who to believe?

Rory Carroll in Kabul
Tuesday January 1, 2002
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Fresh controversy over American bombing
flared last night after Afghans claimed more than 100 people died in an
air strike. US officials hotly denied that any civilians died during the
attack against what it said was an al-Qaida
compound from which surface-to-air missiles had been
fired.

Reports from the village of Qalaye Niazi, in Paktia
province, which borders Pakistan, yesterday said
human remains were scattered among craters. Two days earlier, the Afghan
defence minister - a leading Northern Alliance commander who
wants minimal foreign military involvement in the
country - called for an end to the air strikes.

The question of ongoing bombing by American
forces pursuing clusters of al-Qaida and
Taliban fighters who have eluded them, is one of
many issues confronting the man named yesterday
as Washington's special envoy to Afghanistan,
Zalmay Khalilzad.

Mr Khalilzad, the national security council's
specialist on south-west Asia, the near
east and north Africa, is to be President Bush's
representative to the Afghan people "as
they seek to consolidate a new order [and]
reconstruct their country", the US announcement of the appointment said.

Trying to hold the government together will
be a key task, and the US air raids are among
many issues threatening to split the interim
administration.

Paktia, just south-west of the Tora Bora
cave complex, is a focus of current bombing
because it is a suspected hideout of any fighters,
including Osama bin Laden, who may have escaped last
month's US pounding.

A Qalaye Niazi villager, Janat Gul, told
Reuters he was the sole person from his 24-member
family to survive Sunday's pre-dawn attack by
helicopters and jets. "There are no al-Qaida or Taliban
people here," he insisted. Haji Saifullah, head of
the tribal council, invited US forces to inspect the
village, claiming 107 civilians died, including
women and children.

An ammunition store destroyed in the
bombing had been seized from Taliban fighters who
retreated from the area nearly six weeks
ago, said Mr Saifullah.

The US central command at Tampa, Florida, dismissed the reports,
saying the attack was early
on Saturday, not Sunday, and that two B-1B
bombers and a B-52 - not helicopters - hit
a known terrorist target.

"You don't have a village launching surface-to-air
missiles at aircraft. You have a known al
Qaida-Taliban leadership compound," said a
spokesman.

The strikes set off secondary explosions
consistent with stockpiled arms and
ammunition
but caused no civilian casualties, he said.

Mr Saifullah accused rival ethnic groups of
passing "wrong information" to the US in a
successful attempt to provoke an attack.

Several four-wheel-drive vehicles with US
and

Northern Alliance soldiers were spotted
yesterday at the Tira Pass heading in the direction
of the village. The Pakistani-based Afghan Islamic Press
news agency said at least 92 died in the
attack.

Qalaye Niazi is two miles north of the city
of Gardez, capital of Paktia. US planes have made
several raids in the area in the past
fortnight based on intelligence that Taliban and
al-Qaida remnants are hiding in the mountains.

Two of the earlier raids on eastern
Afghanistan were reported to have killed more than 100
people. There are no independent accounts
of these incidents, but many Afghans are
convinced that the dead were civilian victims of
intelligence blunders.

While the interim government's defence
minister, General Mohammed Fahim, wants the bombing to
stop, the foreign minister, Abdullah
Abdullah, has said that Bin Laden could still be in
Afghanistan and the air campaign could continue "for as
long as it takes to finish the terrorists".

The prime minister, Hamid Karzai, owes his
position at the head of a stitched-together
government of rival factions largely to US
sponsorship and is not eager to alienate
the backer on which he will almost surely
continue to rely.

On his inauguration day, December 22, the
US bombed what it said was a convoy of enemy
fighters, but people from the area later
said the group consisted of tribal elders on their
way to Kabul for the ceremony.

Survivors claimed a rival group had falsely
identified them as terrorists - the same
claim as in Qalaye Niazi.

***From: Christopher Bailey******************

212-663-2515
http://music.columbia.edu/~chris

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