US soldiers killed Afghan civilians and kept fingers, skull as trophies

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US soldiers killed Afghan civilians and kept fingers, skull as trophies
By Patrick Martin
10 September 2010

American soldiers murdered Afghan civilians for sport and kept finger bones, leg
bones, a tooth and a skull as grisly trophies, according to documents released
by the Pentagon on Wednesday. The case is the worst such atrocity yet revealed
in Afghanistan. It underscores that just as in Iraq, the US military
intervention is a brutal colonial war in which the entire population of the
country is a target.

The official charge sheets released by the US Army greatly expand the case
initially brought against five soldiers charged in June with premeditated murder
and beating a fellow soldier who was threatening to inform on them. A total of
12 soldiers now face 76 charges, with multiple counts of drug abuse, mutilating
corpses, filing false reports, lying to military investigators and acts of
violence against fellow soldiers. (See “The twelve soldiers charged in atrocity
and cover-up”)

All 12 soldiers are from the same company of the 5th Stryker Brigade Combat
Team, based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington. The brigade
recently returned from a year-long deployment near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.

Six of the soldiers face charges of keeping body parts from Afghan corpses,
while three are charged with taking or possessing photographs in which US
soldiers posed with the bodies of their victims. One is charged with stabbing a
corpse.

The highest-ranking soldier in the group, Staff Sgt. Calvin R. Gibbs, is
allegedly the instigator of the atrocities, and faces a total of 16 charges.
According to the official documents, after the brigade was deployed to
Afghanistan last year, Gibbs began to boast of conducting similar actions with
impunity during a previous deployment in Iraq. He egged on fellow soldiers to
take part, telling them how easy it was to “toss a grenade at someone and kill
them.”

Gibbs helped organize a “kill team” that targeted Afghan civilians randomly and
then cut off the fingers of their victims as trophies. This grisly celebration
of murder was widely practiced during the Vietnam War, and the tradition has
apparently been handed down to the current generation of American “warriors.”

Gibbs is charged with possessing “finger bones, leg bones, and a tooth from
Afghan corpses.” He is also accused of showing the severed fingers of one Afghan
victim to another soldier as a way of intimidating him and covering up the
crimes. According to the charge sheet, Gibbs participated in the May 5 beating
of a fellow soldier and threatened “to kill him if he spoke about hashish use
within the platoon.”

The three murders were committed during a four-month period earlier this year.

    * On January 15, Gul Mudin was killed “by means of throwing a fragmentary
grenade at him and shooting him with a rifle,” an action carried out by Spc.
Jeremy Morlock and Pfc. Andrew Holmes under the direction of Gibbs. Morlock
allegedly told Holmes, 19 and on his first tour of duty, that the killing was
carried out for fun.

    * On February 22, Gibbs and Spc. Michael S. Wagnon allegedly shot the second
victim, Marach Agha, and placed a Kalashnikov next to the body to justify the
killing.

    * On May 2, Mullah Adadhdad was killed after being shot and attacked with a
grenade. Spc. Adam C. Winfield and Gibbs were allegedly the perpetrators.

The military investigation was not triggered by any of the murders of Afghans,
but rather by an incident May 5, when seven of the charged soldiers allegedly
beat up at least one fellow soldier in an effort to keep him quiet. This soldier
had initially complained to commanders about extensive illegal drug use,
primarily smoking of hashish. After the beating, he also began talking about the
murders, which were an open secret in the company.

The seven soldiers whose names were made public for the first time yesterday,
are charged with participating in the beating and other efforts to cover up drug
abuse and other offenses. But the Army is reportedly investigating other
possible criminal actions against Afghan civilians, including a shooting
involving six of the soldiers in March.

Staff Sgt. Robert Stevens is charged with lying to investigators about that
shooting, telling them that the Afghans were a threat to the troops, and that
one had been in possession of a rocket-propelled grenade, when he knew this
claim was false.

The actual prosecution of the 12 soldiers promises to be a protracted and
uncertain affair. Army officials told the press that the case is largely based
on extensive statements given by one of the five charged with murder, Spc.
Jeremy Morlock. His attorney says Morlock suffered traumatic brain injuries from
IEDs in Afghanistan and was being treated with anti-depressants, muscle relaxers
and sleep medication, while also using hashish and opium. Such comments are an
invitation to a legal challenge to the credibility of Morlock’s testimony.

As with previous investigations into military atrocities in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the focus of the official investigation is entirely on the
low-level perpetrators of particular war crimes, and not on the commanders in
the field or their civilian superiors in Washington, whose policies are
ultimately responsible for the violence.

This latest atrocity explodes the official pretense of the Obama administration
that the war in Afghanistan is aimed at “fighting terrorism” and liberating the
Afghan population from Taliban misrule.

It is the hallmark of colonial wars, waged for predatory purposes by imperialist
powers against poor and backward countries, that the soldiers are systematically
brutalized by the role they are assigned to play.

Given that the inhabitants of the targeted country naturally resent and oppose
invasion and occupation, and that the insurgent forces fighting the occupation
blend in with the local population, it is inevitable that the soldiers of the
invading power will come to look on the people as a whole as the enemy.

This pattern has emerged over and over, whether with French troops in Algeria,
British troops in Northern Ireland, or American troops in Vietnam, Iraq and
Afghanistan.

Those soldiers involved in criminal acts of violence against innocent civilians
should be tried and punished. But far more important is the prosecution of those
whose political and military decisions made such atrocities inevitable.

The top officials of the Obama and Bush administrations, and their counterparts
in the major NATO powers participating in the occupation of Afghanistan, must be
brought to judgment before an international tribunal.

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/sep2010/afgh-s10.shtml

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