BAGRAM, AFGHANISTAN
Collateral Corpses
Iraq isn’t the only place ‘coalition’ forces are causing civilian deaths, albeit unintentionally. The US army killed 11 Afghan civilians, seven of them women, last Wednesday when a bomb landed on a house on the outskirts of Shkin in Paktika province, near the Pakistan border. Paktika governor Mohammad Ali Jalali told Reuters: "We’ve told them repeatedly that they need to try to be precise when they target something." There is apparent unhappiness in southern and eastern Afghanistan against the presence of US troops and the way civilians often get killed in coalition operations. In February, at least 17 were killed in Helmand province when a mountain base believed to be sheltering Taliban fighters was bombed. The Taliban itself shows signs of becoming active, having launched a series of attacks on US and government targets.
KIGALI, RWANDA
The Congo Malaise
Over a thousand people have been killed in fresh ethnic violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN said last week. The massacres took place in the northeastern region of Ituri, a day after an accord was signed (on April 2) to end over four years of war in this Central African country. "Witness accounts" of the massacres, which took place in the Drodo parish and 14 neighbouring areas, say 966 people were "summarily executed" in three hours. The unrest in Congo, formerly Zaire, broke out in 1998, a year after the fall of Mobuto Seke Seso. Over two million have died since as a result of disease and starvation alone. So shouldn’t Washington turn its attention to those trouble spots where oil doesn’t gush?<>p>
WASHINGTON, US
Reconstruction Man
