Murders in Germany, wars in the Middle East

This Associated Press video says about itself:

First anniversary of deadly NATO airstrike

SHOTLIST

Char Dara district, Kunduz province – 29 August 2010

1. Mid of site where airstrike on tankers happened
FILE: Char Dara district, Kunduz province – 05 September 2009

2. Former NATO commander in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal visiting the site a day after strike, burnt tanker in background

3. Mid of McChrystal and other NATO officials

4. Various of destroyed tanker
Char Dara district, Kunduz province – 29 August 2010

5. Zoom out of site

6. Mid of children playing at site
Char Dara district, Kunduz province – 27 August 2010

7. Wide of locals in Char Dara district

8. House of Haji Abdul Basir, who lost three of his sons and one of his grandsons in the strike

9. Various of Basir’s family

10. SOUNDBITE (Dari) Haji Abdul Basir, father and grand father of strike victims:

“Germany is our biggest enemy; they bombed us because of the two fuel tankers. If they hadn’t done what they did we would have been ready to sell our lands and pay them the cost of the tankers.”

11. Mid of Basir’s grandchild
Kunduz city, Kunduz province – 29 August 2010

12. SOUNDBITE (Dari) Hayatullah Khan, provincial director for Afghan Human Rights Commission in Kunduz:

“From the day after the incident, the commission started its investigation on the incident. After ongoing meetings with German PRT (Provincial Reconstruction Team) in Kunduz and meeting officials from German Defence ministry, we asked them if they could help the families of the victims in a way to repent for what happened and we also asked them to make sure there will not be anymore civilian casualties in future military operations.”

Kunduz city, Kunduz province – 31 August 2010

13. Wide shot of NATO military base in Kunduz province

14. SOUNDBITE (German) Major Stephen Wessel, German military spokesman in Kunduz:

“The one who did that from a military point of view at the time, who was responsible, had his reasons to act as he had decided. I can’t say anything more than this at this point.”

15. Close of hands

16. SOUNDBITE (German) Major Stephen Wessel, German military spokesman in Kunduz:

“The German army supported financially the victims’ relatives we could research and concerning this, the compensation to the victims’ relatives is now over. There are no further intention of support from the German army’s side. Beyond that, there are some further projects to support, but the security situation here in the region doesn’t allow for it at the moment.”
Kunduz city, Kunduz province – 29 August 2010

17. Wide of police checking cars and people in Kunduz city, rifle in foreground

18. Various shots of police checking car

19. Wide of checkpoint

STORYLINE

A year after a German-ordered airstrike on two tankers in Afghanistan that is believed to have killed scores of civilians, families in Char Dara are remembering their relatives.

On 4th September 2009, German Colonel Georg Klein ordered the NATO airstrike against two tanker trucks that had been seized by Taliban insurgents near Kunduz, fearing they could be used to attack troops.

The attack in the northern Afghan province killed up to 142 people, many of them civilians.

German officials have said the Taliban may have been planning a suicide attack on the military’s base using the hijacked tankers.

A year on, 65-year old Haji Abdul Basir was embittered by the incident which took the lives of his three sons and one of his grandsons.
“Germany is our biggest enemy they bombed us because of the two fuel tankers. If they hadn’t done what they did we would have been ready to sell our lands and pay them the cost of tankers,” said Basir.

Hayatullah Khan, the provincial director of the commission added that the issue of the civilian casualties in the military operations still remains a concern for them.

By VICTOR GROSSMAN in Germany:

These tragedies are born close to home

Wednesday 27th July 2016

VICTOR GROSSMAN reports from Berlin on causes of the spate of violence striking Germany and across Europe

ONE, two, three, four — so many killing scenes in Bavaria in little over a week. And that against a backdrop of terrible, even worse killings in so many towns and cities elsewhere.

My main reaction is sorrow. Sorrow for the innocent people who only took the train, went shopping or went to a concert and then never came home. And even more sorrow for the families and friends for whom they were irreplaceable.

