U.S. Footprints in Central/South Asia ─ WAR

Re-reported, compiled, by Carolyn Bennett

From casualty reporting sites
February 5, 2010 casualty sites reporting (accurate totals unknown)

• Anti-war dot com March 19, 2003 ─ [Since the Obama inauguration January 20, 2009: 147] Wounded 31,639-100,000; U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000; Suicides 18 a day http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
• Iraq Body Count figures: 95,309-103,982, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
• ICasualties IRAQ: 4,375 U.S., 4,693 Coalition; AFGHANISTAN: 984 U.S., 1,624 Coalition http://icasualties.org/oif/
• Just Foreign Policy: 1,366,350 http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq

U.S.-involved Bloodletting
News from Middle East/Central/South Asia
January 30
AFGHANISTAN
On Saturday, four army soldiers died and six were wounded when a foreign forces’  ["friendly fire"?] air strike hit their post. Also in the early morning on Saturday joint NATO-Afghan forces came under attack in the northwestern province of Badghis, prompting a gun battle and an air attack that killed eight fighters. The violence in Badghis followed the previous day’s Afghan troop/NATO helicopters clash with the Taliban in Helmand. http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/01/2010130102632120814.html
February 3
PAKISTAN
At least eight people have died, including three U.S. military personnel and four schoolchildren (girls, ages 10-15), after a roadside bomb exploded near a school for girls in northwest Pakistan. Hospital reports said they had 65 wounded, most of them girls. At least 29 people died on Tuesday and many more suffered injuries in a suspected U.S. drone attack in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan. Officials said a series of missiles ─ as many as 19 missiles ─ rained down on Dattakhel village in the Degan area of North Waziristan, part of Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal region near the Afghan border. The missile attack has been called “one of the largest attacks carried out so far” and a backlash is expected because recently the military had clearly said they had not given any tacit approval for the Americans to conduct such a strike and there is tremendous opposition inside Pakistan.” The attacks have often resulted in civilian deaths, stirring anger among Pakistanis and even bolstering support for the Taliban and anti-U.S. sentiment.

Unconfirmed were area tribesmen’s claims that they had shot down at least two U.S. drones in the past. The U.S. never confirms drone attacks but its forces in neighboring Afghanistan and the Central Intelligence Agency are the only ones known to use the unmanned aircraft capable of firing missiles.

The U.S. has increased drone attacks inside Pakistan since a suicide bomber crossed over the Pakistani border and killed seven CIA employees in an attack in eastern Afghanistan on December 30. http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/201023125741180461.html
February 5
BACKLASH PAKISTAN
Thousands of Pakistanis on Thursday staged protest rallies in several cities against the Wednesday conviction in a New York court of Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui. She was found guilty of trying to kill American service members in Afghanistan. Many believe Aafia Siddiqui is innocent. She had disappeared for five years before her arrest in Afghanistan in 2008.
February 5
KARACHI
Twenty-two people died after two bomb blasts hit the Pakistani city of Karachi, apparently targeting Shia Muslims marking a religious ceremony. A bomb-laden motorcycle first exploded on a main road in the city as a bus carrying Shia worshippers passed on Friday, killing at least 12 people and wounding 40 others. The second blast went off outside the hospital where the wounded were being taken, reportedly killing another 10 people.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/201025111132590730.html
February 5
KASHMIR
Political parties and religious groups across Pakistan are holding rallies in support of the separatist movement in Kashmir. On Friday, Indian troops sealed off neighborhoods in Srinagar, the capital of Indian-administered Kashmir and arrested dozens of activists to block planned protests over the death of a Muslim boy. The 14-year-old child died after being struck by a teargas shell fired by police on Sunday during a separatist demonstration.

Kashmir ─ predominantly Muslim and Indian-administered ─ is claimed by both India and Pakistan. Anti-India sentiments run deep in the Himalayan region, where more than a dozen groups have been fighting for Kashmir’s independence or its merger with neighboring Pakistan. Since 2008, Kashmiri separatists have been holding regular rallies, which often turn violent. In that period more than 60 protesters have died, most of the deaths resulting from police fire. http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/2010258817644962.html
February 5
IRAQ
At least 27 people have died and more than 75 suffered injuries after two explosions in the Iraqi city of Karbala. Hundreds of thousands of Shia pilgrims observed at this major religious rite. Friday’s attack came on the final and most important day of the Arbaeen festival and was the third major strike this week against Iraq’s Shia Muslim pilgrims. http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/02/20102595844693762.html

Child’s brain blown out by Blackwater ─ WHY?

Ali Mohammed Hafedh Kinani, son of Mohammed Kinani, “was the youngest person killed by Blackwater forces in the infamous September 16, 2007, Nisour Square massacre” in Baghdad.
From today's Nation magazine and Democracy Now’s exclusive “Blackwater’s Youngest Victim” http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100215/scahill; http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/29/exclusiveblackwaters_youngest_victim_father_of_9
Edited excerpt for Today’s Insight News by Carolyn Bennett

 “Shortly after 9 a.m. Mohammed Kinani was preparing to leave his house for work at his family’s auto parts business in Baghdad when his sister, Jenan, called and asked him to pick up her and her children across town and bring them back to his home for a visit.… Mohammed Kinani's youngest son, 9-year-old Ali Mohammed Hafedh Kinani, asked his father if he could accompany him.

