NPR is reporting that U.S. and Afghan soldiers have allegedly forced innocent villagers into a gruesome Death March:
Villagers from a violent part of southern Afghanistan say that Afghan troops, along with several American mentors, forced civilians to march ahead of soldiers on roads where the Taliban were believed to have planted bombs and landmines.
John Glaser from Antiwar.com has more:
Last month, scores of villagers came to the district meeting hall along with their village elders, and all told the local authorities similar story. They said American and Afghan soldiers pulled them out of their homes one evening in early September.
According to Faizal Mahmud, the deputy head of Panjwai’s council of elders, the villagers claimed the soldiers arbitrarily detained them, lined them up, and forced them to walk in front of the soldiers for over a mile, through roads believed to be packed with explosives by the Taliban.
Glaser added that if the allegations were true, it would be “a serious violation of domestic and international law. “
The last time American soldiers were involved in a Death March, they were the ones marching. The Bataan Death March was rightfully condemned as a war crime and the people responsible were prosecuted for it, so must this be if it turns out these stories are true. However, if Dick Cheney’s gleeful boast of torture or President Barack Obama’s wanton killing of Americans are of any indication, there will be no justice meted.
If these allegations are true, it’s a very low new low for American imperialism.
