Two Victims of War
Today, Memorial Day, we honor military veterans. This is good and right but sometimes I think we use veterans to strengthen our own prejudices and beliefs be they true or not. For example, working in the garden and listening to the Brewer baseball game today I heard the announcer read this poem:
“It is the VETERAN, not the preacher,
who has given us freedom of religion.
It is the VETERAN, not the reporter,
who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the VETERAN, not the poet,
who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the VETERAN, not the campus organizer,
who has given us freedom to assemble.
It is the VETERAN, not the lawyer,
who has given us the right to a fair trial.
It is the VETERAN, not the politician,
Who has given us the right to vote.
It is the VETERAN,
who salutes the Flag.”
As he was reading this tribute to veterans all I could think about were the veterans of the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. These three wars, and perhaps others, I do belief gave us any of these freedoms. As the people of these three countries Veterans suffered, died and were wounded.
Protesting military training at Marquette often students would come by and tell us it was the military who gave us the right to protest. I never felt this.
Today I received two emails forward from two members of Voices for Creative Nonviolence written Saturday, May 25th, one form Baghdad, Iraq and one form Kabul Afghanistan. They detail how our military veterans form these two wars did not only give us our freedoms but contributed to the lost of freedom, life and limb in these two countries. With deep respect to veterans I offer these two letters. During the period of these two wars we have lost some of our freedoms in the USA and our country has been endangered but our lost is nothing to what the people of Iraq and Afghanistan lost. I do not blame the veterans but the USA leaders who sent and continue to send these young men and women and military weapons of war that result in lost of freedoms for the people of these two countries and our own.
Veterans deserve better than this hollow salutes that excused the mistakes and sins of all of us.
The two letters are below.
Tales in a Kabul Restaurant by Kathy Kelly
May 25, 2013
Kabul—Since 2009, Voices for Creative Nonviolence has maintained a grim record we call the “The Afghan Atrocities Update” which gives the dates, locations, numbers and names of Afghan civilians killed by NATO forces. Even with details culled from news reports, these data can’t help but merge into one large statistic, something about terrible pain that’s worth caring about but that is happening very far away.
It’s one thing to chronicle sparse details about these U.S. led NATO attacks. It’s quite another to sit across from Afghan men as they try, having broken down in tears, to regain sufficient composure to finish telling us their stories. Last night, at a restaurant in Kabul, I and two friends from the Afghan Peace Volunteers met with five Pashtun men from Afghanistan’s northern and eastern provinces. The men had agreed to tell us about their experiences living in areas affected by regular drone attacks, aerial bombings and night raids. Each of them noted that they also fear Taliban threats and attacks. “What can we do,” they asked, “when both sides are targeting us?”
THE FIRST RESPONDER’S TALE
Jamaludeen, an emergency medical responder from Jalalabad, is a large man, with a serious yet kindly demeanor. He began our conversation by saying that he simply doesn’t understand how one human being can inflict so much harm on another. Last winter, NATO forces fired on his cousin, Rafiqullah, age 30, who was studying to be a pediatrics specialist.
“A suicide bomber had apparently blown himself up near the airport. My cousin and two other men were riding in a car on a road leading to the airport. It was 6:15 AM. When they’d realized that NATO helicopters and tanks were firing missiles, they had left their car and huddled on the roadside, but they were easily seen. A missile exploded near them, seriously wounding Rafiqullah and another passenger, while killing their driver, Hayatullah.”
Hayatullah, our friend told us, was an older man, about 45 years old, who left behind a wife, two boys and one daughter.
Although badly wounded, Rafiqullah and his fellow passenger could still speak. A U.S. tank arrived and they began pleading with the NATO soldiers to take them to the hospital. “I am a doctor,” said Rafiqullah’s fellow passenger, a medical student named Siraj Ahmad. “Please save me!” But the soldiers handcuffed the two wounded young men and awaited a decision about what to do next. Rafiqullah died there, by the side of the road. Still handcuffed, Siraj Ahmad was taken, not to a hospital, but to the airport, perhaps to await evacuation. That was where he died. He was aged 35 and had four daughters. Rafiqullah, aged 30, leaves three small girls behind.
