sites and establish a witness protection program
for
those who have testified as eyewitnesses to the war crimes. "If this
country
can propose to fly 500 Iraqi scientists and their families to Cyprus, then
presumably they could bring 25 truck drivers out of Afghanistan," he said.


"As high as Rumsfeld's office"

Doran said that the evidence he has gathered, and which he will use in his
upcoming sequel to Afghan Massacre, indicates that the responsibility for
the
war crimes in Afghanistan goes "as high as [US Defense Secretary Donald]
Rumsfeld's office."

Within the US media, government efforts to suppress Afghan Massacre have
thus
far produced the desired results. Doran described the role of the American
media as "pretty tragic." He added that one American journalist who was
following up the story recounted a conversation with a senior State
Department
spokesman. Asked why the story had yet to run in any major national daily,
the
spokesman replied, "You have to understand, we are in touch with the
nationals
on a daily basis. It just won't run, even if it's true."

Doran said he was hopeful the film would soon be broadcast on US
television and
that in the meantime he was working on a deal that would bring it to at
least
25 movie theaters around the country. Up to now, however, he has been
repeatedly rebuffed by US broadcast media representatives, who told him
that "the timing was not right" for the film. "First it was post-September
11,
and then it was pre-Iraq," he said.

The 46-year-old filmmaker, who has produced previous documentaries on
subjects
ranging from the disappeared in Chile to a retrospective on Stanley
Kubrick's
film 2001, stressed that he was not driven by political motives when he
made
Afghan Massacre. "I'm really not political, but they've tried to say I'm a
communist and used McCarthyite tactics to try to make the story go away,"
he
said of the official reaction in the US. "But it won't," he added.

He said he was well aware of the significance of the film getting a wide
audience in the US on the eve of another war. "I didn't do the film
because of
what is happening in Iraq," he said. "But the fact that it is now breaking
into
the American market may play a role in making American forces think twice
before they are involved in anything similar in Iraq."


Newsweek's whitewash

Also present at the film premiere was Roy Gutman, Newsweek's diplomatic
correspondent and co-author of a story published last August covering the
same
incidents detailed in Doran's film. This piece put the number of Afghan
prisoners killed at less than a third the number reported by witnesses in
the
film and essentially whitewashed the role played by US forces in the
massacre. "Nothing that Newsweek learned suggests that American forces had
advance knowledge of the killings, witnessed the prisoners being stuffed
into
the unventilated trucks or were in a position to prevent that," the
magazine
reported. It followed up this statement with a series of hypothetical
alibis
for the Special Forces elements present at the scene, claiming that they
must
have heard "stories" about the killings, but "may have thought them
exaggerated," and that they "may have believed that the dead were war
casualties." [See "Newsweek exposé of war crimes in Afghanistan
whitewashes US
role"]

In a discussion period after the film showing, Gutman defended the
Newsweek
story, claiming that reports of American involvement in the massacre were
"in a
gray zone, extremely difficult to prove ... and when you're not sure of
the
facts you have to put them in a special category." He insisted that
Newsweek's
policy was to make sure "every factoid" was completely verified before
publishing. After facing challenges from both Doran and the audience, he
fell
back on the defense that his editors were ultimately responsible, adding
that
writing a magazine article was much like "making sausage." He went on to
criticize Doran's film as overly "polemical."

It is worth noting that Gutman rose to prominence in journalistic and
government circles by applying a markedly different standard when, as a
reporter for Newsday, he helped initiate the story about Serb-run "death
camps"
in Bosnia. For that coverage, Gutman relied heavily on second-hand
witnesses
and handouts from the Croatian and Bosnian Muslim regimes. As he told the
magazine Foreign Affairs in 1993, he "consciously tried to move policy"
with
his stories, promoting a US intervention in the former Yugoslavia.

For Gutman and Newsweek, journalistic standards are highly elastic,
depending
upon whether it is the US that is accused of a war crime, or whether
Washington
is making use of war crime allegations to prepare military intervention
against
another country.

In the course of the discussion, Doran said that Newsweek had spent an
entire
day interviewing him and had called back to check facts the week before
Gutman's story ran, but in the end made no mention of him or his film. He
also
revealed that, after agreeing to give a copy of his film's script to
Newsweek's
correspondent in Afghanistan for "research purposes," he discovered that
the
document had been copied and handed over to General Dostum shortly before
he
and his crew had returned to Afghanistan, placing their lives in danger.
Gutman
acknowledged that he had been given a copy of the script, saying it had
raised "a number of red flags" for him.

