By MARC W. HEROLD
How many dead non-white civilians does it take for the U.S. to notice?
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In the past few years, U.S. officialdom and the mainstream press have been barely taking note of dead Afghans unless the number exceeds 30. On the other hand, when an improved explosive device of the Taliban kills innocent bystanders, metres of newsprint spews forth accompanied by the victims’ photos. For the U.S. press, Human Rights Watch, and U.S. citizenry, some bodies are worthy of mention whereas others are not. As I wrote sometime ago,
“For the Pentagon and its many media boosters, there are good bodies (civilians killed by ‘our enemy’) and bad bodies (civilians killed by ‘our’ militaries), respectively in the Western mainstream labelled accidental collateral damage and (Afghan civilians transformed by the click on a keyboard into) ‘militants’ or ‘insurgents’. During the Yugoslav conflict, Human Rights Watch highlighted civilians killed by Serbs while neglecting civilians killed by non-Serbs. Today in Afghanistan, the U.S. mainstream media led by the Associated Press describe in detail the civilian victims of ‘Taliban’ suicide attacks, often even providing photographs, while remaining far more circumspect about the victims of U.S./NATO air strikes and never printing photographs.” 2
The slaughter in Kunduz on the night of September 3/4 of many Afghan civilians by a United States Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle dropping two 500-pound “precision” bombs upon a large group of people reveals (at least) two things: we know about this deadly attack because it took place in an area where the carnage could not be concealed (anymore); and we know about it because of the scale of the slaughter (too big to hide). But does anyone know about the young girl killed by a NATO missile and about her wounded sister when the “precision” missile struck their home on the night of September 1 in the village of Narizi in Tani district south-west of Khost city? Does anyone remember hearing about a massacre similar in its deadliness to that in Kunduz which occurred in Panjwayi district on October 24, 2006? Or the massacre in Haydarabad, Helmand, in June 2007?3
The context to understanding what took place in Kunduz is a long succession of such deadly U.S. attacks, many of which simply go unreported by the mainstream media but which I have reconstructed in the Afghan Victim Memorial Project (AVMP) website. Such callous killing is related to the very low value attached to an Afghan life.4
The AVMP website describes the attack upon Panjwayi, which involved similar numbers of civilian casualties to that in Kunduz