US forces kill Afghan civilians again

This is a video about Afghan Member of Parliament, expelled for being anti war and pro women, Malalai Joya.

From Associated Press today:

KABUL — An airstrike on a compound in southwestern Afghanistan killed at least six civilians, a local tribal leader said Thursday, after the U.S. military reported that ground forces were coming under fire from inside the residence and called in aircraft.

Civilian deaths have been a source of friction between President Hamid Karzai and U.S. military commanders and have infuriated many ordinary Afghans, who claim international soldiers use heavy-handed tactics.

In Helmand province, local tribal leader Ghulam Mohammad Khan said a farmer, his wife and four children were among nine dead in the airstrike Wednesday evening. He said three guests at the compound also died, but he did not know their identities. …

In Logar province, in eastern Afghanistan, a spokesman for the governor said villagers claimed a U.S. operation overnight killed an innocent shopkeeper and complained that American forces had wrongly detained three civilians. Din Mohammad Darwesh, the spokesman, said villagers were refusing to bury the shopkeeper’s body, in order to prove his innocence, and demanding the release of the three men.

From BigNews Network:

Envoy says his removal from Afghanistan sends out a bad signal about the UN

ANI Thursday 1st October, 2009

London: The senior UN envoy, who was removed from his post in Afghanistan, has told the BBC that his dismissal has sent out “a terrible signal” to the world about the organisation.

Peter Galbraith said he believed he had been removed because of a dispute with his superior over how to handle fraud allegations in the country’s recently held presidential elections. …

“Not just on personal grounds, but because I think it sends a terrible signal when the UN removes an official because he was concerned about fraud in a UN-sponsored and funded election,” he said.

Galbraith said he had seen “very extensive evidence of fraud” in August’s president elections and had had “a sharp disagreement” with his superior, Kai Eide, about how to address it.

He wanted to present the evidence to the Afghan Election Complaints Commission for further investigation, he said, but Eide “did not want this information disseminated”.

Galbraith said that when he intervened, President Hamid Karzai complained and Eide “decided he would support Karzai, who would be the beneficiary of the fraudulent ballots”.

He said Eide had initially “tended to dismiss the fraud”.

“Later, when the evidence of the fraud was inescapable he did talk about it but he’s consistently minimised it,” he added.

EU election observers have said that about 1.5m votes – about a quarter of all ballots – cast in August’s presidential vote could be fraudulent.

Galbraith’s questioning of the election commission had angered Karzai and several cabinet members, some of whom had said they no longer wanted to work with him.

But Galbraith said the UN had “the mandate to support free, fair and transparent elections”.

“That unfortunately imposed on us an obligation to raise the question of fraud in elections which were funded by the international community and supported by the United Nations,” he said.