Despite the attempts of the government and the media in the US to suppress
his
film, Doran expressed confidence that it will find an American audience.
"They
want this story to go away," he said. "But it won't until those American
commanders responsible stand trial."

Afghan Massacre is now available on video and can be purchased at the web
site
of Doran's film company, Atlantic Celtic Film Corporation at
www.acftv.net.
Brief video excerpts from the film are posted on Oneworld TV at
http://tv.oneworld.net/tapestry?story=584&window=full.

raj2rif
February 21st, 2003, 07:45 AM
Dear Parul,
I have not seen the film. I have seen the Afghan People commiting all sorts of crime in Kashmir. Two officers and two soldiers of a battalion ran out of ammunition in Kashmir while fighting against terrorists. They were cut into pieces, their eyes, nails taken out and bodies with burn injuries were handed over to a police station next day. This is the type of ethics followed by the Afghan People. Now comes to Gen Dostum's force. Well all these forces are of warlords and follow no norms of Geneva Convention.
US troops needed these people to fight against Taliban but they were not under command US Forces. Secondly, these people some times don't follow the orders of their own commanders leave aside the orders of the US Forces.
Doran may be having an authentic film. But, I have seen people hiding behind the cover when firing goes on, however brave they may be. I can only comment fully on the film once I see it, but one thing is sure, Doran will make enough money out of it.
While I am strongly against the war crimes committed by the forces, but at the same time one must understand the difficult situation a soldier functions in the war specially if it involes the other party for whom no conventions apply.
Making a film and writing an article is one thing and fighting the actual war is different thing. I don't believe that a professional force like US will commit war crime. There is always more than what meets the eye.

ravichaudhary
February 21st, 2003, 09:56 AM
**Modified by the moderator**
**Please let the discussion remain civil**

----

Try

www.rawa.org/

or simply go an internet search for RAWA, afganistan

Why have you not commented on Rawa


Ravi


*********

anurag
February 25th, 2003, 10:34 AM
Dear Col. Tavathia,

Thank u very much for such a good analysis of the situation. It could be best done by somebody like you only, a person who has been in the (battle) field himself .

After looking at that brief film and the report, even i was of the same view as parul was, and found it to be outrageous and violation of human rights. But after going through your analysis, I realized the hidden points that I was totally ignorant of.

regards
Anurag


Col Virendra S Tavathia(Retd) (Feb 20, 2003 09:15 p.m.):
Dear Parul,
I have not seen the film. I have seen the Afghan People commiting all sorts of crime in Kashmir. Two officers and two soldiers of a battalion ran out of ammunition in Kashmir while fighting against terrorists. They were cut into pieces, their eyes, nails taken out and bodies with burn injuries were handed over to a police station next day. This is the type of ethics followed by the Afghan People. Now comes to Gen Dostum's force. Well all these forces are of warlords and follow no norms of Geneva Convention.
US troops needed these people to fight against Taliban but they were not under command US Forces. Secondly, these people some times don't follow the orders of their own commanders leave aside the orders of the US Forces.
Doran may be having an authentic film. But, I have seen people hiding behind the cover when firing goes on, however brave they may be. I can only comment fully on the film once I see it, but one thing is sure, Doran will make enough money out of it.
While I am strongly against the war crimes committed by the forces, but at the same time one must understand the difficult situation a soldier functions in the war specially if it involes the other party for whom no conventions apply.
Making a film and writing an article is one thing and fighting the actual war is different thing. I don't believe that a professional force like US will commit war crime. There is always more than what meets the eye.

parul
February 28th, 2003, 05:27 PM
Hi All,
I don't have much to say, but seems like all of us have designed saftey mechanisms to defend ourselves.
I feel like sharing this quote by Howard Zinn
( probably i have posted it before also)..
In rethinking our history, we are not just looking at the past, but at the present, and trying to look at it from a point of view of those who have been left out of the benefits of so-called civilizations. It is a simple but profoundly important thing we are trying to accomplish,to look at the world from other points of view. We need to do that, as we come into the next century, if we want this coming century to be different, if we want it to be, not an American century, or a
Western century, or a white century, or a male century, or any nation's, any group's century, but acentury for the human race.

Hope this clarifies my point a bit..
parul