ktlight
2nd June 2011, 08:25
FYI:
he NATO command in Afghanistan Tuesday brushed aside President Hamid Karzai’s demand for a halt to air strikes and night raids on Afghan homes.
Karzai issued the demand in the face of mass popular outrage over a US air strike that killed 14 civilians—10 of them children and two of them women—in the southern Afghan province of Helmand on the night of May 28. It was only the latest in a series of atrocities carried out by American forces that have resulted in mass civilian casualties.
Speaking at a news conference in Kabul, the Afghan president declared, "From this moment, air strikes on the houses of people are not allowed."
Karzai continued by warning: "If after the Afghan government said the aerial bombing of Afghan houses is banned and if it continues, then their presence will change from a war against terrorism to an occupying force. And in that case, Afghan history is witness to how the Afghans deal with occupying forces."
The statement was a clear invocation of the CIA-backed war by the Afghan mujahideen which ended in the withdrawal of Soviet forces from the country in 1989. It also represented a tacit legitimization of the actions being carried out by armed Afghan opposition groups opposed to the current US-led occupation.
Earlier, Karzai had participated in a televised videoconference with the father of several of the children killed in the air strike and a tribal leader from the Nawzad district of Helmand where it took place. The president described himself as depressed by the images of villagers carrying dead children dug from the rubble of demolished homes and vowed that he was issuing a final warning that such attacks must cease.
source for more to read
http://uruknet.info/?p=m78258&hd=&size=1&l=e
he NATO command in Afghanistan Tuesday brushed aside President Hamid Karzai’s demand for a halt to air strikes and night raids on Afghan homes.
Karzai issued the demand in the face of mass popular outrage over a US air strike that killed 14 civilians—10 of them children and two of them women—in the southern Afghan province of Helmand on the night of May 28. It was only the latest in a series of atrocities carried out by American forces that have resulted in mass civilian casualties.
Speaking at a news conference in Kabul, the Afghan president declared, "From this moment, air strikes on the houses of people are not allowed."
Karzai continued by warning: "If after the Afghan government said the aerial bombing of Afghan houses is banned and if it continues, then their presence will change from a war against terrorism to an occupying force. And in that case, Afghan history is witness to how the Afghans deal with occupying forces."
The statement was a clear invocation of the CIA-backed war by the Afghan mujahideen which ended in the withdrawal of Soviet forces from the country in 1989. It also represented a tacit legitimization of the actions being carried out by armed Afghan opposition groups opposed to the current US-led occupation.
Earlier, Karzai had participated in a televised videoconference with the father of several of the children killed in the air strike and a tribal leader from the Nawzad district of Helmand where it took place. The president described himself as depressed by the images of villagers carrying dead children dug from the rubble of demolished homes and vowed that he was issuing a final warning that such attacks must cease.
source for more to read
http://uruknet.info/?p=m78258&hd=&size=1&l=e