Among the many, many flowers, candles and toys placed at the sites of the killings one word is often repeated: “Warum?” — “Why?”

In the hunt for answers we must look first at the perpetrators of these killings. Almost all were young men whose feelings had been twisted into hatred. Some had been diagnosed as mentally ill but the others must surely have suffered too to do such terrible things.

We need not look all too far to find possible causes of such hatred or, frequently, of distorted despair. I think of what hundreds of thousands of people have gone through. War-torn home towns, shootings, explosions and bombings in their native Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, a terrifying flight to get away, to find some haven, some place where they can escape and perhaps even realise their hopes and wishes but a hellish journey to get there.

For those who reached the Promised Land, Germany, some were lucky and found some of the many warm-hearted people who welcomed and helped them.

But all too many were met with callousness, rejection, neglect and greed, even violence, and the constant threat of being sent back to ruins and poverty.

In even the best cases there were the problems of finding oneself in a strange land, with a strange language and very different customs.

This is enough to twist the minds of many people, but not least of all those of young males barred from work and dignity, from family, from women.

Yes, my sorrow extends to all of them too — and to the tragedy of young lives distorted by such experience, lacking guidance or a chance to fight back properly, often so very much alone.

I cannot absolve them of guilt. But I can find guilt elsewhere as well. How many of the good, peaceful people in Bavarian towns and cities — or in other peaceful places — know or care about the killing in the homelands of these people and who has been responsible for them?

What was the punishment for the German colonel who in 2009 ordered the bombing in Kunduz which killed up to 100 civilians? Or was it 150? Who cares, really — except their families? And they, after all, received a full $5,000 for each death. Colonel Klein, who ordered the raid, was promoted to general a few years later.

Who still cares that in 2015, also in Kunduz, 30 or 40 medical personnel or patients, some of them children, were killed by a US war plane in repeated “mistaken” bombing attacks despite immediate pleas to desist? This time relatives were paid $6,000 for each family member killed. After all, one must not disregard inflation!

How many hundreds of thousands were killed in Iraq after a war based on conscious lies? The counting has not been so accurate as in the sad Bavarian massacre. How long have US weapons and German weapons been used to kill civilians in Yemen, in Syria, in Somalia? How long have US weapons and military assistance been used in the destruction of Gaza and repression in Palestine?

Most Arab people certainly know of all these things — and do not easily forget them. How many in Bavaria are aware of them? Or in Germany? Or the US?

The “unfortunate mistakes” at wedding parties and the like are not easily forgotten by sons or brothers. Is it surprising that some seek retribution, even blind retribution? Sadly, very tragically, the ones to suffer and die from such retribution are sometimes peaceful citizens of Arnsbach, Munich or other cities, who are just as innocent of any wrongdoing as those in Kunduz or Kirkuk. And, until the shots or blasts can be heard and felt, just as uninvolved.

This means that everything must be done, wherever we are, to get as many involved as possible. Not only must we oppose the bloody attacks from the sea, ground or air, but also the shipment of the utensils of death to those areas, indeed, to any areas.

We must let the people of other countries solve their own problems — without our pressures, our interference, above all without our weapons.

My sorrow extends even further, to much of what I see in the world which leads to death thoughts, large and small scale.

I firmly believe that we must oppose the cult of killing which pervades our entire culture, the war films, the video games and the media heroics which idolise Western snipers, torturers and killers of all kinds while detailing over and over the misdeeds of a tiny number of immigrants.

But the arms industry brings in billions. Its crooked influence is related, in no small measure, to killings of all kinds, whether by a mentally ill youngster on a peaceful street in Bavaria — inspired or not inspired by Isis leaders — or committed by a handsomely uniformed and decorated general and his men, praised by their embedded journalists as heroic saviours of our civilisation.

Indeed, they and the men behind them in their skyscraper boardrooms are, directly or indirectly, the truly guilty ones, for the wars, the waves of refugees, the misery and countless personal tragedies.

Can they be removed before we all kill each other off in some final hungry desert — or in a sudden final atomic blast?