And Jamaludeen knows that those girls, in one sense are lucky. Four years ago, he tried to bring first aid as an early responder to a wedding party attacked by NATO forces. Only he couldn’t, because there were no survivors. 54 people were killed, all of them (except for the bridegroom) women and children. “It was like hell,” said Dr. Jamaludeen. “I saw little shoes, covered with blood, along with pieces of clothing and musical instruments. It was very, very terrible to me. The NATO soldiers knew these people were not a threat.” (It’s difficult to verify these reports; this one seems to correspond with an attack on a wedding party in Nangarhar in which, according to news reports, 47 people were killed.)
THE MANUAL LABORER’S TALE
Kocji, who makes a living doing manual laborer, is from a village of 400 families located in the Surkh Rod district of Nangarhar province. His story took place three weeks ago. It started with a telephoned warning that Taliban forces had entered the area where his village is located. That day, at about 10:00 p.m., NATO forces entered his village en masse. Some soldiers landed on rooftops and slid expertly to the ground on rope ladders. When they entered homes, they would lock women and children in one room while they beat the men, shouting questions as the women and children screamed to be released. On this raid, no one was killed, and no one was taken away. Kojci believes that NATO troops had acted on a false report and discovered their error quickly. False reports are a constant risk. - In any village some families will feud with each other, and NATO troops can be brought into those feuds, unwittingly and very easily, and sometimes with deadly consequences. Kocji objects to NATO forces ordering attacks without first asking more questions and trying to find out whether or not the report is valid. He’d been warned of a threat from one direction, but the threats actually come from all sides.
THE STUDENT’S TALE
Rizwan, a student from the Pech district of the Kunar province, spoke next.
Twenty-five days ago, just before dawn, twelve children were collecting firewood in the mountains not far from his village. The children were between 7 and 8 years old. Rizwad actually saw the fighter plane flying overhead towards the mountains. When it reached them, it fired on the twelve children, leaving no survivors. Rizwad’s 8 year old cousin, Nasrullah, a schoolboy in the third grade, was among the dead that morning.
The twelve children belonged to eight families from the same village. When the villagers found the bloodied and dismembered bodies of their children, they gathered together to demand from the provincial government some reason as to why NATO forces had killed them. “It was a mistake,” they were told.
“It is impossible for the people to talk with the U.S. military,” says Rizwad. “Our own government tries to calm us down by saying they will look into the matter.”
THE FARMER’S TALE
Riazullah from Chapria Marnu spoke next. Fifteen days previously, three famers in Riazullah’s area had been working to irrigate their wheat field. It was early afternoon, about 3:30 p.m. One of the men was only eighteen - he had been married for five months. The other two farmers were in their mid-forties. Their names were Shams Ulrahman, Khadeem and Miragah, and Miragah’s two little daughters were with them.
Eleven NATO tanks arrived. One tank fired missiles which killed the three men and the two little girls. “What can we do?” asked Riazullah. “We are caught between the Taliban and the internationals. Our local government does not help us.”
THE STORY OF U.S./NATO OCCUPATION
The world doesn’t seem to ask many questions about Afghan civilians whose lives are cut short by NATO or Taliban forces. Genuinely concerned U.S. friends say they can’t really make sense of our list - news stories merge into one large abstraction, into statistics, into “collateral damage,” in a way that comparable (if much smaller and less frequent) attacks on U.S. civilians do not. People here in Afghanistan naturally don’t see themselves as a statistic; they wonder why the NATO soldiers treat civilians as battlefield foes at the slightest hint of opposition or danger; why the U.S. soldiers and drones kill unarmed suspects on anonymous tips when people around the world know suspects deserve safety and a trial, innocent until proven guilty.