“A few blocks from Nisour Square, they encountered two Iraqi checkpoints and were waved through. As [the family] approached the square, they saw one armored vehicle and then another, with men brandishing machine guns atop each vehicle…. The armored cars swiftly blocked off traffic. 

“One of the gunners held both fists in the air, which Mohammed took as a gesture to stop. ‘Myself and all the cars before and behind me stopped … We followed their orders. I thought they were some sort of unit belonging to the American military, or maybe just a military police unit. Any authority giving you an order to stop, you follow the order.’

“It turns out the men in the armored cars were neither U.S. military nor MPs. They were members of a Blackwater team code-named Raven 23. …

Iraqi Police Officer Ali Khalaf Salman ─
“Iraqi police officer Ali Khalaf Salman approached [a] Kia sedan and it started to slowly drift. The driver had been shot and the car was gliding in neutral toward a Blackwater armored car. … He saw a panicked woman inside the car; she was clutching a young man covered in blood who had been shot in the head. … Salman remembered looking toward the Blackwater shooters [and raised his left arm high in the air to try to signal to the convoy to stop the shooting]. He said he thought the men would cease fire, given that he was a clearly identified police officer. 

Mohammed Kinani (Ali Mohammed Hafedh Kinani’s father) ─
“‘As the officer was waving, the men on the armored cars started shooting at that car, and it wasn’t warning shots; they were shooting as in a battle. It was as though they were in a fighting field. I thought the police officer was killed. It was insane.’ Officer Salman managed to dive out of the way as the bullets rained down. ‘I saw parts of the woman’s head flying in front of me,’ recalled his colleague, Officer Sarhan Thiab. ‘They immediately opened heavy fire at us.’

“The Nisour Square massacre had begun.” 

Mohammed Kinani (Ali Mohammed Hafedh Kinani’s father) ─
“‘One young Iraqi man got out of his car to run, and as he fled, the Blackwater shooter gunned him down and continued firing into his body as it lay on the pavement …

“‘He was on the ground bleeding, and they’re shooting nonstop, and it wasn’t single bullets. The Blackwater shooter … would fire at other Iraqis and cars and then return to pump more bullets into the dead man on the ground. 

“‘He sank in his own blood, and every minute the [Blackwater shooter] would shoot left and right and then go back to shoot the dead man, and I could see that his body would shake with every bullet. He was already dead, but his body was still reacting to the bullets. 

“‘[The shooter] would fire at someone else and then go back to shoot at this dead man. … 

“‘The guy is dead in a pool of blood. Why would you continue shooting him?’…

“[In Mohammed’s vehicle, as the shooting intensified, he yelled for the kids to get down]. … ‘My car was hit many times in different places. All I could hear from my car was the gun shots and the sound of glass shattering’…

“Bullets pierced [his] SUV through the front windshield. A bullet hit the rearview mirror, causing it to whack Mohammed in the face. ‘We imagined that in a few seconds everyone was going to die ─ everyone in the car, my sister and I and our children.…’

“Then the shooting stopped.…
“As the Blackwater forces retreated, Mohammed told Jenan [his sister] he was going to go check on the man who had been repeatedly shot by Blackwater. 

“‘I was deeply impacted by that man they continued shooting at.’ As Mohammed exited his car, his nephew yelled, ‘Uncle, Ali is dead. Ali is dead!’ Jenan began to scream. 

“Mohammed rushed around to Ali’s door and saw that the window was broken. He looked inside and saw his son’s head resting against the door. He opened the door, and Ali slumped toward him. ‘I was standing in shock looking at him as the door opened and his brain fell on the ground between my feet … I looked and his brain was on the ground.’”…

Mohammed Kinani (Ali Mohammed Hafedh Kinani’s father) ─
“‘I wish the U.S. Congress would ask [Blackwater company owner Erik Prince] why they killed my innocent son… Do you think that this child was a threat to your company? This giant company that has the biggest weapons, the heaviest weapons, the planes, and this boy was a threat to them? …

“‘I want Americans to know that

this was a child that died for nothing.’”

Sources and notes
“Blackwater’s Youngest Victim,” by Jeremy Scahill in the Nation magazine, January 28, 2010, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100215/scahill
“… Blackwater’s Youngest Victim: Father of 9 Year-Old Killed in Nisour Square Gives Most Detailed Account of Massacre to Date, Democracy Now exclusive: Report from journalist Jeremy Scahill who has conducted in-depth investigations of the Nisour Squre massacre and of nine-year old Ali Kinani who died after being shot in the head by Blackwater shooters. Scahill filed the exclusive report with Rick Rowley of Big Noise Films. Ali Kinani’s father who has provided the most detailed eyewitness account of the massacre is suing the private military contractor, January 28, 2010,:,” http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/29/exclusiveblackwaters_youngest_victim_father_of_9