A Raid Enrages Afghan Villagers
By CARLOTTA GALL
BANDI TEMUR, Afghanistan, May 26 - An airborne assault on this village by United States-led troops three nights ago has raised anti-American fury among villagers, who say soldiers shot several people, killed the headman of the village and caused a 3-year-old girl to flee and fall to her death down a well.
About 50 men were arrested and taken away in helicopters, they said.
The anger and shock were evident today in the village. Women and children wailed as two journalists visited with local district officials. The grandfather of the dead girl lunged at the visitors, tearing at his clothes and throwing himself on the ground in distress.
"They took my sons and they took my money. Only my wife and I are left in the house. We are crying all day," the man, Abdul Ali, 60, said. "It was dark, the little girl didn't know where she was running," he said of his granddaughter.
As with two other recent raids aimed at suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda hideouts in southern Afghanistan, this one apparently failed to net any senior figures.
But Capt. Steven O'Connor, a spokesman at Bagram Air Base, said the detainees were still being interrogated and the military did not yet know exactly who the men were.
The raid has caused Afghans here to compare the tactics of the American-led coalition to brutal raids by the Soviet Army in the 1980's.
"They are thinking of when the Russians came and killed a lot of people, and they are thinking that the Americans and British will also repeat that," said General Akram, the regional police chief in Kandahar.
Military officials said the raid on Friday was based on intelligence that the village was a sanctuary for senior Taliban and Al Qaeda figures.
Captain O'Connor said one person was killed, two were injured and 50 arrested. He added that coalition troops were fired upon first.
General Akram and Gul Agha Shirzai, the governor of Kandahar, the regional capital of southern Afghanistan, became alarmed when angry villagers arrived in the city on Saturday to complain about the raid. They threatened to bring thousands of people from their tribe, the Sakzai, to stone the police station and governor's house, blaming the governor for inviting in American troops who were now killing people, General Akram said.
The villagers traveled to Kandahar again today, spending nearly four hours talking with American Special Forces troops stationed with the governor, said the general, who mediated the meeting.
They were particularly angry at news of the death in custody of their village leader, Hajji Berget, who was 100 years old. "The villagers really respected him, that's why they are so angry. He was killed with a blow from a rifle butt," the general said.
The Americans wanted to return the old man's body, the villagers said, but they refused to take it, demanding that all the villagers who had been arrested be released at the same time. The general said he hoped for a resolution soon.
Coalition forces have increased their activity recently against targets suspected of harboring Taliban or Al Qaeda in western and southern Afghanistan. It is not clear why the American-led coalition has stepped up raids, but local officials have said the Taliban remain active in the region, moving around remote villages, making contacts and possibly recruiting.
The coalition may be seeking to increase military pressure on Taliban remnants to prevent them from organizing any violence that could disrupt the political process, as the country prepares for a grand council in June to decide on a new head of state and government.
But local officials said the raid on Bandi Temur, a poor collection of houses on the edge of the scalding, stony desert, less than 60 miles from Kandahar, may have served little purpose other than to increase distrust of foreign troops, and even to turn Afghans against the American-backed government of Hamid Karzai.
At least six helicopters swooped in on two hamlets of the village, at 1 a.m. on Friday, landing desert buggies and dozens of troops who encircled the villages and blew holes in the walls of the largest compounds, villagers said. The operation lasted until 9 a.m.
One of the first casualties was Hajji Berget whose house was raided. Bloodstains marked the platform where he had been sleeping in the courtyard, but the women gathered there today did not know what injuries he had suffered. They said he had been taken away with the rest of the men in the helicopters.
At least three other men were shot and taken away by the foreign troops, residents said.
"They shot my son, Muhammad Sadiq. He was 35. They shot him in the legs," said Leilo, who pushed forward from the crowd of weeping women. "I was crouching in the corner. They would not let me go to him. He was calling Allah! Allah!" she said.
On the edge of the village, a car riddled with bullet holes stood on blocks beside a house.
"They shot my husband, Abdullah, and they beat me and bound my hands and eyes," said another woman, Naibo. "He drives a taxi, and he said he was tired and was feeling sick and would sleep in the car. They shot him." The foreign soldiers pushed her away and took her husband with them, she said.
Inside the village mosque, a pool of blood, punctured by a single bullet hole in the concrete, marked where another victim had been shot, apparently at close range. One of the villagers, Abdul Muhammad, 40, unwrapped some shards of human skull that he said they had picked out from the bloodstain. "We don't know who was here. We don't know if he was escaping or hiding," he said.
At one end of the village, Oqum Bibi, 30, was rocking a baby and told how Zaghuna, her 3-year-old daughter, fled from the soldiers in the dark and fell into the well. "They were shooting. I sat up but I could not run, they caught me," she said.
"I could not see anything but she was running. We only found her the next day. She was in the well, she was dead."
<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/27/international/asia/27AFGH.html> -- Yoshie
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