A Few More ' Bad Apples'

Felicity Arbuthnot.

... But the most appalling atrocity to come to light (so far) in Afghanistan is meticulously reconstructed in Jamie Doran's film: ' Massacre at Mazar '. In November 2001, just weeks after the invasion, up to three thousand, men were loaded into twenty five metal containers. The containers were shot at killing many inside, others suffocated over four or five days. That it happened on US watch in the occupied country cannot be disputed. Repeated witness allegations of actual US involvement have never been investigated. One witness saw six containers with blood pouring from them. In the desert at Dasht Leili, a fifty metre mound of sand may be America's very own mass grave (...) Occasionally another atrocity leaks out of Afghanistan, the shooting up of a village, wedding party, or funeral, the small and larger massacres of people going about their business, or a small but huge personal tragedy as a farmer told the BBC's correspondent about the British, who he said with immense sadness, had destroyed his citrus groves, olives, livestock, even the walls of his smallholding, he had nothing left (...) Now, it transpires, a different kind of atrocity caught on, with German soldiers in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF.) On October 25th., the German Daily, Der Bilt, printed pictures of German troops playing and posing with a skull...

continua / continued