NATO kills Afghan children again

This video, from a few months ago, says about itself:

10 February 2012

Afghanistan‘s President Hamid Karzai has accused NATO of killing eight children in an air strike on the country’s territory. The incident adds to the already strained relationship between Afghanistan and its Western allies.

…

Gareth Porter, investigative journalist and historian talks to RT, claiming the UN is not doing a responsible job tracking the civilian casualties that are the result of night raids by US special operations forces.

And from AFP news agency today:

NATO air strike kills six children: officials

By Sardar Ahmad – 2 hours ago

KABUL, Afghanistan — A NATO air strike killed a family of eight, including six children, when it ploughed into their home in eastern Afghanistan, local officials said on Sunday.

Saturday night’s incident in Paktia province threatens to further sour already shaky ties between President Hamid Karzai and his Western backers and will likely enrage Afghan civilians weary of years of bloodshed.

“Eight people, a man, his wife and six of their children, are dead,” local government spokesman Rohullah Samoon told AFP.

“It was an air strike conducted by NATO. This man had no connection to the Taliban or any other terrorist group.”

A senior security official in Kabul confirmed the strike and deaths.

“It’s true. A house was bombed by NATO. A man named Mohammad Sahfee, his wife and six of their innocent children were brutally killed,” the official said.

A spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), Lt-Col Jimmie Cummings, said it was investigating the claim.

Civilian casualties are a highly sensitive issue in Afghanistan and have often roiled relations between Karzai and the United States, which leads NATO forces in the fight against Taliban insurgents.

Karzai, who signed a long-term strategic pact with President Barack Obama this month, argues that civilian deaths caused by allied troops turn common Afghans against his Western-backed government.

Karzai summoned ISAF commander General John Allen and US ambassador Ryan Crocker to the presidential palace just over two weeks ago after a number of civilians were killed in NATO airstrikes.

NATO and US forces in Afghanistan admitted in a joint statement after the meeting that civilians had died in two separate hits.

The statement gave no details of how many civilians died in each of those incidents but local officials put the total at more than 20, including women and children.

Yet another Afghan family (and a bakery in Pakistan) is extinguished by an airstrike: unleash the justifications: here.

USA: Iraq, Afghanistan Veterans Filing For Disability Benefits At Historic Rate: here. And here.

In March, the United States and Afghanistan announced that the U.S.-run Bagram prison near Kabul will soon be handed over to Afghan control. It was a major diplomatic breakthrough that paved the way for the signing of a Strategic Partnership Agreement by President Obama and President Karzai on May 2. But the agreement to handover Bagram is leading to a dramatic and dangerous expansion of detention power in Afghanistan-and a potentially disastrous legacy for the United States: here.

In Kabul, No One Hears the Poor. Kathy Kelly, War Is a Crime: “In Afghanistan, ‘women have a bad situation,’ said Fatima. ‘We are illiterate, and we can’t find work that will help us meet expenses.’ They pay one- to two-thousand Afghanis a month for rent. Their homes are compounds where several families share one kitchen. Bread, potatoes, and tea without sugar constitute their normal daily meals”: here.

Bowe Bergdahl told his parents he was “ashamed to even be American” and was disgusted with the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and with the Army, according to emails quoted in Rolling Stone magazine. Bergdahl, a 26-year-old Army sergeant from Hailey, Idaho, was taken prisoner on June 30, 2009, in Afghanistan: here.

Bagram detainees want to use U.S. Constitution to argue for release: here.