TIME: How the U.S. Killed
the Wrong Soldiers
Monday, February 11, 2002
By MICHAEL WARE / URUZGAN with reporting by MARK
THOMPSON / WASHINGTON
At first the U.S. military was quite proud of what it
had done in this tiny hamlet tucked among orchards
and snowcapped ridges north of Kandahar. In what
appeared to be a perfect sneak attack, U.S.
special-operations soldiers on Jan. 24 stormed
Sharzam High School in Uruzgan. That same night,
another unit conducted a similar commando raid at a
military compound a mile away. In all, the soldiers
killed 21 Afghans, who the U.S. claimed were Taliban,
captured an additional 27 and destroyed troves of
weapons and ammunition. All that, and only one U.S.
soldier was hurt--and just barely. It was the most
dramatic ground operation the U.S. has acknowledged
since the opening weeks of the campaign in
Afghanistan.
It may also prove to have been the U.S.'s most
calamitous blunder. According to authorities in
Uruzgan and the surrounding area, the Americans
killed the wrong guys. The soldiers slaughtered at
Sharzam, they say, were not enemy fighters but
anti-Taliban troops loyal to U.S.-backed interim
Afghan leader Hamid Karzai. They belonged to a
military commission appointed by the new provincial
government to oversee the collection of leftover
Taliban weapons. "A terrible mistake has been made,"
said Abdul Ghani, an Uruzgan businessman.
The Americans aren't ready to admit as much. But
after initially dismissing the possibility that the
U.S. had committed a colossal error, American
military officials now concede that they may have
attacked some anti-Taliban fighters. But they insist
that Taliban soldiers were in the district as well.
Privately, the Americans are showing even greater
signs of contrition. An Army officer told TIME that
some of the 27 captives will probably be released
soon and "might even get an apology." A senior Afghan
official in Kandahar told TIME that U.S. military
commanders admitted to him that "there had been a
mistake." An official U.S. investigation is under
way.
According to eyewitnesses, U.S. commandos moved on
Uruzgan shortly before 2 a.m. on Jan. 24, accompanied
by eight helicopters and at least two armored
humvees. Local Afghans said that when the Americans
burst into the school, they found Afghan fighters
sleeping and began spraying the beds with gunfire. A
guard named Hamdullah, who evaded the attack by
hiding in a ditch, told TIME he heard men inside the
school plead, "For the love of Allah, do not kill us.
We surrender." According to villagers, the Americans
shot most of their victims at close range. After two
hours, the commandos choppered out; an AC-130 gunship
hovering overhead then incinerated the school and
several former Taliban vehicles with howitzer cannons
and machine guns. "The cars were burning," recalls
Abdul Salam, a soldier who crept into the school
three hours later, "and all my friends were dead."
Uruzgan is certainly a place that could confound an
army. The province was a Taliban hotbed that sent
hundreds of young men to fight for the regime.
Mohammed Younis, the warlord in charge of the
military compound raided by the U.S., was friendly
with senior Taliban leaders; his son had close ties
to Taliban Health Minister Mohammed Abbas Akhund, one
of the movement's founders. A Kandahar official told
TIME that Akhund and a few other Taliban leaders are
believed to be hiding in the mountains outside
Uruzgan. While it is possible that U.S. troops simply
went to the wrong place in search of those leaders,
locals suspect that American commanders were duped by
warlords--including, perhaps, Younis, who survived
the U.S. attack--trying to eliminate rivals. "I blame
Afghans," says Ahmed Wali Karzai, the interim
leader's brother. "It was an Afghan mistake."
Others are less generous toward the U.S., in part
because of the brutality of the attack at the Sharzam
school. One witness of the aftermath said the
Americans shot Afghans as they hid under beds and
rushed out of doorways. The Pentagon maintains that
the Afghans started shooting first, but villagers say
they heard no gunfire from inside the school. Two
dead Afghans were found with their wrists bound. One
U.S. soldier left behind a note: "Have a nice day.
From Damage Inc." Days after the attack, the
classrooms at the school were still soaked in thick
blood. Surveying the carnage, a Uruzgan elder said,
"The U.S. must be punished for what they did in this
room." Even mistakes aren't easily forgotten.
--With
reporting by Mark Thompson/Washington