“All of us keep asking why the internationals kill us,” said Jamaludeen. “One reason seems to be that they don’t differentiate between people. The soldiers fear any bearded Afghan who wears a turban and traditional clothes. But why would they kill children? It seems they have a mission. They are told to go and get the Taliban. When they go out in their planes and their tanks and their helicopters, they need to be killing, and then they can report that they have completed their mission.”
These are the stories being told here. NATO and its constituent nations may have other accounts to give of themselves, but they aren’t telling them very convincingly, or well. The stories told by bomb blasts or by shouting home-invading soldiers drown out other competing sentiments and seem to represent all that the U.S./NATO occupiers ever came here to say. We who live in countries that support NATO, that tolerate this occupation, bear responsibility to hear the tales told by Afghans who are trapped by our war of choice. These tales are part of our history now, and this history isn’t popular in Afghanistan where stories about precious lives are cut short by terrifying violence.
Kathy Kelly, (kathy@vcnv.org), co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence www.vcnv.org She is living in Kabul for the month of May as a guest of the Afghan Peace Volunteers (http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog/)
Baghdad, May 25, 2013
I just got off the phone with a woman friend from Ramadi. She was to
come to Baghdad to meet with me. “I’m so sorry” she said sadly. “It
is just too dangerous.” She is wise to be fearful as I heard five
drivers from Ramadi were kidnapped yesterday at fake checkpoints.
We have good friends to the north of Baghdad whom we are also unable
to see, from Dyala and Mosel.
Yesterday in broad daylight a man in civilian clothes pulled out his
gun at a nearby gas station and screwed on a silencer. “It was like
watching an American movie!” said a man looking on . I mention these
facts to give you some sense of the extent of the lawlessness. It is
not as if you can pick up the phone and call the police to come help
you!
A sign of hope for me is to see that some of the cement barricade
walls—which run the entire length of neighborhoods—have come down.
If you look closely you can see a couple of them in the foreground of
the photo I took from a moving car.
As we drive through different neighborhoods in Baghdad, however,
countless roads are blocked and barricaded in a desperate measure to
protect their streets. It makes finding our way laborious, like going
through a maze. Cars and trucks are backed up at checkpoints,
checkpoints that people say are useless as explosions continue all
over the city.
One thing everyone agrees on is that the government is to blame. It
is ineffective, unwilling and unable to provide security. Many feel
the government is complicit in the killings and/or turns a “blind
eye.” In a recent slaying carried out by men in plainclothes in
government cars with darkened windows, twelve liquor store workers
were lined up and executed in broad daylight in the street in front of
their shops.
“We need to change all of the leaders,” said Ali. “There is no
ministry that is not corrupt.” He has no confidence in a fair
electoral process and did not vote in the April elections. I pressed
him for his thoughts on what might bring change. “Maybe a general
strike throughout the country. Or have the people in the Green Zone
leave. They are thinking only of themselves!” With a helpless look
he asked, “How can we trust people now?”
Amazing to me is how life goes on. People have no option but to press
onward, fearful and courageous at the same time. I was able to visit
Yusif, a Christian, at his place of work in Baghdad. He is the only
one of his family left in Baghdad. His sister resettled to Canada
after fleeing to Syria. Visibly nervous, he related in a low furtive
voice “I have to stay. I have work and need to send money to my
brother and his family in Turkey. They are waiting for resettlement
[for a year and a half now] and are not allowed to work.” Afterwards
we visited a Palestinian family whose sisters we know in Syria and a
brother in the U.S. Can I help their case for resettlement? The
elderly father used to go to the mosque for prayer, but now he is
afraid. They feel their lives are in danger.
I regret that my scheduled appointment with the UNHCR last week was
cancelled as my security clearance had not yet come through. I
wonder what countries are currently taking Iraqis for resettlement and
in what numbers? What is their current criteria for triaging those at
risk in Iraq, as everyone here feels their lives are in danger.
- alias names used
Cathy Breen (Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org)
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