Operation Infinite Injustice

It was small but vocal. What’s more important is that it was the first anti-US demonstration Kabul witnessed since the Taliban were ousted. The protest was against the US bombing of a wedding feast, on the night of July 1, in Kakarak village, Dehrawud district, Urozgan province, where 48 people died and 119 were wounded. Washington claims the pilot of the C-130 aircraft who was flying over Urozgan had encountered anti-aircraft fire. But the villagers claim they were only firing tracer bullets to mark the wedding. The celebrations were at the ancestral house of influential commander Mod Anwar, a US supporter who assisted Hamid Karzai in his endeavour to oust the Taliban. Some 25 members of Anwar’s family, including his brother, died.

A joint US-Afghan team that visited the village seems inclined to portray the incident as yet another example of paranoid pilots bombing ‘mistaken targets’. The villagers say it was planned, claiming US troops landed there soon after the bombing. Anwar has alleged that US troops handcuffed the wounded and videotaped them for two-three hours. Perhaps the attack was based on wrong information. Urozgan is Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s adopted province; the Americans perhaps believed that he or senior Taliban leaders would attend the wedding. Compounding it was the compensation the Afghan government announced: $200 for those killed, $75 for the wounded.